theory U | Chances to Change | Creating Flow in your Life

You play with two dice and journey through a theory of everything to find your place in all of life and to discover how to live your life to the fullest.

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This is the story of how everything I have done in my life has coalesced into the creation of a platform for the emergence of the “ChancesToChange board game”. This game was birthed in December 2016.

Guest House Facilitation practice manifesting as a U wave.
A three-dimensional view of the Life Pulse.
Adding deep human aspects to the infinity symbol.
Flipping the orientation of the infinity symbol.
Theory U shape-shifts into an infinity symbol.
A specific colour code in alignment with the emerging knowledge.
A two-dimensional board emerges.

Guest House Facilitation practice manifesting as a U wave

Guest House Facilitation is a complex, interconnected and continuously changing practice, it is fluid and smart-flexible. It is a process of experiencing which can only be expressed in words afterwards. The Guest House Facilitation mission is to listen to all voices, even to the whispers.

The main ingredients of Guest House Facilitation are Theory U and the Life Pulse

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Theory U (top of the picture above) has been developed by Otto Scharmer and his team, it is a change management method where leaders move through a process of inner knowing and social innovation. Theory U is a framework indeed a method and also a way of being.

The Life Pulse (bottom left in the picture above) is a cosmic principle with different phases: stasis (red), contraction (green), stasis (red), expansion (blue). Stasis or pause is stillness and emptiness. It is an inward movement connecting with our inner being. Contraction is an outward movement where we enter into relationship with our personality. Expansion is an outward movement, where we enter into relationship with the collective field.

The first representations of the Life Pulse and the Theory U during our Guest House Facilitation gatherings were U forms with waves (picture above on the right).

The U process is what happens as Guest House Facilitation (GHF) unfolds. The U process transforms and shape-shifts GHF and vice versa. We create space for this fascinating and wonderful process through graciously bringing our attention to the cosmic principle of the Life Pulse.

A three-dimensional view of the Life Pulse

Panarchy is the study of the interactions between economic growth and human development and how they depend on ecosystems and institutions.

In a step-by-step process by adding the ingredient of Panarchy to the Life Pulse, the Life Pulse naturally emerged as an infinity symbol (April 2016). Contraction (green) and expansion (blue) become loops and both meet in the middle where the phases of stasis (red) are superimposed.

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The emergence of the Life Pulse as an infinity symbol happened very quickly and from that moment on, the infinity symbol became an integral part of the Guest House Facilitation practice. We explore connectedness and individuality, resilience and vulnerability in relationship with the Life Pulse.

Adding deep human aspects to the infinity symbol

In August 2015, my deep love and appreciation for the physical body gave rise to the idea of creating a Body Tarot card deck to inspire others on their journey with their body. During the following months, a Body Tarot group was formed.

We are crafting a Body Tarot card deck of 120 cards (22 big arcana cards, 70 minor arcana cards and 28 court cards). The Body Tarot is a vehicle to allow a fuller expression of our true self through listening to our body.

The 22 cards (0-21) of the big arcana each represent an aspect of being human starting with the “Void” and comprising fascinating aspects like “Collective consciousness”, “Relationship”, “Community”, ending with “Cosmic Consciousness”.

Those 22 cards organise themselves as three waves of the infinity symbol shown in the picture below.

ChanceToChange Boardgame_52

These big arcana cards affect the Guest House Facilitation practice and are affected by GHF in return – cross-fertilization unfolds.

Flipping the orientation of the infinity symbol

Through the lived experience of the lemniscate within the practice of Guest House Facilitation the orientation naturally changed. The outward movement of contraction (green) flips to the left side and the outward movement of expansion (blue) flips to the right side. The inward movement of stasis (red) stays at the centre of the infinity symbol.

Flipped infinity symbol

In the course of Guest House Facilitation new elements are added onto the infinity symbol such as the difference between inner and outer potential, vulnerability as the other side of resilience and individuality balancing connection. All those seemingly opposite aspects are a continuum and need each other in order to keep the fluidity in the whole system.

