Guy Sengstock And The Circling Method: Better Relationships And Connections

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:00] Guys, thanks, Doug. Welcome to the podcast.

Guy Sengstock [00:03] Yeah, thank you. I’m really glad to be here.

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:07] Yeah, so it’s great to see you and to talk to you, and I’m really excited about this because I learned just a little bit about circling, this new kind of therapy, I think, that you’ve invented. And it’s just incredibly intriguing, especially because I work in an addiction treatment. And it seems completely the opposite of what they do in rehab, where I mean, maybe I’m wrong, but I mean, people, you know, we’re told to look at our character defects. And what is it? Defects. And what’s the other one? Just, you know, people are kind of, you know, anonymous and we’re just a number of basically you’re anonymous. You’re not supposed to have an identity. You’re, you know, you’re bad. You’ve done something wrong you know it’s a moral thing although you know they’ve come around a lot in addiction treatment you know to say it’s a it’s a disease it’s not a moral shortcoming that’s the word I was trying to think of shortcoming yeah but you know I feel like there’s just you know a person with an illness we don’t go to other people with illnesses you know like when someone breaks their leg or they have heart disease or diabetes you know we don’t go and shame them and say you know this is your fault look what you’ve done to yourself yeah and you know and then I saw some of the circling videos and I heard about it and I’m like you know this is like seems like it’s about treating people with respect and you know really looking at someone and seeing them you know for the beautiful person that they are and you know I’m not I’m not sure I totally understand it but I really want to learn more about it so yeah can you tell us more about it

Guy Sengstock [01:35] Oh yeah totally well it’s funny I’m still learning about it I would say that’s really been my, if there’s a fundamental relationship I have with circling, and I was at the first one that happened kind of spontaneously, you know, something, circling kind of just emerged with a group of friends that I was in, and particularly me and my best friend, Jerry Candelaria, kind of caught sight of that there’s something going on here that feels deep and distinct from all the other deep things that we were kind of participating in at the time. And Kim and I really kind of came together, you could say, and committed to bringing it out, whatever that was. And so circling didn’t, I think it’s really important to get about circling. Circling isn’t something that, you know, anybody kind of invented or kind of came up with on their own. Or it was really in the process of being in relationship and that circling kind of opened up. And I remember when Jerry and I kind of had this moment after the first time that circling kind of happened. We both like looked at each other and we pointed back to where we just were, where it happened. And we just kind of spontaneously shook our hands on it. We didn’t have a name for it. We didn’t really even know exactly what we were pointing to other than that there was something, there was a real profound experience that we had. And I would say that my experience has been as I’ve been discovering what we were pointing our fingers towards ever since and so there is there’s there seems to be something see there seems to be something about relationship that is just inherently or can be right inherently mysterious and I think what you kind of pointed to is maybe one of the things that you recognized in some of the videos and things that you’ve been checking out about circling. And it’s funny because I could hear you. It’s hard to put your finger on exactly what it is that you’re perceiving. I think that tells me that you’re actually kind of seeing the thing, right? Which is that there is a way that we can relate with one another where you can start to disclose a certain kind of inexhaustibility, right? Something about you is bottomless. Something about you defies definition. Something about you animates, you know, you could say very, very deep things that are difficult to put into words that are, in some sense, have the characteristic of being something like ultimately good. And I would say that sense of goodness, that sense of, you know, someone would call it like an experience of innocence, that sense of who someone is at the deepest level of their being, right, is a mystery, even to themselves, right? And that whatever that mystery is, seems to be something like what gives us dignity. And so a lot of circling is about profoundly relating with somebody’s and deeply respecting and seeing someone’s inherent dignity. And so that really kind of comes across in the practice of circling which has a lot to do with you know not doing what some of the things that I heard you talk about like in your description of some of the work around addiction which is you know not it’s like not shaming people like not not assuming that I not not looking at you as a problem to solve or something to fix or something to manage or something to define. But kind of in some sense, being able to relate with you in such a way that I can see and relate with, you know, a something beyond what I can define.

Dr. Mark Leeds [06:02] Yeah. Yeah. And that what you just said, you know, a person not being a problem to be fixed. You know, that’s something I had heard someone else say at one point. And it almost seems revolutionary that, and I don’t know if this is saying the same thing, but, you know, a person looking at themselves in the mirror and saying, you know, maybe there’s nothing wrong with me. Maybe I’m fine just the way I am right now. And, you know, it’s, you almost are afraid to say that to other people because they’re like, hold on a second, you’re not perfect. I can give you a whole list of things you need to work on. But you know or is it maybe the world isn’t ready for you know I mean everybody wherever they are with whether it’s a mental health issue or like a unique characteristic you know they could be that one thing the world needs right now you know suddenly the world changes and like you know there was like a scene I brought up before that I just loved and there was a show fear the walking dead and the guy was a heroin addict and this other guy says you know you’re you’re exactly what I need you’re the person I want with me because yeah I want you with me more than anybody else because of what a heroin addict is capable of and in this post-apocalyptic world where zombies have taken over and everybody’s dying you know you’re the person I want next to me more than anybody and you know nobody else would have told that guy that ever before in his life you know up until that point he was told you know you’re a loser you’re an addict you know nobody wants to be around you but you know they said with a lot of conditions like I think like you know things like autism things like ADHD you know maybe in the right place in history in the right you know you’re exactly what we need you know they say the explorers in the frontier were people with attention deficit disorder and that was exactly what was needed but yeah I mean do you would you agree with that may be possible that we’re not all people that need work and that we have problems that you know I could probably lose some weight you know there’s some things I could work on but on the other hand you know maybe I’m fine just the way I am right now

