Aletheia Community Guidelines
We request that all members of our community and all participants in our courses adhere to the following community guidelines. These guidelines are one of the ways that we work together to create a safe space for everyone to practice unfoldment. They also support us in cultivating sensitivity to the cultural dynamics that show up in the coaching space and how these dynamics support and impede unfoldment. This is a necessary pre-requisite for taking conscious responsibility for these dynamics and learning how to more skillfully create the conditions for unfoldment.
Guidelines for Creating a Safe Space for Learning
Practice Confidentiality: You are welcome to share your own experience of something that unfolded in our community, but please keep the course materials, recordings, and details of others confidential. Honor confidentiality with your coaching practice partners by not sharing the details of their sessions within the community without their permission. If you want to share what unfolded to give context to a question you want to pose, please ask their permission and/or share your experience report with them for permission before posting it.
Practice Generosity: Practicing something new together requires generosity. As a client, you generously offer yourself to your coach, who is learning and practicing and will likely make mistakes. As a coach, you generously offer coaching to your client, who will likely not know how to dance with all that you offer. It is an act of generosity to be accepting of each other as you each learn, as well as to take good care of yourself and ask for what you need. It is also an act of generosity to share your experience of being a coach and a client by writing experience reports and posting them to the online platform. Without being generous with each other, we can't create the rich learning environment that we all want.
Practice Asking for Feedback and Receiving It Non-defensively: To learn and develop, you need feedback from others about how your words and actions impact them. Feedback is gold. Most of us have “Parts” of ourselves that get defensive around feedback because they’re trying to protect us from feeling hurt. In Aletheia, we practice naming and working with these parts of ourselves so we can ask and receive graciously. When you receive feedback, practice mirroring what you understand and invite clarifications. You can appreciate the feedback, even if you don't agree with all of it.
Practice Offering Non-judgmental Feedback: Since we expect many mistakes to be made as a natural part of learning, we want to co-create a safe space for our own and each other’s mistakes. Many of us have Parts that are hesitant to offer feedback to others because we don't want to offend or hurt them. In Aletheia, we practice naming and working with those Parts so we can offer feedback in a kind and non-judgmental way. Acknowledge good intentions, and help your partner understand how what they did (or didn't do) worked or didn’t work for you to support their learning.
Practice Acknowledging Good Intentions: As we will learn in the course, we all have “Parts” of ourselves that try to protect us from being hurt. These “Parts” have positive and good intentions, even though their protective strategies and behaviors also have unintended consequences. Sometimes, our “Parts” trigger us to act in ways that may be harmful to others and/or to ourselves. This is part of the human condition, so instead of blaming or shaming others or ourselves, we practice surfacing, understanding, and acknowledging our “Parts’” good intentions.
Practice Distinguishing Intent from Impact: In addition to acknowledging good intentions, it’s also important to acknowledge and be responsive to any unintended or negative impacts that your words and/or actions may cause. Practice responding compassionately – apologize and commit to learning, repairing ruptures, and rebuilding trust.
Practice Repairing Ruptures: Human relationships are complex. Ruptures are inevitable despite our good intentions and our skillfulness. Practice sharing responsibility for any ruptures instead of blaming one party. Commit to repairing ruptures as they occur instead of waiting until they start piling one on top of the other. Please reach out to the faculty with any need for support in repairing ruptures with other participants, with practice partners, or with faculty.
Guidelines for Creating an Inclusive Space for All
Everyone is welcome in our courses, and our community of practice is growing in diversity. Inevitably this brings into our community the relational and cultural system dynamics we have inherited, both helpful and supportive as well as harmful and oppressive.
In Aletheia, we aim to interrupt any habitual ways of relating that could make our community space feel unsafe and to practice ways of being mutually respectful, supportive, empowering, and loving toward each other.
Practice Sensing Power Dynamics: As you practice with others in the community, be mindful of the power attributed to your identities and roles and how this power may impact others. Work to notice any ways that you may unconsciously fall into “othering” power dynamics, such as one-up/one-down, defiant/compliant, scapegoat/scapegoater, or inferior/superior. When you understand these as system dynamics, you are less likely to take your own responses or the responses of others personally. This is a necessary first step to unfolding more mutually respectful and empowering system dynamics.
Practice Embracing and Integrating Similarities and Differences: Practice creating new system contexts in which similarities and differences within and between us are embraced and integrated into the culture of the community.
Practice Being Curious about Others’ Experiences: Please share from your own experience and be curious about others' experiences. Instead of making assumptions about others, contribute to a space that’s safe for everyone to share their unique experiences.
Practice Taking Space and Making Space: If you are someone who typically doesn't speak up or share, practice taking up more space. We welcome and value your voice. If you are someone who often speaks up, practice making space for others to share and practice listening.
Guidelines for Being Trauma-Sensitive:
Aletheia courses and Aletheia Coaching are designed to be trauma-sensitive but are not designed to offer trauma therapy.
Everyone has some degree of unresolved trauma. Unresolved trauma can powerfully shape how you perceive the world. “Long after the original traumatic events are over, many individuals find themselves compelled to anticipate, orient to, and react to stimuli that directly or indirectly resemble the original traumatic experience or its context. These individuals unconsciously and reflexively narrow the field of consciousness to reminders of the trauma, thereby failing to perceive cues indicative of safety and inadvertently maintaining an internal sense of threat” (Pat Ogden, somatic psychotherapist).
Aletheia courses and coaching are appropriate for those with normal levels of psychological health, stability, and adjustment and may otherwise be contraindicated. If a coaching client continues to have difficulty maintaining a sufficient internal sense of safety to effectively do the unfolding practice we offer, and/or their trauma significantly impedes their coaching development, we refer them to a qualified trauma therapist.
Aletheia Coaching invites us to become more aware of protective parts of ourselves, which have been well intended but have also been creating unintended consequences in our lives. In service of deepening our self-contact and embodying our innate wholeness and resources, as we become more aware, we also open toward the underlying feelings and vulnerabilities our protective parts have worked to avoid. Aletheia teaches us to do this gently and trauma-sensitively with what we call an unfolding attunement. If you are practicing within an unfolding attunement, you will naturally be working in a trauma-sensitive way; however, learning to hold an unfolding attunement takes practice, so we don’t expect ourselves or our practice partners to be perfectly skilled at this right away.
Guidelines for creating a safe space for learning and practice include:
It is essential to develop awareness of and take responsibility for your own trauma. Your practice partners, who are just learning the method, will likely not be skilled in working with people who have a lot of unresolved trauma. If you know that you have a lot of unresolved trauma that may impact your ability to maintain an internal sense of safety while turning toward your feelings, please discuss this and/or request coaching with one of our faculty before enrolling in the course to ensure that this will be a good fit for you.
If during the course, you find that you have unresolved trauma that is impacting your practice with partners in the course or your ability to relate with others in the generosity of spirit described in our guidelines above, please take responsibility for this and seek qualified support for working with any unresolved trauma that you find. If you need support to do this, please reach out to the faculty.
As coaches, please follow the guidance we will give you to discern when your practice partners are outside their window of tolerance. If this is happening frequently and/or you are concerned that you are encountering more trauma than is appropriate for this level of work, please reach out to the Teaching Assistant for support.