Practice Dojo

With open front doors, the Practice Dojo is a skill-building space welcoming novices and experts alike to train in a variety of developmental-relational practices.

• developmental grows and shifts your perspective-taking capacity
• relational is caring interactive presence with joint attention and reflection
• practice is participatory enactment of a way-of-being, shifting how/who we are

History

The Practice Dojo became its own space in 2024 with the debut of the IS Developmental Practice Series, followed by an Exploratory Practice Series tour and the heartfelt Being With It All series.

We co-hosted some Circling practice series with our friends at Communication Dojo. We showed up at Limicon 2025 throughout March 2025. Latter 2025 also brought refined iterations of the DPS course and Being With It All

Further geekery

Why dojo? The "dojo" metaphor helps transmit the nature of this practice space: it is a programmatic facilitated space of immersive experiential learning and transformative growth. From the Japanese (traceable to Sanskrit), it translates literally as "place of the way" with a lineage of rich meaning and many applicable connotations. (The closest western-flavored metaphors might be "gymnasium" or "(dance) studio".)

What counts as a developmental-relational practice?

Category-anchoring practice examples:

• T-Group (focus on me)
• Circling (focus on relating me-and-you)
• Collective Presencing (focus on we)
• Case Clinic (focus on relating me-and-world)

More practices that easily belong:

• Empathy Circling, Dialogos (Vervaeke-Sengstock), Bohm Dialogue, CP-adjacent such as [Communal Reverie, Ephemeral Group Process, Inquiry Spiraling], Authentic Relating Games, some Liberating Structures such as [Nine Whys and Troika Consulting], Sacred Ground Experience, Uncertainment, Grief Circles, Glass Bead Game

More practices that can/could sometimes belong with appropriate relational holding:

• Clean/Pure Coaching, Parts Work (IFS), Ideal Parent Figure Protocol, Appreciative Inquiry, Death Cafe, Imaginal work, Shadow work, Open Stance circles, OANMarket/Gifting practice