Guy Sengstock [07:57] Yeah yeah I mean I there’s a you know somebody who I think brings language to this that makes a lot of sense to me is the is the Jewish philosopher theologian Martin Buber and he has a way of speaking about it that I’ve I’ve really come to appreciate and you know he says you know he looks he looks at he just the way he talks about the world is like and being human being is to is to always be in a relationship like we’re a relationship all the way down we’re a relationship in every moment with ourselves right with the world with other people with our thoughts with our feelings right in other words he really kind This kind of gets at the sense of that you will never be able to locate the thing I am, right, independent of everything else. What you’ll always find is a relationship. And he says that existentially, the way he talks about it is that we’re in one of two relations. We’re either relating to the world in these relations as an I-it or relating to it as an I-thou. And he’s in to make in to make that distinction the way he talks about it is you know when I relate to something as an it I’m relating to it as a means to my own end right so like it’s kind of like if I’m relating to my pencil I’m relating to as a means to the end of writing right or this works really good with objects and functionality but we can also relate to people as it’s right and in some contexts this is really probably you want to you want to do that right like in order to solve certain problems in your company and stuff like that you have to kind of look at your employees right from an objective standpoint and there’s nothing wrong with looking at at the world as a means to an end however what I think Buber points out is that what’s become rarer and rarer is this other side of the of the spectrum which is where we can relate to the world and these relations from a place of I-thou and so to relate with something as a thou is to relate with it as a as an ultimate end in itself right in other words right seeing you as not is not something as a means to an end but as an end in yourself, right, of something of ultimate value, right? And I would say that you could say circling, right, is in some sense a participatory practice or meditation or yoga that’s really about cultivating that capacity to really be with the other and with ourselves, right, as a thou, right to practice that to attune with that to comport oneself in that way such that the world can show up that way and practice with another person and you know I think you’re right going back to your question about about this way where you know people like people that we put kind of we label as like, like, like in terms of a pathology or a problem, right? Like things with addiction, right? Different kinds of mental disorders, things like that. And I think what I heard you say was, well, in some sense, really at a deeper level, like we may actually in a different context, those people would show up as the sage, right? They’d show up as the most wise one right and there is a there is a sense what there is seems to be something about like especially in addiction that it seems like underneath the addiction underneath the behavior is something like a spiritual craving right and my dad who’s been sober for I don’t know 40 years or something like that right and has been really involved in Alcoholics Anonymous and such things he talks about it as is that it is that the guy you know Gandhi standing in front of you know a thousand people right talking about being or whatever and the guy in the back you know you know smoking crack in the back alley have the same they have the same yearning it just one one’s at the wrong address right in some sense and so I think I appreciated what you said is that like if you go if you if you shift your attention with that person you can start to you can start to feel that the impulse itself is for something that is at another level can be really really profound yeah

Dr. Mark Leeds [13:05] Yeah yeah actually crack specifically as a drug it’s I’ve heard it said that it’s a in a way a very spiritual drug because it helps a person free themselves of all their worldly possessions to you know just like gandhi or gandhi or an ascetic you know person who you know before long you find you’ve traded everything you have for the drug and then it’s just you and you know eventually you don’t have access to the drug and I mean it’s not a pleasant place to be but yeah then again But, you know, that’s hopefully for people at that end of the road, you know, that’s the beginning of them finding a spiritual connection and hopefully getting into recovery.

Guy Sengstock [13:46] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. What is it that, just for some context, like what is it that has you interested in this and seeing these kinds of things? And what is it in you that has, you know, has you interested in circling and, you know, noticing it and, you know, things kind of shining forth to you about it, like, and doing this podcast and what you’re up to?

Dr. Mark Leeds [14:18] It’s to some degree, I mean, well, starting the podcast was just kind of agreeing to something that I was terrified to do. Someone came in, this was like three and a half years ago, I think. Like I was chatting with some people online and we were agreeing and disagreeing about some things. And, you know, one guy said, why don’t you do a podcast? Join our network. And I’m like, that’s like the last thing I would ever do. I, you know, of anything. I hate talking. I hate seeing myself on video. But then I remembered one thing that throughout school that they always told me that I was good at was I’m good at coming up with questions. And I don’t know if I’m always good at that. But, you know, people always said, like, you know, I love your questions. And, you know, we want to hear what question you have. So, you know, that maybe I could, you know, possibly be good at podcasting. But the thing that it’s, the reason I do it now is it is kind of an exploration to try to help people to find, you know, answers for myself and for other people. I mean, it’s also a great excuse to have a conversation with someone and to meet new people. But like right now, I’m working with a population of people that are in a kind of a hopeless situation where there’s almost no good solution for them. Specifically not so much addiction but drug dependence and protracted withdrawal people that have come off of benzodiazepines mainly and other psych drugs and they might have you know up to years of withdrawal symptoms you know of struggling through you know difficult times and there’s different things that might help them generally no medication helps them they can almost tolerate no medication so the usual thing where they go to a doctor and the doctor writes them a prescription, that’s just going to cause more problems in most cases. So, you know, there’s, you know, and they’re usually at a point where, in the beginning, at least, where therapy can’t really help, you know, they’re not really ready to talk to anyone. And one of the biggest problems they have is that people don’t believe that they’re going through a real thing. One thing is that they want to be heard. They want people to accept and acknowledge that this is real, what they’re going through. And it is real. You know, the benzodiazepines are toxic to the brain. And the long-term withdrawal effects can be severe, you know, not for everybody, but for a percentage, you know, maybe 10, 20 percent. You know, for a very small percentage, it can be very difficult long term. And just getting over that of just, you know, family members coming to you and saying, are you OK? Are you done with this yet? You know, people lose all their friends and, you know, family members don’t want to be around them. They don’t feel comfortable being a burden on people. And so it’s a very that especially. And, you know, so I put myself out there as someone that can, you know, they can come to. And, you know, sometimes I feel like, you know, I don’t have I don’t know what I have to offer you. And I can I can listen and I can talk. I can tell you I know what you’re going through is real. And there’s some things that we can do to help. There’s definitely some therapies and knowing about these are the foods to avoid. You know, here’s some medication that, well, I wouldn’t normally recommend it, but it might help a little bit. But yeah, I mean, I’m kind of exploring, like looking for, you know, what are the things that might help? And I just spoke to someone yesterday. We had a great interview about aromatherapy, which I just never even considered before. You know, just the idea of accessing the brain through the olfactory nerve, you know, with very safe but very effective sense. And that was really interesting. Circlings to that to me is something something that you know useful and that people want to be recognized and you know and taken seriously and you know they’re not making this thing up and yeah I’m like you know that and that’s kind of in a way the opposite of what they’re getting now in a lot of cases and it really does help just to be able to talk to someone who knows this I know what you’re going through is a real thing and it’s not a matter of me believing you or doubting you know, we’re beyond that. I just know that it’s real. And I’m willing to listen and I want to know what I can do to help. And, you know, like you’re saying, you know, people can be, you know, the end of, you know, that we’re here to talk and recognize each other. Or you have tools. I mean, that’s another thing. What are the tools we can put in our toolbox? And, you know, there’s not a very good set of tools for dealing with some of these things. And, you know, so maybe this is a, you know, maybe circling is a tool and, you know, and not just another thing on the list. You know, you always have a list of things. And it also stands out to me as something real, you know, as opposed to, you know, when you have someone saying, and not that I completely disbelieve it, but, you know, people talk about energy healing at a distance. And some of these things, I’m like, well, I mean, I don’t know if this person can really like send healing energy to you through the Internet across the world. Maybe they can maybe there’s some universal connection there but like aromatherapy that’s real and like I know that odors have a powerful effect on memory and how people feel and I know that listening to someone like what you’re doing recognizing them and honoring their like you said their their their the infiniteness of who they are I’m not sure if I’m putting it right but what you were saying about about that’s that’s something real and as something I don’t see very many people otherwise doing

