PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 BREATHS! 4th BREATH.

We meet and live the “groan zone” in our Guest House, an inevitable step to allow the “letting-go” of what no longer serves us and arrive at the bottom of the U.

What is the “groan zone”? Are you able to recognize the groan zones in your life?

The “groan zone” is a term introduced for the first time by Sam Kaner and his colleagues in 1998. They define the “groan zone” as a natural period of confusion arising in a meeting when difficult issues emerge whilst in the process of what they call participatory decision-making.

We define “groan zone” as a phase where we can experience stuckness, resistance, blocked energy, confusion. We often have a strong desire to bypass and come to premature conclusions and shift to the right side of the U.

As we attempt to breathe life into Theory U and emphasize its purpose to be a Way of Being – reconnecting to the more authentic and higher aspects of ourselves – we need awareness of the “groan zone”.

You are reading the fifth article in a series of nine. The series aims to assist you to dance Theory U. The use of “breaths” is a metaphor for the components of the Life Pulse. The Life Pulse is a cosmic principle governing all of life in the Universe. The Life Pulse consists of sequential phases of contraction, stasis, expansion, stasis.

The first article invites you into our Guest House and creates a safe container. The second article shape-shifts “downloading” into a tool to gain more of Self. A listening space arises. The third article breathes life into the opening of our State of Being reason. The more of Self that is available establishes the “observing” and “curious asking” quality. The process continues with the opening of our State of Being emotion in the fourth article and we add “experiencing” to our toolbox. We experience in our physical body what we do with what happens to us and we sense through the group being. The diagram shows us where we are. This article covers the 4^th of our 7 breaths.

We prepare ourselves to open our will and to learn about the importance of delving deep inside of ourselves. This deep dive is necessary in order to discern and live the “groan zone”. The learning cannot happen through a teaching, it has to unfold through the magic of this fascinating triad of “witnessing, asking, experiencing”.

Overview of the 4^th Breath

The 4^th Breath is, as all the other breaths in our series, a Life Pulse composed of an inward movement of contraction (green on the picture), followed by a moment of stasis (red on the picture and located at the inner edge of the U), gently extending in an outward movement of expansion (blue) and back into stasis (again red and now at the outer edge of the U).

The graphic representation reveals how the “groan zone” occupies and affects this whole breath. Only at the very end of this breath does the “letting-go” happen. We move through the eye of the needle and dive into “presencing”.

The drawing below demonstrates where this Breath is in our dance through Theory U.

Contraction

We move inward, and gently and lovingly prepare ourselves to open our State of Being will.

The symbolic representation gives us an overview of our constellation. Our soul incarnates on Earth by engaging with a body-mind. This body-mind is our house and consists of a physical body, which generates an energy field. This energy field represents our personality and can be divided into three different States of Being: reason (the upper part), emotion (the front part) and will (the back part). To learn more about our fascinating human potential, please read the series of articles on Physics and Reality.

Opening of the State of Being will creates space at the back of our energy field. Chakras are energy vortices in our energy field, they are connected to areas in our physical body where there is a great deal of neural activity. Each chakra has a particular psychological area of interest.

This State of Being, will, is reached by opening the back chakras from the fifth down to the second chakra and then to the first chakra. The back of the fifth chakra stands for how we express ourselves in the world, the back of the fourth chakra holds our capacity for trust, the back of the third chakra is our ability to heal ourselves, the back of the second chakra encompasses our creativity and quantity of Self. The first chakra is the home of our life force.

The step by step opening of our will centres is for me the “groan zone”. It requires courage to be vulnerable and to face our struggles and doubts, confusion and resistance.

The gift of opening our will is the access it gives us to the intelligence of our hands, our power from within, our creativity and our capacity to be undefended.
A detail of the drawing of Dancing Theory U shows our body-mind as an orange circle and our soul as a blue dot, which is moving from the centre of our body-mind to the edge and crosses the edge. A red wave tries to keep the soul movement from happening. This wave reveals the resistance.

As a host you completely participate in the “groan zone”, if you are able to show your vulnerability, you will inevitably meet your own resistance and create abilities to grow and gain more of you and you will be better able to hold space for the uneasiness, the unknown, for the boiling potential, for the uncertainty of your group.

Stasis

The point of stasis is crucial at this moment in our 4^th Breath. This is the moment where you shift the attention from deep within each participant outwards while you are also experiencing the “groan zone” with the group. The participants gather momentum in order to live the “groan zone”. A ritual or a meditation is often very helpful in bringing awareness to this moment.

As a host you are holding a listening space, flavoured with curious asking and experiencing, in an atmosphere of witnessing. Time to introduce this wonderful tool – “witnessing, asking, experiencing” – in more in depth.

The “asking” is a dance between the inner process and the external event that is happening to us or around us. It is a curiosity about what is here now with an opening of our State of Being reason. The asking prompts the “experiencing” of what is happening in the body as we open our State of Being emotion. Once we are “experiencing” the sensations in our body, we are then able to acknowledge where we are through impartially “witnessing” what is happening now. There is no judgment; we simply notice what is happening. We do not do anything; we just allow whatever happens to unfold.

This is the true opening of our State of Being will.

