Blogs
Five Practices
This installment i discuss the 5 practices, and the scope to adapt them.
We have been working with the 5 AR practices of ART International.
1. Welcome everything
2. Assume nothing
3. Reveal your experience
4. Own your experience
5. Honor self and other.
Where did these come from? They seem to have their origins around 2012 at Boulder Integral Center.
"The 5 practices were created by myself, Ryel ![Kestano], and Laurie Lazar. They are a combination of things we learned from Decker and Robert Macnaughton, and the founders of the Authentic world. Basically, during Alethia we had agreements, honor self and honor other and own your experience were three of them. Welcome everything, assume nothing was actually just a phrase that Decker threw around a lot. And reveal was added by me because Josh Levin emphasized this so much in circling. And to be clear they are PRACTICES, and not principles. Our main idea was to make practices the basis of our context for the level 1 training, instead of agreements like our teachers were doing... When Decker Cunov handed the intellectual property to us he asked that it be kept open source." - Jason Digges
They feel quite timeless, minimally overlapping, and unambiguous. But maybe there is some things we might add, knowing what we do about the nervous system.
Ar-go uses three agreements and they ask you to agree with them at the start of each session:
1. Honor self
2. Honor other
3. Commit to growth
The growth clause speaks to the integral idea that transformation is the nature of the universe. Align with it or go home. I will note though, that it is pretty difficult for a dysregulated person to keep all such agreements.
Auth Rev has 5 agreements:
1. Respect yourself
2. Lean into your edge
3. Check your assumptions
4. Be present
5. Confidentiality by request
The Circling Institute has 3 agreements:
1. Honoring each others dignity/confidentiality
2. Communication, owning your experience and relating or speaking with the intention of relating as opposed to controlling, managing, giving advice, fixing, etc
3. Listening, practicing deep listening such that you are willing to be changed by the experience, listening for each other's humanity & the positive intent to fulfill needs underlying every way of being
I quite like the explicit call to listening there, and naming relating as a purpose for speaking.
Circling Europe has these 5 principles:
1. Commitment to Connection
2. Trusting Experience
3. Owning your experience
4. Staying with the level of Sensation
5. Being with the other in their world
I like connection being named explicitly. This is another integral concept, that we are already all connected, we have just forgotten it.
Given that these lists all date back a bit of a while now, we might explore what a set of practice "rules" for our own work might look like. With an eye to whats missing from these lists, here is a short list of other premises commonly used in the AR world:
- set context, make the implicit explicit
- being in the present as much as possible, not getting lost in story
- being curious about the other persons impact,
- reflecting and asking them to reveal
- notice where i feel it in my body
- slowing down with each other
- having positive regard, even if theres dissonance
- naming desire in a nonattached way
- the humility of naming when i don't show up well
- when in doubt does my share serve connection
- weight toward the relational layer of conversation
- seek consent before giving feedback
- offer appreciation and curiosity
- lean into your edge
Then we have our nervous system frame to consider:
- Prioritise regulation (safe haven to titrate from, remember nonverbals)
- Lean into connection (safety is the treatment)
I asked chatgpt to combine all of the above lists into one single list, here is the result.
1. Prioritise regulation (slowing down, secure base, appreciation)
2. Be present (embodied, noticing, not getting lost in story, relational layer)
3. Welcome everything, assume nothing (distress tolerance, set context, check assumptions)
4. Own and reveal your experience
5. Honor self and other
6. Lean into connection and growth (lean into your edge, connection as safety, evolution of consciousness)
Interestingly the phrase 'Welcome everything, assume nothing' as mentioned above is attributed to Decker Cunov. I quite like restoring it to its original wording, even if it does now encompass rather a lot.
Maybe 2 overlaps with 3. Listening doesn't feature directly, which i don't like, but its embedded in honor other. Its also kind of long to remember?
After sleeping on this, this is the list i like the most:
1. Welcome everything, assume nothing
2. Reveal and own your experience
3. Honor self and other
4. Prioritize regulation
5. Lean into growth
1 to 3 are the established order that we inherited
Point 2 could also be own and reveal also
Point 4 encompasses connection via coregulation and the social engaement system
Point 5 lean into is softer to my eye than commit to
Food for thought?
Note that views expressed in blogs do not necessarity reflect the views of the Project. They are the blog authors version of truth.