Guy Sengstock [19:28] Right totally I you know it’s funny because what well what a couple of things what I just want to appreciate what you said is like the just this you doing this podcast is in some sense that’s what I heard you say is kind of like a spiritual practice for you of confronting what’s most terrifying so I just appreciate that big time and then I’m also hearing your your and now in what you’re doing in terms of supporting people who are kind of coming going through these kinds of withdrawals are you are you acting as a like you’re a physician right you’re a doctor I think

Dr. Mark Leeds [20:09] Yeah and in some cases we’ll do consultations I mean that’s what we call them consultations not really coaching you know coaching doesn’t sound right really but you know we I do also sessions where and sometimes it’s for family members not always for the person suffering with a condition but where no medical care is expected and so it’s you know me with my experience and knowledge and willingness to talk and listen and a lot of it is listening sometimes you know you can talk to someone and you know I go and prepare to problem solve you know because I love also that’s another thing I’m also an amateur programmer I love in fact just go back to what you’re saying when you’re talking about all the different levels of you know of what was the structure or function at different levels between different parts I mean it kind of sounded to me like oh that’s object oriented programming you know we have objects and objects that have objects in them and bigger objects and you know kind of make that makes sense to me but yeah I love I’m a you know troubleshooter I love looking for bugs and fixing them and so I go into like some of these sessions And I’m like, I want to, you know, I want to help you solve problems. I have a whole list of things that have helped other people. And I have that in front of me. I’m ready to go. And then I find that before I have a chance to say anything, I start listening. And three quarters of the session is just the person wants to talk and tell me what they’ve been through and what’s going on. So, yeah, listening is a big part of it.

Guy Sengstock [21:34] Totally. Yeah, totally. I, you know, it’s interesting too, because if you think about, you know, just from a, like a neurobiological level of what’s, what’s going on in something like intimacy, right? Or fellowship or community, right? When those things are really present for us, you know, I think it’s, I mean, I am not a scientist, right? So I don’t know the specifics of these, like the exact specifics of these kinds of things. But I know that like when somebody feels deeply connected, it activates serotonin system, like your serotonin system, dopamine, it activates all these neurotransmitters that are really real. I mean, really, really real and really potent in a certain sense. And I think that makes a whole lot of sense, especially when you consider how we all start as infants. Human beings are really, really interesting, especially when you think about how we start off. Right. In some sense, a human infant, as far as I can tell. At least from my observation, I don’t know if there’s anything more vulnerable and dependent. Right. Than a human infant. Than any other organism that we know about. Like, I mean, literally, like we all start off. We were almost all pure potentiality with very little actuality. Right. We can maybe we can maybe latch on to the nipple if we’re lucky. So we start in this incredible vulnerability. Yet what’s interesting is if you look at who’s on top of the food chain, right? Who’s the ones that are thinking about going to Mars, right? Who’s the one that kind of know that we know in some respects? And so there seems to be this really paradoxical, profound relationship between vulnerability and our ability. And it strikes me as the difference that makes that difference, right? In terms of that vulnerability, turning in and realizing what it potentuates, right? Has to do with relationship. And so it’s kind of like from day one, I was talking before we started recording, I had mentioned, I’m re-immersed in this because I’ve just had my second child 16 months ago. So I’m in the midst of baby land, right? And he’s just learning how to talk and read the alphabet and all those kinds of things. And I’m so present to just how much his development is completely almost a one-to-one relationship with how deeply he’s related to, how deeply he’s held, how deeply he’s attended to. And how attuned, our attunement as his caregivers are, right, is to the degree that’s really good or to the degree that breaks down is so determinate of who it is that he becomes. So relationship seems to be this, I don’t know if there’s anything more impactful and determinate and influential on us than the way that we’re related to and the way that we relate, right, than for us. Because there is just a fundamental vulnerability. However, if there’s a good enough holding environment to use kind of the language of Winnicott, right, and that goes well, it’s the difference between somebody who can be extraordinary, right, or not. And so in some sense circling is you could say it’s makes a practice it’s a it’s a practice of that of how to relate profoundly in that way and one of the things that I have learned over over the years right about circling and if we backed up just a little bit and looked at it from kind of like, well, why is, why did like circling this thing that just started with me and my friends within a few years ended up spreading all over the world? It literally did that. And that’s always, and I’ve always wondered about what’s like, what that, what does that say, right? About, is that saying something about the practice of circling? Does that say something about the world? And I think it’s both. However, it took me a while to start to realize this, but we circling start we started circling somewhere like right around 1998 which is right in the beginning of the of it was right in the middle basically of the of the dot-com you know the dot-com thing in san francisco and one of the things I started to kind of see right over over time is like asking by the question is like, well, why are people responding to this so deeply? Right. You know, it’s spreading, it’s spreading at a level that kind of goes beyond the personalities involved. Right. It’s, it has an emergent quality. And I always thought, I always tried to understand that in terms of that there must be something about the practice of circling. And I think what it is about the practice is that it’s a rare thing. Circling is a rare thing as a practice in that it takes just the fundamental unit of relation, the I-thou relation, and makes it a yoga, right? So sometimes the way to describe it is like it’s something like if you think about all of the deeply, the deep conversations that you’ve had, right? Deep, profound conversations that you’ve had or interactions or relationships that have been, you know, like transformative for you or, you know, profound philosophical, insightful conversations or deeply intimate conversations that have had, you know, like a developmental or transformational impact on you. And if you took all of those and you, and you abstracted out the through line of all those interactions and relationships and conversations and you and you took that and you made that into like into a yoga or into asanas or postures so like you know postures of communication postures of listening postures of attention and ways of being and you got together and you just with a group of people and you just went deep into those asanas and practicing those asanas you could say that’s what circling is right is practicing you know the yoga of intimacy or the yoga of connection and but the question is why did that speak to people so deeply right yeah and I think it I think there’s something that’s happened that the internet has magnified right that shows a change and in commune in communication that’s been profound that I don’t hear a whole lot of people talking about and it’s internet in like if you think about it socially internet the internet has really magnified this ability to uncouple right information exchange or informational connection from relationship so like let’s say before the answering machine right if you and I wanted to have the back and forth just the most simplest information exchange we would at least have to talk on the phone we’d have to do this kind of awkward strange thing called talking right it’s filled with ambiguity it’s filled with like you know powerful possibilities positive possibilities but also filled with potentials to deeply hurt us, right? If you think about all that’s possible and just the simplest facing interaction between two people, I mean, it’s so much when you really think about it. Up until the answering machine, essentially, you couldn’t really uncollapse this exchange from relationship. You had to relate if you wanted to talk with somebody or exchange information. And then starting with the answering machine and then in the email and then texting and then all the social media things all of a sudden you’ve the for the first time you’ve in a in a profound way have been able to uncouple that to where you and I can exchange information without having to do the hard thing called relating and because our nervous system is just inclined to move towards the path of least resistance right we’re just going to naturally now that we have this choice we could naturally just move towards like texting instead or sending an email instead or right yeah and it’s in that ability has has multiplied to the point where I think in the first for the first time in history all you basically need is an internet connection and someone can become famous, they can have a billion friends, they can start a company, they can become a millionaire, they can have all the accoutrements of a profound life, if you will, without ever having to actually address another human being. I mean, that’s possible now. So seeing that and coming to see that I’m realizing like, oh, I think circling happened to be this relational practice, right? That emerged in a time where there’s starting to be a kind of shortage or a famine or where life doesn’t necessitate so many conversations and interactions. And encircling just happened to be there as the consequences of that structural change, right, took place. And that’s why now Now I’m starting to realize that’s actually why circling is spread throughout the world or a big part of it. Right. In that way.