You can read more about this magic triad in the series: Why Everything that Happens Affects Everything.

Expansion

We continue with an outward movement still in the “groan zone”. Most of the participants don’t like it; they experience resistance and stuckness.

We try to speak the “groan zone” into being. It is by exchanging and supporting each other that each participant will be able to really grasp this concept of “groan zone”.

We realize that the resistance is what is preventing us from “letting-go”. The “groan zone” is the phase just before. It is not willing to let go of our patterns, dynamics, habits, images, beliefs. It is not willing to let go of control, let go of pride, let go of words, let go of exerting power over, let go in all possible ways.

And there is such beauty in acknowledging this phase and in giving it enough space within the whole living process of Theory U. It is how we get to know each other and respect each other, by witnessing our struggles.

A practice helpful at this moment is World Café. World Café is a New Space Technology. It is a simple process of bringing people together to talk about things that matter. The groups are anything between 15 and 100. You need a room set up with tables that are covered with paper and can each host an average of 5 people.

People share their views around a burning question and switch tables in order to connect the threads from each table’s discussion. There is always a host at the table who makes sure the conversation stays focused around the burning question. My book Becoming What is Changing: Exposition describes World Café and compares it with several other New Space Technologies.

Here in this expansion of our 4^th Breath and the burning question in our World Café is about our experience of the “groan zone”: How can we discern and allow the “groan zone”? This practice can lead us out of the “groan zone” and into “letting-go”.

Otto Scharmer defines this “letting-go” as a letting go of the ego of our old self. We do indeed let go of limited identification of our ego, we do not let go of our entire ego. Our ego is a major tool for our personal growth and allows us to tend to our State of Being. It is our inner conductor. Our ego is defined by how it identifies itself with a part or several parts of us. I invite us to identify our ego with much more of ourselves than this limited part of us. In its highest form, our ego has the capacity to sense into the field and allow magic to happen.
A detail of the drawing of Dancing Theory U shows a literal letting go, a dissolving of the resistance in fragments. The red wave is fragmented. “Letting-go” of everything that does not serve us any longer.

It feels as if you are going to die, you don’t know how you will move through this threshold, through this eye of the needle, you can only surrender. A participant shared in one of the trainings: “Embrace, recognize, take distance from fear. You have to live it!”.

“Letting-go” is the removal, dissolving of the resistance and surrendering is the moving through the cleared field. This surrendering is our next moment of stasis.

Stasis

In the World Café you invite participants to reflect in silence on the patterns, themes and deeper questions experienced in the small group conversations.

This is a stasis in deep connection with others, with the world, with the surrounding sphere. We are at the outer edge of the U, deep down in the U. We have reached a state of listening outside the world of our preconceived ideas and concepts. Our circle of attention widens and a whole field of possibilities opens, not just one new reality, many realities existing together.

We feel we are connected to and operating from a widening surrounding sphere as Otto Scharmer describes it. Time is slowing down and space seems to open.

Each individual reaches this “presencing” and so do we as a group. The group being connects to a source deep within. We achieve a deeper connectedness then we were able to do so far. A deeper connection arises in this initial phase of “presencing” reaching towards the essence of who we are and what we bring in the world. We achieve a point of communion with the group.

A real 4^th breath experience

We return again as in our previous articles to the real experience of this 4^th Breath in the Guest House Facilitation training in Berlin, in November 2014.

In our training the opening of our State of Being will at the back of our energy field, started at the end of the day with the preparation of our dinner, the eating of our dinner and our night’s sleep.

The activities of daily life are a part of the training and have a space in the experience of the Life Pulse. We are not served our food, we prepare it together and we serve each other.

The idea behind this is to offer participants a more in depth experience of Theory U, of the Life Pulse, of the principles of Guest House Facilitation and an ability to take all of this back home with them.

As a host I experienced something really profound in this training. The teaching at the start of the expansion within this 4^th breath was very difficult, the transmission of the knowledge was awkward and only after the completion of this breath it dawned on me that “of course” you cannot teach anything in the “groan zone”. There is too much confusion and resistance within the participants.

CONCLUSION

This 4^th Breath is most of all the “groan zone” breath. The key feature of this Breath is the awareness of this fascinating triad “witnessing, asking, experiencing”, enabling us to pause and to be with what’s here now.

On our journey through Theory U, at the bottom of the U, lies an inner gate that requires a huge “letting-go”. Literally and metaphorically you need to become empty in order to be able to pass this inner gate.

This inner gate makes it clear that even if you move through the U with a group and even if the group being assists us to move through the journey, it’s an individual act of letting go of everything that is not essential. It is an individual act of opening our reason (=mind), our emotion (=heart) and our will.

It’s up to you do decide if you are ready to let go of how you know things are, should be, have to be into this fascinating field of emerging possibilities of how things could become.

This is new territory, unfamiliar in our society in many ways, yet powerful and fulfilling and needed in order for us to thrive on the waves of changing consciousness and their effects in our world.

Awareness of the Life Pulse is a wonderful tool to assist us to move through the “groan zone”, to allow the “letting-go” and the subsequent surfacing of the spaciousness of “presencing”.

