Container Holding as a Hosting Practice

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Kathy Jourdain

In the work and exploration of the Art of Hosting (AoH) Conversations that Matter we often talk about the container, creating the container, holding the container – but what does it mean, really? We tend to speak of it in the same breath as hosting, as if it is the same thing. But, is it?

In preparation for a gathering of sixty five AoH Stewards from thirteen countries that took place in Minnesota in October 2013, Jerry Nagel, Stephen Duns, Bob Wing and I became deeply curious about what it would take to hold a dynamically complex field that included three breaths of Art of Hosting – founders, early adopters and new or emerging stewards, many of whom did not know each other and had never met in person – who were holding, each in their own way, many similar questions percolating in local fields around the world, centering on what it means to be a global self-organizing system.

We began a series of calls to see what we could learn about container holding that we could apply at the Stewards Gathering, recognizing that some who would be holding the container would not be present in person but would be holding from the rim – wherever they happened to be geographically located. For our inquiry, we separated out container holding, design and hosting recognizing they often are intertwined, happening together at the same time and that they are distinct in and of themselves. It was – and is – rich learning.

Container holding is part of the subtle arts. It is metaphysical, meaning of or relating to things that are thought to exist but cannot be seen. So much of what we pay attention to in hosting, beyond process, people and design, is the invisible – the energetics, consciousness. It is why we have offerings of Hosting from a Deeper Place or the Art of Hosting the Subtle.

The invisible is alive all on its own and it shows up in the physical in group dynamics, ease or tension, flow or disruption, to name just a few ways it manifests. We know that in any offering that is co-hosted, the frequency of the team is also alive in the field. When the team has challenges within, those challenges show up in the larger field. When the team has an ease of relationship, infused with trust (and usually joy), this also shows up in the field. What is in the team is reflected back to the team. A well connected, trustful, aligned team – which does not mean members all think alike – can hold the larger field from a place of trusting what wants to emerge and not be knocked off balance when challenges spark – at least not so off balance that they cannot recover. The more coherent the team, the deeper they can host and the more process will flow through them rather than the team trying to control design or over-design.

Container holding might look inactive whereas design and hosting might look more active. When we are hosting, it doesn’t mean we ignore elements of the metaphysical or subtle realms – although we are often not full intentional or conscious about it. Attention to the metaphysical or subtle realms can also be a sole component of container holding. You can be a container holder and not be in a visible hosting role.

In the work we do, the container can be porous or permeable – and given it is metaphysical in nature that would likely hold to be true all the time. When the container is held with the crystal clear energy of intention, this intention infuses the field and what happens as much as, and sometimes more than, design does. The hosting can be flexible, which is what we always advocate – with a willingness to be disturbed or disrupted, trusting the chaordic path – chaos can be good, especially as we learn to sit with it until a natural sense of order emerges. If the intention is strong and held with clarity, disturbance can lead to emergence. When the intention is less clear, disruption can lead to chaos with no pathway back to order. It is important to not be attached to design, to hosting or to process – to hold it lightly – which is simply good hosting practice at the best of times. We can ask the question, what does the container need to be infused with to hold chaos and disruption so it is of service to what wants to happen? It could be different depending on what is the work we are about.

A well held container invites coherence into the field. Coherence is a frequency. When we tune into the frequency we can host it into being to allow or invite it to become present, or more present – like when we hold tuning forks up to each other, they pick up the frequency of each other and become entrained. How do we grow coherence without control, to celebrate different thinking, recognizing it can all be aligned with a common purpose and clear intention? Is this not our work as hosts?

Container holding is part of hosting – especially when we are intentional about it. And container holding has its own energy, its own path and its own coherence. So much more to explore. We are deep in our learning. And how beautiful is that?

Hosting From A Deeper Place: The Art of Hosting the Subtle

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Kathy Jourdain

The subtle and the physical. Both are all around us all the time. The eyes see the physical and we perceive it as “real”, tangible. It often takes more than the eyes to “see” or sense the subtle. Since we have learned to rely on our eyes, we have lost much of our conscious connection to the subtle. Yet, it is all around and within us even as many of us are oblivious to it. It is a natural extension of the physical phenomena or/and the physical is a natural extension of the subtle. Yet we complicate our understanding of the subtle, ignore it, believe it inaccessible or non-existant. Or, believe that if it does exist, only a few really gifted people can access it.

Speaking for myself, up until a few years ago, I didn’t believe those gifted people included me. Now I know we all have this “gift”. It is a sense many of us are re-learning, remembering how to tune into.

This understanding was one of the things at the heart of the call for Hosting From a Deeper Place: The Art of Hosting the Subtle, co-hosted by Narjara Thamiz, Gustavo Prudente, Jerry Nagel and me. Our time together was guided with the purpose of “joining together in a learning field to deepen individual and collective capacity to host complexity.” Implicit in that purpose statement is the notion that in order to host complexity well, we need to tune into, discern and understand the subtle, the energetics, the deeper patterns that are also at play. Tapping into this in an intentional way has the potential to shift the nature of the work we are in and the results we achieve.

Openly talking about the subtle has challenged many of us in the work we do. Too many times we have bumped up against hearing that this way of working is “woo-woo“. “Don’t want any of that “woo-woo” stuff here, we need practical results.” Yet, when work is in flow, when it is emergent and generative, people understand that something different happened, that something impactful, useful and powerful has influenced the results, the actions flowing out of the work. We have been trying to find ways to describe it, words and phrases that are understood and accepted in the world of business, government, non-profit. Yet truly hosting from this deeper place is beyond words, beyond knowing and beyond not knowing. This is the exploration that called us. What does it means to access this place with intentionality, a place of presence.

The first time I explicitly remember hosting from a deeper place was with Jerry Nagel the first time we hosted together in Nova Scotia in 2011. We looked beneath individual behaviours that were sparking to discover the patterns underneath, working with the subtle field. Tapping into the deeper patterns elicited design ideas that produced a complete shift in energy, in relationship and conversation within the group. We happened upon this through inquiry and, when we noticed the palpable shift in the space, became curious about what we had tapped into.

In my last post, I wrote about our design process, about being in the not knowing and riding the waves of emergence that kept surfacing during our time together at Hosting From a Deeper Place in Brazil. It was all part of working with the subtle and working with the subtle went much deeper than that.

Some of the people who came, came because of an intense curiosity about the subtle, including people who have had near death experiences, experiences with shifts in consciousness, with tapping into different dimensions. They arrived with curiosity about what we meant by the subtle, invisible forces, that which is before the naming. Their experiences, our experiences, as diverse as the number of people who came.

The subtle field showed up, in subtle and not so subtle ways. The beautiful property of Espaço Arco-Íris was designed for this kind of work and hosts groups in this kind of energetic field.

Despite interest from many parts of the world, the people who responded live in North and South America. In our opening circle, Narjara remembered a dream she had in the early days of our conversation about this gathering. She had dreamt of a condor, not knowing what it was, discovering the Hopi prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor, a meeting of cultures and energies, a shift from leadership from the mind (North America) to leadership from the heart (South America).

The hosting team designed for the first day and a half. The third day was co-created with participants. The fourth day was open space. We were holding the mystical and practical in our field and this too showed up in the open space. A session on tarot cards was offered for messages related to our gathering and other events in Brazil at the moment. Jerry offered the flow game, a mystical tool itself applied to deep and often practical questions people bring as they host themselves.

I offered a question about spirit guides, guardian angels and power animals, what do they have to do with our work? As I write this I notice my own tension between wanting to share this story and my uncertainty about how it will be perceived by people who read it, who were not there, wanting to honour the integrity of each of us who were part of this overall experience of Hosting From a Deeper Place, not all of whom were part of the session I called.

Taking a deep breath, I am continuing to share, inviting those who continue to read to bring your curiosity and open heartedness to what you read.

My open space session turned into two as someone in the circle shared that one of the participants channels a guardian and would we welcome the guardian into our circle with any messages meant for us?

Anita Gomes joined our circle, noticing that the guardian she channels was indicating she wanted to share with our circle. The guardian’s name is Vó Antônia or Grandma Antônia. She is a “Preta Velha”, from Umbanda, a Brazilian religion that blends African religions with Catholicism, Spiritism, and considerable indigenous lore.

