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So now that we know that AR grew out of circling, we need to know what circling is, and where it fits in terms of usefulness as a tool in our work. This explanation comes from a person who is not a circler, so bear that in mind.

Circling seems like a much less structured version of AR. It's a practice done more typically as a group of up to 10 people or so, and can be thought of as being like a longer more intense version of the 'Being here now i notice' game, but done in groups. While it seems like there is profound emotional growth potential from doing this practice, its also clear that it will not always be pretty. The key is lots and lots of practice, commitment to stay with it even when its hard, and having a base level of emotional regulation, that allows you to play at all.

There are two broad types of circling.

A birthday circle, is where the whole session is spent with the focus on one person. The facilitator plays a lead role in holding this back and forth conversation with the circled person. Over the years, a small pool of highly skilled charismatic facilitators means that they serve a role akin to a therapist, in their advanced cability to hold space for the circle-ee.

An organic circle, sometimes called a flow circle, or a surrendered leadership circle, is where the flow goes organically across the circle, staying with one person for a time then moving to another as the flow dictates. Here the facilitator takes more of a container / host role, instead relying on the distributed skill base of the circlers.

When we consider where Zegg Forum fits, the Forum might be thought of as being like a mix of Birthday circling and psychodrama.

Circling in my view has some noteworthy issues for our work. First the advanced training required, and second by the risk of retraumatising participants. Circling shares the same limitation as EFT and other really useful therapy modalitys in terms of the time and money required to train facilitators. Which means good facilitators are scarce, which means they cost a lot.

As I mentioned when compared to the highly structured games format of AR, circling requires significantly more emotional capacity on the part of participants. From a trauma informed point of view i would class this with meditation as being a moderate risk activity for those carrying severe trauma. Being trauma informed as an organisation requires us to adopt a duty of care in this respect.

From a nervous system frame, i also see fundamental issues relating to reciprocity. As you know Porges views reciprocity as a defining feature of the social engagement system. Circling has the potential to disregard this. Althought there may be ways to mitigate that.

So in that sense, even though AR was born out of circling, it seems that in terms of progression from an adult development perspective, mastering AR first seems a logical way to approach circling.

I have a theory about this that i borrowed from Bruce Perry and Daniel Hughes. Think of it this way, first the infant has to learn to relate with its caregiver, to hold one other nervous system. Then later when it has mastered that, it can then go on to learn to relate to its peer group, and hold space for multiple people at once. Managing groups is actually quite an advanced mental faculty and Robin Dunbar is very clear in his writing, that group relations are very taxing to the human brain. Its the reason we have such big brains. Its part of the reason we lean so heavily on romantic partners for our emotional needs.

Thats it. My summary: lets look at circling again down the track.