The practice
Lineage · Anatomy · Among the therapies · Side by side
The schools that teach Circling and Authentic Relating, and how they grew out of one another.
The practice has grown three branches: the schools, mapped here; research that studies it; and its uses in other fields. The other two are on the map. This one is kept apart, because its history rests on practitioners’ own accounts rather than on published work: much of it was passed on in person, and some dates and credits are disputed. Each school lists its sources and says what is disputed. Checked 27 Oct 2026.
Circling in San Francisco2
- 1998
Arete Experience
The weekend course where Circling got its name and its first paying groups. The practice itself had been taking shape for a few years before, in more than one group.
Accounts give different dates: Sengstock dates the practice to 1995 and the Arete Center, the organisation behind the course, to 1996; others place the start in 1997 or 1998.
Founded by: Guy Sengstock and Jerry Candelaria
Sources: International Circling Federation ↗, Guy Sengstock ↗, Circling Guide ↗
- 2013The Circling Institute ↗
Sengstock’s school, teaching what it calls the Original Circling Approach. It is one of the schools licensed by the International Circling Federation, which holds the Circling trademark, to certify practitioners.
The school dates its teaching from 1998, counting the Arete years; Sengstock dates the institute itself to 2013.
Founded by: Guy Sengstock and Alexis Shepperd
Grew out of: Arete Experience
In the catalogue: Repetti 2023, Lewis & Lewis 2024
Sources: The Circling Institute ↗, Guy Sengstock ↗
Authentic Relating and Integral Circling5
- c. 2000
Authentic World
Where Authentic Relating took shape: a San Francisco community built around evenings of relating games. Decker and Kendra Cunov’s trainer programme, T3, began here in 2010.
The community played by a short set of rules, the “Game for Intimacy”, agreed by Cunov, Bayer and others with the business coach Mark Michael Lewis, who described such a game in his book RelationDancing (2003); the Integral Center later counted Lewis’s game among the antecedents of its school. Accounts place the community’s start between the late 1990s and the early 2000s.
- 2004
Authentic Man Program
A course for men that carried the community’s relating practices into dating and romantic partnership. Its counterpart for women, the Authentic Woman Experience, was led by Alexis Shepperd and Shana James.
Its last course at the Integral Center was planned for early 2018, before the centre closed. No later end date is public.
Founded by: Bryan Bayer and Decker Cunov
Grew out of: Authentic World
Sources: Circling Guide ↗, Adam Coutts ↗, AuthenticSF, 2006 ↗
- 2011
The Integral Center
A Boulder centre where Authentic Relating and Circling were taught side by side and grew into Integral Circling, framed by Ken Wilber’s integral theory. Facilitators came from many countries to train there.
It took over Boulder Integral (2008–2011), an integral community centre at the same address that had already held Zen evenings with Jun Po Roshi, talks on integral psychotherapy and Authentic Relating game nights. As the Integral Center it also housed Mondo Zen and Integral Zen groups and yoga classes with Sofia Diaz. Its closure was announced for March 2018; by February 2019 its website said it had closed.
Founded by: Decker Cunov, Robert MacNaughton and Bryan Bayer
Grew out of: Authentic World
Sources: Michael Porcelli ↗, International Circling Federation ↗, Boulder Integral, 2008 ↗, The Integral Center, 2017 ↗, The Integral Center, 2019 ↗
- 2013Authentic Revolution ↗
Sara Ness’s organisation, known for the Authentic Relating Games Manual, which gathers hundreds of games and variations from dozens of facilitators. Ness began running games nights in Houston and Austin in 2012.
It gives 2013 as its founding year; Ness has also dated the company’s incorporation to 2014.
Founded by: Sara Ness
In the catalogue: Nica 2022, Lewis & Lewis 2024
Sources: Authentic Revolution ↗, Adam Coutts ↗
- 2017ART International ↗
Authentic Relating Training International, set up to bring the training to a mainstream audience, more cheaply than the small, costly courses before it. Both founders came from the Integral Center’s community.
Founded by: Ryel Kestano and Jason Digges
Grew out of: The Integral Center
In the catalogue: Lewis & Lewis 2024
Sources: ART International, our story ↗, ART International, our founders ↗
Circling Europe and what grew from it3
- 2012Transformational Connection ↗
Founded by two practitioners from the UK, who found Decker Cunov online in 2008 and trained in San Francisco with him and with Guy Sengstock. It frames the practice in five principles.
