Since September 2023, we have enjoyed open online meetings on enactive process, exploring our core principles:

• The experiential meaning of embodied grounding (passive but receptive consciousness) (September 2023)
• Awareness of emergent experience (October 2023)
• Negating conditioning and nourishing emergent knowing (the expression and embodiment of insight as it forms in continuous movement) (November 2023)
• Collaborative co-creative leadership (response-ability) (January 2024)

These discussions were experienced by all participants as very meaningful and enriching. They also brought in spontaneous, important themes. In Spring 2024, we continued our open sessions with such spontaneously upcoming themes. From May 2024 onward, we will continue with a new, but intricately related exploration: Making space for openness in our lives.

Open Sessions theme from May onward: Making Space for Openness in our Lives

During the next public sessions we will explore the theme of openness: how can we bring embodied awareness to moments of openings in our meetings, and our professional and private lives? 

For various reasons – be it fatigue, overwhelm, or past experiences that left their mark – we can get stuck in rigid views, become afraid of difference or come to see others as disturbance, threat or plain evil. We care about the moments in which such protective rigidity dares to open up: What happens when we notice new aspects of ourselves or the world around us? How does openness manifest as such in various moments and situations in our lives? In our relationships/family, our work, the paths we walk in our lives (career and otherwise), in our moment-to-moment sense of being alive? What role does the body play in creating openness? Is openness something we do, or rather something we notice, or both? At what levels of subtlety does/can it happen?

We find that these questions sit at the heart of our work as enactive researchers. We therefore decided to, for now, use our monthly open sessions to explore our particular and different ways of opening up – of being present to openness in the different roles we take on, in conversation with others, as we move and explore our embodied presence.  As before, we will do so in a combination of open dialogues, facilitated and individual/silent practice and partner work.

For us, this is an exploration that, as researchers, will ultimately impact our research projects – beyond our personal interest, we consider openness to be a crucial element for a science that supports human and non-human flourishing. However, we will never use any of the statements made or materials created during our open sessions without your permission. If you feel so inspired, you are welcome to participate in the research projects too, beyond exploring the topic in our open sessions. In general, an easy step towards being more deeply involved could be to join our weekly meetings.

The first session exploring this theme will be on Tuesday 28th May at 6.30 PM CEST / 11.30 AM CT. Shared insights arising during the next session on 28^th May 2024 will impact the themes of further sessions on this topic, and so will each following session. We look forward to embarking on this exploration together!

The gatherings each last about and our and a half and are open to anyone interested in participating; there is no need to have attended any of the previous meetings. The sessions take place each fourth Tuesday of the month at 6.30 pm CE(S)T. Contact us if you would like to join us!

Upcoming open session meeting dates: