When women gather in a safe space, we experience a synergy
that magnifies our personal wisdom and activates our collective leadership.
Over the past decade, we have anchored hundreds of gatherings large and small, locally and internationally. We have experienced the incredible feminine power that can be generated when women gather to have authentic conversations.
A powerful experience doesn’t just happen. There are some important basic elements which are necessary to create a safe space and invite the wisdom of every woman in the room.
• Take the time to create a strong container by having a core circle of women do the planning using shared leadership and circle practices. Meet several times — in person or by telephone or video conference calls when people on your team are scattered across the country. Shared leadership and collaboration helps create a container that invites everyone’s voice and wisdom.
• Acknowledge the sacred at the center. This can be as simple as a lighted candle or a vase of flowers. Each women present can bring a special symbolic object to create a simple altar.
• Gatherings can be as few as 5 or as large as 500 — and you can still keep it simple, sacred and focused on offering circle conversations where every woman has a chance to speak what is in her heart.
• Resist the temptation to have keynote speakers or a number of ‘experts’ talking into a microphone at the front of the room. This can actually be disempowering for women as they compare themselves to articulate leaders and think their input could not possibly matter.
• Seating should be at round tables of 5-7 — or simply with chairs clustered in circles.
• Use circle practices and principles in your planning and in all the actives at your gathering
• Ask your women to reflect on a good question or two in their circle conversations. We love simple questions like “What is in your heart right now? “ Or you could read a short poem or quote and then ask “What got stirred up in you by what you heard?”
• Have sticky notes on the tables to encourage women to write down the nuggets of wisdom they hear in their circle — capturing the inspiration and insight generated on each circle.
• Allow some time for each table/circle to briefly report about the most inspiring things said in their circle.
• Always open and close the gathering with a simple ceremony — a moment of silence, a prayer, poem or song.