Dr. Mark Leeds [32:42] Yeah. That makes sense. And yeah, when you’re talking about people texting and doing that asynchronous type communication, it’s kind of ridiculous when people start voice dictating a text to another person and they voice dictated text back. It’s like you’re talking to the thing to send a text when you could be talking directly to each other at the same time.

Guy Sengstock [33:02] Totally. Especially if you, And whenever you change any part of communication, it changes everything. Just think about when we went from an oral culture to literacy. That profoundly changed everything. The printing press was another huge change. And so I think we’re in a time right now where we’re starting to that it’s like I don’t think that we understand the consequences of that shift but some would say that you know the all of the some of the things that you’re talking about right with the with the psychiatric medications that, you know, I think some people would say that, you know, with the advent of the internet and all of that, of linking this loss of, this loss of mental health, right, and depression and schizophrenia and all those kinds of conditions to, you know, tracking it to the, to the growth of the internet, there seems to be a profound connection between the two. Yeah and so when you think about when you think about like well how is it that you become who you are right well you come you become who you are in and through these interactions in and through these relationships right that’s how we literally come into being as another human being is through relationship and it was like that from the moment of our birth and I think that continues to be the case as we develop into adulthood. I don’t think that ever stops being the case in a big way. So when you talk about people who are really going through various levels of hell with their withdrawal of their medications and these intense experiences, I can imagine that in some respects, maybe the reason why they even needed the medication in the first place, right, is out of this depravity of contact, of genuine connection with other people, right? And so coming through this withdrawal and having a hard time and then reaching out to you and then just being able to be in contact with you and experience the back and forth of being seen and understood and heard right in some sense becomes so although it doesn’t necessarily like heal them heal their ailments right that genuine reciprocity right and care profoundly profoundly can transform our relationship to whatever it is that we’re going through in a big way yeah yeah

Dr. Mark Leeds [35:55] Yeah that’s you know when a person gets started on some of these medications, they may go to a psychiatrist and they might expect to have a long conversation or even lay on a couch and have a psychiatrist up by their head taking notes while they talk about their mother and their childhood. And that’s not how psychiatry visits have gone for a very long time. You know, usually when a person, and I’m sure it’s still the same way, but, you know, when a person goes to see a psychiatrist, it can be a quick five-minute visit where the psychiatrist says, you know, based on the form you filled out in the waiting room while you’re waiting to see me, I’ve looked it over and decided that you have the following disorders and they’re treated by the following medications. And so the person before they have a chance to think, you know, they were expecting some kind of an interaction of therapy going into, you know, what traumas occurred in their lifetime. And they walk out with a set of medications and then they take them and they go back the next month and the psychiatrist says well how do you feel do you have less anxiety less depression yeah yeah I’m not having the anxiety because I take this pill every time I feel anxious and this other one has kind of made me not feel very good or very bad I’m you know I’m kind of in the middle now it’s like okay good it’s working let’s keep going with that and that can go on for decades for some people yeah but yeah I mean they yeah I can see that being the thing a person, you know, and then there’s also the thing of, you know, of, I guess, like communication trauma or whatever, you know, like a person has had, you know, maybe they identified as a black sheep of the family and they felt beat up on by everybody and, you know, and they get to a point where they just want to avoid confrontation and avoid people. And I mean, do you see a lot of that of people coming to circling who have had really difficult upbringings with family?

