The overall purpose of group ritual facilitation is to introduce ritual designs and floor plans that amplify the existing conditions and dynamics of the group as a whole. The skills necessary to facilitate these rituals can only emerge from doing the work itself and gaining familiarity with its transformative processes from the inside out. In my view, this amounts to the completion of at least four ritual labs (one lab runs 8-12 weeks, twice a week, three hours a session). The role of facilitator is not the same as a director, or teacher, or guru and/or therapist. The facilitator is more like the group's "third eye” gathering enough pertinent information to challenge and support the expression of the innate dynamics of that group during each session.

 

TAKING NOTE OF EXISTING CONDITIONS
Only by careful observation can you learn to detect the tendencies evolving in each person and in the group as a whole. Pay attention to present-time moods, needs, resistances, and the overall spirit embodied by the group in each session. Look at more obvious properties such as differences in gender, age, energy levels, skill and talent. By staying receptive to these innate dynamics, it is easier to allow them to unfold their natural outcomes (rather than the outcomes you want for them).

TWO TYPES OF ATTENTION
The kind of observation required for effective ritual facilitation in this medium involves two types of attention. The first attention is that awareness linked to language, thinking and the automatic assignment of meaning. The second attetion is that awarenness linked to presence, energy and phenomena. The second attention allows for the perception of the existing energetic dynamics of the group. The first attention, when trained to follow the second attention, can offer more accurate interpretations of the innate group dynamics to best determine which direction to take.

The second attention supports a perception for seeing things as they are, not as they should be or could be to serve one’s own agendas but as they truly are. Consistent practice in No-Form can proffer this kind of receptivity to the existing conditions of oneself and others, as well as, minimize the tendency to impose one's own projections, fantasies and expectations on the organic group process (also see "The First and Second Attentions").

NO-FORM
An effective facilitator has access to No-Form, not as a conceptual understanding but as a realized spiritual state he/she can drop into at any given moment while facilitating the group. The first time to observe group energy levels is during the first moments and the first ten minutes that the participants enter the space and orient themselves there. Additional cues can be detected throughout the Physical Warm-Up Cycles and the Personal Polarizations.

LESS IS MORE
During the rituals themselves, participants experience the facilitator as a disembodied voice. There are certain vocal and tonal adjustments that can serve ritual facilitation better than others. Since the participants are not "in their heads" or are attempting not to be, they tend to respond more directly when external suggestions are not too spelled out or require any thought to understand them. Keep it simple. Choose your words carefully; sometimes, the less you say, the better.

SPEAK TO THE BODY
Single words can often act with the power of mantras; sometimes, one word can be enough. Speak to the body. Physical intelligence, or body wisdom, resists over-definition. Allow your directions to remain somewhat incomplete to invite participants to discover and evolve their own responses and processes. Give participants ample time to explore and exhaust your suggestions. The body needs more time to discover and experience a direction than the mind needs to think about it or talk about it.

RELAX YOUR VOICE
Speak to the Central Nervous Systems and Bodies of participants, rather than their different personalities, minds and egos. Relax your voice. If you're tense, participants will hear it in your tone; resistance begets resistance. When you experience unnecessary tension before a session, express this vocally before arriving or find some other way to get it out of your system. Participants have enough resistance to deal with already without having to deal with yours, too.

OBSERVE BEFORE SPEAKING
It is useless and distracting to speak before observing. What you are looking for are signs and symptoms of present-time group dynamics unfolding moment-to-moment before your eyes. Stay alert. There are changes occurring out there on the floor. You may need to continually adjust your suggestions to coincide with the influx of new information from the group energy itself. Stay flexible. When in doubt: relax and then, look to see. Do not speak without observing first.

ON PERMITTING MORE UNCERTAINTY
The energetic dynamics percolating beneath the threshold of the group and individual consciousness are often unpredictable. To remain more receptive to these currents, adapt an outlook that permits more uncertainty. The facilitator is partly responsible for initiating an atmosphere, a kind of creative climate of openness that supports the autonomy and integrity of each person in the ritual setting. One internal adjustment for setting up this kind of climate involves a certain "lack of self-investment". If you become too personally excited, invested or ego-involved, participants will pick up on it and resist your suggestions. You are here to support their involvement in the ritual process, not yours. Create space for the participant's emotional involvement by removing your own. Don't take your position too seriously. A catalyst never undergoes the same changes as the catalyzed. The facilitator is a ritual catalyst.

THE FINAL RITUAL OF EACH SESSION
It is wiser to end cool than to end hot. Due to the attention given to energy itself in this medium, this work tends to activate and excite the energetic body; the Central Nervous System is stimulated, sparked and "lit." Design a final ritual that can also serve a cooling off process, rather than one that leaves everyone hopped up and wired. Restoring balance and equillibrium is a good rule of thumb here. When these rituals end late at night, the activated energetic body can sometimes keep participants up into the wee hours. Insomnia can result. This is why No-Form practice is so critical and why after especially charged rituals, it is important to stand in No-Form longer than you think is necessary to discharge the excess energy. I have also found epsom salt baths to be effective for neutralizing excess electromagnetic charge in the body (depending on body weight, mix 1-2 cups of salt in a full bath of hot water and then, soak for no more than thirty minutes; often times, 15 minutes can be enough).

ON ENDINGS AND GROUP CIRCLES
Typically, there is one group circle at the end of a 3-4 hour lab session. Group circles provide an opportunity for participants to voice their experience. Sometimes, nobody will say anything; when this happens, do nothing. Wait it out. After a particularly charged ritual, people may be silenced by what happened. Look around; look to see. On the other hand, if participants start searching for or espousing meaning or philosophical contexts to their experiences, refer them back to present time, i.e., "What happened to you ?" "How did you relate to what happened ?" Though philosophical discourse and psychoanalysis have their place, the group circle has another purpose: to simply report on what happened. Sometimes, a group circle is needed to formalize an ending and other times, no group circle is needed at all. Go with intuition. So much depends on what is necessary to the moment and where the moment leads.

Distilled and abridged from material excerpted from
"Towards an Archeology of the Soul" by Antero Alli
(VERTICAL POOL PUBLISHING, 2003)

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