Vó Antônia is an old black woman with completely different characteristics and mannerisms than Anita. She also has a lovely manner and a beautiful sense of humour. Those in our now expanded circle had both personal questions and broader questions for her.

There were key messages that resonated for me. Vó Antônia shared with us there is no need to doubt the existence of the subtle. It is as real as the physical. There are entities, beings, guides that support each and every one of us, whether we are aware of them or not. We are on the same team, we just live in different houses. When asked if we should be looking for signs she told us it is long past the time when we need to look for signs. No books falling off of shelves, windows being rattled, doors opening mysteriously, smoke signals being sent. It is far simpler than we make it out to be.

We rely on our eyes too much. They give us false information. We look for physical beauty. We look for ways to show how special we are, how gifted we are. Seeing through the heart allows us to see through many false pretences. Seeing in this way we will be in our knowing. We will be able to trust our knowing, trust ourselves.

It is not too late to save the planet. We are already working in service of the planet. We do not need to be afraid. As above, so below. As within, so without. As in the physical, so in the subtle.

Our gathering might seem small but its impact is significant. When we leave, we simply need to keep doing what we are doing, seeing from the heart, knowing all is intertwined. Walking the paths that call us, living purposefully, meaningfully, intentionally. We are weaving the web of the past and the future together for the present moment.

For me, I came home from this experience in Brazil in the space of expansiveness, remembering from time to time to take a breath and sense beyond my physical form to where the boundaries blur and my consciousness swims, intermingled with other essences of and from the subtle. To remember that it is not two separate things – the physical and the subtle – it is all part of the same essence, each in its own way. To remember that my spiritual journey, my life journey, my career path are not separate things that I need to think about how to combine, work and the sacred are all essences of the same thing.

It was and is, of course, different for every one who was there. The group is still alive and sparking in beautiful, interconnected ways of story sharing. Many are sharing how they are hosting from a deeper place and what that means to them. Most of us are still in the discovery of what it means, how it is showing up, how the subtle and the practical are dancing together in powerful, beautiful, noticeable ways.

We are curious to see what more the story is becoming, what more we are each becoming, individually and collectively.

And, while we were told we didn’t need to look for signs, the pictures taken on our last day in our opening circle outside showing orbs of light in the sky and around each person in the circle no matter where we were standing seems a pretty good reflection of the energy field expanded by our time together in exploration of the practical and the subtle. Tricks of light or just light? Simple, really. Beauty and grace. Expansiveness from the heart.

Hosting From A Deeper Place – Working with Not Knowing and Emergence

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Kathy Jourdain

It was a long time in the planning, a conversation begun two years ago in earnest, a few twists and turns along the way with possible hosting team members and dates. If you trust in the timing and flow of things, it was clear, Hosting from A Deeper Place: The Art of Hosting the Subtle happened in exactly the right timing at the end of February 2013 near Sao Paulo, Brazil at Espaço Arco-Íris.

The gathering was inspired by Marianne Williamson‘s quote from A Return to Love:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Since it was the first gathering with the specific intent of exploring what it means to host from a deeper place, the hosting team of myself, Narjara Thamiz, Gustavo Prudente and Jerry Nagel sensed the need to spend additional time together beforehand, preparing ourselves, preparing the field for what wanted to happen and we decided on three days. In hosting work these days, there are typical patterns we draw on in our design process. For this gathering, there were no particular patterns to draw on. We felt in the not knowing of new patterns, of what wanted to emerge. We were intentional in inviting ourselves to stay in our own not knowing about what exactly the gathering was and about what was to happen during those days together.

The purpose that emerged through our deliberate enquiry into a statement that would guide our design process was: Joining together in a learning field to deepen individual and collective capacity to host complexity.

We decided to draw on Theory U to map out our five days together and to incorporate the Four Fold Practice as fully and intentionally into each day as we could, looking for the interplay between hosting self and hosting others, and the dynamic relationship between the mystical and the practical and how that shows up in each of the four practices.

Day 1, started after lunch, beginning with a walk through the woods of the beautify retreat centre to ground us in the energy of the place, the energy and intention of our time together and then moved to a circle check-in.

The theme of Day 2 was hosting self and others into a deeper place, moving down the left hand side of the U. We used body movement and guided visualization to invite an expanded sense of being, enquired about people’s experience with not knowing for a powerful world cafe and open space to invite “conversations would help me host myself and others to go into a deeper place”.

