Teaching Reclaiming Style

 

Once upon a time, there was a young witch who had a vision for changing the world, one witch at a time. She was smart. She had a coven, and she was the High Priestess, full of herself, full of ideas, with lots of information, and plenty of energy.

 

Things were going along as they did in that long ago time. Coven members and even covens came and went. Classes were held, information exchanged, lives changed, destructive forces held back. But one thing remained constant. Our young witch was the High Priestess, and she was In Charge!

 

Then one day, the witch, in her work to stop those destructive forces, came across some folks who were doing things differently. The techniques and processes used by this activist group resonated deeply with the young witch’s soul and gave her a new way of working with people, of teaching the Craft, of being in groups. The new tools were: empowered learning, consensus process, co-facilitation and power sharing, and feminist process. And everything changed forever and completely.

 

This little fairy tale may be a terrible oversimplification of the birth of Reclaiming and more importantly of the Reclaiming style of teaching. But it was something like that. In any event, the tools are real and are fundamental to what we do when we teach Reclaiming classes.

 

Though we may not train teachers with this terminology, it is these tools that make Reclaiming classes unique. We emphasize direct experience and reflection, empowerment of the participants, co-teaching, emotional safety, and decision making through consensus. Most teachers these days may “get it”, the Reclaiming style, by osmosis, by observing what their mentors are doing. Through our practice of the Principles of Unity, through our ideals and values, we are, like the young witch of the fairytale, perhaps drawn to these tools?

 

But these tools, however they are learned, are the basis of what we do when we teach in Reclaiming. The information passed, the skill of the teacher as a priestess, her skill as a witch, these at least co-exist or are perhaps even subordinate to the experience and empowerment of the class participants.

 

That was a heady time in 1979, right after Three Mile Island blew its top and poisoned parts of Pennsylvania. Though I was living in San Luis Obispo then, I didn’t get involved until 1981. But there was a crew of idealistic, anarchistic, feminist-oriented activists roaming about trying to stop nuclear power plants from being constructed. And, in San Luis Obispo, California, there was a burgeoning grass-roots movement to stop Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. Throughout California, concerned people, activists and others, formed an anarchistic affiliation of groups called the Abalone Alliance. From Philadelphia, some long-time activists from the Movement For a New Society (MNS) who’d thought about and written about social movements, came to California, and specifically, to San Francisco, to help out with the fledgling anti-nuclear movement and the Abalone Alliance. These folks had been in contact with the forming Abalone Alliance in San Luis Obispo for some time. Together, they had been conducting non-violence trainings with these new methods. And the MNS folks had been using consensus for a while. The Abalone adopted consensus for its decision making.

 

The MNS had taken the work of Brazilian educator and activist, Paulo Freire, and melded it with consensus and an emerging body of inter-personal politics, ideals, and practices that we used to call, “feminist process”. Feminist process had been informed from the work of women in consciousness raising groups and by the Humanist Psychology movement. A lot of threads of study were coming together into a coherent philosophy and practice.

 

The new methods stressed the absolute authority of the participants to decide for themselves. Personal empowerment was one of the main goals. A central tenet was that when people broke free of oppression, not only were lives and inter-relationships richer and more satisfying, but also, we were actually living our values, and that this personal empowerment was in and of itself, a revolutionary act that changed the power dynamics of the individual, and that individual’s relationship with systems of oppression, like patriarchy, racism, the military-industrial complex. Through personal freedom, people change, and societies are changed when the people living in them are changed. The personal is political.

 

Though I was living in San Luis Obispo at that time, I didn’t get involved until 1981. Still, I was lucky enough to be trained and to work with a couple of those MNS folks or their direct descendants in the work. For quite along stretch, we all lived, breathed, spoke about, wrote about, taught and taught about the empowered learning philosophy. We developed not only tools for workshops, but also a whole body of work on how to teach people how to facilitate workshops. It is this body of work that I want to share with Reclaiming.

 

I feel very blessed that I was asked to facilitate workshops with lots of folks outside the anti-nuclear community so that I could add their teachings to the work, that I had such great teachers, like Eric Bear, Paula, Marian, Raye, Mary, David Hartsough, Jack Rabbit, Randy Schutt, Love and Rage, Death and Taxes, The Narcoleptics, many other members of the Northern California Preparers Collective, and yes, even Starhawk, who was, and is, one of the most amazing facilitators I have ever had the pleasure to observe and to work with.

 

Coming into contact and practicing consensus and feminist process completely and unutterably changed my life. Through my first baby steps in confronting the oppression of the patriarchy in myself and in the violent system in which we live, I gained a few precious moments of empowerment. And I’ve never looked back. As Gil Scott Heron sings, “First one person wants freedom, then the whole goddamned world wants freedom.”

 

It is my purpose to make our teaching process more transparent. I’d like, with this work, to give our tools some names, to offer some tools for practicing and sharpening our teaching work, and to pull the covers off of what we are doing so that we can do it better and more consciously. And, I have to admit, I’m afraid that the work of my teachers will get lost in the mists of time. If my writing here is at all useful, perhaps this work can live on in our work as Reclaiming teachers, consensus facilitators, and non-violence preparers?

 

I’m dividing up the territory in three sections. One could segment teaching style in some other manner. This just reflects my sensibilities. 

Inter-personal Process

 

Ah, those unwritten rules about behavior in Reclaiming. The standards that none of us seem to meet, but which many of us would like us all to meet. This is the process that we expect from each other and which is our shelter from a violent, oppressive culture. Our process is one of the trickiest things about Reclaiming. I’m probably breaking some rule or other just trying to write about it? Oh well, no doubt many will voice complaints about this series, so what-the-heck!

 

Here is a definition from the Vandenburg Action Coalition Direct Action Handbook (1983).

 

“When we say we use feminist process, we mean that the relationships within our groups cannot be separated from the accomplishment of our goals. We mean that we value synthesis and co-operation rather than competition, that we value each individual’s contributions to the group and encourage the active participation of everyone involved in an action. We mean that our organizations are non-hierarchical; that power flows from the united will of the group, not from the authority of any individuals. Nevertheless, our groups are not leaderless, each one of us is a leader”

 

Sound familiar? It should be. Starhawk went to Livermore in June of 1983 while I was sneaking around the poison oak groves of Vandenburg Airforce Base at the same time. For both of these actions, process was fundamental to everything that we all did. Rose May Dance, Oak, Pandora, Akasha, are among the teachers in Reclaiming who were at one or more of those actions and went through the same cauldron. You can read all about it in Luke Hauser’s book, Direct Action. I think that Star was actively engaged in writing Dreaming the Dark at that time? There’s a lot about process in that book.

 

I’d like to set out some of the things that I believe are core practices for my teaching. I also believe that most of these are part of the unwritten social mores of Reclaiming.

 

The following list is not exhaustive, by any means. But, as a starting point, let me list some of the stuff that I think of related to inter-personal process.

Boundaries. This concept seems to me to get a lot of air-time when folks are talking about other folks’ shortcomings, as in, “Mud Flap doesn’t have very good boundaries. Did you hear the way she reacted to Pond Weed’s personal drama?” My goodness! Still, I find the concept very useful. Where do I end, and where do other folks’ existence begin? The Buddhists tell us that everything is connected and that we are all one. This, I do believe at some level, is true. Nevertheless, knowing that my feelings and reactions are mine help me inter-relate more clearly. When teaching I try to practice the following lists of understandings, dos and don’ts. 

This list isn’t exhaustive, but rather, suggestive of an attitude that says that my inner world is not The World. My inner world reacts to or resonates with other’s expressions, but is not those expressions. Each of us has her own inner world. Our inner worlds are our own, precious, but not the Truth – our inner world is our truth, nothing more, nor less. What I find funny, someone else may find triggering.

