Shannon Nicoletta Manns

Thank you for your response to my long post, Renee.

When you go looking for a self-healing circle, please be sure you look for a
place that allows for full expression of all emotions, especially the
so-called negative ones (rage, sadness, etc). I am not talking about a
circle of people sitting around talking about how they feel or what they
have experienced, but rather people actually feeling and fully expressing
their feelings. This can be done without blaming someone else for our
feelings. Sometimes if a person just can't seem to get past blaming we set
up what we call a 'container'. Then the person can vent and rage and blame
until they are finished, without anyone interrupting at all. Then the
process of 'cleaning up' needs to happen, especially if the intensity is
between two people within the circle, say a husband and wife. We need to
sometimes be allowed to just vent, but the person receiving the 'vent' needs
to have enough substance to NOT TAKE ON THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE OTHER
PERSON'S FEELINGS (not take things personally).

Say a wife really needs to express some strong anger at her husband, doesn't
quite know how to do it without sounding like she is blaming him, she can
ask him to be a container for her. If he feels strong enough to handle her
rage without taking it on and then getting defensive - great. If he doesn't
feel strong enough to do that, the wife may have to pick someone else to
take his place and he may be present as witness. In the end, whatever the
wife is feeling towards her husband has at the core very little to do with
her husband, but most likely originated within her own first family. The
purpose of circle is to get to the core of things and deal with them at that
level.

I have come to believe that we choose our partners and draw out of our
partners the very things we need to heal in ourselves the most. That to me
is the main purpose for intimate relationships. The more intimate you get,
the greater the potential for healing for both partners.

If you have trouble finding a self-healing circle where you are I could give
you some more info about exactly what we do and the tools we use and maybe
you could start your own self-healing circle. To begin with here is a
sample:


BEING IN CIRCLE by Sedonia Camu and Joshua Halpen

Angeles Arrien says that we need to do four things to make our lives work
and they apply to being authentic in the circle as She says we must
show up, pay attention, tell the truth, and not be attached to the outcome.
A circling community allows many opportunities to practice these skills by
teaching us to be fully present, to pay attention to our deepest impulses
and to be alert and aware of others. We learn to tell the truth so that we
can be deeply known just as we are while discovering more about our- selves.
Our commitment needs to be so great to these principles that we do them
regardless of the outcome. This means that we "give away" from the very best
of ourselves. What makes a circle safe for practising this radically
authentic behaviour, for going through public transformation is the unique
quality that arises when there is harmony between the personal and the
transpersonal.
This state of awareness, contained within a circle, generates an energy that
cannot come from any other place. This is what has been called in -many
traditions "the Witness". To be an effective witness requires that we pay
attention, not project, interpret, judge, or try to "Fix" the other. There
is no room for interference in another's process. The witness is asked to
sit in his or her own circle of Power, pay attention, take responsibility
for what he or she is feeling, and not project his or her experience onto
the other. The only way to really see someone else is to fully own our
emotions, feelings, and thoughts.
The need to be really seen is as great as the need for food and shelter, yet
most of us go though life starving for reflection. We al I need to be seen
with eyes filled with love, acceptance, and adoration. There is terrible
loneliness and alienation when we feel no one sees, hears, or understands
us. This loneliness lingers in circles unless the quality of witnessing is
present.
Sometimes as part of witnessing, people go through a stage in which they
seem to know what they are feeling and they take the certainty that affords
them and assume they know what others are feeling. This is not witnessing.
For instance, sometimes when people feel afraid of another's pain they will
immediately reach out to hug or stroke them, which stops the process, or
they might come up with a solution to the other person's dilemma or discount
the other's feelings by saying it's not really so bad.
All these are the reactions of someone who is afraid of his or her own pain,
or someone who is not being in circle.
Learning how to witness is essential because we live in a time when great
numbers of people am beginning to tell their truths. Some of these truths
are hard to hear, some involve terrible childhood abuse and betrayal, yet
they must be told and heard. When they are not heard properly the telling is
undermined and damage, rather than healing, may result. It can take a long
time to regain the courage to tell the story again.
In the circle process, when people sit and speak from the deepest part of
themselves, no matter how wounded, how much anguish or how many tears, they
then, at that moment, are sitting in their circle of power. They need to be
witnessed, that is, to be respected for their willingness to go so deep and
be so vulnerable. What is required of us as witnesses is to sit in our own
circle of power, owning our own pain and fear, fully being with those
feelings and not projecting them outward.
Our stories need to be heard, not fixed. Nobody needs fixing, we are not
machines. All we need is to be heard. We need someone else to know- how hard
it was, to know, that we have survived with dignity and that we are not
afraid to feel. We as human beings need more than any- thing else to be
seen, known, felt, accepted, and loved.
When people are real in the circle we love them for their process of
becoming whole. We love each other for being who we are, with all our
perfections and imperfections. The essence of the process is to validate
that we are living, breathing, dancing, real people who feel pain and fear
and make mistakes, while living and caring about each other. The circle form
creates a place for everyone to work, pray, be real and feel at one with
each other, all together.
Being in a circle teaches us to respect ourselves and one another. When this
happens we are brought into an experience of immanence and sacredness,
making us better able to honour the beauty and integrity of the earth. If
enough people gather in circle and grapple with their identities within this
context, it enhances the possibilities for us all. Creative group dynamic is
essential if we are going to mobilize healing and create an ecological
environment for ourselves.

Let me know how it goes. There are a lot more books that I would recommend,
such as "Getting The Love You Want" or "Conscious Loving", and others. If
you want I will send you a list.

All the best,
Nicoletta