Circling has enormous applicability for mental health and addiction recovery, and especially in combination with a new type of treatment for mood disorders (and many other psychiatric diagnoses) called Functional Medicine.
One of the best-known proponents of Functional Medicine for the treatment of mood disorders is Kelly Brogan in her recent book, A Mind of Your Own. Kelly Brogan is a crusader for more holistic treatment of all so-called “mental health” issues, recommending diet and lifestyle changes over psychiatric medication (especially anti-depressants) as being both way more effective and safer. She has an active psychiatric practice in New York City, and is a popular blogger and “anti-pharma activist”.
My partners and I are currently prototyping programs that would unite Circling, Functional Medicine, and a concept that we are calling “Cooking Collectives”. The idea of a Cooking Collective is that each person in a group cooks for the others once in the cycle. So for instance a group of 5 people might agree to cook for each other at their own houses every week-day. Each person would cook once and eat 5 meals, which provides (potentially) greater quality of nutrition, economies of time and money, and community. This works best when the people in the group live close to each other (something like a community kitchen) and of course they must agree on the diet. For more information review the website www.RelationalNutrition.com
Circling is potentially a powerful complement to a diet- and lifestyle-based recovery program as it helps people to get into connection with each other and to form a true supportive / transformational community. We are looking for trained circling facilitators to run pilot programs, and are also exploring online circling in combination with Functional Medicine.
In addition to the above, Seek Healing in Asheville NC is doing cutting-edge work around addiction recovery, using connection-based practices.