 

At a teacher workshop, one of the prospective teachers came into the circle to facilitate an exercise for feedback. Presumably, he saw himself as a funny, charming guy, and he was used to leading groups where he was the authority. Meaning to break the ice as he described the exercise, he made a joke about participants not sleeping with him, wink, wink, nod, nod. He got a laugh or two, and a few nervous giggles. We weren’t actually in class, and most everyone knew each other fairly well. My feed back for him was that this was inappropriate. Though I knew he didn’t mean any come on, it would be impossible for him to tell with a class what triggers folks had. It’s likely in any class that someone there will have been coerced sexually, raped, or otherwise abused. In order to make it safe for all of us, I think that we have to be extremely careful not to suggest anything, even in play, that might trigger folks’ sexual boundaries. Whether the people who are triggered actually get up and leave or not, internally, they may “check-out” and emotionally protect themselves.

 

When we have reasonable boundaries, folks feel a lot safer so that they can be vulnerable. And, I have experienced great magic, deep change in circles and workshops where vulnerability is safely honored, is allowed and validated.

 

Active Listening. This technique is the act of listening very carefully without formulating reactions to what is being said. When active listening, we take in as much of the information as possible, concentrating on whether or not we have understood what the speaker is trying to convey. We put aside our reactions and our opinions for the moment in favor of understanding. Perhaps we repeat back what we’ve heard, or ask clarifying questions to validate that we did in fact understand what was said.

 

Most of us are probably at least somewhat familiar with active listening since we encourage people to listen respectfully during check-ins and during post-exercise sharing. At one time almost every non-violence training included an active listening exercise. It is a fundamental process, a basis for the work. It is also one of the deepest magics that I think that we have. I cannot count the number of times a participant has said to me, “That is the first time in my life I have ever been listened to. I finally feel validated.” How simple, yet unfortunately, so rare.

 

Respect. It seems obvious, perhaps, but I don’t think that it’s trivial. We assume that participants are intelligent, capable people. We assume that everyone’s trying her best, even in the certain knowledge that most of us are wounded, if not specifically, then by living in an oppressive culture. We, the teachers, don’t have to fix participants, that’s each person’s personal work. We are there to build a process, perhaps offering some guidance. But it is the process in and of itself that allows for learning. Besides, it may be trite to acknowledge it, still, it remains that I can’t control anything except myself, and I have some limitations in that arena, as well. Each of us is her own spiritual authority.

 

Emotional Sharing and Honesty – Vulnerability. I’ve already touched on this point, above, in the Active Listening section. When teaching, I find that this is a fairly tricky area. I can use the workshop for my emotional needs: getting support for my issues. And, most assuredly, that does happen. But I think that this requires a light touch. Experience teaches me that when I’m vulnerable, it creates a space that is safe for others to be honest and vulnerable. However, I have to be clear that I don’t expect anything more than listening. If I move into shadow intentions, then the focus is on me. And, as the teacher, the person to whom participants give their trust, focus on my issues is not the point of the work.

 

So, I tend to listen and express resonance until it feels like a moment where folks have gone just so far, but are hesitant to go deeper. I can help create that safety by being honest and vulnerable. I do the work with everyone else. That seems to provide the requisite honesty and vulnerability in and of itself. I would guess that each teacher must find her own balance here. But boundary work seems very important to balance teacher vulnerability. But I do believe that honesty, transparency, vulnerability and humility to do the work with everyone are essential ingredients that allow everyone in the group to go as deep as each cares to.

 

There are a couple of corollary processes that help make vulnerability safer. I call it a willingness to be in relationship, or a willingness to be intimate. It may come up as one of the following actions:

Assertive Self-interest. Part of good emotional process is expressing our requests clearly, with no demand or subterranean threat or coercion. But, speak up we must. And this assertiveness creates a space where others can speak up. We each must be advocates for what we want. Who else can do this? Ultimately, only I can take care of myself. I take responsibility for getting my needs met. I can ask for what I want. But I realize that people have the right to say “No”, and that I will need to deal with that, respecting the other’s decision.