Guy Sengstock [37:47] Oh god yeah totally yeah I’ve I’ve seen yeah and from all spectrums and all all degrees of from super super you know healthy environments to like the most like devastating kinds of environments that you can that I could imagine I’ve heard so many been with people and been frankly just profoundly amazed at the kinds of you know people who had childhoods that were just so distraught and right dealing with just outright you know malevolence towards them and trauma the trauma of all that and given all that there’s still this person who’s fundamentally wants to get better right or you could sense is it there is still a goodness in them that you can’t explain right deterministically based on their history their history would say something like god if you know it’s it probably would make more sense if they’re you know not seeking help but like you know you know causing hell in their life and self-destructing and destroying other people’s lives right and that and that people can through living through all of that still come to want to be have a sense of goodness right and want to address themselves it’s just it’s just like when I see that I’m always so impressed and amazed right by what’s possible with human beings right but yeah I think I think that it seems to me that most of I mean, most of our problems, right? Like most of, most of the areas that we struggle in, right? Are a function of where relationships have broken down historically. Yeah. You know, so, where we haven’t felt seen or where we’ve, right. We’ve been misinterpreted, right. Or there’s been a need that we had when we were a kid. And instead of it being addressed, We end up with having to deal with our parents’ anxieties or something like that. Like the amount of how complicatedly bad, right, relationships can go and how deeply that can affect us is just huge. And it also makes sense that you know from that standpoint moving toward in and through towards relationality to address those things and to heal it makes a lot of sense to me right like if the problem has to do with this it like originated in these like core relationships from when you were a kid, like moving, healing it or addressing it through relating differently and having like more open, more open I-thou relationships is the, it just makes sense to me intuitively, right? That and logically that having those relationships and deepening those relationships and having those kinds of bonds in your lives would be the resolution of a lot of those problems big time. And I’ve definitely seen that. You know, one of the things that we take care to be to emphasize is that, you know, it’s a it’s a paradox because encircling what we are. It’s not therapy. Right. We’re not we’re not trying to heal anything or fix anything or solve any problems. What we’re doing is we’re just practicing right the like the principles of being deeply connected and deeply related and all the things that we can we can do in relationship to that and which is in circling we talk about that as it’s just the intention to profoundly be with what is right like that’s the whole when we sit down and we that’s the first thing that we talk about when we start a circle and we practice is like first thing we say is that the what we’re doing here our sole intention is to is to practice profoundly being with what is right and the paradox of it is that through being that way right people experience these this have this experience oftentimes of healing right of resolving all kinds of issues that happen for them lots of people people talk about those you know that just by being in that environment is an inherently therapeutic in a big way

Dr. Mark Leeds [42:42] Yeah

Guy Sengstock [42:44] There’s a deep there’s a paradox there that’s I’ve always found really interesting

Dr. Mark Leeds [42:48] The thing about that’s really interesting to me is that I spoke to a psychiatrist recently and I’ve had a few psychiatrists on the podcast and I asked her and most and the other ones I’ve talked to were very much involved in treatment with medication and one who had given me the justification for why psychiatrists these days can’t really afford to give people the time that they need but this other psychiatrist I spoke to she has a practice where she gives people the time and she doesn’t prescribe medication she actually helps people get off of medications and so I thought well I finally found someone I can to ask the question of because I was always asking this question like what exactly is therapy what happens in therapy when you do therapy what conversations do you have what techniques are you doing like you know what exactly is you know do you talk about their childhood do you give them tools do you give them things to do and what she told me was interesting she said that there’s been studies showing that it doesn’t matter what you do the point of talk therapy is talk that the talking itself is what gets the result. And you could do all kinds of techniques of therapy, but what the person really needs is a conversation for a period of time. And so I can imagine what you’re doing, the result could be as or more therapeutic than any kind of formal therapy.

Guy Sengstock [44:08] Yeah, yeah. And perhaps what I’m hearing is perhaps the therapy, it’s like, well, what’s happening in and through the talking, right, is a relationship is being formed right yeah and if that relationship is open and compassionate right and real like it’s not just it’s you know this is one of the things I want to also kind of emphasize too is I can imagine somebody listening to this and thinking that like oh this is really about like a Pollyannish kind of positivity or something, right? And in reality, no, it’s about really being real. And so it’s not like we’re just shining a smile at things. No, we’re actually looking at them and relating to them profoundly and openly. And that can be, you know, you talked about you know in some sense I heard you sit talk about talk about that in starting a podcast right you’re you know you’re it’s a it’s a it’s like the last on one level it’s the last thing that you want to do is get on right is publicly have conversations with people there’s something terrifying about that but you just turning towards that and practicing facing that right has probably led to, I would imagine, has opened things up. Possibilities you couldn’t have ever foreseen.

Dr. Mark Leeds [45:36] Yeah, that’s, I mean, not just podcasting in general, but also agreeing to do episodes interviewing certain people. You know, some of the people have just terrified me. I’m like, you know, why are they even agreeing to talk to me? And I can’t possibly hold a conversation with that person. And then it turns into, you know, it turns out to be fine. It’s an incredible conversation. And, you know, other things, it, you know, it reminds me, I guess, there’s been a couple of books where people, you know, I think there was that book called The Year of Yes, where the woman, the director, you know, she said she just said yes to everything. And not that you want to say, not that a person should say yes to everything in the world. But it was also in one of Michael Singer’s books where he, I forgot which one, but one of them where he said he, for a lot of his life, he pretty much just said yes to whatever came along. And some things that he didn’t especially want to do, but he felt that God or the universe had brought these things to him. And it was his place to say yes and accept what it was. I think it was the one where he talked about getting into construction. He was building wood houses with his hands, and people came along and said, we want houses built. And somebody wanted him to write a program. He wrote a program for them. He learned how to do that. People wanted to meditate with him. He brought them in to meditate with him even even when it wasn’t something he wanted to do he said pretty much said yes to everything and all these incredible things happened throughout his life that all turned out good so yeah the podcasting was kind of like that it was I’m like I know I should say yes to it even though I don’t want to I really it would be easier just to say no and continue with my regular thing and blogging was the same thing I really didn’t want to put myself out there writing articles I’m like the first thing I’m going to write something and everyone’s going to tear it apart. You know, I’m going to say, oh, look, the doctor wrote an article. Let’s go through piece by piece and show where he’s wrong. And the way I got past it at first was I convinced myself nobody’s reading anyway. You know, I can put out a ton of articles. And then later I came to the conclusion, well, what if I say something wrong? That’s going to start a conversation. Someone will say like, oh, you’re wrong here. I’m like, well, okay, either I’m wrong or I’m not. But if I am, okay, I’ll fix it. Or let’s talk about it. Let’s see why we disagree. And you know so there’s there’s it was definitely a good thing and you know it’s important you know that was important for me now that’s become a major thing about what I do that’s that’s actually become a new job for me because I kind of wanted to move beyond health care and not have that to be the only thing that I do and I’ve actually started to write for other people and write professionally a little bit and I never in my life if you told me in school like you’re going to be a writer someday I’m like you know I can’t even write a paper you know and when I do I get like a C on it or something. I do. I’m a terrible writer. I picked my major in college to be the only major where I didn’t have to write a paper at the end.

Guy Sengstock [48:24] Yeah, right.

Dr. Mark Leeds [48:25] I mean, if you told me now I get to write write a 10 page paper, I probably could have it done by tomorrow. But if you told me that in college, I’d be like, you know, that’s never going to happen.

Guy Sengstock [48:35] Totally so this is I think is it sounds like that just saying yes to podcasting and turning towards the thing that was kind of scary and saying yes to writing and turning towards the thing that was kind of scary I think what I’m hearing you say is led to not only has it opened up possibilities that you get to participate in now but like it sounds like it’s been it’s those things have significantly transformed you had you develop more in ways that maybe weren’t even imagining were possible is that is that does that feel true

Dr. Mark Leeds [49:13] Definitely yeah and you know it makes me wonder what other things are out there what if I said no to before that I maybe I shouldn’t have and you know what might what new things might come along today that I need to be careful not to right away say no to it.

Guy Sengstock [49:28] Yeah, that’s really cool. Because what I just heard you just do right there, I think was, now you have this relationship called the domain of the unknown, right, that I could say yes to, right, that you can now you can now see, and then look back at your life and go and see things in terms of places that you could have said yes, where you’ve said no to right so it sounds like there’s this it’s transformed or made more explicitly something like the domain of the domain of the unknown itself right and it’s become something that’s I think what I’m hearing through you or the way you’re talking about it is that is that the unknown is in some sense has actually become something attractive to you

Dr. Mark Leeds [50:20] Yeah yeah and I think you know when people talk about

Guy Sengstock [50:23] That strikes me as quite a big difference right that’s a big shift

Dr. Mark Leeds [50:27] Oh yeah right

Guy Sengstock [50:29] Yeah yeah that’s a big shift

Dr. Mark Leeds [50:31] Yeah and I mean it’s one thing to jump into you know when people talk about taking a risk or jumping into the unknown where you don’t know what the outcome is going to be you know doing something dangerous or risky or new. I mean, yeah, I think I used to be like that a lot more when I was younger. So maybe I had like a long stretch of two or three decades where I was playing things safe more. But yeah, yeah. And, you know, I like to think about that monkey trap story I read somewhere, you know, like, you ever hear that the monkey, you know, that these hunters are trying to capture monkeys so they put some food in a hole in a tree and the chimp or whatever kind of monkey comes along he reaches in he tries to grab the food and he gets a big handful of food in his hand and now his hand can’t fit out of the hole anymore and the hunters come along the monkey’s stuck there he can’t get his hand out he’s like trapped and they just pick him up and throw him in a cage and all he had to do is let go of the food and walk away yeah and I think a lot of us are stuck in that trap of like you know maybe working at a job making a salary and you’re like everything is really good now if I walk away from this and do something different yeah how can any good come from that but that’s yeah you know that’s it you just gotta let go and walk away or and get out of the trap

Guy Sengstock [51:51] And that and that letting go and walking away right puts you in this place that’s it well one is what I’m hearing I think what I’m getting is it’s is it’s immediately putting you in the domain of the unknown right and that’s depending on how you relate to that right seems to determine or make more likely whether or not that domain is something that you kind of live in order to not experience right or avoid or a place that you can step into. And if you step into it becomes this zone, what they call, I think in cognitive science, the zone of proximal development, like the ideal place, right? Where it’s an edge, right? Where you’re opening up to something that’s needing something more than you currently understand to be able to relate to or how to deal with, right? However, it’s enough such that facing it, you can learn about it, right? And open up to that domain and develop yourself the zone of proximal development and that edge. And what’s interesting about this is kind of tying that back into why I think relationship, real, genuine, authentic relationship is so important for us. Because in some sense, you know, intimacy, the system thinkers talk about family systems thinking talks about intimacy in a way that I really like, which is they talk about intimacy as a function of the ability to tolerate anxiety. Right? Right. Like and the way that they would talk about it. And it’s kind of getting at this kind of zone of proximal development in a certain sense. Right. And it makes sense why in order to be intimate, you have to tolerate anxiety because, you know, essentially the way they talk about it is that human beings have the two fundamental drives. Right. That comes with existing. Right. With being a human being. That one have we have this deep deep longing for closeness and the security and the comfort that comes and the belonging that comes with that closeness and at the same time we have has as deep of a drive for autonomy right to stand on our own to be unique right and to be autonomous and so when you go into relationships you end you end up you know and they talk about it’s like if you if you conceptualize yourself as a bullseye right as a concentric right rings into the center and the other person is a bullseye and then as you come close to the other person you hit these levels right of closeness and that when you hit and when you come up to a certain level of closeness it’s it’s where those points come up where it looks like what I want or to be who I am, it looks like it may risk being close with you, right? And so you get into these, it can become really anxious, right? And there’s three ways that they talk about that you move away from anxiety and thus move away from intimacy, is that you move away from it from like one way is just to dissociate, right? Of like, rather than say your truth and risk, right? And risk the relationship in a certain sense. Instead, you’ll just dissociate. And the other way is you’ll dominate, right? You’ll just take over the situation, right? And I’ll never even open up to what that you may be other than me or want something different, right? And so we’ll dominate as a way of moving away from that anxiety. Or we submit and we just say, well, I’ll just do whatever you want. Right. And that’s another way of moving away from the anxiety. And then they say, or actually move towards this, move towards the fear and the anxiety and actually say what you want and open to what the other person wants. Right. Are these moments of tolerating that anxiety that break open to become something that you start to you break into a domain where where something becomes possible that you couldn’t foresee right and I think I think be having relationships in your life right if those relationships are deepening right constantly bring up those occasions of that zone of proximal development that continually keeps us on our on our edge in a good way