From this deep connection to Source, to our soul’s purpose, and with all of us, we are ready to embark on the 5^th Breath. This 5^th Breath is primarily a residing in “presencing”, in the spaciousness. The key question is if tapping into this real force of “presencing” can bring the new into reality.

You can discover this in our next article.

Please, if you like this article share it with your friends and colleagues. Any comments or stories are welcome.

With love and appreciation

Veerle

ACKNOWLEDGMENT:

This series of nine articles could only arise with the amazing assistance of all those magnificent people who attended a Guest House Facilitation workshop or training. They provided me with wonderful experiences that contribute to our dance through the U. One of the participants, Elaine McGoogan co-created in a delightful way through her excellent and fluid editing work!

VEERLE DE BOCK is a social entrepreneur, a change-maker, physician, healer, facilitator, trainer, coach and author of the trilogy, Becoming What is Changing. She spent nearly three decades of her life as a physician specializing in geriatric care, including a 21-year career as department head in an Antwerp regional hospital. In 2003, she began her study as an energetic healer, teacher, process facilitator and supervisor at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, and since 2007 has been leading many other trainees to master these same skills. In 2010 she was trained in the practice of Dynamic Facilitation by Jim Rough, which she now incorporates into her workshops and training sessions. In 2012 she decided to devote her work exclusively to writing, facilitation and coaching. That same year, she devised a new integrative practice of facilitation she calls ‘Guest House Facilitation’, that helps teams learn how to listen and utilise both the inner and outer processes within their organisation, to see it as a dynamic and living organism, and to reconnect to its intrinsic purpose and intention. Her book, Becoming What is Changing: Exposition, is the first part of a trilogy aimed at managers, team leaders and responsible employees who wish to bring this kind of transformation into the workplace, so they can create an environment where people are happy, satisfied and continuously growing.

http://www.chancestochange.com

http://twitter.com/VeerleDeBock

http://facebook.com/BecomingWhatIsChanging

Aspects of life

Practice don’t Preach Theory U in 7 Breaths! 2nd Breath.

March 9, 2015April 15, 2015 Veerle de Bock

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 Breaths! 2^nd BREATH.

Opening our State of Being “reason” deepens the dance between our soul and body-mind, coalescing into “seeing” and “observing” in a wave of curious asking.

How to practice Theory U? Just imagine how disappointed you are when a meeting ends as it begins with “downloading”. How can you have more conversations that matter in your organization and in your daily life?

You’re in the right place to find out! Here, in this series of articles, we dive deeply into new practices to move through the “downloading” stage and, if we need to, we can always revisit this “downloading” tool.

This article fits into a series which explains how you can effortlessly move through Theory U while at the same time allowing the steps of the U to expand and even transform you. We dance Theory U within a literal and metaphorical Guest House. The breaths refer to whole and complete cycles of the Life Pulse.

The first article in the series offers you a framework and introduces you to Guest House Facilitation and the magical, cosmic principle of the Life Pulse. The second article familiarises us with “downloading” as a tool to process the Self. It is the 1^st Breath of the series of Seven Breaths of moving through Theory U.

The diagram below shows where we’re at now in our dance.

Our 2nd Breath is the ‘seeing’ stage of Theory U and as you notice in our diagram it’s also called ‘observing’. I invite you to explore with me what its deeper meaning is!

Overview of the Second Breath

The Second Breath is again a complete phase of the Life Pulse as the drawing illustrates, an inward movement of contraction (green on the drawing), followed by a moment of stasis (red on the drawing and at the inner edge of the U), an outward movement of expansion (blue on the drawing) and again effortlessly moving into stasis (back to red and now at the inner edge of the U).

Contraction

We move inward to assimilate what has happened to, and around, us in this magnificent phase of ‘processing the Self’.

How does what is shared so far land in us, how do we feel within the Guest House, how does the teaching reverberate through us?

This inward movement is how we prepare to open our State of Being: reason. What is meant by opening our reason?

The diagram below shows how reason is located at the upper part of our body-mind. For those familiar with the chakra system it is the opening of our seventh and sixth chakras. The seventh chakra stands for our ideas, our mission. The sixth chakra has a front and back aspect: the front aspect being the concepts we can see and the back aspect how we are able to create a vision, that is, a step by step approach to the concepts we see. For more explanation on the chakra system, you might enjoy Anodea Judith’s magnificent book on Chakra Psychology. Opening our reason (or mind in the language of Theory U) is literally creating space in our energy field around our head – 360 degrees.

This inward movement or contraction (green on the overview of the 2nd Breath in the beginning of this article) can be taken as a silent walk in the environment of the literal Guest House or it can be time spent individually in silence or it can be a dancing practice.

I love a dancing practice where you invite the inner dancer to graciously dance with the different elements in the four directions. The inner dancer represents for me our soul, the spiritual being which we are and we dance with our body-mind. We connect with the earth of our body and with the earth around us, the fire inside and around us, the water in our precious bodies and the water all around us, the air and spaciousness inside of us and the breath of life all around us. This is a great practice to prepare us for the opening of our reason.

Stasis

This contraction, this inspiration completes with another moment of stasis (red on the overview), connecting deep inside of ourselves – at the inside of the U where we gather momentum from the field of endless possibilities to move outward into another wave of expansion.

