Iteration II - Series 3
“Liberation is both the undoing of the effects and the elimination of the causes of social oppression.”
(From “Liberation Theory: a Working Framework” by Erica Sherover-Marcuse)
You are excited about the insights and tools coming from NGL and wondering how you might integrate them into your accompaniment of others
You offer coaching or one-on-one support to individuals and want to increase your capacity to focus on how people you support can free themselves from the socialization they've received from patriarchal conditioning
You are concerned about what is happening in the world all around us and want to align your support of individuals with what might contribute to a deeper shift within them and their environments
You are eager to have more confidence that your accompaniment and coaching of others is transformational towards the empowerment that you and the people you are supporting want
Within NGL we aim to focus on liberation from all forms of social oppression, including in particular the core patriarchal structures (such as exchange-based economies and social stratification more generally) emerging from scarcity, functioning in separation, and resulting in powerlessness. Beyond the “from” element of liberation, we also see a “to”, based on a longing for all of us to reclaim our full humanity individually and realign with life collectively.
We imagine that within this lab we will experience together what supports this movement and what we can concretely do to create such openings for liberation.
For this new series, we continue to witness Miki’s accompaniment practice with an added focus on developing practices in relation to specific patriarchal phenomena. Many of us experience ourselves stuck in patterns coming from our patriarchal conditioning. How might we support those we accompany in developing practices to liberate from this conditioning? Witness as Miki coaches members of the Core Group in doing this. The plan for the sessions is twofold:
In the first three sessions Miki plans to accompany one person from the core group with a topic that they bring, demonstrating in real time her particular accompaniment practice. The plan is for another person from the core group to engage with Miki in thinking about and articulating what she does.
The last three sessions are focused on coming up with practices to support movement in relation to persistent patterns: someone from the core group accompanies a volunteer from the larger group, with Miki offering guidance and coaching for the process of finding practices.
Everyone else, including a core group who are actively apprenticing with Miki, is invited to witness so as to learn from the strategies and orientation that Miki demonstrates in supporting movement towards liberation.
Within the two hours for each session, we have a scheduled time for breakout groups for practice and discussion and after that we intend for there to be a space for questions and answers. As in other labs, we plan to invite those who are apprenticing from within NGL (the Core Group) to ask questions first before opening it to everyone else.
The purpose of the Supporting Others' Liberation Lab is
to seed the lineage of NGL in relation to supporting others’ liberation and deepen our collective understanding of the significance of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), systemic thinking, and the capacity lens in reclaiming our full shared humanity
We are excited to stack functions within this second run of the lab by focusing each session on one person who is already stewarding NGL. For this series, Miki plans to focus on overall reflection, with each person, on what their liberation edges might be and what processes and pathways may be specifically suited for their journey.
Everyone else, including a core group who is actively apprenticing with Miki, is invited to witness so as to learn from the strategies and orientation that Miki demonstrates in supporting movement towards liberation.
Within the two hours for each session, we have a scheduled time for breakouts for practice and discussion and for question and answers. As in other labs, we plan to invite those who are apprenticing from within NGL (the Core Group) to ask questions first before opening it to everyone else to ask questions.
Who’s Involved
The Core Group: In this experiment the core group is made up of people within NGL who are already supporting others’ liberation journeys and who have said “yes” to the invitation to apprentice more closely with Miki as a way of integrating more deeply the NGL framework as it applies to supporting others’ liberation.
Those being accompanied: For the first three sessions, one person per session has volunteered to be the focus from those who are stewarding NGL and have been invited to receive such support from Miki. For the last three sessions, we are focusing on people within the Core Group offering Impact Digestion support to each other.
Miki is planning to be the one to offer accompaniment for each of the first three sessions of this series. For the last three, the plan is for Miki to offer guidance and coaching for the process of finding practices.
