Circling Guide

Learn the group conversation practice that will transform all of your relationships and bring you the love, friendship and community that you want

Circling and the “We-Space” Movement

The Circling and Authentic Relating movement is only the latest instantiation – although one of the larger and fastest-growing ones – of a number of schools and practice communities which share similar goals and philosophy, although different practices. These communities could be considered as going under the general umbrella group of what has come to be known as “we-space”.  I am listing some of these schools below, in rough historical sequence of creation. Most of these schools evolved separately (or earlier) than Circling. A few are direct applications (or derivations) of Circling and Authentic Relating into real-world problems. Some of these are covered more extensively on the website, www.CirclingGuide.com in the Resources section.

Here is my curated list of “we-space” schools and communities. There are many more, of course, but these are some of the most popular ones (the ones covered on the website are marked with a triple-Asterisk ***). The movements that are most similar or relevant to Circling are also bolded.

  • Teilhard de Chardin and the “Noosphere” (1922)
  • Martin Buber’s book I and Thou (1923)
  • Attachment Theory – John Bowlby and others (1958) ***
  • T-Group, or Encounter Group (~1960)
  • Non-Violent Communication – Marshall Rosenberg (~1972) ***
  • Integral Theory – Ken Wilber (~1977), with contributions by Sri Aurobindo, Jean Gebser, Haridas Chaudhuri, Don Beck and others ***
  • Sociocracy – John Buck and others (~1978) ***
  • Focusing – Eugene Gendlin (1982) ***
  • Bohm Dialogue – David Bohm (~1983)
  • Heart Circle – Tej Steiner (1985)
  • Hakomi – Ron Kurtz (~1990)
  • Restorative Justice – Howard Zehr (1990)
  • Network For a New Culture (US-based) and ZEGG in Germany (1991) ***
  • HeartMath – Doc Childre (1991)
  • Waking Down in Mutuality – Saniel Bonder (1995) ***
  • Somatic Experiencing – Peter Levine (~1997) ***
  • Inner-Relationship Focusing – Ann Weiser Cornell (~1997) ***
  • Circling – Guy Sengstock, Jerry Candelaria, and others (~1998). “Authentic Relating” came a few years later
  • The Art of Hosting – Toke Møller and Ria Baeck (~ 2000)
  • Pacific Integral’s Generate Transformative Change Program (~2004)
  • Authentic Man Program – Decker Cunov and Brian Bayer (2004), and later Authentic Woman Experience ***
  • Thomas Hübl’s teachings on awakening in relationships (~2004)
  • Collective Presencing – Ria Baeck (~2006)
  • Mutual Awakening and the Evolutionary Collective – Patricia Albere (2007) ***
  • A Small Group – Peter Block (~2008)
  • Heart IQ – Christian Pankhurst’s (~2009)
  • Sacred Ground Community – Stephen Marcus (2011)***
  • Ten Directions Integral Facilitator Training – Diane Hamilton and Rob McNamara (~2012)
  • One World in Dialogue – Elizabeth Debold and Thomas Steininger (2015)
  • Avalon Dharma – Alanja Forsberg (~2015) ***
  • The Power of 8 – Lynne McTaggart (2018)
  • Seek Healing – Addiction recovery in Asheville NC (~2018) ***
  • Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – John Vervaeke (2019) ***
  • Authentic Singles – Marc & Rebekah Beneteau (2019) ***
  • Self-Circling ***