Each breath is complete in itself and could not be anything else. It is a natural principle which exists in all of life around us and within us – a moment of contraction, stasis, expansion and another moment of stasis.

Expansion

We are now ready for an outward movement or expansion (blue on the overview). The participants are given some basic guidelines about Guest House Facilitation. I assure them, they are all guests and that any contribution is welcome and valid.

With our reason centres open, we are ready to have conversations which matter and which go deeper. A great way to establish this is through Dynamic facilitation, a powerful technique invented by Jim Rough. You can read more about the practical applications and principles of Dynamic Facilitation (DF) in my book Becoming What is Changing: Exposition).

To explain some of the principles of DF: any contribution from a participant is reflected and written on a flipchart. Four flipcharts are used, three of them with the headings Data, Concerns and Solutions. The fourth flipchart harvests the How-questions.

As a host, pay attention to the flipchart with the How-questions: these indicate a shift in the conversation. A shift can arise out of a contribution to any of the other headings on the flipcharts.

What is written is the responsibility of the participant – you own your contributions and how they are written. If it doesn’t feel completely aligned, ask your host to change what is written.

One of the important principles in DF is that all the participants address the host and take turns in sharing. I invite them all to speak to me and not to each other in order to create safety for the unfolding process within the group. You can speak when the other has completely finished. I explain that Dynamic Facilitation is not a dialogue, it is a “we-flection”, creating space for the “unknown” to unfold.

We move through this wave of expansion, reaching out and sharing through the model of Dynamic Facilitation.

DF allows the participants to move further down the U and truly begin to open their reason. During this expansion they start to explore the next step of Theory U –‘seeing’.

This process allows for an effortless letting go of preconceived ideas and concepts by opening reason (= mind in the table below). What is revealed is a desire to see reality in a new way. The field already affects the unfolding process. You can understand the depth of this phase of ‘seeing’ in the Theory U model (step 2 in our table).

CHALLENGE	REACTING	SOLUTION
Step 1: “DOWNLOADING”: viewing the world through our habits of thought, allowing our current reality to surface.	Re-structuring	Step 7: “PERFORMING”: achieve results through actions, embedding the new into the larger context
SUSPENDING	OPEN MIND: Re-designing	EMBODYING
Step 2: “SEEING”: seeing reality with fresh eyes, suspend judgements, the system being observed is separate from those who observe		Step 6: “PROTOTYPING”: explore the future by doing, prototyping, enacting the new by being in dialogue with the Universe
REDIRECTING	OPEN HEART: Re-framing	ENACTING
Step 3: “SENSING”: the attention shifts to the inner way of seeing, from object to process. The boundary between observer and observed collapses.		Step 5: “CRYSTALLIZING”: the attention shifts from the inner vision to exterior action. Crystallising vision and intention, envisioning the new from the future that wants to emerge
LETTING-GO	OPEN WILL: Re-generating	LETTING-COME
	Step 4: “PRESENCING”: Connection to the deepest source

Through the precious New Space Technology of Dynamic Facilitation you hold conversations that matter. You reach deep personal territory and clarify the right how-questions, the longings and the intention.

The How-questions are very important keystones in this phase. In the methodology of DF the shifts literally happen through the fact that a new how-question emerges, a question which always starts with how can I or how can we. They brings us in touch with the deeper sense of “seeing” the reality as it is and we cultivate this by paying attention to the questions.

Otto Scharmer points to the capacity to suspend the voice of judgement, self-judgement and judgement of others as a key feature in this step.

However, I wonder if it’s really about suspending our judgements. I’d like to invite us to take a closer look at our judgements in order to understand them. What is held underneath our judgements? What is our need hidden in this judgement? Unravelling our judgements without judging our judgements is a key feature needed to move from projection into true observation. This is a huge step, even if it might seem a small step in the framework of the U. It is huge to take back our projections and to become aware of where we still function as hooks for the projections of others.

The graphic representation of this second step is an orange circle with blue dots moving to the edge of the circle. In the perspective of Guest House Facilitation the orange circle is the body-mind and the blue dots indicate the metaphorical movement of our soul.

We start our soul’s perspective from deeply hidden inside of the body-mind and our soul looks at the beliefs and constructs of our body-mind. Through the movement to the edge of the body-mind, the soul inhabits the body-mind more intensely. This is achieved through the act of opening reason in the energy field of the body-mind.

The dance of our soul and our body-mind continues and becomes more intimate.

Stasis

Another moment of silence (= stasis, red on the overview) in connectedness arises and we arrive at the outer edge of the U. We are connected and yet we still objectify in order to understand, in order to learn, to process.

Objectification is a hard concept for us to digest and often it feels shameful. We might judge ourselves and feel guilty. Maybe, however, we could consider objectification as a tool which enables us to gain more insight into our organizations, systems and most of all ourselves. It is not good or bad, it is what it is – we do not see the other or the organization as part of us, we see it as an object outside of us. Even if we acknowledge our judgements and are ready to understand the deeper meaning of them and see the underlying need, we still objectify while in this phase.

A real 2^nd breath experience

The next picture shows an actual 2^nd Breath, which unfolded in a Guest House Facilitation training in Berlin in November, 2014.

