Authentic Relating & Circling
Immersion Level 1
Nelson, BC | Oct 19-20 | 15 people max
In a Nutshell:
Join us for an advanced training designed to master the art of conscious communication, human connection, conflict navigation, speaking your truth, and empathetic listening. This immersive experience includes a weekend of profound and playful connection with wholehearted individuals committed to personal growth and authenticity.
What is Authentic Relating?
Authentic Relating (AR) is a transformative practice centred on being truly yourself. It involves being real, honest, revealed, and transparent, allowing others to see, hear, and understand your inner world. You will engage in AR exercises specifically designed to deepen your connection with yourself and others. In a supportive environment, you are encouraged to express your genuine feelings and thoughts, fostering a profound sense of understanding and closeness among participants. Authentic Relating is more than just a practice—it’s a growing movement with vibrant communities worldwide. People are gathering to connect authentically and enrich the human experience, fostering a sense of belonging and deeper interpersonal connections.
What is Circling?
If AR is practicing the punching and kicking moves, Circling is the sparring match where all these skills come together. Circling is a relational meditation in which participants share their authentic present-moment experiences—sensations, emotions, and thoughts—while connecting with each other. Participants express their sensations, emotions, thoughts, judgments, assumptions, stories, desires, attractions, observations about each other’s demeanour or way of being, the group's dynamics, moments of dissociation, boredom, and more, all in an exploration of consciousness through the present moment. Two common types of Circles are “focus circles,” where one person is the centre of attention for up to an hour, revealing their present-moment experience to a group exploring their world, and “organic circles,” where there is no focus person and attention moves organically as people reveal themselves and follow their curiosity.
For more information about Circling, you can download the West Coast Handbook here.
In this level 1 immersion you will:
Learn fundamental ground rules, principles, and teachings for Authentic Relating & Circling.
Connect deeply with other seekers on a path of personal development and evolution of consciousness.
Learn the language of intimacy that creates the opportunity for deeper connection through understanding and practicing the three levels of conversation.
Learn powerful empathetic listening tools such as the art of reflective listening, sharing impact, and art of asking presence-deepening-questions.
Experience your first Focus Circle which is 20-40 minutes of a small group focusing on exploring your present moment experience in connection with the group. You’ll be transparently revealing your thoughts and feelings, while the group explores your world and shares their experience in connection with you.
Become more relationally aware by getting lots of present moment honest feedback about how others feel in connection with you moment by moment, when they feel most/least connected with you, how your way of being impacts others, how you seem, and stories/assumptions others have of you. This practice reveals your relational blindspots that are unconscious behaviours or patterns that push away potential connection and intimacy.
Sharpen your intuition about interpersonal dynamics by developing a ninja level X-RAY vision for what others are truly feeling or thinking, and for noticing what is happening in interpersonally between people.
Learn and practice the art of revealing withholds to build more transparent and honest relationships.
Take steps towards mastering conscious communication skills like owning your experience, reflective listening, sharing impact, getting someone else’s world, and empathetic listening. You get better at articulating how you feel in the present moment through deeper somatic awareness (awareness of body sensations and feelings you’re experiencing in the moment) and improving emotional literacy (having access to a wider vocabulary of emotion words to describe how you feel).
What people are saying…
“My first Circling Immersion was the most potent experience of my adult life. I felt supported showing up in a deep honesty and transparency that I did not know I was capable of. The integration of this experience continues to ripple through all my human connections.”
- Allistair Dell
"My circling immersion experience with Garrett was a worthwhile opportunity to practice and deepen fundamental relational skills that underpin my life. Every time I invest my time in this container, I walk away feeling profoundly connected and better resourced to step into everyday intimacy."
- Patricia Parkinson
“My first contact with circling was at a weekend immersion hosted by Garrett Rokosh and Robbie stainton. I had a wonderful experience which would set me on a path to deepen into this practice. It was a weekend that covered the full range of human experience, from a deep sense of connection to intense discomfort. Circling is an excellent opportunity to step beyond social convention and learn more about what is actually happening, in this moment, between you and I. I would recommend this to anyone who craves a clearer lens on relational reality and would choose an uncomfortable truth over a comforting lie every time.
- Foster McGee
“Garrett creates a clear and inquisitive space. His prompts are evocative, adapted to each situation and bring a sense of ease to participate. Within it, I felt safe to share my heart's content and excited to discover deeper layers of myself.”
- Manuel Matsya
“Circling is a space where I consistently feel the most alive, honest and free. It’s a place where I can settle into the comfort of my somatic experience and feel at home in myself. At the same time, I can also choose moments to lean into the bolder edges of my authenticity and take more risks in connection with others. It is one of the few places where I feel safe enough to express dissonance and feel challenging emotions like anger in a clean and embodied way. It’s a precious tool for coming into attunement with a collective and witnessing one another in what’s present here and now.
- Andrea Wiebe
"I appreciated Garrett's focused facilitation and his ability to both hold the space of the Circle, while also revealing his own experience in a transparent and vulnerable way. I've experience facilitation with many people before, and can see that Garrett is very intentional and skilled in his ability to support people to go deep and uncover their truth."
- Leo Cheung
Location | Pricing | Schedule
Location
The venue is located at “Heddlestone Village" and is located at 3260 Heddle Road, Nelson, BC V1L 6M2
Pricing
*Prices do not include GST or PST
Full Price is $390
Early Bird is $365 (ends Oct 5th)
Extra Early Bird is $320 (ends Sept 19th)
Alumni Price is $250 (for people that have completed the level 1)
*Limited scholarship spots are available for people with financial constraints. Reach out to the email listed in the registration form.