Deeper understanding of what we mean by liberation, both theoretically and experientially
The centrality of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and systemic thinking to the process of liberation
The components, principles of coming up with practices to support movement in relation to persistent patterns
Specific aspects and pathways of supporting others’ liberation as they are described in the packet “Supporting Others’ Individual Liberation” such as:
The significance of tenderness: Inviting compassion for self and others through elements such as perspective taking and applying the systemic lens
Directiveness: Discerning how much to follow and how much to lead when accompanying someone’s liberation journey
Challenging narratives: Discerning when people’s narratives interfere with seeing their own and others’ humanity and how to support a shift in their narratives without losing their own dignity and clarity
Liberation-based feedback: Discerning when it makes sense to support someone’s journey by offering them consciously chosen and digested feedback as a gift of learning
Accepting limitations: Supporting people to recognize and bring tenderness to their own limitations through the systemic lens and understanding the effects of trauma
Asking questions: Developing capacity to ask questions that support discovery and movement for those we support
Self-awareness: Tracking our own inner process while supporting others’ liberation, especially when we have a reaction to what we hear
Transparency: Increasing trust and togetherness by making our humanity more visible to those we support
The power of interdependence: Supporting those we accompany to lean on practices and agreements with others in their environment outside of coaching sessions as a way of deepening integration of liberation
The capacity lens: Finding empowered next steps that are moving towards liberation and that are actually within capacity for the person we accompany and their environment
This program is focused on a small core group of those accompanying others towards liberation, and invites the larger group to witness, practice, and ask questions. We anticipate that everyone who comes will learn a lot that they can apply in their contexts. At the same time, we want the learning to happen within a field committed to the accelerated learning of the small group.
We trust the paradox: as all commit to focusing on gifting our presence and attention and creating a field of support for the core group to grow their skills and integrate the framework into the actual fabric of their lives, all of us learn and our lives are enriched. And this particular model has already worked in a few other labs: the Weaving Togetherness Lab, the All Ages Collaboration Lab, and the Deaccumulation Lab: people who have been part of the group that witnesses have learned a lot and found meaningful ways of applying what they have learned, and some have also joined the core group.
We rely on your orientation to us…
What we want to invite you into is an attitude of support and orientation to what we are doing, and to the purpose of the lab, particularly given the vulnerability it takes to do liberation work while observed by others – both when being accompanied and when accompanying others. The synergistic momentum of learning and application the purpose invites is in contrast to what we mean by “knowledge consumption”, inviting us to integrate the learnings in relation to how we live our lives and offer ourselves in service to the whole. Within this, you are contributing to the greater potential of this synergistic momentum in a sustainable way. You are also contributing to the possibility that, at some point, you may reach sufficient capacity and purpose alignment to join the core group, if the experiment of this lab continues.
If you sense that it will be a challenge for you to orient toward us in this way, it may not make sense for you, and us, that you join us at this time.
We anticipate a time coming when we are more settled structurally and when we can offer support in various ways to those who come to the lab from those who will have integrated the learning sufficiently to offer it. And we are not there yet. You are being invited, now, into the formation of a field, with your support, and with confidence that you are likely to grow capacity over time even as you orient to us. Your accurate choice at this time is a vital element of what can support this lab to thrive.
There is no curriculum
The Lab is intended to be completely emergent. We anticipate learning arising from what is happening in the moment. There is no need to attend every week unless this is what you want. The content of each six week series (if this lab continues) is completely unknown in advance and there is no intention to have any sequence of themes or skills within or between series. We imagine, though, that over time as capacity grows, deeper and subtler nuances may arise.
(Check your local time here.)
(if you have previously registered, there is no need to register again for the next series. AND we invite you to consider gifting again to support making this and all of NGL experimentation sustainable for the people who gift their life energy to make this happen)
If you want to gift in US dollars, we invite you to do so here.
If you want to gift in Euros, we invite you to do so here.
If you want to gift in UK pounds, we invite you to do so here.
If you want to gift in AUS dollars, we invite you to do so here.
This training is offered as a gift to our community as well as to everyone who registers. We never charge for anything we offer.
At the very same time, we completely depend on financial gifts given to us freely to sustain our capacity to do what we do and continue to offer what is ours to offer. Because of this, we want everyone who registers to consider their own financial situation and our needs before deciding whether and how much they will give us. If, after this discernment, people choose to give nothing, we see it as a sign of trust in our commitment to the gift paradigm. We get pleasure out of knowing that in this way we make our offerings available to some people who usually don't have access to the resources necessary for similar offerings elsewhere even as we mourn that such disparities in access exist in the first place.
We vulnerably ask you to fully connect with the needs we are making visible below as well as with your own needs and financial situation, and choose the maximum amount you can gift us without resentment or overstretching. We operate from trust in life that when doing it this way, people will be moved to give us money to care for the material needs of those of us who gift our energy to NGL.