As people arrived this was the extent of the design development we had done as a team even after being together already for three days, holding ourselves in our individual and collective not knowing. Days 3-5 were completely blank other than knowing the theme or intention for each day. They needed to be that way, to tune into what wanted to emerge from and for the collective.

The theme of Day 3 was Hosting within a Deeper Place at the bottom of the U. At the end of Day 2, as a hosting team, we recognized the divergence of our own world views in this work from more practical to more mystical. Wanting to be in service of the people there rather than any of our own individual needs, we invited any who wished to join our hosting team meeting. When they arrived, first we asked them why they came to the meeting and then we asked them what going deeper meant to them.

I’m not sure we realized we carried an expectation that going deeper somehow meant diving into shadow and fear until someone spoke about how the Marianne Williamson quote had sparked goosebumps and shivers, imagining illuminating our light. It was one of those moments when shift happens and everything seems to open up. The design for Day 3 began to emerge and by the time we were done and names appeared next to each design element, I realized I’d hosted myself out of hosting. A beautiful and disconcerting thing at the same time.

The design for Day 3 began with movement to begin the embodiment of light and playfulness and set the stage for a guided visualization, after which there was a short period of time for reflection through silence, art, poetry, journaling or being in nature – whatever called to each one. We moved into appreciative triads with the following questions:

Tell a story of a time when stepping into your deepest fear liberated powerful things in your life?
What is the gift you have you don’t fully acknowledge?
What are you learning about your own talents, gift and light?
Who must you step into being in honour of your fullest potential?

This was followed by three hours of silence, including a silent lunch and then back into our triads, paired with another triad to reflect on what we are learning about our hosting now, followed by a long check out circle, people wanting to share reflections and insights gleaned throughout the day. Celebration, story telling and music around the fire at night.

The next day, Day 4, was clear. Open space all day. A world cafe at the end to harvest the day. The field was now hosting itself. Noticing synchronicities. Hosting from within and out of a deeper place. This day seemed to invite the deep mystical to show up in many different forms and conversations. The field was ready to be in this exploration. And always we carried the curiosity of how does this inform the practice, how does it translate into the practical.

Day 5. Getting read to go home. Saying good byes. Departures. Hosting out of a Deeper Place. Gently. For re-entry. More embodiment. A visualization of taking it home. Back in our triads. “When I leave here, how will I balance and integrate my knowing with my internal and external worlds? And what help might I need?” Then an embodied harvest of our days together, angel corridor and collective poem. Moments of pause and silence. Nobody wanting to break the circle.

A field alive with all that had flowed in and emerged over our days together, still deeply curious about the mystical and the practical of hosting. A clear swirling around hosting self as central, core to all the other practices in the four fold practice, core to hosting from a deeper place.

A group so connected and field so alive it continues to spark and shine across North and South America. Connected in depth. Connected in love. Connected in journey of work that calls each of us to step in, lean in further, challenge ourselves in how we show up so we invite others to show up differently and more fully.

The stories of impact are already emerging and we imagine it will only be in the weeks to come that we more fully understand the impact of this gathering on our individual and collective hosting capacity, especially as we work in more and more complex situations. We plan to touch back in with deliberateness to harvest more, to learn more, to understand how we host from a deeper place and what it means when we are able to do so.

Activation, Amplification, Acceleration

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Kathy Jourdain

These three words – activation, amplification and acceleration – have been keywords of mine for awhile now. 2013 is the year I live into them fully and I am already the recipient of the delicious impact of them – which is why I am only now finishing a post I started at the beginning of the month, the beginning of the new year.

These words capture the essence for me of what time it is in the world, what is needed now and what so many of us are living into as we live and work in the ways that we do – fully, as authentically as we know how in any given moment, with heart. Not trying to solve all the worlds problems, but focusing on what calls us.

These three words – activation, amplification and acceleration – are so alive in my experience of 2013 that they have caught me by surprise. So much is flowing I almost can’t keep track of it so I am learning to trust feeling the flow rather than thinking it. One of the intentions I had held for 2012 was to become aware of and break patterns that no longer serve me and step into new patterns that serve me better. As 2012 is still flowing into 2013, there are signs all around me that this intention has borne fruit. A new pattern is learning how to breathe into flow rather than be overwhelmed by it, so I can continue to receive what wants to show up in the abundance in which it is being offered.

