TL;DR

A facilitator holds the structure. The group chooses the journey. We work from menus of activities, exercises, and games, and we treat the whole thing like a playful experimental lab: try → feel → reflect → refine.

A typical flow looks like this:

  • A grounding moment — arrive, breathe, land
  • A quick check-in — what’s alive in you right now?
  • Setting intentions — what you most want from this gathering
  • An activity, chosen together (sometimes in pairs, sometimes the whole circle)
  • Sharing what shifted — and walking out a little more alive than when you came in

Read the full version below.

The Facilitator’s Role

Each meeting has a facilitator who holds the space, guides the flow, and helps the group make decisions together. The facilitator’s role is to enable the group’s collective wisdom, not to dictate what happens. Decisions about activities are made together by the participants: sometimes by vote, sometimes by group discussion, sometimes by the facilitator’s intuition in the moment. When the group has diverging preferences, it’s also fine to split into subgroups so everyone can do what works best for them.

In each meeting, a different member serves as the facilitator. Because the role is well-defined and the guidelines are clear, anyone in the group can step into it and yet bring their own style and approach to it.

Each gathering is 100% adaptable, but here is a typical structure:

Arrival and Grounding

We start with a gentle opening where participants land in the space and settle in before the work begins. This could include:

  • Taking a few slow deep breaths
  • A short meditation, with or without music, to help everyone relax and arrive fully
  • Holding hands in a circle

Check-in Circle

Each person shares briefly how they are feeling right now, what their goal is for this gathering, and how they would like to feel by the end of the meeting. This gives everyone a voice from the very first moment, helps the group tune into each other, and gives the facilitator a sense of where people are so the meeting can be shaped accordingly.

Brief Review of the Principles and Structure

The facilitator explains the principles that guide the gathering, and then the meeting’s structure. This is the time to ask questions and clarify any doubts. Participants may also propose modifications to the principles and the structure.

Setting Intentions

Participants share what they want to experience this time, by answering these questions:

  • What does “actualization” mean for me now? See also here.
  • What does “connection” mean for me now? See also here.
  • What benefits do I hope to gain from this event?
  • What do I need to feel comfortable to be my real self in this group?
  • What would I like to feel during this event?

Choosing an activity

The club has rich menus of possible activities. We place printed versions in front of us to remind us of the possibilities.

When we want to start a new activity, usually we vote on it. One way to do it is where each participant places three tokens on their preferred activities. The activity that got the most tokens is chosen. If there are ties, they are resolved through discussion.

However, in some rounds, the meeting facilitator may decide on the next activity based on his or her intuition and feel of the group. In particular, to either:

  • Increase harmony and the comfort level for everyone, or:
  • Gently challenge the group to some activity at the edge of their comfort zone (See : Comfort Zone vs. Stretch Zone).

Reflecting and refining the activity

  • After choosing an activity, we do NOT immediately start doing it.
  • Instead, we take a moment and reflect on the activity, with awareness and consciousness, so that each person can see what they feel about the activity and whether they want to participate or just sit on the side and watch.
  • Participation is always voluntary. There is never any requirement or expectation for you to participate, it’s perfectly legitimate to choose not to.
  • Participants can also suggest variations on the activity, to make them more effective and tailor them to the group and the current situation.

Doing the activity

We do the activity together, with deliberate intention and awareness of how we feel.

Some activities are done with the entire group interacting together. Others are done in small groups, but after that, everyone returns to the larger group to talk about the experience.

Sharing feelings and drawing conclusions

When an activity is over, we take a moment to share, reflect, and analyze how it went. We are curious to check whether the activity really helped us make progress toward our goals, feel more connected, and improve how we feel. We ask:

  • Do you feel you made progress towards your intentions for this gathering?
  • How did you feel doing the meeting?
  • How do you feel now?
  • What stood out or felt meaningful?
  • What do you take with you?

We draw conclusions which we can apply in the next iteration. Sometimes we realize we need a slight modification of the activity to make it more effective.

Closing Reflection

At the end of each meeting, the group takes a few minutes to reflect on the meeting as a whole. The guiding question is simple: Is this working?

  • What felt most alive or valuable today?
  • What could we do differently next time?
  • What do we want to experiment with in our next meeting?

This is the rhythm of the experimental lab: each meeting is both a result of what we learned last time, and a source of data for the next. We do not assume we have found the perfect formula — we stay curious, iterate, and keep improving.

This closing reflection is also a natural moment to surface anything that was left unsaid, to appreciate each other, and to leave with a sense of completion and a desire to meet again.