We want to acknowledge that engaging in this way requires more effort than most of us are used to. It's definitely easier to just see an amount and decide if it's within our means or not. We are asking you to join with us in this experimentation – which also gives you a taste of how we function both within NGL and within this course, where liberation and conscious discernment are central.
See Registration Form for more.
What NGL is about
Our main website: nglcommunity.org
NGL’s purpose is “to integrate nonviolence into the fabric of human life through ongoing live experiments with truth focused on individual and collective liberation.” (Strange words? Read the detailed explanation here.) Since May 2022, nearly five years since we began our work, we are ready to share the fruits of our work and what we have learned. The key question we are grappling with is how to liberate ourselves from patriarchal conditioning and rediscover what it might take for humanity to realign with life.
We are also ready to ask, as widely as possible, for resources to flow towards us in support of the work. We are ready for bolder and deeper experimentation. For example, as BayNVC, our mother organization, is closing, we are passionately experimenting with how far we need to move from mainstream ways of functioning in order to align with our dreams of a full gift economy when the rest of society continues to function as it is.
And we are under-resourced.
We are confident that people exist who would be enthusiastic about what we are doing and will want to support it. Are you one of them? Here are the different ways that we can envision support coming our way:
Bring the vision to where it’s needed
Are you aware of individuals, communities, or organizations that are aiming to function in practical, visionary ways and who might want one or more of our experienced practitioners to offer them concentrated ongoing support, beyond a 3-hour introduction?
Do you have friends you could imagine inviting to this and other events? As individuals alone, we are very limited in our capacity to move effectively towards vision. When we come together with others, our capacity increases significantly, especially if we want to live in visionary ways. Who would you want to do this with in your neighborhood, family, community of interest, or anywhere else in your life? What would keep you from inviting them to come with you?
Engage with us in support of the vision
Are you yourself ready to join us and offer your passion, skill, and energy by taking on tasks (always within capacity!) and participating in projects that could use support? If you are unsure, come check us out by joining our growing community of NGL Friends here.
A radical approach to funding the vision:
This event is offered entirely on a gift basis. We are hoping that many people will participate and not give us anything, because they can’t. SO MANY events are not available to people who need them because they require money to participate. We are longing to remove barriers to access, as many as we know-how.
Simultaneously, we could imagine someone giving us $20,000 instead of anything resembling “market value.” This is a big step on the way to the vision of a world where resources flow to where the need is, without any money being involved: given the world we live in, we start with asking those who can to give us what would be seen as outrageous amounts of money, so that the people who want to do the work that we are doing can do so without having to earn money somewhere else.
Do you have access to financial resources, directly or indirectly, that you could flow our way in support of what we are doing?
So far, we have not received much when offering these events, and we are very much hoping that more people choose to give higher amounts as this is crucial for our sustainability.
What happens within NGL?
We are longing to make available to anyone, anywhere, the exciting discoveries we are making about what we can do together as humans when we restore, even in small measure, our trust in life. We also want to share what we are learning about the challenges that turning the tide entails.
We are experimenting in many areas, including in particular:
What supports the increase of individual and collective capacity to move towards our vision of a world that works for all?
What are practical ways of living within the flow of maternal gifting?
How do we make integrative decisions that support choice within togetherness?
What makes humility and vulnerability in the sharing of information possible?
What makes it possible to liberate ourselves from conflict aversion so that feedback and learning can flow?
What is the relationship between collective capacity and the presence of conflicts?
What is a path of liberation for all when it comes to the tough topics of power and privilege?
What does it mean to distribute leadership within a field held by a visionary leader?
Yes, we have been experimenting in all these areas at once.
We started with many principles and practices that Miki had already uncovered through her research, teaching, consulting, and writing. Now many of us are active participants even as Miki is still the main person articulating what we are learning together. This shift to a larger number of committed people increases our collective wisdom. For each of the events in the series, several people are planning to offer similar events afterward to increase capacity for themselves and for NGL as a whole. As more of us are able to share foundational and emerging NGL content as their own, with authenticity, responsiveness, and rigorous accuracy, we are deepening into a flow of modeling, coaching, and mentoring – leaders to apprentices, peer to peer, and apprentices to leaders. One of our goals is for Miki’s work to outlive her.
Please support us as, both individually and as a community, we step closer to allowing that to happen.
If you have any questions, please contact the SOL Lab Project Stewardship Team.