 

Don’t take advantage of the “glamour of the teacher”. That is, “no sex with participants”, because the power dynamics are not equalized in the situation. No matter what my commitment to power-sharing, I’ve got more experience in the class work than at least some participants. And the particpants have tasked me with guiding the agenda and with helping participants in their empowered learning. In other works, I have their trust. And, I may have more idea of what's going on in the work than at least some participants. And of course, we are trying not to play out hierarchies, but we're all well trained in these from our culture and families. These dynamics require (in my humble opinion) that attractions not be acted upon at least during the class period (just my way – others will no doubt have their own takes on this contentious topic)

 

Exercises:

 

Active Listening. This exercise can be done in pairs or triads. I will add the triads part as the last step.

(explain what active listening is, why it’s important, etc., as above)

Boundary work.

I Noticing /I Imagine. I got this from Katrina Messenger. So, I have probably transmuted the exercise since hearing about it. This is an excellent verbal feedback for boundaries and respect and shadow work. This exercise needs a bit of safety, some sense of group before doing it. I wouldn’t place it at the first thing in my day. It’s better after folks know and trust each other a bit.

Statements might be something like, “I notice that Brook is a bearded hippie and I imagine that he’s very flaky.” The feedback would then be, “Yes, Brook has a beard. But we don’t know what his culture is, whether he considers himself a hippie or not. All we know is that he wears a beard and keeps his hair long.”

 

This exercise is described in The Twelve Wild Swans.

 

There is also a good exercise in personal-centrism in The Twelve Wild Swans, The Center Exercise (page 54)

 

Moment to Moment practice. This is also described in the section about Empowered Learning. This is my favorite practice, which I learned from Stephen Levine. But any moment to moment awareness practice will do just as well.

Feeling Sharing. This exercise is the basis for the processing that takes place after a class exercise. However, this is more formal, in that content is not discussed about the subject, only feelings about it. This is best in pairs or threes. Each person should have uninterrupted time for sharing. Then the listener should repeat back and validate the speaker’s feelings. Change roles. This exercise can be combined well with active listening.

 

For women, women’s only space, for men, the same: Sharing our experience as men or as women in gender based-space is very powerful. I’ve learned a lot from the men’s groups that I’ve been in.

 

Empowered Learning

 

Empowered learning is based upon the work of Paulo Freire. He was a Brazilian educator who believed that humans learn best by processing what they learn. He stressed the innate intelligence that we each possess. When our natural desire to grow is engaged, then we learn.

 

Freire’s work used dialectic as a key technique. Whatever the subject matter, and he liked teaching about oppression, we learn when we get a chance to discuss the material, i.e., process the material with others. And, each of us learns about what interests us, and we learn what is important to each of us. It is likely that different people will learn different things from the same material. And, that some of us will not be engaged in the same way.

 

As far as I know, the Movement for a New Society (MNS) folks added role plays, that is, experiences, to the Freire model. It is this combination, role plays and then processing which gave birth to the empowered learning model.

 

There are some basic tenets to work:

Without these assumptions in play, the learning model will not be effective. It cannot be both ways: the teacher or facilitator as a star or diva, as the prime source of learning, as the conferrer of empowerment, are antithetical to the empowered learning model. Hence, there is a strong current of facilitators/teachers doing their own personal work, checking their motivations as they facilitate.

 

The empowered learning model has four stages. Experience leads to Reflection leads to Insight leads to Action.

 

Experience is really anything, something in the moment, or a memory. Commonly, in Reclaiming classes it may be an exercise, like the Womb Breath (The Spiral Dance), Robot Witches on Steroids, a chakra cleansing, sensing energy with pendulums, a ritual, a Working, Talk Story, Pairs Trance, what-have-you.

 

The important point in setting up and facilitating experiences is that it be clear, doable, contained, and that the facilitators have few expectations about what, if anything, the participants will “get”, or get out of it.

