Every Tuesday I run a circle at The Hare and the Moon in Twickenham, 2 to 3pm. Donation only. Open to everyone. No booking required.
What it is: a room. People who are honest. No advice. No fixing. No cross-talk. Just being in the presence of other humans who are willing to say what's actually going on.
Nobody can picture an hour from a list, so here is the shape of it.
People arrive and find somewhere to be. Some lie down. Some sit in a chair. There is no right one and nobody is arranged into anything.
There is breath. There is music, ceremonial and medicine music. And there is a stretch of time in which nothing at all is asked of anybody.
Nobody has to speak. Nobody has to share. If you want to say something there is room for it, and if you would rather lie on the floor for an hour and not say one word, that is a complete and proper way to spend the hour.
It is recorded, and the recording goes out afterwards, so being unable to get to Twickenham on a Tuesday does not shut you out of it.
What it is not: therapy, a support group, a workshop, or anything with a curriculum. There is no programme. There is no progression. You come when you need to. You stop when you're done.
Those are the 3 things people most often expect it to be, and the differences matter, so it is worth being exact about them.
Therapy has a practitioner and a client and a direction of travel. This has a room, with me in it.
A support group is organised around a shared thing, and there is usually a round of speaking. Nobody here needs a reason to be in the room, and there is no round.
A workshop teaches you something. You could come for a year and not be taught anything at all, and still get what the hour is for.
No cross-talk is the one that sounds like a restriction and is in fact the kindness. It means nobody will respond to what you said, compare it with their own, improve on it, or ring you about it later. It is the only arrangement under which a room full of capable people will stop managing each other for an hour.
Most people who come for the first time look nervous. By the end of the hour something in them has settled. Not because anything dramatic happened. Because they were in a room where they didn't have to perform.
That sounds like nothing. It's actually everything. Being in a room with other people who are not braced does something to you that reading about it never will.
There is a reason the room does what reading cannot, and it is not atmosphere.
Your body reads other bodies continuously and without consulting you. It is taking in faces, breathing, the speed of movement, the tone underneath the words, and it adjusts to what it finds. In a room where everybody is braced, you brace. That is not weakness. It is accurate.
Which is why the hour is not really about what anybody says. Put somebody who has been on duty for a decade in a room where nothing is required of her, beside other people who are also not required to do anything, and her system starts working it out before she has consciously noticed.
The music is part of that and not decoration. A room of people breathing to the same thing stops being a collection of individuals fairly quickly, and it does it without anybody having to talk, which for most of the women who come is the entire appeal. Talking is what they do all day.
What people try instead of a room is doing it alone. An app, a practice, 10 minutes before bed. All of which is worth having, and none of which can do this particular thing, because the missing ingredient is other people.
The second thing people try is a room with a purpose. A class, a course, a group with an aim. And then there is something to be good at, and being good at things is where the bracing came from in the first place.
The ordinary week version of why this is hard: Tuesday at 2pm sits in the middle of a working day, and an hour in which nothing is achieved is the first hour anybody cancels.
That is worth knowing in advance, because you will cancel it once. Most people do, and the week you cancel it is usually the week it would have been most use.
The practical questions, since they come up every time. Donation only means you put in what you want and nobody watches. There is nothing to bring and nothing to wear. You do not need to arrive on time or stay to the end. And you do not have to tell anybody why you came, now or ever.
The other honest thing is that the first time is not always lovely. For some people an hour with nothing to do is the first quiet they have had in months, and what arrives in the quiet is whatever has been waiting. Nobody will ask you about it. You can leave at any point. But it is better to know that than to assume something has gone wrong.
What to notice, if you come, is small, and it is usually on the way home rather than in the room. The traffic is less annoying. You are not rehearsing anything. You get back and find you did not spend the journey preparing to be useful.
Come when you're ready. Tuesdays, 2 to 3pm, The Hare and the Moon, Twickenham Green.
More like this.
Everything you want to know before your first Returning Circle, including whether it is weird. https://www.annalouwellness.com/love-and-relationships/everything-you-want-to-know-before-your-first-returning-circle-including-whether
Why I kept the circle donation-based, and what that decision means. https://www.annalouwellness.com/love-and-relationships/why-i-kept-the-circle-donation-based-and-what-that-decision-means
Why retreat days are not a luxury, the biological case for group healing. https://www.annalouwellness.com/love-and-relationships/why-retreat-days-are-not-a-luxury-the-biological-case-for-group-healing
And if you would rather start by reading, the Reset Letters go out once a week at resetletters.substack.com.