Awake & Alive

Name: Awake & Alive
Start: 2026-10-17T09:00:00+01:00
End: 2026-10-18T10:00:00+01:00
Location: Nawa Studios

Circling as a Path of Tantric Awakening, Embodiment, and Integration

A weekend working directly with awareness in connection - the heart of relating practice and the heart of contemplative practice, meeting where they were never different. Two intimate days of Circling held as a path of awakening, in Gothenburg.

Meet a person. Sit down across from them, look at them, let them really look at you.

Past the politeness and the awkwardness, something happens. A catch in the throat. The chest tightens, or opens. Whatever you were about to say stops being interesting. We’ve developed a lifetime of skill at managing that moment down, but in doing so, we miss out on something truly profound.

Two feet away is a living center of awareness and intelligence. Not a theory about practice, something to achieve, or some rarefied experience to have. No — life itself is present in front of you, looking directly at you. It can be shockingly intimate — it’s no wonder we spend so much energy and effort managing it. But if you’ll resist the habits, the tics and tricks you use to “meet” someone, a door can open up that a decade alone on the cushion won’t offer in quite the same way.

Relationship held in earnest doesn’t let you hide the way you can by yourself on your pillow, doing your practice. Intimacy is startlingly intense. Which is exactly why contact is one of the most reliable spurs to awakening, to transformation. Life comes too close for you to hide, and connection will go exactly as deep as you’ll let it. Keep meeting the moment with another person, without collapsing it into a story or discharging it as fast as possible, and the intensity doesn’t overwhelm your presence — it opens it. Opening presence invites a deeper vividness in contact, which initiates a still deeper presence.

A living space of contact arises, where everything else you’ve been doing — your bodywork, your therapy, your psychedelic openings, your years on the cushion — stops being a separate set of projects and comes into one life, yours.

That’s what we’re going to practice this weekend.

What that looks like: simple practices for recognizing awareness itself. Practices for raising intensity and staying with it. Circling held explicitly as a practice of awakening. And clear teaching on what’s actually happening and why — so you leave with the path, not just the experience. A small room, intimate by design.

What you’ll walk out with

– Simple techniques for recognizing your own awareness. Awareness isn’t complicated, and it isn’t something you have to remember to do forever. We’ll practice a few ways of directly recognizing something you won’t be able to un-see.

– Practices for working directly with the intensity of life and of relationship — for staying with it, channeling it, letting it be as strong as it actually is without needing to resolve it, numb it, or explain it. For using the intensity of your life as the fuel for transformation.

– A simple, profound approach to living a life of wholeness, embodiment, and awakeness. How to use awareness to deepen experience, and the intensity of experience to ground and expand awareness. Not a cool state — a way of going about your day.

– Hours of practice in a room with other people, which helps all of this land somewhere real instead of staying in your head.

– More capacity for contact — for staying present, awake, and yourself when it gets intense with another person. In love, in conflict, and in the moments that actually matter.

Is this an intro weekend, or a more advanced one?

Yes. (Genuinely.) Everything here is accessible from a cold start — no Circling experience, no particular background required, assuming you’re interested in this in some way. And what we’re working with here is as deep as this work goes; longtime Circlers and longtime meditators tend to find this is the missing link. The material goes as far as you can take it.

Do I need Circling experience?

No. If you have a practice of some kind — meditation, yoga, therapy, embodiment, any form of inner work — you’ll find your way in fast. If this would be your genuine first step into any kind of practice at all, message me first and we’ll see if it’s a fit.

Will we be Circling?

There will be spaces for awareness-oriented Anchor Circling, but this weekend isn’t focused on Anchor Circling (Birthday Circling). If you’re interested in Anchor Circling in particular, check out my guidebook on the practice, *What is it Like to be You?*, which is free at andrewlouisvenezia.life.

To reserve a spot, reach out to Andrew on Facebook. (You can find him via the facebook event if you’re not connected with him.)

Date

17. - 18. October 2026

Location

Nawa Studios

Manufakturgatan 4, SE-417 07 Göteborg, Sverige

Cost

€350.00

Contact Andrew on Facebook

Meet the facilitator

Andrew Venezia

Andrew Venezia

Amsterdam/US based writer, teacher, coach and (psychedelic) Guide. My core obsession is the intersection of meditation and Relational Practices — ‘Awakened Interbeing’ — and bringing its joy, aliveness, and clarity into one’s daily life, and the world, inviting the blossoming of our best and truest selves in service of the Good.