Schedule
*Note that this will change. It’s just a general idea.
Saturday, 9am-5pm
8:30-8:45: Arrival
9-10: Taste of Circling + Check-Ins + Context for weekend
10-11:30: Teachings + Authentic Relating Games to introduce concepts
11:30-12:30: Trainings Wheels Circle
12:30-1:30: Lunch
1:30-2: Debrief + Teachings
2-3: Focus Circles
3-4: Focus Circles
4-4:50: Organic Circles (small groups)
4:50-5: Debrief + Tomorrow's plan + Closing
Sunday, 9am-5pm
8:30-8:45: Arrival
9-10:30: Authentic Relating Games + Teachings
10:30-11:30: Organic Circle
11:30-12:30: Focus Circles
12:30-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3: Triad Circles
3-4: Organic Circles
4-5: Integration + Self reflection + Close
Facilitator Team
Garrett Rokosh he/him, Co-Lead Facilitator
Garrett’s authentic relating journey started six years ago when feeling depressed, numb and lonely at the end of business school he found his way into a AR games night. He left that night completely blown open, glowing, with a cathartic sense that those people had gotten to know him deeper than any of his closest friends. He was hooked.
He devoured an online training with the author of the authentic relating games manual, Sara Ness, then flew to Austin, TX to take her advanced facilitator training, which was the most impactful week of his life. He then moved to Austin for six months to deep-dive into these practices and serve as an apprentice instructor on her training team. Soon after, his focus turned to Circling and led trainings with other top leaders including Jason Diggs, Mark Boughton, and Peter Benjamin. He led the first Circling immersion in Western Canada, has led 15 weekend immersions since then, and mentored several leaders in facilitating Circling.
Aside from AR and Circling, he completed a two year deep nature connection and cultural repair immersion with Wisdom of the Earth Wilderness School, a psychotheraputic training in Compassionate Inquiry with Dr. Gabor Mate, and is currently completing a Masters of Counselling Psychology at Yorkville University. His weekly jobs include mentoring youth at Thriving Roots Wilderness School, maintaining a private counselling practice, and integrating authentic relating into the corporate world with his company, Social Architect. Some of his corporate clients have included Masterclass, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Burning Man and Mindvalley.
For a deeper dive into Garrett, check out his life vision.
Alon Gelcer he/him, Co-Lead Facilitator
Alon began circling in 2015. With an eye toward developing a varied experience base, he made an effort to experience many different circling facilitators including Authentic Revolution, Circling Europe, Awkward Leadership circling, Adrian Engstrom Van Alten, and the Connection Institute. Determined to learn directly from his favourite facilitator, Alon flew to Austin to take the 2019 advanced facilitator training in Authentic Leadership with the founder of Authentic Revolution, Sara Ness. Alon assisted Garrett with the Nelson AR & Circling Immersion as well as a Withhold workshop which he co-designed.
Born to two psychologist parents and with a lifelong passion for personal growth, Alon began designing and facilitating personal growth and transformational groups 40 years ago. He has facilitated men's groups, women's groups, couples workshops, survivor groups, First Nations, corporate leaders, elder groups, teachers, leadership trainings for facilitators, youth and youth-at-risk populations. Alon has trained with Marshall Rosenberg (NVC), Peter Levine, Dick Schwartz, Esther Perel, Terry Real, Byron Katie, Gay and Kathleen Hendricks, The Connection Institue, Osho Sanyasans, A Course in Miracles, The Path of Love, Pachamama, The Mankind Project, the Forum, Hakomi, Naka-Ima, Gestalt, psychodrama, is a graduate of the 2 year counselling program at the Luminous Awareness Institute in California, a 2 year Behavioural Science & Psychology finishing degree at the Leadership Institue of Seattle through Bastyr University, a 3 month Process Work residential intensive with the Process Work Institute in Portland, a graduate of Baba Haridas' 200 hour yoga teacher training and a member of Harvard's Association of Spiritual Integrity.
In 2020, he opened his own counselling and coaching practice where he focuses on relational issues with men and couples counselling. He sees his professional devotion as “the creation of more love” and has a particular excitement for this fouth wave of feminism and it's beautiful impact on healthy relationships. He has a particular passion for working with issues of consent, sexual integrity, patriarchal awareness and social justice. He is a certified mind-body therapeutic Rebalancer and blends Buddhist psychology with Somatic Relational Therapy and Internal Family Systems work and is also certified as an entheogenic integration coach with the Being True to You program as well as a fully trained breathworker with both Clarity Breathwork and Breathwave and is the west coast Canadian National Representative for the International Breathwork Foundation.
He is inspired by constant learning, psycho-spiritual development, clowning, tantra, excellence in communication, emotional intelligence, equity, inclusion, team synergy, attachment theory, Brene Brown, Andrew Harvey, Marianne Williamson, Joe Dispenza, Stanislav Grof, his mother and father, Vipassana and Sufi poetry.
He is the creator and director of Reach Out in the Kootenays, a local platform that provides free counselling for people that wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it. For 3 years, he hosted his own radio podcast, Be The Change, which highlighted people and programs that created positive change.
Alon lives off-grid in a tiny house yurt at the top of Nelson BC and is never not learning. Alon believes that our answers, personal power and love, live within our selves and that our work is to clear away the cobwebs of conditioning to allow our true nature to blossom. He's a firm believer that one good question can bring a lifetime of insight.
