Offerings

A space to re-story 

I feel unravelled. Despite a swim in the sea, my mind is unsettled, my body ungrounded. In the UK, council elections are showing huge gains for Reform and the media are predicting Nigel Farage will be the next UK Prime Minister.

I sense the deep septic wound of separation becoming a chasm. Separation not only frames modern Western thinking, but is being felt as a lived wound in our culture, in our bodies, in our imagination and relationships. It is a condition that is infecting our perception of all life: human from nature; mind from body; masculine from feminine; white from black….. An endless list of how separation enables immutable polarities of good and bad, them and us….

I am glad it is Friday.

Every Friday morning for the past two years, a small group of us have gathered over Zoom. We practice a little Qi Gong, we meditate, and we share what is rising in us, what feels to be spoken in that moment.

It is space created for those who spend their lives thinking, working and caretaking others and the planet. We are a group of therapists, coaches, practitioners and facilitators.

The circle lasts an hour, and we follow the same format each week. We move, we meditate, we listen, we witness. We don’t comment, judge or offer solutions.

Humans have been gathering in circle for millennia. In ‘The Circle Way’ Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea describe circle as an energetic social container capable of helping a group draw on wellsprings of insight, information and story that inspire collective wisdom.

We describe our circle as a space away from the running faster, the doing more, from the overwhelm, the stress and the burnout.

What is different in this circle from many that I have participated in are the opening practices of Qi Gong and Meditation.

Qi Gong is rooted in the philosophy and cosmology of daoism. Daoism is based on understanding the cosmos as a generative, unfolding process, with Qi (energy) flowing through all things. Daoism recognises that opposites of light and dark, action and rest are not rigid categories of separation, but complementary forces that continually generate and flow into one another. Whilst a modern Western mindset focusses on opposites as fixed, immutable polarities, frequently framed as good and bad, them and us, daoism and Qi Gong look at the world relationally. The focus is not one of judgment but on seeing what is out of balance and how balance can be restored, for it is in restoring balance that we find health and harmony.

From a daoist perspective, humans are a microcosm of the cosmos.

After Qi Gong, we are lead through a meditation. The meditations are different each week and often set the tone for what is shared. There is extensive evidence that meditation reduces anger, stress and overwhelm and enhances empathy, patience, compassion and calm.

Following the meditation, we open the circle and share. What is shared is deep, honest, and raw. Two years in, and we are comfortable with silences. Members comment on the relief of being together in silence.

In grounding our bodies, calming our nervous systems and sharing our thoughts and feelings, Circle is a place to process, anchor, and be with each other in community and connection.

We are living in a world that is collapsing through this story of separation.

Our circle, for a brief moment each week, restores relationality, bringing respite from the ragged, frayed stresses of what it is to live through these fragmented and deeply disturbing times.

In circle we move beyond the industrial growth story framed by rigid binaries to a story that weaves webs of entangled connection, where compassion, care and empathy are healing threads.

Increasingly I sense circle is a gentle but radical act of resistance.

Mentioned in this post:

The Circle Way: Christina Baldwin & Anna Linnea (2010)

Sophie Gibson May 2026

Dates to be announced.

Coming soon.