Our contraction phase was rather short in time. However, it’s important to name it as a distinct phase and allow integration and assimilation to happen. This is a non-linear process – overall the amount of stasis, contraction, stasis and expansion needs to be balanced.

In this 2^nd Breath, the preparation of our food and eating together is all part of the inward movement and of the stasis. We are a literal and metaphorical Guest House and what happens in our Guest House – whether literal or metaphorical – is also a part of our experience within the flow of the Life Pulse. We prepare our food together as an expression of caring for each other and our environment.

We completed the first day of the training with a check-out as suggested in the principles of Circle Practice.

CONCLUSION

Our 2^nd Breath is the opening of our State of Being: reason (or mind). It is the clarification and bringing to light of our judgments. We introduce here one of the New Space Technologies, Dynamic Facilitation, as a magic tool to gently move through this step. And you may have another similarly powerful tool in your toolbox with which to support your group through this first step in Theory U.

We are learning and refining our capacity to ‘observe’ through curious asking. What makes you curious? What do you want to understand more or better?

We begin to recognize what we see and we don’t yet have words to express what we perceive and what we are beginning to understand. Our knowing is still separate from our words.

In order to learn to put words on what we perceive we move on to the 3^rd Breath. In this 3^rd Breath we begin to open our emotion (or heart) and we dare to stop objectifying.

If you are curious and want to read more, check in with us next week!

Any comments and stories are very welcome. And please share this article through your preferred social media (click on the buttons on the upper left of this article).

With love and appreciation

Veerle

ACKNOWLEDGMENT:

Contact Veerle about the book, or to discuss coaching/hosting for your organisation at:
http://www.chancestochange.com

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Aspects of life

Practice don’t Preach Theory U in 7 Breaths! 1st Breath.

January 10, 2015April 15, 2015 Veerle de Bock

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 Breaths! 1^st BREATH.

We create a space to listen in our Guest House and focus our attention on the Group Being. We share our habitual patterns and images gently and with much courage.

Have you ever imagined that ”downloading” could be a tool?

“Downloading” is a process through which you listen by literally downloading what you already know. You are not at this stage allowing new information to be integrated or assimilated.
In this article we are learning to transform the “downloading” into “processing Self”. Within the safety of our Guest House the listening is the key in order for this to happen. It is not that we are not “downloading”. We do, and we should be, downloading by repeating extensively what we already know. So we use our courage to download at length in order to give our group the opportunity to help us with this important step of “processing Self”.
You are reading an article that is one of a series of nine articles. From the diagram below you will see that we’ve arrived at the 1^st Breath – the second article in the series. The first article is an invitation to explore with me the dance through Theory U and the offerings of Guest House Facilitation.

Each breath is equally important in our dance through Theory U. So let’s really savour it and take in this 1^st Breath.

Overview of the 1^st Breath

This 1^st breath consists of an inward movement of contraction (green on the picture), a moment of stasis (red), an outward movement of expansion (blue) and another moment of stasis (red). These are all the phases of the cosmic principle of the Life Pulse. My book Becoming What is Changing: Exposition describes the Life Pulse extensively.

If you superimpose this drawing of the Life Pulse upon the Theory U framework, each stasis before a contraction is located at the outer edge of the U and each stasis at the end of a contraction is located at the inner edge of the U.

As this article unfolds, we will touch into and question in depth each aspect of the Life Pulse, starting with the inward movement of contraction.

Contraction

We often forget that before we embark on something new we always start with an inspiration. This inspiration moves us inward (green on the picture).

As we breathe in everybody in the group arrives; it’s important to acknowledge this moment and literally allow an inward movement to support each participant to arrive.

Walking is for me an easy and effortless way to arrive somewhere, to connect with the land and with myself.

I will often invite my participants to walk in silence in order to connect while staying with the questions: What are the gifts I bring into this gathering, workshop or training? What is my intention to be here in this moment?

Important questions which can help you as a host are: What do you need to feel at home? How do you want to be welcomed? These are intimate questions which will help you craft the first inward movement of the participants you will be working with.

Otto Scharmer refers to this first movement as co-initiating. I love this term -in this moving inward you are building a common intent, the intent to stop and listen to others and listen to what life calls you to do.

Listening is the foundational capacity of Theory U and of Guest House Facilitation. It requires listening to oneself and to others as well as listening to what emerges through the group being. The group being is the energetic constellation that is automatically created when two or more people gather.

True listening requires a safe space in which each participant can contribute to the whole. This safe space is literally and metaphorically the Guest House which we are facilitating as host. Using this place of contraction we prepare and breath life into this Guest House.

Stasis

After this first contraction, we arrive at our first moment of stasis (red on the picture) where we gather momentum from deep inside the physical body for our first expansion. We moved from the outer edge of the U in our inward movement to the inner edge of the U. At this inner edge, the moment of stasis is stillness deep inside ourselves.

We honour this stasis by creating a circle around a central point. When I prepare the training space, I like to create a simple centrepiece with a few objects that have some meaning for me.