Theory U shape-shifts into an infinity symbol

The U transforms into an infinity symbol as described on the picture below. The down part of the U makes a loop as does the upwards part and both meet in the middle in the area of presencing.

transforming the U

This is a huge revelation within the practice of GHF: each time we have finished a U, we come back to the centre and prepare for another ride. The centre is the presencing, the connection with source, with our essence.

Colours in alignment with the depth of the knowledge

Slowly a specific colour code emerged. The primary colours are blue, red and yellow. Blue is the colour given to the soul and spiritual family. Red is the colour used for the physical body and the earth. Yellow is the colour assigned to the collective field and our biological family. You can recognize all these colours on the left side of the picture below.

Colourcode CTC

Mixing up these colours give the other colours as can be seen on the picture above on the right.

Red and yellow give orange. Orange becomes the colour for expansion, for the outward movement into relationship with others. Our body (red) interacts with the collective field (yellow).

Blue and yellow give green. Green becomes the colour for contraction, for the outward movement into relationship with our personality. Our soul (blue) interacts with the collective consciousness (yellow).

Red and blue give purple. Purple represents the stasis, the silent mind through the intimate connection between our body (red) and soul (blue).

Magenta is red, blue and yellow or green, purple and orange. Magenta is the colour associated with mind.

This colour code is applied throughout all the graphic facilitation of the practice of Guest House Facilitation.

A two-dimensional board emerges

In December 2016, I was guided to intuitively craft a board game to play with my family on Christmas Day. My husband, our four children and their partners are my tribe and my most precious container on my journey to create the more beautiful world my heart knows is possible. I experienced a deep desire to celebrate their magnificence and find an easy way to transmit what makes me so full of joy and aliveness. The result was the first prototype of this board game.

Blue dots on board game

You might notice that the board has blue dots. These are the big arcana cards of the Body Tarot and as already explained these are all aspects of being human.

inifnity symbol board The infinity symbol simplifies into its current form in the board game, while still retaining all its content (from Theory U and Panarchy). The green and orange areas each have three different phases.

CONCLUSION

This is an integration of Theory U, the Life Pulse and Panarchy with a lived experience of the practice of Guest House Facilitation and seasoned with the big arcana cards of the Body Tarot. These cards are deep human aspects which we are normally not aware of.

The outcome is an amazingly simple board with all these levels of knowledge underneath and supported by the being of this game. This being is a living organism following universal laws.

This process of shape shifting and emerging reveals both the holographic and holistic aspects of the board game.

The board game received the name: ChancesToChange.

Are you curious and do you want to explore more about this fabulous board game? You can click here www.chancestochange.com/ChancesToChangegame

Did you enjoy this post? If so, please share on your favourite social media (buttons below). It’s a HUGE help for me and I am always really grateful.

Thanks, Veerle

Veerle De Bock

I am a social entrepreneur, a change-maker, a physician, a healer, a facilitator, a trainer, a coach and an author. I shift and take on different roles. I spent nearly three decades of my life as a physician specializing in geriatric care, including a 21-year career as department head in an Antwerp regional hospital, until August 2012.

In 2003, I began my studies as an energy healer, teacher, process facilitator and supervisor at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing. Till 2014, I taught at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing Europe.

In 2010, Jim Rough trained me in the practice of Dynamic Facilitation, which I moulded through workshops and training sessions into a new integrative practice of facilitation which I call ‘Guest House Facilitation’.

In 2013, I wrote and self-published a book, Becoming What is Changing: Exposition, it is the first part of a trilogy. The book integrates a great deal of my experiences in the hospital with the elderly and our caregivers’ team. The aim is for each of us to allow the emergence of the kind of transformation into our lives and workplaces, so that we can create an environment where we and others are joyful, alive and continuously growing.

In 2012, I discovered the Art of Hosting community. I attended several workshops and had the opportunity to be on the hosting team of several gatherings in Zimbabwe, South Africa and France.

One of the cornerstones of my practice is Theory U designed by Otto Scharmer. I have followed the u.labs over the past two years.

In August 2015, my deep love and appreciation for the physical body gave rise to the idea to create a Body Tarot card deck to inspire others on their journey with their body. During the following months our Body Tarot group was formed.

Everything I have done in my life has coalesced into the creation of a platform for the emerging of the “ChancesToChange board game”, birthed in December 2016.

Aspects of life

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

April 15, 2015April 15, 2015 Veerle de Bock

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! 3rd Breath.

March 21, 2015April 15, 2015 Veerle de Bock

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 BREATHS! 3^rd BREATH.

We open up our State of Being “emotion” within the safe listening space of Guest House Facilitation, and we effortlessly dive into “experiencing” and “sensing”.

Imagine we are spiritual beings (souls) on a journey to experience life on Earth in a physical body. Our Way of Being is our most important task. Theory U is a framework, a method for profound change and most of all a Way of Being, through which you can connect to the more authentic and higher aspects of yourself.

Today we embark on a learning journey to remember the capacity we have for “experiencing”. We gently open our State of Being emotion and with loving kindness we observe our judgments and connect more deeply with our soul’s purpose.

This article is one of a series of nine articles. The series reveals to you the magic of Guest House Facilitation, how it allows us to dance through Theory U, effortlessly and smoothly, in its precise time and its right space.

The first article facilitates our Guest House and brings awareness to this precious cosmic principle of the Life Pulse. The Life Pulse governs all of life in the Universe and also precisely governs all our processes and organizations.

The second article shape-shifts the “downloading” into a “processing of Self”. The key feature of this 1^st breath is holding a Listening Space.

The third article extensively describes the 2^nd breath. Opening reason facilitates by opening the intelligence of the brain, the “seeing” and “observing”. The key feature is curious asking: we begin to understand what we see.

From the diagram you can see that we have arrived at the 3^rd Breath in the fourth article of this series.

Overview of the 3^rd Breath

The 3^rd Breath is again an inward movement of contraction (green on the following drawing), followed by a moment of stasis (red and at the inner edge of the U), continuing with an outward movement of expansion (blue) and coming to completion in another moment of stasis (again red and now at the outer edge of the U).

In the contraction we open our State of Being emotion in order for the “sensing” and “experiencing” to happen in the expansion. We continue our exploration in more detail.

Contraction

We bring awareness to the inward movement and we prepare to open our State of Being: emotion.

Let’s have a look at the graphic representation of the dance between our soul and our body-mind and how they play with the three different States of Being: reason, emotion and will. They match the mind, heart and will used in the Theory U model. In body-mind we discern the physical body (yellow) and the energy field (blue+orange+green) which it generates. This energy field permeates the physical body and extends out of the body. The energy consciousness of our body-mind is intermingled with the energy consciousness of our soul. In this energy field there are three major States of Being, which are reason (blue) the upper part, emotion (orange) the front part and will (green) the back part. Mind in our vocabulary is the whole of all the States of Being, it is our reason+emotion+will and together they give form to our personality.

By opening emotion we open the front of our energy field. Chakras are vortices of energy in our energy field and they are portals. The chakras mark the areas with high neural activity in our physical body – the plexuses. Emotion is the State of Being related with the front aspects from the fifth to the second chakra.

Each chakra harbours a psychological function. The front aspect of the fifth chakra encompasses assimilating, taking responsibility, and deeply listening. The front aspect of the fourth chakra holds our capacity for love in relationships. The front aspect of the third chakra represents intuition and your ego sense of Self. The front aspect of the second chakra is the quality of Self, the experiencing of Self.

We open the front aspect of these portals or chakras fifth to second, one by one, in order to achieve an open State of Being with regard to emotion.

You can read more about our magnificent potential and the dance between our soul and our body-mind in my book Becoming What is Changing: Exposition.

Contraction is an inward movement, a deep connection within us, an opportunity for introspection and assimilation of what has happened to us and around us in the expansion phase. This inward movement can unfold when we are alone or in relationship. We can perform our daily activities from an inward perspective.

Our energy field can be everything from big and charged to small and weak depending on our personal process with regard to our defences.

At this moment in our Guest House the contraction phase can have the form of profound sharing, from an inward connection. We share from deep inside of ourselves in an ongoing introspection and reflection.