Activation happens individually and collectively. What is it we want to give life to? What do we want to live and be? What is it we want to do? What is the vision of our life journey or path?

It is what happens when we gather to do meaningful work in the world. We activate patterns. We activate hope. We activate intention. We activate the possible. What wants to emerge. What wants to come to life.

We always have the potential to activate. Often we do it unintentionally. I and some of my good friends and colleagues are living into the question of what happens when we do it with intentionality and awareness. Feeling this year is particularly about activating the mystical in step with the practical. How do we live with a foot in both realms, each fueling and feeding the other? And, for me, it is activating with boldness. In 2009 when I articulated my purpose statement, the word “boldly” included itself – I boldly bring my healing gifts to the shifting shape of the world and the regeneration of its people. It is only now, four years later, that I feel it truly activated in me and in how I am intending to show up in the world.

Amplification. What happens when we activate together, in a collective field. I can journey alone. We can each work alone in our individual realms. But, when we activate together we amplify the impact. It becomes stronger and more powerful. The energetic field is amplified. This is one reason we host with others. More happens and more quickly. The mystical expands and is amplified. The practical moves more swiftly, carried by more people and stronger intention.

Amplification leads to acceleration. Things happen faster. Healing happens faster. Not necessarily because we intend to go faster but because the conditions emerge for acceleration. There is a discernment here between being busier at work and in our lives which comes simply from acting and doing, trying to do more, faster. The kind of acceleration I mean here is the result of tending the field, the spiritual, the energetic, the mystical. Grounded in this kind of energy, acceleration is the flow that naturally emerges as synergies occur and synchronicities appear. The things beyond which we could have planned. The people and events that show up in right time and right place. As if they have been waiting for us or we have been waiting for each other.

I have been learning about these three words since I started using them a few years ago. This is the year they are on fire for me. They are part of what has inspired me to be in the journey of the offering of Hosting from a Deeper Place: The Art of Hosting the Subtle in Brazil at the end of February 2013. A conversation that started years ago with my beautiful friend Narjara Thamiz and grew to include our co-hosts Gustavo Prudente and Jerry Nagel. An offering that has seen many potential dates come and go until it finally landed in the first quarter of 2013. An offering that has attracted friends and colleagues from Brazil, the United States and Canada. An offering where we will lean into our not knowing, hold the space for emergence and where these three words – activate, amplify and accelerate – will be very much alive for me.

I am in wonder of how vibrant and alive life is as I learn to feel my way into it more, grow my own receptivity to what is emerging and live fully into the gifts I have to offer as this second half of my life continues to unfold in blessed and graced ways. I am humbled and renewed every single day.

Resilience, Grief and Collective Consciousness

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

Human beings are remarkably resilient. We have this amazing capacity to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get on with getting on after all imaginable and unimaginable nature of horrors, calamities, catastrophes, shocks to the system – that happen to us, to our families, our communities, our organizations, globally. Hope really does spring eternal even though at times it is hard to access. It’s like the grass, flower or weed that pushes it’s way through concrete to bloom again in the light of day.

I find myself in a deep contemplation of this resilience, despite, at times, overwhelming odds and continued attempts at suppression. My contemplation of resilience is weaving together with grief and what is alive and communicated in the collective consciousness, without it being visible. This is alive and emerging for me because of work and conversations I’ve been in and over the last few months in particular. What I write today are half formed thoughts percolating more with each conversation.

Recently I worked with a client – a department in a large organization – that has gone through a significant amount of change, restructuring, everyone applying for remaining positions and no one knowing the outcome. This was the most recent in a series of changes. I know I could be referring to almost any organization. The conversation they wanted to have was how to work more horizontally in a hierarchical structure and how to be more transparent with communication.

We began with a circle, asking people what makes them hopeful. Eleven people in the room. Responding with a talking piece but popcorn style. Nine spoke about what made them hopeful. The tenth person, with tears just beginning, spoke about not having hope. Not anymore. Not after so much change and so little care for human collateral along the way. The eleventh person went deeper in this vein, apologizing because she had nothing hopeful to offer.