We go inside and connect with our deepest longing, with the reason why we are here, with our common commitment to be part of what unfolds “now”. Although quite different, the participants often share a profound commitment in their reason for showing up. This common ground creates the beginning of our Guest House Facilitation. Our sacred space is now open. With this ritual, we begin to create coherency in the collective energy field, the group being of our Guest House Facilitation (GHF).

The participants are literally residing deep within themselves.

In GHF we use the same picture as in Theory U consisting of a circle with a dot in the centre. Our definition is slightly different, the circle representing our body-mind and the dot representing our soul. We are spiritual beings (= souls) incarnating in a human body (= a body-mind) in order to fulfil our purpose and experience life. You can read more in the article: How to fall in Love with Our State of Being.

At this moment our soul is residing deep within ourselves and we look at the world around us through our habitual patterns and beliefs, our images and constructs. We literally only see our own body-mind, our physical body and our personality (=mind) with all its flaws and patterns, achievements and struggles.

This is a picture of our house: our soul dancing with our body-mind and the place where the three states of being – reason, emotion and will – reside.

These different states of being are covered more extensively in the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th Breaths, that is the third, fourth and fifth articles of this series on Theory U where you will be invited to open your reason (=mind), your emotion (=heart) and your will. The three keys in Theory U: opening mind, heart and will, are from now on be referred to as reason, emotion and will.

Often this is the perfect moment to connect with the group being and explain that our gathering is a living process, a being, a field. The group of participants still circles around the centrepiece.

As the Host of GHF, you invite your participants to ground their physical presence into the Earth and connect in the middle with the group being. At this moment this can still be a bit unfamiliar for the participants.

This picture below shows how the group being is a collective of many different human beings looking at the world around them from their own perspective. The group being also looks at its cultural and social beliefs: how a group being should think, feel and act in the world.

We have now established a connection even though, so far, not much has been exchanged between the participants. This will further unfold in the expansion, which effortlessly follows this moment of stasis. Even if we are not aware of, or possibly resisting, the different phases of the Life Pulse, they are still happening in their own unique timing.

Expansion

After this moment of silence, we move together to check-in using the Circle Practice format. I would like to honour Ann Linea and Christina Baldwin for their continued efforts in bringing this ancient form of gathering back into modern life (You can connect with Christina Baldwin and Ann Linea on www.peerspirit.com).

The check-in allows participants to transition into the space of GHF. The momentum is slowed down and each person brings him or herself into the group. In a clockwise round, I invite the participants to present themselves, share how they feel and share the unique gift that they bring to this GHF.

The overall sense of this 1^st Breath in the Theory U model is called “downloading” (Step 1 in the table): our view of the world through our habitual thought patterns and images.

CHALLENGE	REACTING	SOLUTION
Step 1: “DOWNLOADING”: viewing the world through our habits of thought, allowing our current reality to surface.	Re-structuring	Step 7: “PERFORMING”: achieve results through actions, embedding the new into the larger context
SUSPENDING	OPEN MIND: Re-designing	EMBODYING
Step 2: “SEEING”: seeing reality with fresh eyes, suspend judgements, the system being observed is separate from those who observe		Step 6: “PROTOTYPING”: explore the future by doing, prototyping, enacting the new by being in dialogue with the Universe
REDIRECTING	OPEN HEART: Re-framing	ENACTING
Step 3: “SENSING”: the attention shifts to the inner way of seeing, from object to process. The boundary between observer and observed collapses.		Step 5: “CRYSTALLIZING”: the attention shifts from the inner vision to exterior action. Crystallising vision and intention, envisioning the new from the future that wants to emerge
LETTING-GO	OPEN WILL: Re-generating	LETTING-COME
	Step 4: “PRESENCING”: Connection to the deepest source

As the host you will become aware of patterns from the past surfacing. Don’t throw them away or ignore them – they are precious. They’ve served the participants in many ways. Honour them and teach the participants to treat themselves with loving kindness and acceptance. Our aim is to integrate the underlying energy into the bigger Self, rather than cutting it out, so that we are literally “processing the Self” in order to allow more of ourselves to become freely available. The more we integrate, the more of us becomes available in the dance between our soul and our body-mind.

In this phase, we gently and with a great deal of love and assistance from our group being begin to see the mental constructs that we project upon the world. It dawns upon us that we do not really recognize what we see in the outside world, “we” come into the way of our own seeing. “We” as our current constellation with all our beliefs and images.

This stage is important and in many organizations this is the brainstorming stage. You can’t skip this stage if you want to reach authentic and deeper levels of listening and being.

“Downloading” is a way of honouring what you already know from your past experiences. It’s also valuable to help you integrate and assimilate all these experiences into your way of being, into your way of living your life, a step towards honouring and celebrating who you are. Accepting at the same time, of course, that this might change over the coming days, weeks, months.

Stasis

After the check-in we pause, have a stasis (red on the diagram at the beginning of this article). We’ve listened to all the participants, we are connected and at the outer edge of our U. This moment of stillness creates the spaciousness needed to prepare ourselves to receive the gifts of this expansion and bring them back inwards to our Self.

A real first breath experience

This picture shows a real first breath as it unfolded in the moment in a Guest House Facilitation training, which took place in Berlin, in November 2014.

In a workshop or training I like to fill in the different components of the Life Pulse as they unfold in the moment.