As we continue our dance through Theory U, with our reason and emotion open, we achieve the ability to genuinely observe ourselves and how we tend to project outside of ourselves, judge ourselves and others. We judge when the organization needs to be different, the system needs to be different, our partner needs to be different, our parents should have been different, we have to be different.

A good entrance point is to look at ourselves with compassion and try to find out what our underlying needs are. Which of our needs are unmet and prompt us to judge? The State of Being, emotion, enables us to hold ourselves with a great deal of love. By bathing ourselves in love and compassion, we are able to allow a deeper level of connectedness and can risk letting go of objectification. We objectify as long as we consider ourselves separate from what we observe which can be another being, an organization or a system.

As we complete this contraction, we arrive at the phase of stasis.

Stasis

This stasis is a silence at the inner edge of the U, a place of being deep within our physical body. A moment of stasis in our Life Pulse is a good time to perform a ritual.

We connected with the group being at the start of our U in the 1^st Breath. Often this is a good time to reconnect and to observe the differences in the connection.

We set our intention and commitment by aligning our soul channel. This soul channel is how we incarnate as a soul into this sacred physical body and how our soul starts the dance with our body-mind. It is our soul’s connection deeply grounded and supported through the core of the Earth, and inspired through our unique star in the Sky.

At this point I’ve observed that every participant is more able to notice the relationship with the group being.

The picture illustrates what happens. Each individual is much more connected to the group being: there is a nourishing of the group being and in turn individual beings are nourished by the group being. Each individual has changed the perspective of the soul (the blue dot) from the middle of the body-mind (the orange circle) to the edge of the body-mind. We all are more fully occupying our body-mind, as is the group being.

As we gather momentum for the next wave in stasis and without any agenda, we effortlessly reach a new level of perceiving.

The boundary between the organization, system, other and “us” that we are observing starts to vanish. The organization, system, other was the object of our attention at the start of our journey. We now begin to see how “we” are the organization. A deepening occurs and implies the redirection of attention from the object of our attention (the organization, the system, the other) to the process. This process is the energetic constellation of the group, it is our field, the group being of our workshop, training or gathering.

Stasis is not a non-movement, it is a silence that enables the movement to shift from inward to outward or vice versa. With each moment of stasis our soul and body-mind meet, greet each other, find each other and we connect with the field of endless possibilities deep within or far out in the Universe.

At this moment, in this 3^rd Breath, we have arrived at our next wave of outward movement.

Expansion

“Expansion” is an outward movement towards the other, towards life. We experience life in relationship. Our energy field can be expanded or contracted depending on what is happening to us and around us. The state of our energy field does not define the phase of the Life Pulse.

Whatever happens to us and around us can affect us, trigger our defences, our patterns and dynamics.

As our States of Being reason and emotion are open at this stage of Theory U, we automatically begin to see, sense and feel in our bodies. This is the “Sensing” phase (step 3) in the table below.

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 in Guest House Facilitation it is essential to keep your reason open, your emotion open and your will open. This is how you can follow the Life Pulse in the moment within the dynamic of your group.

The expansion is profound. In Guest House Facilitation we apply different practices to allow conversations that matter to effortlessly unfold. In the third article of this series we already touched into one of the New Space Technologies: Dynamic Facilitation. Dynamic Facilitation is a method invented by the genius of Jim Rough and is extensively described in Roza Zubizarreta’ book. Roza is a creative and inspired associate of the DF society, she wrote a useful manual on the principles of Dynamic Facilitation.

Dynamic Facilitation (DF) can be a catalyst in allowing participants to share with an open reason and emotion state of being. Participants engage simultaneously from their brain and their heart.

When something intuitively feels like a major contribution and one that requires a circle checking, I temporarily weaken the DF mode and switch to Circle Practice, a powerful and ancient form of gathering brought back into modern life by Ann Linea and Christina Baldwin. As I switch practices, I continue to take notes and to reflect what is said.

We have a new graphic representation for this step and in Guest House Facilitation this refers to the dance between the soul and body-mind. The energy body of our soul now extends outside of the body-mind boundaries. You see the body-mind as an orange circle and the soul as the blue dots moving out of the safe container of the body-mind.

We move outwards in this expansion and deeply connect with each other. We experience in our body and at the same time the “sensing” happens from the whole field through the group being.

Stasis

We are most definitely reaching out to a deeper sense of connectedness at the end of this expansion phase. And again we find ourselves at the outer edge of our U.

We perceive in a different way, we are part of a bigger whole, and this is no longer an observation, we really become part of this bigger whole. There is no longer objectification, we are one with all living beings.

Stasis is always a moment of gathering momentum for the next wave to come. We are charging the group being and we charge our own energy field.

We prepare to dive deep into our personal processes in the 4^th Breath.

A real 3^rd Breath experience

The picture shows you a real third breath, which took place during a Guest House Facilitation Training in Berlin, in November 2014.

You can see that walking is part of our inward movement. This helps us to deeply integrate and assimilate all that has already unfolded through the steps of “processing the Self” and “seeing”.

Guest House Facilitation includes the activities of daily life as part of the experience. This enables you to have an even deeper awareness of the Life Pulse.

In this deep, inward stasis, participants are invited to check where they are in their own Life Pulse.

CONCLUSION

This 3^r Breath brings us already deep within the U.

We observe, observe and observe. We go to the places with the most potential and we listen with our reason and emotion open.

We are unfolding the capacity for ‘experiencing’. We use this tool of ‘experiencing’ to understand what we do with what happens to us and around us. It is an active sensing as a group and it is experiencing as an individual. Where are you, what is happening in this precious body you inhabit? We still hold a Listening Space and our ability for Curious Asking. We are approaching the reconnection with our soul’s purpose at the bottom of the U.

We recognize what we see and we begin to be able to put words on what we see. There is an intelligence emerging from our heart and we begin to acknowledge this intelligence. We see with our heart. And so far there is still a split between what we do and what we say and think. How can we walk our talk?

In order to establish this we move on to the 4^th breath and we sink into the “groan zone”.

Sam Kaner and his colleagues first introduced the term “groan zone” in 1998. They define the “groan zone” as a natural period of confusion in the process of participatory decision-making when difficult issues are on the agenda.

Much more is to come in the fifth article of this series next week.

If you like this series, please share it with your friends and colleagues.

Comments and stories are very welcome.

With love and appreciation

Veerle

ACKNOWLEDGMENT:

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

http://twitter.com/VeerleDeBock

http://facebook.com/BecomingWhatIsChanging

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

Practice don’t Preach Theory U in 7 Breaths! Invitation.

December 26, 2014April 15, 2015 Veerle de Bock

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 BREATHS! INVITATION.

Guest House Facilitation unravels the mystery of how Theory U unfolds, precisely as it should be, effortlessly and smoothly with the awareness of the Life Pulse.

How to bring Theory into practice? How can we hold space for the steps of Theory U regardless of the contributions of the participants, the constellation of your group and the available knowledge within the group?

Imagine bringing your awareness to your breath. A few deep breaths metaphorically bring you right down the U in connection with Source. A few more breaths and you act as an enlivened steward of life’s brilliant potential.

What is the mystery at play here, how does Theory U unfold with such divine precision – effortlessly and smoothly?

This series of articles offers you a step by step journey through Theory U. The first article is your personal invitation into our Guest House. We present our offerings. The next seven articles engage you more and more deeply with each breath. The final article in this series weaves all of it together.

Guest House Facilitation

Guest House Facilitation is a new and refreshing practice. The basic idea is the welcoming of all inner and outer guests. The inner guests are all our thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations. The outer guests are all the participants. Everybody who is present has a role in the bigger whole. Even the whispers in the background are important.

The Latin word “facilitare” literally means making easy. I make the interaction with the outer participants and our inner parts easy.

I use Rumi’s well known poem the Guest House as a metaphor.

I do not prepare for “Guest House Facilitation” or have an agenda. It’s not possible to make plans for people who are not yet physically present. This prevents us from underestimating the amazing power, intelligence and leadership within the group.

You can read more about Guest House Facilitation on the website Chances to Change.

