Get started on COnnect
Learn about our practices, our intentions, and more
Welcome COnnect Members!
Step 1: Check out the Welcome video and practice descriptions below. If you haven't done Authentic Relating or Circling before, sign up for an intro event *
Step 2: Read the Intentions at the bottom of this page. If the culture feels like a fit to you...
Step 3: Check out our Calendar using the navigation menu above.
Step 4: When you want to join an event, click the button on the Join Event page at the date and time listed for the event.
In service of safety and high quality events, we lock the Zoom room 5 minutes after the event has started. Please show up on time or early to ensure you can get in!
* You do NOT have to wait for an intro event before attending other events on the platform
Our Community Care Bear says hello...
About The Practices
Authentic Relating is a practice of self-awareness, self-expression, and empathy. We explore the effect of bringing our honesty more into every relationship, with tools to both check how our expression affects others and to bring out their more honest truth as well.
Authentic Relating Games are a playbook of practices invented by communities around the world for how to begin relating on an authentic level. Playing these games helps build skills for any relationship: romantic partnerships, families, roommates, friends, community groups, teams, and clientele.
Circling is a transformational communication practice that enhances self-awareness, creates connection, and teaches participants how to get their needs met AND help others thrive in the process. It is practiced by hundreds of communities across the world.
Part art form, part meditation, part group conversation, Circling has been described as “interactive intimacy”, “social intercourse”, or (my favorite), “A structured way to love the crap out of someone.”
In a circle, you’ll join a group of people to have a conversation about what’s actually happening for you, and between you, right here and now. You’ll get a visceral sense of what others feel, think, and experience around you, and develop a meditation practice for bringing your embodied self naturally out into the world.
Who's Leading on COnnect?
COnnect Intentions
We agree to do our best to:
Show Up Prepared
- Show up in a quiet distraction-free environment, fully present and available to experience the event
- Show up with a device that has full video and audio capability
- Have your video turned on for the majority of the event once it begins. (It's okay to turn your video off temporarily if a background visual distraction occurs)
- Do not join an event while in transit (walking, driving, on the bus, etc.). Do not join an event while multi-tasking (cooking, working, watching television, etc.)
Honor Ourselves
- Take care of your own physical and emotional needs throughout the duration of this event. You are at choice in each moment during this event, especially around how and what you share
- Request confidentiality as desired
Own Our Experience
- When you’re owning your experience, you communicate your thoughts, feelings, perspectives and opinions in a manner that is unarguably true.
- Use “I” statements when relevant to do so.
- Do not using violent or diagnostic language towards other individuals on the platform
- For instance, if you don't like someone's behavior, you could say "I'm frustrated and I want you to stop that," rather than "You're a very frustrating person and you shouldn't do such things"
Hear Others Out
- We begin with the presumption that we do not know everything. That, in fact, we do not know most things about others, and sometimes even about ourselves
- When we are given feedback or hear a new view, we attempt to respond with curiosity about what we don’t know, rather than reaffirming what we do
We also agree to do our best to NOT offer advice, teach, fix, problem solve, heal, coach or therapize each other.
Although the Authentic Relating and Circling practices we do here may be therapeutic, this is not a space to seek or conduct therapy. To be accepted without being diagnosed is the medicine many of us need most.
We ask that all who attend our events agree to do their best to show up in alignment with these agreements.
COnnect reserves the right to cancel a member’s membership at any time. If a member is in breach of the heart and soul of these agreements or in any way creating or threatening physical or emotional harm to themself or another member, they may be asked to leave the event. They may also be asked to meet with an COnnect administrator to collaboratively determine if this community is a good fit for them and their needs.
Psycho-therapeutic Support
Circling and Authentic Relating are powerful practices, but neither should be confused with therapy, nor should they be expected to provide the type of support that having a good therapist can provide. Therapy can be a great way of processing triggers that might come up from sharing in relational practice space with others. Here’s a great resource for those of you who might be in need of psycho-therapeutic support in your lives, or who might need additional assistance in working with the psychological material that sometimes arises through deep relational practice.
Find a Therapist
