The History of Authentic Relating and Circling Practice

The evolution and history of the practice that facilitators should know.

My personal journey with Authentic Relating started in 2013, when I joined The Integral Center for the now legendary T3 leadership training. Little did I know that was stepping into a budding movement in Relational Practice and I would play a key role in spreading Circling and AR around the world.

A written history is quite difficult, because this is largely an oral tradition. Transmitted from teacher to student, most often during the staff meetings for the courses, over 10,000 people have taken a weekend course in AR or circling.

From 2000-2018 my teachers worked tirelessly to develop and teach these practices to hundreds of facilitators, who traveled from all over to Boulder, Colorado and the Bay Area. Many of them have moved on from the field, and are no longer teaching, and new people pick up the torch. This is why the movement has developed in an open-source and decentralized way.

Even though I started the first podcast, and published the first book on authentic relating, thousands of people have been touched by AR who have no clue who I am! I present these dialogs for anyone wanting to piece together a tapestry of the history for themselves.

In 2018, the integral center closed, and this ended the second chapter of the spread of Relational Practice. A diaspora emerged and I would begin traveling to Bali, Amsterdam, and a dozen other cities to spread the gospel of conscious communication. A longer written version is in the works, but for now these 4 conversations tell the story of this movement.

Starting with the Godmother of AR

It was an honor to interview Susan Campbell — someone who has been conscious communication for 60 years! Her book, Getting Real, was required reading for all of the early Circling schools. Susan was involved in developing T-groups in the 1960s, and since then worked as therapist, relationship coach, speaker, workshop leader, trainer of professional coaches, college professor, certified Radical Honesty trainer, and founding teacher of the Getting Real work. Quite a resume!

In this 30-minute conversation, you can learn about the roots of Authentic Relating in the early T-groups Susan led. The mantra they used back in the day, “I, thou, here, now” is mirrored by the ground rules of modern-day circling. We then move on to speaking about emotional intelligence as the backbone of skillful communication, dreaming up the future of education we’d like to see.

…to take the bird’s eye view on the practice…

Kendra Cunov has been studying, facilitating, and (most importantly) practicing Authentic Relating, Embodiment Practices & Deep Intimacy Work for over fifteen years. She's the founder of The Collective: A Global Web of Women Devoted to Embodied Wholeness," and teaches a course on Relationship by Design.

In this deep dive, Kendra and I pause to think about different components and founding assumptions of Relational Arts. One of them is that, as individuals, we change all the time — and our relationships need to reflect this. Kendra offers a beautiful overview of her method, Relationship by Design, by outlining its four pillars: authenticity, desire, curiosity, and generosity.

Through exploring Kendra’s line of work, we name several pieces universal to all Relational Arts.

…and finally, reflect on past, present, and future of Authentic Relating.

It’s a double pleasure to share this conversation with you. First, because I think it provides a unique perspective of “zooming out” on Authentic Relating as a movement existing in a broader context of the world’s history. Second, because it brings me back to how enjoyable it was for me to be part of that conversation, alongside Susan Campbell and Sara Ness, facilitated by brilliant Peter Limberg from The Stoa.

Through interviewing one another, we dig into the original aims of the AR movement and how the shape of modern society re-ignites our thirst for community. All of us share a good chunk of our personal stories to provide context for how what role AR played in our lives. We also spend some time naming how a heightened sense of connection changes people — and what are the long-lasting consequences of it.

At the end, Peter invites us to express where each of us would want the Authentic Relating movement to go. That’s the moment for some dreaming!

… and Finally, a Retrospective, looking back from 2024.

There are new groups of teachers and facilitators of these practices popping all over the world. Even the leaders of this movement, can’t keep track of how fast it’s spreading! Recently, the hosts of “The Container” Sara Goldstein, and Jonathan Clark interviewed me and we went very deep into the origin story.

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