Theory U is a very precious presence in our Guest House Facilitation.

Theory U

Since its emergence around 2006, the founders of Theory U understand its purpose in three primary ways. The first is to understand it as a framework; the second is as a method for profound change; and the third is as a way of being through which you can connect to the more authentic and higher aspects of yourself.

Theory U is non-linear but for ease of reference throughout this series of articles, I have structured it into its linear form in the table below which summarises all the steps of Theory U, steps 1 through to 7.

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 MINDRe-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 HEARTRe-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:“CRYSTALLISING”: 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 WILLRe-generating	LETTING-COME
	Step 4: “PRESENCING”: Connection to the deepest source

We start here and we don’t know how the process will continue to unfold. We bring the cosmic principle of the Life Pulse into our Guest House Facilitation in order for us to dance with Theory U.

What is the Life Pulse?

The Life Pulse is a cosmic principle with sequential phases, always in a sequence of stasis, expansion, stasis, contraction and again stasis.

Stasis is a moment of silence, a pause to gather momentum to travel outside in expansion toward the other, in relationship or to travel inside in contraction, inward into yourself.

You can experience this cosmic principle deep in your physical body. An easy way to understand what this means is to breath in and out deeply. You breath in, you pause, you breath out, you pause.

Breathing is one of the simplest versions of the Life Pulse.

In terms of the Life Pulse you breath in, you move inward, you nourish yourself, your blood is oxygenated, you pause in deep silence within the depth of you. You breath out, you reach out, speaking and singing happens on the outbreath –and at the end of the outbreath, there is another moment of silence, you reach another moment of connectedness.

After this stasis in connectedness you move back inward, this is contraction, you have time to integrate, to apply introspection and reflection. Your physical body is nourished.

To learn more about the principle of the Life Pulse, please see the Pathwork Guide, Lecture No. 55 – The Cosmic Expanding, Retracting and Static Principles (http://www.pathwork.org).

In the Life Pulse Mystery you can read how this cosmic principle enables us to play with the concept of creation. And a further step is to understand How the Life Pulse allows you to unfold your DNA.

And in fact it also affects the DNA of your organization. Add to that the awareness of Theory U and magic happens!

As our dance through Theory U unfolds throughout this series of articles, I offer you the experience I’ve gained from several Guest House Facilitation workshops and trainings.

Dancing Theory U

If we combine this model with the life pulse, we can perceive that stasis moments will happen inside the U and outside the U. This seems to indicate that on the inside you have the connection deep within yourself and on the outside you have the possibility of establishing a deep interconnectedness with each other. Source is as much present on the inside as it is on the outside.

The graphic representation below gives an illustration of our dance through Theory U with awareness of the Life Pulse.

The first breath: “Downloading” is happening and we discover the immense potential we have to dive deeply into this step – allowing this step to become “processing of Self”.
The second breath: “Seeing” unfolds and “curious asking” effortlessly brings us to the questions that truly matter.
The third breath: “Sensing” brings us to a deep immersion into extraordinary “experiencing”’.
The fourth breath: The “groan zone” is the next step we discover – it is our resistance to letting go just before we let go.
The fifth breath: “Presencing” happens in a huge inward movement, graciously expanding into “letting-come and “crystallising”.
The sixth breath: “Prototyping” becomes a “filling of Self”, an “embodying” of the future, as it wants to emerge, in the huge wave of possibilities.
The seventh breath: “Performing” is “bringing Self into the world” in further unfolding, ever continuing, waves of the Life Pulse.

I hope you are curious!

All of this is covered extensively in each article of this series.

Conclusion

Guest House Facilitation is a way of being in which you tend to your State of Being through living Theory U; you discover unknown aspects of yourself. Your blind spot can be a potential gift, and it can sometimes be very messy –it might disturb and even destroy, and still it is an entry point into more of you.

Theory U is a framework, a method and a way of being through which processing more of “you” engages more of “you” into the world. I facilitate this fascinating and wonderful process in Guest House Facilitation through graciously bringing our attention to the cosmic principle of the Life Pulse.