 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve flipped internally because someone’s pendulum was not moving. While I love doing that exercise, I have to admit that I get pretty triggered by my goal orientation. I want everyone to have that magical moment when the pendulum seems to be taking off on its own, and there’s that wonderful “Ah, ha, I can do it!”.

 

But, alas, some folks’ pendulums don’t swing. Some just go off to the side in one direction. Not everyone can sense with a pendulum, and what they sense may be different than what I sense. It’s a Mystery. And, different folks may get different results at different times and places. Each of these results can be a teaching, when I have boundaries enough to let the experience speak for itself to each participant as she wills.

 

In empowered learning, the information passed is less important than the internal experience. The teacher, with her information, is secondary. While every experience that we do in a workshop needs clear enough information in order to carry it out (and Oh! Haven’t I screwed the logistical part of exercises up!). And, there may be techniques that we’d like to share, just in case they resonate or otherwise deepen someone’s practice. Still, what each of us experiences from any given exercise may be completely unique. In empowered learning, whatever that experience is becomes valuable, even boredom or disconnection.

 

When we reflect, we have time to explore our experiences. In Reclaiming, this will often  be the time for check-in, for “processing”, for telling someone else what we experienced, in pairs, small groups, to the workshop. It can also be done through journaling, though Freire’s work suggests that verbalization and the acknowledgement through active listening are powerful gateways to Integration. There is also a power in hearing other participants’ experiences. We can resonate, or not. This is mirror which also helps lead to Integration. Hence, the listening part of the reflection time is just as important as the being heard. There’s magic in each part of the process.

 

We remember best when we have an emotional experience. So, allowing each person time to express her feelings is important. What we felt is just as important as what we did.

 

When facilitating reflection time, a light hand is important. This is why, in Reclaiming, we often break down into small groups that are self-facilitating, simply reminding folks of passing time and equalization in sharing. We stay away from discussion, since discussion leads us often away from the heart and the reflection into reaction to each others’ experiences or sharing.

 

The Integration phase is the “Ah, ha” moment. We’ve just all shared about our pendulums, and someone realizes that she can find her exercise partner’s aura. Or, she realizes that she has difficulty going with the experience, her mind chattering away a million miles away, or telling herself how incapable she is. Integration can be said to be the moment when experience and emotion come together to be held in memory. It’s the epiphany.

 

When I was doing a lot of non-violence trainings, we were taught to zero in through questions or other acknowledgement on folks who seemed to be have moments of integration. Through acknowledgement, we validate the learning, and also show that it is safe to have a unique experience: “So, Mud Flap, you said that you often criticize yourself when you’re attempting something new? How are you feeling about that now? Do you need anything?” We help the person highlight the integrating moment.

 

Then, Mud Flap might say, “Yes, I’ve got this personal voice going on inside telling me how stupid I am. But, come to think of it, it sounds just like my mom. And I’m an adult now, so I don’t need her in my head anymore!” Mud Flap has moved to Action. She’s ready to do something about something that she wants to change. Action can be anything that each participant considers important. It, by its very nature, must come from the individual, though it is possible to facilitate this by asking if there’s anything anyone wants to do based upon an experience.

 

There is one exercise that I consider crucial to learning about the Empowered Learning Model. When I was training people to become non-violence preparers, we always left time in the agenda, considerable time, sometimes half the day, for the participants to facilitate exercises and get feedback. This, I believe, is a very powerful learning tool for this work. I have used it for working with people who want to become Reclaiming teachers.

For feedback, I like using Donald Engstrom’s guidelines. Feedback must be:

I believe that it is imperative to ask permission before giving feedback. In some relationships, the permission may be implicit, as it is when a teaching team agree to give and receive critique. Or, it may be implicit in a really strong relationship where feedback has a history of safety and continuousness. Outside of these bounds, it is important to ask the receiver for permission. We each have a right to make a choice about receiving feedback.

 

Feedback must be given within proximity to the subject of the feedback. There may be little learning or change that can occur if we tell our co-teacher about images in a trance that she conducted a year ago. Feedback is best given when memory is fresh. Some feedback may be given immediately, like suggesting to a partner that she change her pacing, or speak louder. But feedback that may trigger emotional response or resistance, or which may be embarrassing is best given privately, with some prepartation.

 

I believe that we should focus our feedback on those things over which our co-teachers have some immediate personal control. Even if I think a teacher’s shadow is preventing her from her full effectiveness, I have to remember a few important points: Each person’s personal path is subject to her empowered choice. Just because I don’t like the way a person navigates certain situations doesn’t mean that it’s ineffective. A person’s shadow often contains her greatest gifts. Serious personal issues should be dealt with by professionals. All of these reasons help me focus on those things that my peers can work on consciously, those things that are amenable to empowered learning and to practice.

 

Specificity is crucial. If feedback is vague, it may be like boiling the ocean, e.g., unattainable. Or, the receiver simply may not know how to effect the change. Something like, “I think that you will have a better trance if you develop a rhythm in your voice.”, may seem quite specific. But it would be better, I think, to make the advice even more specific by offering a suggestion for what that rhythm might be, as in, “And, when I tie my pacing to an embodied rhythm such as my walking or a drum beat, I can easily maintain my rhythm without focusing on it. Further, after I’ve asked an evocative question, and perhaps, offered some examples, I like to leave some silence so that trancers have time to resonate and reflect with the work.”

 

Telling someone that she needs to “change her energy” does nothing except deflate her. Further, it’s not specific, and it is probably not something that someone is going to be able to change very easily. When we feel like saying something like this, it usually says more about our own irritations and shadow than about the other person. Ultimately, the only reason to give feedback is make our work together more effective. In the context of teaching, that means, we give feedback to make our classes better, more effective and safe empowered learning experiences for participants. Whatever we tell each other is best directed towards this goal. I do not mean to imply that personal issues are not important. But these are not in the realm of feedback, but rather in the murky world of wants, desires and shadows where there are not rights and wrongs. One person’s triggering behavior may be another’s delight.

I like to add that when I give feedback, I implicitly open myself to feedback as well.  For me, feeback is  always a 2-way street.

 

What I find  is that, like all empowered learning, participants can get a reasonable gauge on how well they can facilitate others. Very often, those who are having more problems come away knowing that they need more time for personal work before doing this work, or that this kind of work is not for them. Again, we can trust the process and the intelligence and understanding of participants to figure out for themselves what each of us needs to learn.

 

Hopefully, making the Empowered Learning Model more transparent will help us all be better teachers, be more consistent in our work, and help us work together more smoothly?

 

Consensus, Facilitation, Power-sharing

 

Reclaiming classes are co-taught. That is one of the definitions of a Reclaiming class, at least where I live, in Northern California. I know that in some places, for lone teachers, this can be difficult. But folks have worked out lots of ways around that problem: like phone mentors, etc. However it’s worked out, the teachers will be working as a team.

 

Consensus is the glue that we use to work together. Reclaiming’s web site has a number of resources to help with the process. There are ways to help the process be more efficient.

 

But there’s also something else. When I co-teach, having some unity about the class work is essential. I’ve taught workshops where it seemed that the other teacher and I were actually teaching different classes. Though perhaps our consensus process was sufficient, consensus only works well when there is a basis of unity underlying it. While the Principles of Unity do give us a basis for working together, my experience suggests that a workshop or class needs something just a little bit more specific than that in order to work well. Sharing our vision, using consensus to synthesize that vision and let it change until in represents a consensus, that can help the co-teaching process.

 

Co-teaching leads inevitably to power-sharing. Ultimately, I believe that consensus is the tool, but power-sharing is value and the goal. That is, even when 2 teachers are working together with vastly different levels of skill and understanding, still, there is room for power-sharing: in creating the vision, while building the agenda, while facilitating, in creating the exercises. This takes honest feedback, as in Starhawk leaning over to me when I was her student teacher my first time at witch camp, and saying, “If you go on this slowly, we’ll be cleansing our charkas all morning. Remember, not everyone has the same endurance for this work as you.” I had a serious chunk of the work. But she wasn’t afraid to offer her depth of experience in order to improve our work together.

