I now see more clearly than ever my relationship to everything. I feel lighter, more connected, and inspired to share life.

Since 2019, I have been learning and facilitating Circling, a relational-based mindfulness practice, and this summer at the International Circling Festival in the Netherlands, in a 100-person circle, I reached a new level of clarity about one transformational form of the practice called Surrendered Leadership. I feel passionately that this practice can evolve everyone’s capacity to lead from their deepest truth in connection to the collective, which is vital for our time.

What is Surrendered Leadership?

Surrendered Leadership, as a practice, starts with a circle of people in a space for a certain amount of time. There are no rules from that point on (aside from five principles) which grants a freedom that resembles life as I know it. This creates an emergent space where, in this freedom, the truth of the human experience arises, and the practiced circler can feel connection to the collective alive in the body to powerful degrees.

It’s called Surrendered Leadership because, though there are named leaders who set and hold the context of the circle, they surrender in their leadership to the extent that the circle still represents to them the practice. This makes everyone in the circle a leader, whose practice is to surrender in leadership. So if everyone is surrendering in leadership, what happens?

The Powerful Paradox
From true surrender, life force energy emerges. This is where your individual sensations, emotions, and values will lead the circle for a moment. You decide, or discover, what surrender means to you. To me, surrender means feeling the circle’s impact on my body, and holding or moving with those sensations, so that I can enjoy connecting to the wisdom of our collective presence. That may look like sitting up with my back straight and scanning the energy in the room. It can also mean standing and dancing, or expressing something that’s narrowing my awareness from the collective.

This practice feels so meaningful to me because what emerges when I am unable to surrender to the collective is every layer inside me that resists the natural flow of my life force energy. Conversely, when I surrender and be with what happens in a Surrendered Leadership circle, I grow my capacity to experience and move with more expressions of life. As this capacity expands, so does my consciousness, and my experience of love. I enjoy experiencing more love.

A New Leadership

So how do I lead if I’m practicing surrender? It is a beautiful paradox. If I lead from true surrender, I experience what emerges from nothing, from my inner silence, possibly from truth. The closer I stay to that silence, I unearth energies that want to express from collective truth. When the expression of collective truth resonates, it is both revelatory and revolutionary. It is ecstatic and orgasmic. It has the power to change the world.

This practice sharpens every leader’s attunement to the collective, which is what I want from the world’s emerging leaders. As a leader, I value truth, harmony, and aliveness, among other things like love, peace, freedom and expression. In my surrender, I feel my values respond to what is happening in the circle. Therefore, I lead from surrender if I embody my values whilst presencing my awareness with the natural harmony of the collective. When my leadership emerges through this surrender, as in, I express from a place of deep trust and attunement to the collective, I may influence the circle with my values.

A Deeper Leadership
“Surrender often points us toward a greater inclusivity or humbleness in what we know as a leader, and what the potential is within the collective and everyone in the circle.” adds Sean Wilkinson, co-founder of Circling Europe and my teacher/friend/fellow leader, after reading a draft of this piece. “We’re surrendering, actually, in service of discovering a deeper leadership, a deeper context to lead from, and to be in connection to those who are leading.”

I feel warmth and excitement reading Sean’s different languaging. Peter Munthe-Kaas, a senior leader at Circling Europe (who also took the top photo in this piece), writes about surrendered leadership:

Sometimes you are needed to open or expand the moment, sometimes you are needed to hold it without action. Figuring out if you should apply yourself can only be done by being aware of what is true in the situation. And you are the only one who can do that for yourself.

We each bring our own values to the circle, just as we do to life. In a Surrendered Leadership circle, our expressions co-create an emergent collective intelligence that can only be possible in that setting, in that constellation of people, in that moment. The more I stay attuned to it, the more my leadership feels relevant, and I can surrender more to the wisdom of life’s unfolding truth.

I am the Collective

My truth is that I feel connected to the collective no matter what. I have no choice but to surrender to its immense power, while leading what feels right from my values and attunement. Surrendered Leadership offers me a focused context to practice how I hold my values and influence within a sample of the collective experience. The more I surrender in trust, the more I feel my spirit in connection to the collective. It is as if the collective and I become one. In that place, I have only felt love, and very little need to lead or be anything other than myself.

I imagine this practice benefits anyone who wants to be or lead with more attunement and flow. I desire to practice Surrendered Leadership more with experienced circlers, and to share it with anyone who feels called to learn. It is a sacred practice, and I hope that this writing contributes to it.