Deep Democracy blog series /Kirsi Joenpolvi
My first meeting with Process Work was mysterious, brought a wave of curiosity and excitement and made me feel as if I was inside of an amazing piece of art, also known as Theatre of Life.
I was visiting the Ecovillage in Findhorn Scotland and touring around- I had just gone through an intense personal value transformation and was on the verge of making a leap into something completely else. During my search I had studied homeopathy and other holistic health trends, explored vegetarian diets, done a lot of body work, including dance. My background at the Business School was just something I wanted to ignore.
Findhorn turned out to be an important place for me to give birth to the new path.
The moment I had the ”first date” with the process work was at the Universal Hall where the community was having its annual easter conference. There was something called a community process going on. A man in the middle was facilitating the group. I was allowed to sneak in for a little while, so I went and sat on a chair and watched what was going in the middle of the stage.
I remember that the process was at a very beginning, and the facilitator asked if there was anybody who had a body symptom representing some stress in the community. One older male participant said his heart was aching. For me it sounded a bit of alarming but the facilitator went on and asked if the aching feeling would have a sound or some kind of expression and asked the man to show it. The man suddenly yelled so loud the whole hall was echoing. As if it he was suffering from some other sort a of huge pain.
The situation sounded and looked odd -but interesting. How does this facilitator KNOW so firmly what he was doing? And to what exactly was the big group of community taking part in – what was the red thread behind all that?
It sounded far away from ”normal” and still he was inviting people into something outrageous that I could sense felt normal.
I was witnessing a systemic way of exploring group processes called Process Work and the facilitator in the middle was Max Schupbach from Switzerland. He was one of those experienced facilitators working and travelling in Europe in those days.
I was only allowed be there for a little while and went on with my tour. The story unfolded: I ended moving to the area for 3 years. It was an intense 3 years where I learned a lot about group processes and systemic approach. I got into conflicts and out of them. Most of all I learned a lot about myself and self-management.
When I returned to Finland, I gradually ended up facilitating group processes in ecovillages and other grassroots organisations, deep dived more into the Art of Hosting, which is a wonderful systemic approach of designing and facilitating participatory group processes in different contexts and settings, implementing practical tools for different process phases. I worked more in the mainstream world and to my own surprise I gradually saw how my Business School background, Findhorn´s teachings, Art of Hosting and systemic thinking got united -it was never a path that I consciously had chosen but some part of me had!
At some point me and my colleagues were invited to call together an international meeting for the practitioners of Art Hosting. The format was a Learning Village and it took place at the Unesco site island in front of Helsinki -at famous Suomenlinna. It turned out to be a very special week for me. (Read my blog post about it: Diary at the Learning Village.) The week was based for an Open Space Approach, so it was going pretty freely, and many important topics emerged.
Also the four phases of group phases emerged: when the group stays together for a little longer there basically are four phases that it goes through, depending on the circumstances and context. First being happy and polite, then having polarities popping up, gradually understanding the other perspectives more and finally coming to some uniting truth.
During the week this happened especially in the facilitators group as we stayed together -participants varied depending on the days. As we had the Open Space format for the whole week, we still had some loose structure in the terms of facilitation: morning meetings for starting the day, welcoming and introducing the structure for the new participants, inviting the topics into the middle and by the end of the day collecting the golden nuggets of the workshops and sharing them in a big group. Of course we also had some fun stuff taking place like saunas and great food at the local restaurants. For all that we also needed to have facilitators for each day.
The common phases of group process emerged -first being happy and polite, then having polarities showing up, gradually understanding more the other perspectives and finally reaching some flow of unity – especially in the facilitators group and especially for me.
In the middle of the week we clearly sailed into the grone zone. It was in one of the closure meetings where one participant stated an accusation for the facilitators group; even though this is supposed to be an Open Space format, the facilitators are deciding too much -giving deadlines and telling how there will be something else than just the normal Open Space flow. This incident happened just when it was time to close and many of us were already hungry and tired, some tried to catch up the ferry to the mainland.
For some minutes there was silence and confusion. The facilitator said he would like to deal with this later only with only those who are involved. He made it sound so peaceful and nice but it was obvious that he was confused, too. 60 hungry people, tired of the day wanting to go for the dinner. (Actually we never checked how many wanted. ) Now what to do?
In that moment I felt: a) that there is something that could be done but I don’t know what and how! b) I felt confused and really frustrated. c) some sort of pressure in my body, as if there was a bridge that I wanted to reach but something was blocking the way.
Another facilitator said that it was about the time to arrive to the grone zone- this is a natural step! That brought some understanding for the moment but still what to do? The sudden interruption of nice energy flow was cut off. So let’s go for now was the decision- and but the energy was still flying around us. Some facilitators did not talk to each other so openly anymore. Some tried to keep up the openness, everybody dealt with their inner tensions on their own. We had one meeting where we touched the topic but it was a very polite one. It was unclear how to proceed further with the issues that seemed to be connected to the accusation. We shared about it a bit at our dinners but not really among the participants. The foggy energy travelled with us for the rest of the week.
Frustrated by this experience I started checking where is that facilitator that had gone into my memory so vividly back in Findhorn – he must be somewhere in Europe. I found out that there is the International Deep Democary Institute, a global think tank that Max Schupbach and his wife Ellen are running and that they had regular workshops in Netherlands, Amsterdam.
I travelled to the next seminar in Amsterdam, ended up travelling to many more until the covid made it happen more on the internet. To make the story short: I see how much Process Work is strengthening some inner muscles in me to become the more fluid in intense and abrupt conflicts that the world is surfing through.
I really love Process Work. There is so much I could list here and I will certainly come back to this:
I feel so captivated by the element of the field of a system, that automatically organises roles in it. The roles have polarities, sometimes unseen and unspoken but they exist. The ”roles” can be seen as energy streams of different aspects and elements that are present in the field no matter how the real world roles look like. When we slow down and give them a ”voice” /attention, the invisible diversities can up and the whole system more aware what else is present. Think about a conflict for example: there are basically two opposite opinions. When we go deeper into the opinions more elements that are on not the surface can show up. As they get voiced out, understood and accepted the whole field gets more relaxed and the conflict can ease.
The underlying information that is constantly present is an amazing source of potential. I am learning more and more how my own sensations are part of the field and how it actually can help the whole system when I am truly checking on myself and bring that authenticity with more awareness into the presence.
That frustration at the Learning Village was a powerful step for me to open up to a larger scene of the systemic view. In the emergent phase, at the deeper end of the pool, there is a lot of potential taking place that can be useful for the whole process. Individual experiences, subtle notions or clearer polarities, that all can lead into more awareness – but often gets ignored because of unconscious marginalised attitudes or belief systems that are related to the issue. Systemic view in the more vertical perspective can open up a multilayer energy map of different realities, offering a larger view of potential, and thus practical and creative steps forward, individually and collectively.
#deepdemocracy #processwork #emergentprocess #systemschange#artofhosting #sustainableleadership #diversityandinclusion #worldwork
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