 

I think that it takes some courage: courage to let an exercise be something other than I might have wanted it to be, courage to let participants view me when I’m confused and unsure, courage to ask my co-teacher, no matter her experience level, for council. For this is the magic in power-sharing. No teacher must have all the answers, must be perfect, must always have something sage to say or do. We all carry that responsibility, not only the co-teachers, but all the participants.

 

Power-sharing to me, means also being willing to understand that my idea of an agenda may not be working very well. The participants may have a better understanding of what they need. My agenda was just my best shot at it. Groups of people have a lot more wisdom than any single person or pair of people in the group.

 

It is one of the basic tenets of the Empowered Learning Model that every participant is an intelligent and capable person. She may not have all the context, style, and information for a certain moment, but she will have her wisdom that can be brought to bear, if it is allowed to speak.

 

And, of course, not everything works, not every attempt by participants is sage. Sometimes it’s inappropriate, tentative, clumsy, whatever. That is where I find that I must have the courage to let things be less than perfect, to trust the magic, and to trust the Empowered Learning Model that allows that every experience can be a valuable teacher, if it can be reflected upon and integrated.

 

I won’t duplicate the many resources available both at http://www.reclaiming.org/, and elsewhere about facilitation of meetings. But, facilitation of the empowered learning model has a few different twists. It involves the same attention by the facilitator to both the outer process, energy, and content, but also to her inner world. For, one cannot remain impartial unless one is in touch with one’s biases.

 

One important addition is that facilitating the Empowered Learning Model is not goal directed in quite the same way that I find meetings to be. In a meeting, one is stewarding a process that probably has the goal to make decisions. However, when facilitating a workshop, the only goal is that it be safe enough for participants’ empowered learning. As in a meeting, the facilitator  tries to remain impartial to the outcome of a decision. So, too, in a Reclaiming workshop, the facilitator must stay out of the way of people’s learning process, of their right not to learn, of their right to take from the work exactly what they need and nothing else.

 

To build consensus skills, I recommend that teachers facilitate meetings, especially, meetings where experienced teachers and facilitators are present. They will help you with lots of tricks and process suggestions. There’s really nothing like it. Role plays are good, but nothing takes the place of experience. And, of course, role play facilitating workshop exercises, the reflection afterwards, and ask for feedback whenever teaching, both from the co-teacher(s) and from the participants.

 

Before starting an exercise from which you took away something profound, try grounding and reflecting on the many ways that the exercise might serve people in different ways than it served you.

 

I use moment to moment breath practice a lot when facilitating. This allows me to monitor both my inner world carefully, while hopefully staying in tune with what is happening in the circle. In this way, when something seems important to me, that is, I have an emotional reaction to it, I can choose to express that or not, depending upon whether I think it may be helpful to the integration or not.

 

One can get very fast at the following practice, so that within seconds one is working with the final state, letting breath arise and fall in its own rhythm.

A path, “Into The Wild”, that I taught at Samhain Camp in Texas, 2003, came up with a mnemonic for this process, the ABCDE meditation.  Maybe the following can help you to remember the process quickly and easily?

 

·         Attend to your body

·         Breath

·         Curious

·         Drop

·         Everywhere

 

A Short and Very Incomplete Bibliography

Resource Manual for a Living Revolution (the Monster Manual) David Hartsough

Truth or Dare, Starhawk. This is my favorite book about the nature of patriarchy and how our personal journey, our process, our tools, empowered learning, can free each of us and our world. Star’s master work.

Dreaming the Dark, Starhawk.

Emotional Literacy, Claude Steiner http://www.emotional-literacy.com

Begin at Start, Sue Negrin

Randy Schutt, http://www.vernalproject.org/

The Twelve Wild Swans, Hilary Valentine and Starhawk.