In my earliest liberation-studying days when I used to make up frameworks of transformational programming in my free time, I saw a recurring pattern among the experiences I had had that had changed me forever. How many times can I say had in one sentence? Every experience I’ve had that that had a lasting impact on me disoriented me first and caused me to grapple with who I am and what I believe. In the transformational learning literature, this is called a “disorienting dilemma”. We experience loss, death, change, or a seemingly insurmountable challenge that challenges our existing understanding of who we are and what we believe about others/the world. In order to conquer the challenge, we must revise our understanding of ourselves or the world so that we can succeed.
Many programs in the liberatory or transformational landscape model their programs on the idea of the “disorienting dilemma”. What this means is that they knowingly create a stressful, seemingly impossible challenge or series of challenges for people to overcome, that causes people to re-consider who they are and what they believe about the world.
The majority of programs that I have encountered include in their programs what I call a “negative disorienting dilemma”. This means that leaders craft a program that induces a stressful experience that may be overwhelming and bring about intense negative emotions that the participants must work to understand and achieve a breakthrough of some sort. The experience is often an experience of need-deprivation, which means that the participant goes through some sort of process where their social, emotional, or physical needs are not being met (commonly done in initiation processes).Once the mental or emotional breakthrough is achieved and some action that demonstrates that mental or emotional breakthrough, the participant is applauded.
Negative disorienting dilemmas, are indeed, a natural part of life. There is nothing necessarily wrong with them. We suffer. We lose. We fall into the depths of despair. And then, our brains naturally orient us towards survival, so we create ourselves into something new so that we may survive emotionally, psychologically, mentally, socially. Life naturally has negative disorienting dilemmas. However, consciously crafting negative disorienting dilemmas as the leader of organizations and programs can be sadistic. What is the impact of overwhelming people into positive realizations about their lives and not providing the resources or support they need to create the changes in their lives? What is the impact of creating such intense experiences that people have a new source of suffering that they must pick themselves up from? What is the impact of beating people down or encouraging people to dig deeper into their childhood or past just so you can lift them out of the hole they now find themselves in? Does it leave people better than we found them to disorient them into change? Can inducing disorientation ever be not violent?
Perhaps. What if, instead of relying on negative disorientation, we consider that other types of disorientation can more tenderly create the deep connection we are committed to? The other type of “disorienting dilemma” that I see is a positive disorienting dilemma. This is when people provide or co-create resources and supports that actually meet people’s needs enough that the individual or group is disoriented. Their ideas of what was possible for themselves, their group, or for humanity, shifts due to their needs actually being met. This process is also natural in life. Think about falling in love with a new partner. We fall in love unexpectedly. All of those reflections we’ve done about the type of partner and relationship practices that would best meet our needs and desires… suddenly you see those needs and desires met. Yet again, we feel that a future of love and connection is possible. Perhaps a world of love and connection is possible. We begin changing as we align ourselves with loving practices and seeing the world as a place where love and connection is possible. A positive disorienting dilemma is also natural.
And the best part of a positive disorienting dilemma is that is actually serves the purpose of creating deep connection. We cannot create deep connection when our needs are not being met. That is why the negative disorienting dilemma can take us further from where we want to be – because it often involves us being deprived of what we need and has no centering in what we need. Negative disorienting dilemmas can often just serve the mind – providing mental breakthroughs and realizations without emotional, social, or physical needs being responded to. Negative disorienting dilemmas can provide lip service and talking about problems without action. And indeed, programs that provide negative disorienting dilemmas are often constructed such that participants and groups are constantly going back for more breakthroughs and epiphanies because their needs are not being met, nor are they being positioned as a powerful leader that can meet their own needs. Negative disorienting dilemmas can also often serve existing systems of oppression because there is no sustainable change being created. Positive disorienting dilemmas are all about actually creating what we need and hopefully positioning the participant as the creator of what they need.
May we reflect on the role of negative and positive disorienting dilemmas in our work. Where is the place for both? Is there a place for both? What may we gain as we look towards the possibilities within positive disorienting dilemmas in the space that we are co-creating? What does it mean to go towards actually creating spaces the spaces that we need, rather than stopping at the mental, emotional, or spiritual breakthroughs that result from negative disorienting dilemmas?
May we be assured that we do not necessarily need to rely on the liberator paradigm of overwhelming ourselves into realizations by depriving us or shattering preconceptions in a negative way. May we hold steadfast and grounded that we can choose to discover and meet our earthly needs, and that will shatter our preconceptions in the most powerful way. And in a way that lasts for us all.
And so, many of us are understanding that we have gone so much of our lives believing that there was something wrong with us – when in reality, it was our spaces that were not meeting our needs. When we enter spaces that are not a fit for our needs, spaces where our body is overwhelmed, we can call that space toxic to our body. Because systems of disconnection and conditioning pervade our society, many spaces have “by default” not met our needs and, therefore, have been toxic to us. Taking on the toxicities of all spaces we have inhabited through our lives, these toxicities “clog up” our bodies, often leading us to be “chronically overwhelmed”. This process of recounting the toxicities of our spaces is critical. Collectively and rigorously seeing the “default toxicity” within our past spaces (what I call “microsystems of disconnection”) provides us with intimate understandings of space elements that we can use to design or redesign our spaces of deep connection.
And there is so much more that we are learning we must unravel. What we often overlook in our spaces when we talk about designing spaces of deep connection where our needs are met is that which is much less obvious, the energetic space. To see all toxicities contributing to our spaces, we must be able to “see” and measure all of the energy of spaces (e.g., mental toxins created by racism, patriarchy; toxicities in our light, sound, air; patterns of disconnection that individuals bring with them). Fully seeing all toxicities, we can begin to understand where exactly our spaces (and our bodies) have been “clogged up”. Then, we can begin to experiment with moving that energy and unclogging our spaces (and our bodies).
Collective (movement) practice, which focuses on how we collectively move energy, then, is a powerful approach to designing spaces of deep connection. It is an often-hidden, ancient approach that many of us are seeking, studying, or drawn to, though we call it different things. I define collective (movement) practice as the collective practice of moving physical energy in a space to create the energetic conditions necessary for deep connection to be possible. I believe there is gold in the rigorous study of collective (movement) practice and these ancient wisdoms are here to teach us how to do our Work of designing spaces of deep connection. As we step into our full power to build spaces of deep connection that meet our needs, as we slowly uncover ancient wisdoms of collective (movement) practice, we all deserve the opportunity to learn the truth and the power of collective (movement) practice. Zooming out, we can see that, within this study of collective (movement) practice, there are thousands and thousands of years of ancient science, art, design, culture, and medicine guiding us as we build our spaces of deep connection. May we find each other, study together, learn together. May we fully step into our power as builders of spaces of deep connection. Join us at our Open House to collectively practice seeing the “default toxicity” of the microsystems of (dis)connection we’ve left behind and to co-learn, reflect, and share about how we use collective (movement) practice to design/redesign spaces of deep connection.
These ideas and questions are central to Raw Movement, an approach to inquiring about and experimenting with co-creating spaces of deep connection through collective (movement) practice. If you’re in the practice of creating grounding, deep connection, home, family, and desire to experiment with co-creating spaces of deep connection, find out more about Raw Movement at: www.rawmovement.org.
This writing is a part of my Conversations on Deep Connection series. If you’re also in the practice of creating grounding, deep connection, home, family and would like to get notified of new conversations, click here to get notified of new conversations.