Are you ready to embark on this journey with me?

The next article in the series brings more awareness to the First Breath in our process. We immediately jump into the unknown hidden territory of the Self.

Your comments and stories are very welcome. If you like this article, please share them through your favourite social media (there are links at the left side of this article). I am always very grateful for your thoughts and opinions.

With love and appreciation

Veerle

ACKNOWLEDGMENT:

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/hosting for your organisation at:
http://www.chancestochange.com

http://twitter.com/VeerleDeBock

http://facebook.com/BecomingWhatIsChanging

Aspects of life

How ‘Guest House Facilitation’ Affects Your Organization

March 10, 2014March 11, 2014 Veerle de Bock

How ‘Guest House Facilitation’ Affects Your Organization

Our organizations are living systems composed and affected by each member. This ‘group being’ encompasses the magic of a future that wants to emerge.

How does it feel to consider the possibility of having an impact on your organization, no matter which role you occupy in that organization?

We all matter in this human realm. The key invitation is to give each of us a voice, to listen to each of us, even to the whispers.

Imagine how acknowledging a ‘being’ of a group, an organization or a family would be able to make a huge difference in that group, that organization or that family.

This article offers you a definition of the ‘group being’ and insight into the magic of ’Guest House Facilitation’. ‘Guest House Facilitation’ is an assembly of attitudes and technologies that enable a safe space for this ‘group being’ to connect with its higher potential.

What is a ‘group being’?

Each gathering of two or more people creates a ‘group being’. This ‘group being’ is composed of the different members and is at the same time more than the members. Whatever is present consciously and unconsciously affects this ‘group being’. The awareness of this ‘group being’ can be very powerful. In order to engage with this ‘being’ it is important to create a safe container.

The magic of ‘Guest House Facilitation’

‘Guest House Facilitation’ creates a safe container and manifests into the human realm from a self-organizing field in the Universe. This field holds the intelligence that we need to create a more beautiful and healthy world. The name ‘Guest House’ refers to Rumi’s poem. Rumi’ invites us in his famous poem ‘The Guest House’ to welcome and embrace all our inner guests, even if they are unexpected and sweep our house out.

‘Guest House Facilitation’ brings our awareness to the existence of a ‘group being’, and we welcome all that is present ‘now’ in this group body. The group body itself in ‘Guest House Facilitation’ calls forth the emergent ‘form and flow’ of its unique wisdom and leadership.

We achieve this through applying an unlimited set of mediation and conversation techniques applicable to a variety of situations. In ‘Guest House Facilitation’ you not only learn the techniques, you also understand how the components of each technique work in effecting healing, creativity and change.

The ‘group being’ itself invites us to enhance self-awareness of our individual contributions and talents. Each transformational attitude or technology creates space for skills that can enable or strengthen this specific attitude or technology.

Let us take a closer look at one or our attitudes: this fascinating triad of ‘Witness, Ask and Experience’ and how this affects our ‘group being’ and each individual member. We extensively covered this triad in several previous articles on this blog. Today we explore this magnificent triad through the eyes of ‘Guest House Facilitation’. We combine the different aspects of our triad with steps of the Theory U model part of the amazing organizational research of Otto Scharmer.

Asking, opening our mind
Experiencing, opening our heart
Witnessing, opening our will

Asking: Open our mind

We start opening our mind, recognize our taken-for-granted assumptions and begin to hear and see things that were not evident before. Our mind is related in this context with our reason, with the whole realm of our concepts, ideas and beliefs of how the world makes sense to us. Most of these concepts, ideas and beliefs are cultural and social and related to the Story of Separation of our current world. This is a term the inspirational author Charles Eisenstein uses in his work.

The aspect ‘asking’ of our fascinating triad is literally giving the energy field around our head more space. We wonder without judgment. We open up for the moment now and we do not engage in what we already know, through our old stories. We are curious and open to the unknown.

We facilitate our inner guests, whatever is present for us is welcome. We meet the ‘being’ of our organization with an open mind, we have no judgments, we gently and softly receive the ‘being’ and ceaselessly ask the same question: “What is here now?”

