Hosting Collective Presencing dialogues is a collective practice

The Collective Presencing practice is something we do together; and hosting these dialogues we also do together.

Ability to ask for help

Sooner or later there will come a time when you, as the main host of the dialogue session, feel overwhelmed or suddenly you lose the thread… instead of getting panicky and/or trying to hide it, that is the moment to recall that you have a co-host with you – and even several practitioners – and you can truly relax instead. On top of it, you can name and speak what is happening to you in the moment (like in your framing or in the check-in) and just reach out to your team members, or even ask some seasoned practitioners if you forgot anything or if they can add to your framing. In that way we model, as a small team, what we actually mean by being a collective.

This opens up our rigidity around the notion that the leader, the trainer, the facilitator knows it all. The hosts are just human beings like all of us, and they are not always aligned and fully present – although they will prepare to be able to speak and invite from that place of course, but life happens, right? We want to break the projection related to hierarchy, which exists as much in the hosts as in the participants (maybe even more?). In the end it is not the position (being the one who frames the dialogue) so much that brings authority, but more the lived and embodied awareness of how you invite others to join you in the dialogue.

Amanda speaks below of how vulnerability and trust mutually enhance one another – linking here with what we wrote in the previous point about intimacy and intensity – and challenges us with a counter intuitive question that we can also apply to our role as dialogue host:

Vulnerability feeds trust, by Amanda Zamparo

It seems that sharing what is painful for us (if we are doing it in a genuine way) makes others trust us. It seems that vulnerability feeds trust, and trust feeds vulnerability. So the more we open up, the more we can build trust in any community.

So how can we remind ourselves of this more frequently so that every time we find mistrust in any group, we open ourselves more, we become softer, more vulnerable?

Never host alone

Never host alone is a good catch phrase to remind ourselves that time is over to be the hero, the one who can hold it all, can do it all. Many of us, trainers, therapists, facilitators, teachers, … can indeed hold a lot, and… we are all limited, human beings. It turns out that it is sometimes very difficult for people who have chosen these professions to actually feel that others can hold them, be it their co-hosts or be it the circle of participants. So, never host alone so you do have a back-up support when needed, and you can train yourself to drop the responsibility-for-all-and-everything. For sure, it is not healthy and leads to a lot of the burn-outs we see these days.

Below, Cheryl writes that it took her more than a year of practice to actually embody that trust that she is held; and how it leads to a collective capacity previously unknown to us.

Not alone in the field, by Cheryl Hsu

After 15 months of this dedicated practice, I know I am not alone in the field. We always co-host together, hold each other as a collective body of practitioners. We tune into E. with his dancing light, into N. for creative daring, T. and her senseful embodiment, D. for warm steadiness, R. with firm and loving wisdom, B. for wild imagination, K. for fiery passion, H. with fierce discernment, J. as innocent sage… and there are countless others unnamed, each with their unique frequencies and beautiful soul gifts that are generously, openly shared with the field. Our souls swirl together into the centre like a colourful kaleidoscope, creating this mandala spiraling towards a collective capacity and strength beyond our current imagination.

You need a field to hold a field

This is another important catch phrase to remember in this dialogue practice. How could you ever invite participants to be, form or experience the field of collective wisdom when you are speaking from a lonely position? I truly think that is not possible. Like Cheryl mentioned, this collective practice leads to a collective capacity and strength beyond our current imagination. But only, or with more chance, when the hosting team members form this little field together, that holds the wider field of potential of this whole group. The experience of being a field needs to be embodied by all in the hosting team. You invite from your lived experience, and participants in the dialogue will notice how there is no competition and no hard separation between all of you on the team.

The power of collective attention

Justin Frank, another of our core practitioners, wrote as a contribution to this book an interesting piece on the power of our collective attention; but it is too long to paste in here. Instead we invite you to read the following questions and give yourself some time to let them sink in. We just want to open your thinking about what collective attention actually is, and what it possibly could do.

What is it that this collective attention can do, when freed of individual ego-patterns?

What is the creative power of collectively attending to something, be it some trees, or animals, or man-made stuff? Do we notice they become more alive?

Can we cultivate our sensitivity and our receptivity so we notice the tsunami coming, as many animals do?

Can we grok the ongoing loop of us, collectively attending to something, which changes it and then be changed by it?