We welcomed the tears into our circle. Thank you for your courage and honesty. For sharing what is alive for you in this moment. Hearing about the hope expressed by so many was too much. It evoked the other truth sitting in the room. The truth of grief. Before we knew it, many in the circle were in tears. I was not surprised it was there. I was a bit surprised at the depth of it.

Our organizations tend to make it hard to tell truth – not “the” truth, but the multiplicity of truths that exist in the same space. And in change efforts, there is a tendency to just want to get it done, to move from A to B. The fear is that if we factor in the human response, the emotional response, nothing will get done, we will be overwhelmed. Yet not creating space for it drives it underground, like rivers under the earth that can destabilize what appears to be a solid foundation and where sink holes spring up unexpectedly. We seem surprised when they show up, caught off guard. I wonder why?

With this group, after welcoming tears, exploring the change curve which is predicated on the grief curve, looking at circles of influence, in just a couple of hours the group was collectively ready to turn toward the future – with collective hope and inspiration now bubbling through. It was relatively simple though I don’t, by any means, believe or mean to say that all it takes all the time is just a couple of hours. But I am curious about what it does take and how much more simple it likely is than we imagine through our fear and structures designed for effectiveness and professionalism. Emotions? Not so professional. Trying to banish them from the workplace? Not so effective.

In a conversation with a friend after this event, she said to me, “We have forgotten how to grieve. We think we are supposed to grieve alone, but really we need to grieve in ‘community’ – with others. Witnessing each other. Holding space for each other.” That’s what I witnessed with this group. A collective experience of grief that showed up differently for each person. Those better off feeling excited about opportunity but afraid to speak it knowing others were worse off. Those worse off afraid to speak their disappointment and disillusionment Almost everyone experiencing some kind of survivor guilt after so many left.

For me, it sparked reflections on the grief embedded in collective consciousness. I am by no means an expert on collective consciousness. I understand it is “how an autonomous individual comes to identify with a larger group or structure. It implies an internal knowing known by all, or a consciousness shared by a plurality of persons.” Most of it is not conscious or articulated but it becomes visible through the patterns which show up over time – even embodied in individuals. It seems to show up in lineages. I have witnessed the pain and grief of generations no longer alive in their descendants who were not even alive at the time of the harm – the pain and grief as alive as the time it happened, as in the people it happened to. It makes me deeply curious about how this is possible, what it takes to release the grief, to open the space for healing? I don’t have the answers of course. But I yearn for the spaces where this can happen. Where we can show up with curiosity, with compassion, humility and grace allowing despair, sorrow, grief and pain to come in – the grief alive in this moment, the grief alive in the lineage from days gone by without resolution, yet. Seeking the ways love, joy, delight, happiness can co-exist – in each of us, in how we show up, in our lineages too.

It brings me back to resilience. Everyday resilience as we arise each morning and go about our day, our lives, our business with varying degrees of success, the resilience of families, of generations, of communities and of our organizations. I am in awe. I am relieved. I am inspired. Feeling the call, as always, to perpetuate resilience, perpetuate hope. To boldly, or quietly, bring my healing gifts to the shifting shape of the world and the regeneration of its people, to evoke and invite that in others.

This is the call that invites so many of us to continue to dive deeper into the journey of personal transformation and the call, by the way, to Hosting from a Deeper Place, the Art of Hosting the Subtle, in Brazil at the end of February 2013.

“If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.” Lao Tzu

As we each do our own healing work, we contribute to healing in the collective consciousness. But what more becomes possible when we do this work in community – with each other? This is one of the questions I carry everywhere I go.

There’s a Reason Why It’s Called The “Art of …”

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Kathy Jourdain

What is art without technique and is technique alone really art? “Art” could mean art as it evokes the image of artwork but, really, it is much broader than that – dance, fitness, sport, yoga, meditation, music, hosting, the work we are in.

I’ve been in a beautiful reflection after a delicious conversation recently with good friend and hosting colleague Jerry Nagel. We were discussing upcoming work in California, Brazil and Minnesota and just after he’d been listening to an interview with Rosanne Cash. She spoke about working with her muse – the muse being the source of inspiration for creative work. She said she works with her muse all the time. All the time. Not just sometimes. All the time. A discipline. A practice. In little whispers along the way and in more structured forms.

