Meta Lab: How to Harvest and Share “Systems Sensing” Experiences
In this post, we provide highlights from a recent meta lab we hosted to explore how practitioners who engage in systems sensing and systemic constellations work can best harvest and share the diverse outputs and experiences generated.
In our work in the field of societal change, we’ve noticed some common themes and patterns that emerge during the systems sensing and systemic constellations sessions we offer. These themes mirror across multiple scales — from individual and interpersonal to team, organizational, community, and the broader ecosystem — and also repeat across long time frames. For example, over the past two years the themes of “voice, power, and belonging” surfaced not only in our action research and practice sessions, but also with clients and in our own team dialogues. We found ourselves wondering how we could best harvest and track both individual expressions on themes and the patterns they make together in the larger whole.
In early 2021, we introduced the adapted “async constellations” approach in a training course on Systemic Constellations for Societal Change, focusing on the themes of voice, power, and belonging. Practitioners undertook this exercise asynchronously, at their own pace and in different time zones, then shared the highlights and essences of their systems sensing experiences with the group. This sharing took many forms, including written summaries, poetry, journal entries, visuals, drawings, maps, artwork, and an audio recording. With such diverse and rich content, tracking and “making meaning” posed more questions than answers.
To explore how to best share, harvest, and make meaning from these systems sensing experiences, especially over time, we hosted a “meta lab” within the practice space to invite the wisdom of the collective to focus on the process of practice. While the focus was on how to share these experiences in general, the Meta Lab also deepened the inquiry on how we can approach broad topics related to societal change and their interrelated patterns.
Framing the conversation
Six practitioners joined the Meta Lab to explore a question that Collective Transitions’ Nancy Zamierowski framed at the start of the call: “How do we best approach societal change topics, including their scale and breadth?” We wanted to consider whether there was value in sharing, with a wider constituency, the specific sensing experiences and learnings from the practice spaces — or whether the essence of these experiences should remain only with those who participated.
Moreover, if this wider sharing is deemed valuable for research and meaning-making around broader societal change themes, what is the best way to harvest and track the highlights from these experiences? For instance, how do we document experiences that are largely sensory or “right brain” in a way that can be correlated with others and traced over time?
After framing the conversation, Nancy invited a round of sharing of intent, asking the practitioners: “What brought you to this call today? Within the topic of harvest, integration, and sharing, what interests you?”
The following are highlights from the discussion, which provided insight into the practitioners’ individual motivations for joining the call and for engaging in the broader practice of shared inquiry through async constellations.
Gaining insight on the shared inquiry practice
One practitioner spoke to the daringness of “not knowing” and being surprised, a core principle and capacity of the shared inquiry practice: “True to form with this whole practice and modality, I am curious to know, ‘where is this going to go?’ I have no idea. And then these incredible insights and information come through. So I’m just really interested in … showing up to be with the shape and form that this one is to become.”
Another practitioner shared: “For me, the aspect of revisiting the process [and also the outputs] is something I’m really curious about. During the practice, things come through in the moment and it’s really clear — what I’m sensing, feeling, writing down. And then going back to life, I notice it’s really easy to forget [the insights]. The act of pulling up my notes again and rereading them right now is valuable.”
A practitioner also described how being part of the practice community over the year made it possible to tune into a whole new way of thinking:
“The [theme of] voice, power, and belonging is a particular interest to me. I mean, I think it’s so critical collectively right now. And for me, it’s definitely been this ongoing story and journey around expressing my voice. … I’m also interested in the quietest voices, and the voices of non-humans and that sort of thing. And so for me, it’s like, how do we listen to that? And, how do power structures allow for that?”
The value of group validation
For one participant, there wasn’t any specific intention around participating in the meta lab discussion, but just to be in this emergent space and to see what form and shape it would take, when engaging with a larger group to validate the practice. She explained: “My curiosity and question is … around the validity of how [systems sensing approaches] exist within the system …. [M]y belief is that [individual sensing experiences] need to be seen or calibrated with a group in order to either land or become something else.”
Another participant noted:
“I’m trying to respect the practice while making sure that there’s a responsibility to know that intuition and sensing are really subjective. And I think subjective is very valuable. As is the objective reality…. So how do we calibrate for that in a group? And that’s why I find that a community of practice and threading things — seeing where there’s commonality and including the steps like debriefing and reflecting — are really important to the process. And I’m not sure what that looks like yet.”
Using creative formats to explore and share experiences
One practitioner explained that, when engaging in systems sensing, she’s witnessed how images, maps, and other forms of creative expression have been valuable for both communication and the recall of experiences. She described how a person in her practice group “was sharing an experience from over a month ago with such vivid details [that], in a way, I could almost relive the experience with them. ‘How did you do that?’ I asked her in amazement. She then showed me a map she created with different images and symbols that provided memory cues which seemed to anchor the essence of the experience. From there, she could retell the story as if it just happened.”
The practitioner noted that the idea of using maps and other visuals as a communication tool, rather than simply sharing verbally, sparked several questions for her:
“How do we communicate the expressions, emotions, felt senses, and energy of these experiences? Is putting them into words or effectively distilling and processing sensory experiences with the left brain, so that someone else can read them and then reconstruct the experience, really the most effective and efficient way to communicate these experiences? What’s a more direct way to express the essence so someone else can interpret and even recreate an experience?”
She added: “I’m interested in creating a space to actually acknowledge all those forms — as visuals, movement, sound, song, metaphors, and poetry, for example — that could be valuable.”
Another practitioner observed: “[These are] qualitative or right brain data. They can also be expressed as quasi-quantitative/analytical data, in the sense of mapping the patterns in a consistent way, for example like measures of amplitude or frequency as a way to visualize relationships.”
A participant jumped in: “I was going through the same thought process that you were. I’m very much a pen and paper type person, and with colors. I have different colors for different parts of different threads of my mind, i.e., ‘that fits into that quality, that fits into that quality.’ And, I distribute through colors and also sounds.”
Validating different ways of knowing
The group then discussed various approaches to validating the information and the different “ways of knowing” that are generated during the systems sensing practice, in a way that contributes to broader collective understanding.
One practitioner inquired: “I want to better understand how to share the experience in a way that is valuable. For example, what are the forms and shapes of the experience, both individually and how can that, if at all, translate to a collective experience? For me, that comes back to community building and connecting to the experience to start to validate the different ways we know or can sense in the body.”
Another practitioner compared knowledge and information, explaining that, “Data can become knowledge through a shared commonality, context, or shared experience.”
Sensual and verbal affirmation
A practitioner chimed in: “I’m resonating with this so much. I’ve been finding in the process of practicing async constellations, I like to stand up to feel body sensations of an element, and then [I perceive] image-based information where I’ll just … go on a visual journey. And then when I’m sharing it for the first time, that is when words will usually come. In this way, I’m realizing that having a partner or someone witnessing the sharing part is very valuable.”
Another participant shared her appreciation for the group sharing aspect of async constellations, and its role in validating the more sensual experiences that occur:
“These practices are so precious when you’re in a safe community where I can share the direct translation of [what’s being experienced] and be seen and validated for that. I’m curious about the power of community witnessing and mirroring … and if that helps create that initial validation that’s real. I often don’t know how to put it quite into words that there’s something that’s taking place or something that I’m seeing visually in the experience … [So] coming back and using whatever form of sharing that is held [and received] right away, I think does give it a sense of liveliness or validation … to the many ways that we receive information … including body sensations.”
Validation and legitimacy
Another thread kept coming up around the need for validation and legitimacy around systems sensing work and the systemic constellations approach more generally, given its unconventional nature. A practitioner shared:
“It speaks to the belonging theme and also having yourself be recognized within the whole. There is a second form of validity or legitimacy as this [field] of practice is recognized in a greater sense in [societal change topics such as] conflict mitigation. For example, just as sharing within the group is a method for that validation, sharing externally and going through the process of finding the common meaning could be valuable to the process, especially with skeptics.
For example, I’m sharing a lot of this work with my sister and she’s an architect, who values linear thinking. There is often a lot of miscommunication that happens and I have to go through a practice of making meaning together including finding a language that resonates with her. For example, instead of saying ‘felt sense,’ I can say, this ‘affects my physiology’, which is based in science.”
The conversation led to discussing different examples of blended modalities that, like systemic constellations, bridge between mainstream and emerging approaches — for example, the use of art in medicine and collective interpretive dance therapy. The conversation further evolved into discussing representation systems and pattern language, for example using icons or images for asana poses as helpful reminders within a longer yoga sequence, how dance instructors break down a flowing form into smaller movements, and how sign language uses the full body to express ideas and thoughts.
Reflections on the Meta Lab
Toward the end of the Meta Lab conversation, practitioners shared concluding thoughts and reflections about the harvesting and sharing of both individual sensing experiences and the common themes and patterns that emerge from the larger whole. Ultimately, for many, this work felt like an exercise and journey in voice, power, and belonging. The discussion circle closed by giving gratitude to the practice and letting the richness of experience settle and integrate.
This post was co-authored by Nancy Zamierowski and Stacey Sude, both practitioners on the Collective Transitions team. Many thanks go to the contributors who participated in the Meta Lab and discussion: Stacey Sude, Allie Armitage, Julia Mande, Milla McLachlan, Keith Riggs, and Nancy Zamierowski.