Its way of leading groups, Surrendered Leadership, which follows what emerges in a group rather than a plan, took shape in its workshops from 2013, partly through work with the psychotherapist Alanja Forsberg. Accounts differ on whom to credit for it. In 2024 the school stopped using the Circling name, a trademark held by the International Circling Federation, and became Transformational Connection.
Founded by: Sean Wilkinson and John Thompson
Grew out of: Authentic World
In the catalogue: Greenwood 2017, Lewis & Lewis 2024
Sources: Circling Europe, 2019 ↗, International Circling Federation ↗, The Circling Institute ↗, John Thompson ↗
- 2015Avalon ↗
Alanja Forsberg’s school, which combines Circling with other methods, psychodrama among them. She worked closely with Circling Europe from 2013, and Circling Europe counted Avalon as part of its lineage.
Founded by: Alanja Forsberg
Grew out of: Transformational Connection
Sources: Circling Guide ↗, Circling Europe, 2017 ↗, Avalon ↗
- 2015The Relateful Company ↗
The online platform for daily practice that Jordan Myska Allen built as a partner in Circling Europe. In 2023 it took its own name and renamed its practice relatefulness.
Its line runs from the United States to Europe and back: Allen, from Texas, joined Circling Europe in 2014. Its Austin community was started with Sara Ness, of Authentic Revolution, and others.
Founded by: Jordan Myska Allen
Grew out of: Transformational Connection
In the catalogue: Lewis & Lewis 2024
Sources: The Relateful Company, 2023 ↗, Circling Europe, 2019 ↗, Circling Guide ↗
Integrations1
- c. 2018We-Flow ↗
A practice for teams and working life, which its makers built by taking apart Circling, Authentic Relating, integral theory and Zen state training. It reports gains at client companies but cites no research.
Segatori dates his first workshops to 2016; the lab’s own site has put the start of its methods around 2018. He describes the practice as having emerged from a group rather than from one inventor.
Founded by: Stéphane Segatori
Grew out of: The Integral Center
Sources: We-Flow ↗, Stéphane Segatori, on Relating Arts ↗, Integral European Conference, 2022 ↗
A parallel line of circle work2
- 1985Heart Circle ↗
Tej Steiner’s circle practice, which grew out of the open support circles and men’s groups he led from the mid-1980s. No documented line joins it to Circling; the two meet later in Heart iQ, which draws on both.
Founded by: Tej Steiner
Sources: Heart Circle, 2017 ↗, WE-powered ↗, Circling Guide ↗
- 2006Heart iQ ↗
Christian Pankhurst’s school of circle work. He was mentored in circle work by Tej Steiner and counts circling among the practices it draws on; Circling Europe has written of an affinity with it.
Pankhurst dates the start of his approach to 2006; a practitioner guide gives about 2009.
Founded by: Christian Pankhurst
Grew out of: Heart Circle
Sources: Heart iQ ↗, Christian Pankhurst, Evolve Fest ↗, Circling Europe, 2019 ↗, Circling Guide ↗
What the schools share
Their forms differ, but they aim at the same thing: closer contact with yourself and with other people. They also train the same capacity, mostly without naming it: noticing experience as it happens, sensations in the body included, and speaking and acting from there. Call it phenomenological agency.
In Ken Wilber’s integral theory, which shaped several of these schools, people develop in four ways: waking up, growing up, cleaning up and showing up. There is no “relating up”. These practices read better as the same development done together: waking up, growing up and showing up in what the theory calls the “we” quadrant, between people rather than within one.
What came before
Practitioners’ histories name much the same forerunners: encounter groups and T-groups; Landmark’s large-group trainings; the teachings on men and women of David Deida and of Vic Baranco’s Lafayette Morehouse community, where the hot-seat game began; Gestalt therapy and holotropic breathwork; and the rave and Burning Man scene of 1990s San Francisco. Jason Digges recalls that Susan Campbell’s Getting Real was required reading in the early Circling schools.
Buddhist meditation and Ken Wilber’s integral theory mostly came in later, as the practice grew, above all in Boulder and in Europe, though Decker Cunov had sat Vipassana retreats before he moved to California.
Further reading
- A history of Circling: Adam Coutts’s long, personal account (2018).
- The history of Circling, from Marc Beneteau’s Circling Guide.
- The history of Authentic Relating and Circling practice: Jason Digges (2024).
- The three schools of Circling: Michael Porcelli (2016).
- A history of the relating arts: a wider timeline of relational practices, which its author says may contain mistakes.