Learn the Essentials of The Circle Way
Beginning in January 2027, The Circle Way is offering multiple 2-day trainings in New York City on the essential components of Circle. The next 2-day training of The Circle Way will take place at Balance Arts Center in NY, NY on January 18-19, 2027 from 9am-4pm, facilitated by Chantilly Mers.
We are calling on all who long for culture change, and for those who know that more inclusive and cooperative futures cannot be built with the same tools that built the old ones.
You may lead a team, an organization, a movement, or a community. You may have watched hierarchy decide who speaks, whose knowledge counts, and whose needs wait. And you may already sense what many cultures have long known: that we are whole only together. A community’s wisdom lives in the relationships between people, not at the top of a chart.
The Circle Way is a pattern and practice for living that understanding. It draws on one of humanity’s oldest forms of gathering and structures it for today’s boardrooms, nonprofits, schools, congregations, government and neighborhoods. Wherever collective wisdom is needed, Circle is available.
In Circle, leadership rotates, responsibility is shared, and every voice is needed. Imagine power shifting from position to participation, where authority is held by role, not rank. Imagine decisions that emerge from the whole, so they hold.
Over two days, we’ll learn and practice The Circle Way’s essential components:
The center and intention: a shared purpose that holds the group together
Check-in and check-out: opening and closing so each person arrives fully and is seen
Agreements: Commitments to personal and collective wellbeing
The three principles: rotating leadership, shared responsibility, and reliance on the wisdom of the whole
The three practices: speaking with intention, listening with attention, and tending to the well-being of the circle
The talking piece, the Host, and the Guardian: simple tools that slow us down, interrupt cultures of dominance, and make room for voices too often unheard
Seasoned practitioners will share what they’ve learned from years of hosting circles across sectors and communities. Then we’ll practice together. You’ll sit in circle, take turns as host and guardian, and experience from the inside how shared leadership and deep listening change what a group can imagine and accomplish.
This experience is especially for you if you:
Are working to shift organizational or community culture toward deeper inclusion and belonging
Understand community and organizations as living systems, whole and interdependent
Are ready to move beyond top-down leadership and toward collaboration, cooperation, and collective action
Want practices that tap into collective intelligence and intuition
You’ll leave with more than a method. You’ll leave with experience, confidence, and a circle of peers who share your hope - that a life-giving future is cooperative, collaborative, and regenerative. Circle holds the pattern and the practices.
The Circle is waiting. Come and take your seat.
Dates:
January 18–19, 2027 Registration is open here.
March 8th-9th, 2027 Registration opens December 2026
June 7th-8th, 2027 Registration opens March 2027
August 5-8, 2027 4-day Advanced Circle Way Retreat. Check-back for more information.