We observe the ‘group being’, and we do not yet experience ourselves as part of this ‘group being’.

Experiencing: Open our heart

The second step is opening our heart to feel beyond the mind, achieving a deeper level of attention. We occupy our whole body in order to experience. We open our heart and automatically we come home into ourselves. Our energy field becomes stronger and more grounded.

We can make sense on a deep level. We experience in our physical body our sense of self. We perceive different emotions and feelings. We literally apply this ‘Guest House’ attitude. We might feel vulnerable.

The pitfall is that we easily will try to figure out or analyse what is happening. We keep our mind open though and only ask ourselves ‘What is here now?’ We stay present in the now.

‘Guest House Facilitation’ extends this opening of our heart to the ‘group being’. When we are home within ourselves, we see from the inside and we are part of the ‘group being’. A profound shift happens in our awareness, and we experience the ‘being’ through our physical body. This can be awkward and strange. We might feel overwhelmed and experience headaches, nausea and dizziness as old stories surface through this ‘group being’. Those physical symptoms relate to old stories referring to how we have always done things in our organization or family. They refer to our collectively held stories of Separation.

Witnessing: Open our will

Finally we are summoned to open our will, the ability to unlock our deepest feelings of commitment. Witnessing stretches the back of our energy field, we observe without doing. We trust what is happening to be useful and part of a bigger, much bigger, reality that we cannot understand in this moment. We allow the unfolding to take place. We keep checking if our heart is still open and if our mind is open.

This often brings us to an uneasy space. We want to do something, escape this uneasiness, this whole of experiencing and being with what is. It is an unusual space to reside in for us. When we move into action, we lose our contact with the ‘group being’. When we achieve at this moment the patience to wait and to not do, then we are in touch with this fascinating ‘being’ and we arrive at a state of ‘presencing’.

Presencing…

A great deal of knowledge and insight, thinking and intuition coalesces in the catalyst of Presencing. The definition is to sense, to tune in and to act from your highest future potential. You arrived at the bottom of the U. You are aware of habitual patterns from the past that are no longer constructive, and you learn from the future as it emerges.

The magic of ‘presence’ is using whatever is popping up, happening inside and outside, in the moment as potential. It is the flexibility to use whatever is arising and letting go of a pre-set structure. We move from the inner area to the outer area, and back—everybody is a guest in our house. Our enemy is our guest as well. We listen to all the voices, also the whispers. We no longer see problems, only opportunities. We are the ‘group being’ and the ‘group being’ is us.

‘Presencing’ is applying this wonderful triad of ‘witnessing, asking and experiencing’—opening our mind, our heart and our will.

Conclusion

You received a glimpse of the huge territory of ‘Guest House Facilitation’. ‘Guest House Facilitation’ incorporates this fascinating triad of ‘witnessing, asking and experiencing’ as well as the different steps of the Theory U model of Otto Scharmer.

‘Guest House Facilitation’ assists the identification of the next steps in individual and group development, what kind of continuing support would serve you and where you can get it.

Meanwhile, you can apply this fascinating attitude in your daily life. This stepwise approach leads us from the Story of Separation into the acknowledgment of a ‘group being’ in our families, groups and organizations.

The ‘group being’ enables us to hear our voice and value our essence and the unique contribution we make. It also enables us to hear the other voices and value their essence and their unique contribution.

Recognizing the ‘being’ of our groups allows environments that lead to increased transparency, trust, pleasure and creativity.

You can read more on the website chancestochange. You are welcome to connect with us, leave a message, come and co-create with us on one of the trainings or workshops.

Veerle

March, 10^th 2014

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: theory U

THE MANIFESTATION OF A WILDLY ORIGINAL BOARD GAME

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! 3rd Breath.

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 BREATHS! 3^rd 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! Invitation.

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 BREATHS! INVITATION.

Conclusion

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

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 BREATHS! 3rd BREATH.

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

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

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 BREATHS! INVITATION.

Conclusion

How ‘Guest House Facilitation’ Affects Your Organization

PRACTICE DON’T PREACH THEORY U IN 7 BREATHS! 3^rd BREATH.

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

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