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<\/h3>\n<\/h3>\nThis unusual photo shows many of the most influential founders of the Circling and A\/R movement in one room. From the left: Bryan Bayer, Robert MacNaughton, Shana James, Decker Cunov, Guy Sengstock, Alexis Shepperd, John Thompson, Sean Wilkinson. (2014, courtesy of Adam Coutts<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Michael Porcelli<\/a>). Only missing:\u00a0Jordan Myska Allen<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sara Ness<\/a>.<\/p>\n You will always outlive my concept of you. And I will always have a concept for you to outlive\u201d \u2014 Guy Sengstock, founder of Circling<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no place to get to but more here\u201d \u2014 Decker Cunov, co-founder of Circling<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It seems that the practice we now call \u201cCircling\u201d emerged and was discovered independently by at least 3 different groups, starting as early as 1995.\u00a0 Its precise origins are unknown.\u00a0 It does appear, however, that the first paid groups, and the first use of the \u201cCircling\u201d name, began in the year 1998 in the Bay Area.\u00a0 It was called the Arete Experience and was an intense all-immersive weekend which was led by Guy Sengstock and Jerry Candelaria.<\/p>\n Guy Sengstock was an artist, philosopher, personal trainer, bodybuilder and a massage therapist, while Jerry was at the time working to become a Landmark Forum leader. They had a powerful experience together at Burning Man, with a group that had moved from conflict into a kind of collective ecstasy, and had committed together to take the practice into the world.\u00a0 Besides the influence of Burning Man and Landmark Education, the early practice of Circling was inspired by modalities that include Gestalt, Rave culture and drugs, Carl Rogers encounter groups, man\/woman ideas originating from Lafayette Morehouse, the Sterling Men\u2019s course, David Deida, Holotropic breathwork, Ali Hameed Almaas\u2019s Diamond Heart, the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and more. The Arete Experience ran until 2008, when it shut down.<\/p>\n Even before this, Bryan Bayer and Decker Cunov had independently discovered the practice as a tool to resolve conflicts in their shared college household in Missouri, later moving to San Francisco and expanding the practice into a community called Soul 2 Soul, which later grew into Authentic SF, one of the first \u201cAuthentic\u201d communities which has now spread to over 60 cities. Bryan and Decker found Guy and Jerry in about 2003 and trained with them, later developing the Integral style of Circling, with the help of others at Boulder Integral. Bryan Bayer calls those early years the \u201cWild West\u201d days of Circling \u2013 anything would go.<\/p>\n In 2004, Bryan and Decker founded the Authentic Man Program (AMP) which is an application of Circling into sexual and romantic partnership, and which gained worldwide influence through their DVD training series.\u00a0 AMP is still running in Boulder.\u00a0 Around this time, Alexis Shepperd and Shana James, who were directly involved in the first AMP\u2019s as well,\u00a0developed a parallel program for women which is called the Authentic Woman Experience (AWE), and which continues to be offered in the Bay Area. Alexis Shepperd and Guy Sengstock started leading Arete together approximately 2005.\u00a0 Powerful community, friendships and collaborations emerged out of all these ventures (Arete, Authentic SF, AMP and AWE).<\/p>\n When Arete shut-down in 2008, Bryan and Decker inherited the Bay-area community, and Guy went quiet for a while. When he rejoined the scene, Guy and Alexis Shepperd designed a training program called the Transformational Coach Leadership Training (TCLT).\u00a0 Decker had met Robert MacNaughton, who had been working with Ken Wilber at the first Integral Center in Boulder.\u00a0 Robert went to a TCLT weekend with Guy in the Bay Area, and came home transformed and inspired. He started offering Circling in his living room once a week. Over several years the events became so popular that the crowd of 30+people overwhelmed the space.\u00a0 Robert and Decker started renting space at the Integral Center in the hope of expanding the practice.<\/p>\n In 2011, the first Integral Center (which was created under the direction of Ken Wilber and later taken over by Jeff Saltzman) was about to shut-down.\u00a0 Robert and Decker decided, with great trepidation, to lease the property and take over the business, ultimately building a large Circling community in Boulder, which included their T3 Training program (Boulder Integral shut-down in 2019).\u00a0 They also co-created the Aletheia weekend, which in many ways follows the original Arete model of a three-day weekend of breathwork, Circling, and community processing. In the meantime, Guy Sengstock and Alexis Shepperd created the Circling Institute in the Bay Area, which now runs weekends and year-long training programs. Circling and Authentic Relating Games communities started blossoming everywhere, notably in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n The Austin community was founded by Sara Ness, Jordan Allen, and others.\u00a0\u00a0 Sara had been a college student, had discovered Authentic Relating Games, had introduced them into her college dorm with great success, and has since, working 70 hour weeks, trained hundreds of facilitators and created dozens of communities through her Authentic Life Course<\/a>, in addition to the large community in Austin.<\/p>\n In the meantime, two young men from the UK who were interested in Integral theory and ran a Tennis academy, Sean Wilkinson and John Thompson, had also independently discovered the practice in \u00a02002. They started practicing on each other 24 hours a day.\u00a0 In 2008 they found Decker Cunov and trained with him and later with Guy Sengstock, ultimately founding Circling Europe<\/a> in 2012, which is based in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n The online Circling platform The Relateful Company<\/a>, and Relateful Austin<\/a> launched in 2015 and serves people from all over the world who are not able to meet in person, or who live far from a Circling center.\u00a0 Authentic Revolution<\/a> also offers online circling, a range of courses which include the Authentic Life Course<\/a> and the Facilitator Academy<\/a>, and a think-tank of best practices and trends.\u00a0 Four other circling schools opened: Amy Silverman\u2019s The Connection Movement <\/a>(2013), Josh Stein\u2019s Awkward Leadership School<\/a> (2017), Jason Digges and Ryel Kestano\u2019s ART International <\/a>(also 2017), and Peter Benjamin’s The Connection Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Circling movement, and its twin brother which is Authentic Relating Games, are, as of now (2020), just over 20 years old.\u00a0 And yet there are already over 60+ communities worldwide, mostly in the US and in North-Western Europe, and 6 schools offering advanced training.\u00a0 Review the Resources section of this guide for details.<\/p>\n Thus, it could be argued that the \u201cWild West\u201d stage of Circling is far from over; rather it is just beginning!\u00a0 I personally look forward with great excitement and anticipation to further expansion and development of the practice, which seems to be inevitable.<\/p>\n More information on the history of Circling can be found in Adam Coutts\u2019 epic post here:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/a-history-of-circling\/<\/a><\/p>\n More information about the Circling Europe lineage here:<\/p>\n(Update Dec\/2023: There is a shorter history of the movement, along with the larger context of what it’s about, in Relational Power, Chapter 3<\/a>)<\/em><\/h3>\n
(Extract from the Circling Guide)<\/em><\/h3>\n