FW: What a facilitator does when she holds space

[Harrison Owen]

Raffi -- love your thoughts -- but when faced with such an interrogator as
you describe-- my answer would be pretty simple. "We breathe a lot." We
breathe a lot -- especially when other folks forget to. And that is why we
get paid the big bucks.

Harrison

Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland   20845
Phone 301-365-2093

Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html



-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Raffi
Aftandelian
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 4:20 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: What a facilitator does when she holds space

This weekend I was at a Moscow conference of trainers and consultants.

There was a "demonstration" OST in the middle of it, to show how OST
works. And curiously it worked pretty ok despite some of my concern that by
announcing the topic only at the opening of the event it might flop...

After the end of the mini-OST meeting, there was a debrief on OST. One
participant who does lots of martial arts, holotropic breathing, and
other assorted goodies/practices wondered what does the OST
facilitator "do"? THe OST facilitators present tried explaining to no
avail.

He simply couldn't understand. He explained that he needs a visual
model to "get it."

And later it dawned on me: I have for a while thought of OST being a
very fast means of humans consciously recreating all of nature's
processes in a bounded environment (think the biosphere experiment).
And this led me on to the aha...if the facilitator is opening a space
for nature to happen, then the facilitator is...God!

What does God do to make grass grow? Nothing.

I am curious what others think of this God model of facilitation. I
almost shared this "model" with this participant, but my instinct got
the better of me. That is not the thing you should EVER, probably,
tell someone interested in OST.

That realization is something people need to come to themselves. It's
just downright scary for one thing.

And this brings me to the how of holding space. Of course, for each
person God is/acts/is called something different, so the nature of
that held space will be different.

People's thoughts?

Raffi


                          mailto:raffi at bk.ru

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist