Books

Perls et al. · Demanding

The founding text of Gestalt therapy, which Circling’s own histories name among the practice’s roots. Its starting point is contact: what we experience arises where a person meets their surroundings.

Gendlin · Accessible

For contact with your own experience: the “felt sense”, an unclear bodily sense of a whole situation from which more precise meaning can emerge.

Bohm · Accessible

For noticing how a group creates meaning and gets stuck: suspending assumptions so they can be examined rather than defended or suppressed.

Buber · Moderate

The best first book on what it means to meet someone: relating to a person as a “Thou” rather than as an object of knowledge or use.

Heidegger · Demanding

Changes how you understand experience, relationship and authenticity. Being-with, solicitude and attunement give a vocabulary for what happens in a circle.

A way in: Being-in-the-World · Dreyfus · Moderate

Merleau-Ponty · Demanding

For a deeper understanding of embodiment: how our bodily involvement in the world underlies perception and experience.

Murdoch · Moderate

For the quality of your attention: how self-concern and fantasy get in the way of seeing others clearly, and how attention can become an ethical discipline.

Levinas · Moderate

For respect for another person’s otherness: the other exceeds our ability to comprehend them, and calls us into responsibility.