I invited the participants into a practice in which their inner dancer greeted the four directions. Each direction refers to an element that is present around you and inside of you. The different elements are earth in the south, fire in the east, water in the west and air in the north. This practice brought us deep inside of our physical body.

In the stasis I guided the group through a ritual in order to become aware of the group being. The expansion unfolded through a circle practice around the question: What is my intention for this training?

We completed this 1^st breath with a teaching on the different components of the Life Pulse.

Conclusion

This First Breath is an opening, a beginning.

Through Circle Practice we introduce the use of a talking piece. This simple practice is very important to create safety and security. When you have the talking piece you have the possibility of sinking deep within yourself and nobody will invade or interrupt you. You will appreciate how valuable a tool the talking piece is as we progress through the steps of our Guest House Facilitation. The talking piece assists us in Holding a Listening Space, a key feature and capacity of this breath.

We celebrate who we have become so far and we honour what our ancestors have done; we honour those on whose shoulders we stand. We realize that what has been created isn’t all perfect, and yet this is a necessary step towards integration.

We listen to each other’s stories, to our patterns and beliefs, to the images we have of what happens to us and around us. We tap into this energy consciousness and awareness of ourselves, this unique and precious dance of our soul with our body-mind. We don’t as yet recognize what we see. In order to recognize what we see we need to open our reason, the area around our head. This is what we make ourselves ready to do with the 2^nd Breath.

Your comments and stories are very welcome. If you like this series of articles please share them with your friends and colleagues.

With love and appreciation

Veerle

ACKNOWLEDGMENT:

Contact Veerle about the book, or to discuss coaching/hosting for your organisation at:
http://www.chancestochange.com

http://twitter.com/VeerleDeBock

http://facebook.com/BecomingWhatIsChanging

Aspects of life

How Can You Create More ‘Market-ing’ by Doing Less?

July 12, 2014 Veerle de Bock

How Can You Create More ‘Market-ing’ by Doing Less?

Our answer is Guest House Facilitation! This new refreshing practice effortlessly gives rise to Market-ing with an abundance of offerings, tools and perspectives.

What is ‘Market-ing’?

When we were recently sitting with the question how to do marketing for Guest House Facilitation (GHF), something extraordinary happened! We suddenly realized that we were becoming what is changing, and marketing transformed into ‘Market-ing’.

We refocus marketing on one of its original definitions according to the dictionary: the act of buying or selling on a market. We shift marketing into ‘market-ing’.

We are each of us a market—everything is already present and nothing needs to be made different, changed or ameliorated. You are already perfect as you are. You only need to be reminded, need to be mirrored. Guest House Facilitation is your guide to your own market so that you can regain insight and access to your own abundance inside and outside.

This has some implications, which are astonishing.

Whether you are a participant or a host in GHF, you are all equal.
Your inner ‘Guest House’ is in fact a market where many different gifts are available.
The outer ‘Guest House’ has many tools; you decide which ones are useful for you in any moment.
There is no demand and no obligation in Guest House Facilitation; there is freedom to play with consciousness and energy.
You do not prepare Guest House Facilitation, you are doing less; you dance with what is in the moment now.
Nothing needs to be improved in you; you are perfect with your imperfections.
Guest House Facilitation is a navigation system towards abundance for everybody.

The metaphor of the resident, the reformer and the rebel

I use this metaphor to clarify the structure of GHF. This precious metaphor discerns different ways of being, and in truth we are each of us a combination of the three aspects. Depending on our circumstances, one of them will be more prominent. We need the different perspectives for our personal development.

Our resident resides in our inner box with fencings created by our beliefs, images and habitual ways of doing things. The resident will help us when the circumstances or events are overwhelming or confusing.

Our reformer continuously tries to improve our circumstances in the inner box.

Our rebel tries out new perspectives, new solutions for old problems. Our rebel leaves our inner boxes with the fencings made of our beliefs, images and patterns.

We now explain each role in the context of Guest House Facilitation.

1. The pioneers of GHF

The pioneers stand at the cradle of GHF. They are the rebels of our metaphor; they play with new consciousness. They are willing to jump into the unknown and be open for new perspectives, taking into account whatever is happening as contributions for this fascinating approach. They nourish and nurture the field of GHF, and they listen for new developments and insights.

As a rebel you hold space and facilitate a we, the people. You are ready to assist the group to grasp its potential, bring it into consciousness and act upon it. We, the people starts anywhere and continues everywhere.

The rebels come to the gatherings of hosts that are organized regularly in order to attend to this new emerging field of GHF.

How do the rebels present themselves in the market? They are not easily recognizable, they move and inspire other people, it is not about them, their names do not have to be known. It is their presence, the way they radiate, which makes the difference. The rebels are like Harmonizer Souls. Michael Newton, the regression hypnotherapist, learned a great deal about our souls through his groundbreaking research into the afterlife. He discerns a general category of Harmonizer Souls. He explains that incarnated Harmonizer Souls typically are souls who balance the energy of planetary events involving human relationships. They function on a larger scale in an attempt to diffuse negative energy.

2. The hosts of GHF

There are areas where we are the reformer, we are hosts in Guest Houses, and we try to hold space in order for the circumstances to ameliorate. The beauty is that we teach in order to be taught, we heal in order to be healed. Hosts are the reformers of our metaphor.