Dr. Mark Leeds [56:43] Yeah yeah that makes sense I was wondering you know speaking of that I’m thinking about all you know all the things that you’re saying and you know when people you know come together and you know and relate to each other there’s you know there’s a lot of expectations and I was thinking of like suppose that someone you know maybe someone in recovery from addiction just for an example. They’re home alone, they’re watching TV and, you know, trying and they want to get up and get out of the house because they know that it’s not good to be alone with themselves. They want to be around other people. And they could go to the mall and be around people that they don’t interact with at all. Or they could go to, you know, because they’re in recovery, they could go to AA or NA, one of the 12-step groups where someone will talk and then they’ll have a chance to raise your hand and talk. And it kind of follows a close script of what’s allowable in a 12-step meeting to talk about. Or they could go to one of the newer kind of meetings. There’s Smart Recovery, which I’ve heard great things about. It’s very similar, but without the 12 steps. But now suppose a person is looking through all the list of things they can find in their community and they see circling. There’s a circling group. And they’re like, decide, I don’t know what that is. I’m going to take a chance and go there. They show up at the right time. They walk in the door. What can they expect? This person, you know, maybe they’re looking to make friends, to meet people like them, to they don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. All they know is there’s people in there and they’re going to have a chance to interact with people. What happens from there?

Guy Sengstock [58:16] Totally. Well, one of the things that I can just describe what we do in our opening every Thursday night from six to nine Pacific Standard Time, And we have an open event where just anybody can come and we circle together for three hours. And how we start off is we start off with just a little centering meditation. And then we go over a set of agreements that we kind of articulate that kind of lay the ground rules for what we’re going to be doing that night. And then we go right into some kind of relational practice, right? Some kind of thing where we break because it’s all on zoom so we’ll break they’ll break out into partners right one or two people or three people and there’ll be some exercise that is about like essentially being with this person and maybe just saying what you notice right what you feel being with this person and then the other person says hearing that I notice I’m feeling right and then the person says hearing that now I’m noticing or different exercises that involve like following your curiosity and asking questions these all the different things all the different kind of you could say dribble drills or ways of taking a piece of relating and creating a constraint around it and then just going deep in that practice we’ll do that for like a half an hour to 45 minutes right and then we’ll come back into the main room and people will talk about their experience of that right and relate about that then after a small break then we’ll come back and we’ll start the we’ll we’ll we’ll break up into groups of anywhere between four to six people and there’ll be a leader for each one of those groups and then we’ll we’ll go into the practice of circling right and with that and what the form that we take we do on thursday nights is circling is where one person chooses to be the center of attention right and we all bring our attention to that person and to ourselves and then that person usually starts talking about something important to them right something going on in their life It could be something that they really, that’s really singing for them, right? In a positive way, it could be something that they’re really struggling with. And then, and then we all start to deeply relate with that person and share what it’s like for us being with them, right? What we’re getting, what we’re feeling, what we’re experiencing and hearing them talk about their lives. And also what we’re hearing them say, right, and the deeper levels of what we’re seeing, right, which usually, which that dynamic opens, oftentimes it has the experience for the person being circled and really opening up to more of themselves, to show more of themselves, right, which invites everyone else to take a deeper look and an experience that opens the listener up. And there’s this, you could say what starts to happen is this mutual, you could say, autopoietic reciprocal self-opening, right, starts to take hold where there’s an exhilarating, John Vervaeke calls it, you know, he’s got awesome vocabulary. He calls it about it like an accelerating, a reciprocal, accelerating sense of self-disclosure, right? So everyone starts to have a deeper level of basically revealing themselves more and in revealing themselves more, right, inviting you to reveal yourself more, right, which invites me to reveal yourselves more. So that happens at a personal level but as you keep if you keep doing that you start to actually what starts to get disclosed is like not just what’s going on personally but you start to get in contact with these more universal things right you start to feel this you start to feel this sense of being itself become something that is disclosed and opens up or love itself right these kind of platonic universal senses of things can start to can start to be felt and experienced and talked about in and realized in and through the circling and we do that for probably we do usually a couple of circles so we do that for a couple of hours total and then we come back and then we all sit and kind of check in about what that experience was like for us right and then we talk about the different ways you know the different things that we do at the Circling Institute and ways to go deeper with the practice. And so you can imagine somebody walking out of that, right? Yeah. Kind of just, they haven’t even left their house, right? And then going and having that experience, you can imagine the different universe they’re living in, right? Before and after that, it’s pretty profound.

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:03:31] Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. And what about in person? I mean, what opportunities does a person have to do this in person and actually in the same room with other people?

Guy Sengstock [1:03:43] Right. Well, right now. It’s funny because it used to all be in a person. And for the last 25 years, I’ve been doing everything in person in the Bay Area. And then and then COVID hit and then everything went online. And so we did our stuff online and it completely worked online in a way that was a bit daunting to see how well it worked online. Cause I’m kind of, you know, I was a little bit set in my ways about like, it had to be done in person, but it doesn’t have to be done in person. So we are now with the restrictions being lifted, we’re just getting our feet back in the water about how we’re going to unfulfill things in person, but there’s nothing available right now.

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:04:27] Okay. Yeah. I forgot that. I mean, we’re, I’m, Florida. So, I mean, California and Florida are like different situations with COVID and everything. Yeah. So are you in San Francisco right now?

Guy Sengstock [1:04:39] Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:04:41] Oh, okay. Oh, that’s great. Yeah. We went on a vacation there a few years ago […]

Guy Sengstock [1:04:49] Oh, yeah. Yeah. The Bay Area is awesome. It’s awesome. There’s so much happening here. Yes.

