AoH Training 2023 – Day 3

Flow of Day 3

• • Rope Game
  • The 8 Breaths
  • Solo Reflection
  • Proaction Cafe

Introduction

On our third day at AoH, we met with our participants at 9:30 am on September 30th at Levent Han Spaces. With the teachings and reflections of the first two days, we were ready for the beginning of the third day. Words that were reflections of the participants were written under the chairs in the circle. These were exchanged with the friends he thought he needed in the team.

          Then, the flow of the third day was started by talking about the flow of the practices that would take place during the day.

We need three equal length ropes for this session. The fact that these ropes are the same length allows six people to form a neat circle. During this practice, you are expected to find your own language of agreement without communicating out loud with those in the circle.

With the Rope Game, the participants experienced how to communicate in silence and how an environment that exists only to communicate without judging the other person in a silent environment, without sticking to certain patterns in our minds, can create a situation.

In the Harvest part, there were 2 questions focused on.

• What was the moment you realized that you were in a community & co-creating? What was that moment like?
• What roles did you experiment and/for observe? What shifts were thereif any?

The topics that came to the forefront here were the variability of leadership within the community, the state of being able to dance together in flow, the importance of finishing something in harmony and the power of communication created by silence.

The Breath Pattern is an important way to understand how groups work. There are three phases every group goes through:

Divergence: We get to know each other and all of the unique skills and perspectives we bring to the conversation.

Emergence: A time we go beyond what we know. This can feel uncomfortable. Like chaos. We call it the “groan zone.” This is the place innovation and creativity can happen if we can stay together.

Convergence: Now we get practical. How will we make our ideas come to life? This is the point we create an action plan.

The Art of Hosting field realised that this pattern repeats. The 8 Breaths of Process Architecture is how we understand how we approach our experiences in eight stages and where we find ourselves. It is a map for how processes and initiatives unfold:

First Breath: The Call — someone decides to answer their internal call to care for something; an organisational inquiry, something in the community; a compelling question

Second Breath: Clarify — the team comes together around the purpose. They get clear on the focus, the calling question, how to work together.

Third Breath: Invite — Getting clarity on the invitation, the stakeholders, the way the inquiry will unfold and who will host it.

Fourth Breath: Meet — People gather, in whatever modality to be in a hosted conversation.

Fifth Breath: Harvest — We take a deeper look at the harvest from our meeting(s) to find the themes and deeper connections.

Sixth Breath: Act — We talk action on what we’ve discovered together.

Seventh Breath: Reflect —We stop a moment to reflect on everything up to now. What are we going to do with what we find out?

Eighth Breath: Holds the rest of the breaths — This is called “hosting the whole.” This is usually the domain of the core team, keeping everyone together over the whole journey.

We can use this map to find out where we are in the process and what we need to focus on now.

In the Harvest section, participants explained that with the 8 Breaths method, they started to create a connection between the issues they wanted to solve in their daily lives. At the same time, they became aware of where they stand with the problems they face (both in the business world and where they stand on a daily basis).

The Four-Fold practice is central to the Art of Hosting conversations that matter. It emphasizes being a mindful host, listener, and speaker, fostering authentic engagement while being in a learners mindset, having learning as a tool and a facilitator in transition between the four states of the practice, while being the sensei and the steward of the practice you are in. 

The practice involves hosting oneself to be fully present, participating actively, hosting conversations skillfully, and co-creating with others. These practices are interconnected, with effective participation relying on presence, hosting conversations building on active participation, and co-creation drawing from all preceding practices.

Participants found themselves on the harvesting.

As a conversational process, the Pro Action Café is a collective, innovative yet simple methodology for hosting conversations about calls, questions and projects that matter to the people that attend.

These conversations link and build on each other as people move between cafe tables, cross-pollinate ideas, and offer each other new insights into the questions or issues that are most important in their life, work, organization or community.

“Art of Hosting is about what it is to be intrinsically, human together, be good humans together. I think of it as a consciousness practice. So if I would visualize it, I guess a group of people sitting in a circle leaning in, instead of leaning away or falling apart. Then there’s something interesting that happens in that circle, it’s almost like this thread that starts to go around and people feel connected and committed to each other and then get inspired to do something that will be helpful. And you know when people ask us what is the most simple way that you can do a practice like this, the most simple thing is to have a good question and maybe a stone as a talking piece.

The most simple sense of beginning to think about something in a new way and to open yourself to new possibilities to really be in conversation means that you are willing to be changed by it. It is so important today especially when in conversation with people who are different to us and have different opinions and different ways of looking at things. How do we really learn, how to deeply listen to each other? How do we build the resilience and the capacity to stay in the challenging conversations long enough? The Art of Hosting is not something new, it’s something we actually remember from how to be humans together, and there is something really beautiful about that.”

Mary Alice

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“I loved to find out about the 8 breath pattern and the diamond shape (emergence, groan zone and convergence). What had the biggest impact on me from an emotional point of view and as personal insights was the Pro-action cafe method and what happened there. I was called to  contribute to some specific people’s projects, having some strong perceptions from the field about what was going on the projects or what was missing from them, only to realize in the end that it was about myself and my projects in equal measure. It was mind-blowing and magical and insightful and helpful and emotional and..and…and…

I am really grateful for what this method brought to us and for the deep connection I felt with each project owner. The Flow game was also very magical insightful and put the spotlight on a few aspects that I really needed to see and I was missing on.”

Camelia

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“What I am taking home is being able to take part in a beautifully inclusive event with my year old son. I am familiar with most of the methods and host them regularly in my work, but it was great to BE HOSTED by such a great team. I loved the proaction cafe that I am less familiar with and hope to host it one day myself.”

Anastasia