Hosts come to GHF trainings. They become part of a huge family of hosts that are spread over different countries. So far we have hosts in the US, Zimbabwe, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Bali, the UK, Austria, and Japan.

Hosts can hold workshops as Guest Houses and apply a beautiful variety of technologies and tools available through GHF.

In our market, the hosts are the market vendors who sell all the different items. They hold space for you to discover, explore, learn, and most of all play. ‘Market-ing’ unfolds through the hosts inventing and adding their own specific tools to this amazing creative mix of GHF.

Sometimes hosts get inspired and start to do their own thing with flavours of GHF. There are endless possibilities.

3. The residents in GHF

Sometimes we are residents, we are participants in Guest Houses and we explore the fencings of our inner boxes within the safe container of these Guest Houses.

Anyone can be a participant, and everybody is welcome. There are no specific requirements. We are all human beings, and this is the only requirement for attending in a Guest House workshop. We all are spiritual beings, and we all come to achieve our soul’s purpose, to have our personal growth.

One of the major principles is how all your inner guests are welcome in our settings. As in Rumi’s poem, this can be a sorrow, a despair, an anger, an unwanted guest—yet they are all welcome. There is no enemy to conquer, all of you is welcome. We acknowledge how this very fact enables you to uncover your unique essence and gifts. The group being of GHF has specific features to assist each individual participant.

The group being creates a container through which a sacred space unfolds where awareness gently invites and inspires residents to experience deeper levels of ‘self’.

You are exploring the market, you are ‘market-ing’. You are ‘market-ing’ in the sense that you tune in and find which trained hosts (reformers) will be the perfect mix for your specific field of exploration.

The outer ‘Guest House’ is the magic coming together of the right people in the right space and the right moment. It is the richness of the mirroring through relationships, the contributions each participant offers, and the listening back and forth. The multiplicity of senses is available as in a marketplace.

The practice of GHF offers an abundance of specific tools and technologies at your disposal, and as in a market place, you walk around, you try, you listen and you decide for yourself what works and what does not work.

Conclusion

We are all equal partners in the fascinating inner and outer Guest Houses of this world, whether we are in this moment a rebel, a reformer or a resident—a pioneer, a host or a participant.

There is a ‘Market-ing’, an ongoing nourishment and nurturing, an abundance of colours, tastes, and perspectives allowing us to dance within the richness and endless possibilities of human relationships and human processes.

And as our title promises, this occurs by ‘doing less’. The secret is the space for the ‘Market-ing’ held by the group being. In this space, new consciousness can thrive.

We no longer need to do Marketing in the known ways. Marketing becomes ‘market-ing’ through Guest House Facilitation. We achieve a holistic marketing as the marketing guru Philip Kotler describes. This type of marketing emphasizes how everything that happens matters. We add the effortlessness through the art of the relationships between the participants, hosts and pioneers. We introduce the inner Guest Houses as integral parts of the outer mix of tools and techniques. We invite everybody to own responsibility for whatever happens to you and around you.

You can explore Guest House Facilitation and create your own experience or come and play with us at one of our scheduled events.

If you have found this article useful, please share it and leave a comment below.

Veerle

July 12^th, 2014

VEERLE DE BOCK is a physician, healer, facilitator, trainer, coach and author of the trilogy, Becoming What is Changing. She spent nearly three decades of her life as a physician specializing in geriatric care, including a 21-year career as department head in an Antwerp regional hospital. In 2003, she began her study as an energetic healer, teacher, process facilitator and supervisor at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, and since 2007 has been leading many other trainees to master these same skills. In 2010 she was trained in the practice of Dynamic Facilitation by Jim Rough, which she now incorporates into her workshops and training sessions. In 2012 she decided to devote her work exclusively to writing, facilitation and coaching. That same year, she devised a new integrative practice of facilitation she calls ‘Guest House Facilitation’, that helps teams learn how to listen and utilise both the inner and outer processes within their organisation, to see it as a dynamic and living organism, and to reconnect to its intrinsic purpose and intention. Her book, Becoming What is Changing: Exposition, is the first part of a trilogy aimed at managers, team leaders and responsible employees who wish to bring this kind of transformation into the workplace, so they can create an environment where people are happy, satisfied and continuously growing.

Contact Veerle about the book, or to discuss coaching/facilitation for your organisation at:
http://www.chancestochange.com

http://twitter.com/VeerleDeBock

http://facebook.com/BecomingWhatIsChanging

Tag: Guest House

Practice don’t Preach Theory U in 7 Breaths! 4th Breath.

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 BREATHS! 4th BREATH.

Practice don’t Preach Theory U in 7 Breaths! 2nd Breath.

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 Breaths! 2^nd BREATH.

Practice don’t Preach Theory U in 7 Breaths! 1st Breath.

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 Breaths! 1^st BREATH.

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 BREATHS! 4th BREATH.

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 Breaths! 2nd BREATH.

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 Breaths! 1st BREATH.

How Can You Create More ‘Market-ing’ by Doing Less?

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 Breaths! 2^nd BREATH.

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 Breaths! 1^st BREATH.