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:04:55] Yeah. We stayed in an Airbnb on the beach and the beach was beautiful. I mean, it’s really cold and different definitely different from the beaches here I mean just like something out of a painting and yeah yeah it was it was a lot of fun I mean it’s did

Guy Sengstock [1:05:09] You go where you mean like Ocean Beach in San Francisco

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:05:12] Oh I don’t know how to I know there was a train like a was it a Judah something street it was a train that circled around the end like it came to the like the end of the train line was right where we were right by the house we were staying in it would circle around and go back again right but I don’t remember and there was I remember there was a restaurant oh this good place where we were if there was a there was a windmill and there was you go up a hill and there’s a restaurant on top of the hill and then right there’s a bathhouse thing that from like the early 1900s that there’s remnants of it there

Guy Sengstock [1:05:48] Yeah yeah that’s yeah that’s yeah that’s that’s right in san francisco it’s right around ocean beach

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:05:54] Okay yeah it was it was beautiful and then it wasn’t too hard at first we were determined to use public transportation then we finally gave in and rented a car we only meant to rent it for a day we use some kind of a car rental service where you find the car on the street in front of someone’s apartment and you they activate it remotely you just get in and drive it away and so we did it for 24 hours and then we found we could extend it so we just kept the car and just drove around everywhere. And we got to go visit one of my favorite podcasters, Leo Laporte. We drove up north to a studio. And they let us come in and watch his main Sunday night podcast for like three hours. And that was a lot of fun to do that. Yeah, it was a great trip. We walked the Golden Gate Bridge. But yeah, I can imagine it must be a great place to live and work.

Guy Sengstock [1:06:49] Yeah, it has been for me. It has been for me for sure yeah

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:06:51] Yeah so definitely a good place to visit and then lately we’ve been we visited brooklyn we walked the brooklyn bridge which is kind of a similar experience that’s fun and yeah another totally opposite end of the side of the country but you know also kind of similar in some ways you know just like you know he was looking for a good bakery good coffee you know fancy historical bridge to walk

Guy Sengstock [1:07:16] Yeah totally yeah totally that’s gorgeous yeah yeah I love I love brooklyn I love being in new york I don’t know if I could I don’t know if I have the I’d be able to tolerate like living there all like all the time but touching in new york is just there’s something going on there that’s not going on anywhere else in the world for sure.

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:07:40] Oh yeah yeah definitely but I would agree I mean you know it gets it gets stressful after a while and you know just you know being out you know there’s just so much going on I mean yeah like you know I kind of like the quiet cleanliness of where we live is it’s very quiet here it’s not no garbage on the streets not a lot of noise but yeah it’s definitely fun to go visit […] yeah so yeah as far as the circling where where can someone find out more about it like if someone is listening and they’re really intrigued and they want to get involved what’s the next step for them

Guy Sengstock [1:08:22] Just go to www circlinginstitute.com so circlinginstitute all one word.com and then All the links for all the different things that we have going on are there. We have, like I talked about, the Thursday night happens every week from 6 to 9 p.m. On Thursdays. Thursday evenings, that’s been happening every Thursday for years now. We also do intensive weekends. We have one, I think, we just did one, so I think we have another one coming up in about five or six weeks. And then we also have the art of circling program which is a year-long training in the art of being able to facilitate circling and we have like there’s a bunch of different levels after that but those are the main things that are kind of if people are interested those are all the things that they can ways that can jump in and participate there’s also if you go on if you go online we have, like, we’ve written a bunch of, like, blog posts about different aspects of circling. And then I have a, my own channel. It’s called Circling Via Logos, or if you just look up Guy Sengstock. It’s, the emphasis that I, what I talk about on the channel, it, of course, involves a lot of circling just by virtue of, that’s kind of my history. However I that channel has really turned out to be something more of the work that I’m doing with John Vervaeke and christopher called Dialogos which is really an ecology of practices that’s kind of bringing the intimacy of circling right into philosophical ideas and the world of the world of meaning and those kinds of conversations and so that’s kind of the emphasis on my channel but you can find all kinds of stuff there of just really wild insightful deep you know everything from like personally deep and intimate to like deep and profound in the philosophical insightful sense of the word as well that’s all on my channel

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:10:43] Oh great great and the thursday night thing is that is there like a capacity like can you take I mean I would imagine a lot of people get get involved with that is that something that’s open, like anyone they want to try it this coming Thursday, that there’s probably availability?

Guy Sengstock [1:10:58] Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah, you can just go online, and you can just, I think it’s $20. So it’s pretty cheap. And anybody can come. You can come this Thursday, for sure.

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:11:08] Oh, that’s great. Yeah, you know, I think I’m gonna, I’m gonna see, you know, […] I’m gonna be there. And I definitely recommend it. Definitely recommend oh are there no there’s one video that I found on youtube like do you recommend or do you have on your website do you host videos of like examples there’s one incredible video of you demonstrating circling but do you have a lot of like other videos of that

Guy Sengstock [1:11:33] Of me of circle demonstrations of circling no in fact the one the one that you saw is really rare because we actually had somebody just come and film me demoing a circle for the art of circling right a number of years ago and it actually was able to capture after it was able to capture it I thought quite well but being able to capture circling on video and stuff like that has been it’s been it usually doesn’t come come across really that you don’t really get a sense of on video but that when you do and that’s on my that’s on my on my youtube channel you can find it’s like the one that’s featured when you go to my channel it’s the it’s the one that’s actually featured there

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:12:23] Okay so the best way a person can really get to know what it’s about is to start probably show up thursday night

Guy Sengstock [1:12:29] Yeah yeah yeah I want to encourage everybody to come to thursday night yeah it’s like it doesn’t take much you just show up and bring your presence and you’ll get it you’ll get the first taste of what’s possible with circling yeah and if you want to go deeper there’s all different kinds of ways you can go deeper with them

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:12:47] Yeah yeah that’s I mean just right there you just gave me a new resource that I can talk you know when I talk to patients I can say here’s something you can do you know you can do this on wednesday night and now you have a thursday night thing to do

Guy Sengstock [1:13:00] Totally yeah absolutely absolutely so

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:13:05] That’s perfect thank you guys thanks doc Thank you for joining me today on the podcast.

Guy Sengstock [1:13:09] It’s been so nice getting to know you a bit. I look forward to more. Thank you.