She also noted how performing in front of an audience is not a one-way street although she used to think that early on in her performing career. Now she knows through experience there is an energetic exchange between the performer and the audience. Tuning into the energetics. Fuelling and being fuelled.

My conversation with Jerry started with a curiosity about how working with the muse relates to our work in Brazil at the end of October: Hosting From a Deeper Place with two Brazilian friends, and the purpose of that gathering. Perhaps it is about how we each individually work with and cultivate our muse, our source of inspiration. How we move technique to art or if we are already in art, how we grow our artistry in our work and life? Because it is a practice. It is a discipline. It is not just present some of the time. It is present most or all of the time.

We then moved into an exploration of what we do in Art of Hosting trainings, in our work with clients and what’s happening in the field in Minnesota where hundreds of people have been to an Art of Hosting training in the last year or two and some are stepping into a deeper journey to be a trainer but wondering really, what is the path to artistry and what does it take to get to the field beyond good technical skill?

People will often say they come to an Art of Hosting training for a technique – like World Cafe or Open Space Technology. Or, as some like to say, “to expand their tool kit”. And technique, particularly good technique, is fundamentally important to what we do and what we offer. We need to know and practice the foundation or the fundamentals to get good. An artist practices technique – whether with paint, music chords, performance basics, fitness basics. I wonder if artists talk about expanding their took kit or if they talk about growing their craft?

Most of us don’t just sit down at a piano and have beautiful music come out unless we are some sort of musical prodigy. Nor would we expect that. We would expect, if we were inspired enough, to learn the foundations and know that after we learn the foundation then we have the opportunity to become more and more intricate with the music, the style, the mix of technique.

Some never move into artistry from being a technician and, for sure, not everyone must. However, there is a quality we can observe, hear or sense, that lets us know when we are listening to music from a good technician and when we are listening to music from an artist. It comes from the heart, from the soul.

It seems to come when we can relax in the technique and live in the art – just as true in hosting work as any other kind of artistry. Art bolstered by working with the muse all the time. Even, maybe especially, when we are not working with groups, we are working with the muse. Developing a discipline of practice. The practice is the work. The practic is holistic – involving fitness, health, spiritual and personal practice that allows us to know ourselves – the first fold in the four fold practice – hosting self, being present. The more we know ourselves, really know ourselves, in addition to the solid foundation of knowing the technique, the more we dip into artistry.

The difference between being a technician and an artist is subtle and dramatic at the same time. It is something we sense but can’t always name. It is tuning into this energetic exchange between host and hosted. Sensing what is there rather than looking for it. In the looking for it we sometimes miss what’s really there. In tuning in, we sense the subtleties in the room, in the energy that is present that requires hosting in quiet and/or more obvious ways. We become like a well tuned instrument. And it can take years of intentional practice for this to happen.

I am aware in my summer of presencing, where I have not been hosting groups, I have continued to be in the work, practice, discipline of hosting myself – with new levels of awareness and new patterns of joy emerging. When I begin co-hosting groups again in a couple of weeks, I know in the depths of being, it will come with a whole new level of presence.

With practice, the discipline begins to call on the host. Time to exercise. Time to meditate. Time to invite a conversation – to host and be hosted. Time to be curious.

Hosting from a deeper place is what happens as we move beyond being good technicians into artistry. There’s a reason why, when we name a training, workshop or intensive, we often call it the “art of…” The first or surface invitation is into technique and process. The deeper invitation is into practice and discipline that tips us over into artistry, the understanding of the deeper patterns, the energetic architectures and sensing into the subtleties that show intervention points that are much harder to grow awareness or understanding of when we are in the technical learning of our craft. It is why one art of hosting training does not a practitioner make.

Technical competence and expertise? Yes we need it. It builds a strong foundation. Artistry? Where and how does your soul call you into your hosting artistry and what are the subtleties you notice – in others, in yourself – as you tip over? What muse inspires you to deeper places in your being and invites you to bring more of who you are to what you do? What journey do you need to embark on to host for a deeper place?

ShapeShift

The shape of the world is shifting… embracing and being intentional about it

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