Raffi -- love your thoughts -- but when faced with such an interrogator as you describe-- my answer would be pretty simple. "We breathe a lot." We breathe a lot -- especially when other folks forget to. And that is why we get paid the big bucks.
Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland 20845 Phone 301-365-2093 Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html -----Original Message----- From: OSLIST [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Raffi Aftandelian Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 4:20 PM To: [email protected] Subject: What a facilitator does when she holds space This weekend I was at a Moscow conference of trainers and consultants. There was a "demonstration" OST in the middle of it, to show how OST works. And curiously it worked pretty ok despite some of my concern that by announcing the topic only at the opening of the event it might flop... After the end of the mini-OST meeting, there was a debrief on OST. One participant who does lots of martial arts, holotropic breathing, and other assorted goodies/practices wondered what does the OST facilitator "do"? THe OST facilitators present tried explaining to no avail. He simply couldn't understand. He explained that he needs a visual model to "get it." And later it dawned on me: I have for a while thought of OST being a very fast means of humans consciously recreating all of nature's processes in a bounded environment (think the biosphere experiment). And this led me on to the aha...if the facilitator is opening a space for nature to happen, then the facilitator is...God! What does God do to make grass grow? Nothing. I am curious what others think of this God model of facilitation. I almost shared this "model" with this participant, but my instinct got the better of me. That is not the thing you should EVER, probably, tell someone interested in OST. That realization is something people need to come to themselves. It's just downright scary for one thing. And this brings me to the how of holding space. Of course, for each person God is/acts/is called something different, so the nature of that held space will be different. People's thoughts? Raffi mailto:[email protected] * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
