State of the Art Systems Thinking. GAIA Journey
By: Helio Borges
Tags: Stories From The Field, Innovation, Social Change, Systems Thinking, Insights

GAIA’s Social Field. The Three Bodies. Image, Olaf Baldini. Presencing Institute

“State of the art systems thinking blends systems thinking with systems sensing and focuses on making systems and communities see and sense themselves…” Otto Scharmer

The Arc of Our Journey

Antoinette Klatzky opened the 5th week’s Inhale session of the GAIA Journey by stating our purpose — to come to terms with and begin to see and sense what is happening in our world. She shared, “we know as Einstein said, that we can’t solve problems using the same type of thinking that created them. We can’t continue to be the same way as we were before.”

The Arc of the GAIA Journey. Image Presencing Institute.

Antoinette further noted how our first month was marked by listening — dropping into a deep listening space where we learned from one another’s stories. With this session however, she encouraged us to move into a space of deep resonance. A space where when we hear a bell ring, we see and understand why it is ringing, and feel the bell ring inside ourselves. She told us to drop into the body, to a sense of what still sings in ourselves, what is moving in us; for we are still in the beginning phase of the GAIA Journey. Next, she gave the floor to Otto Scharmer.

State of the Art Systems Thinking

Otto began with introducing three terms, Social Fields, Social Arts, and Awareness Based Action Research.

Unearth What is Coming into Being — Animated Scribing by Jayce Pei Yu Lee

Social Fields

He first described Social Fields.

“Social Fields are basically social systems seeing from within. Social systems usually take an outside view on human behavior, like a third-person view, what a camera could report, for example. Social Fields however look at human behavior both from outside and from inside, from a first-person perspective, but also from a second and third-person perspective.”

Then he shared a model about what a social field perspective looks like.

Iceberg Model of Systems Thinking. Presencing Institute

“Basically what a social field perspective says is that the deeper source conditions from which we operate give rise to the qualities of relating, the patterns of thinking, conversing, and organizing, which then produce practical results. So, in order to effect profound change, it is not enough to react to the symptoms here at the top level, or to redesign the patterns of behavior immediately below. We also need to change the deeper source conditions.” Otto Scharmer

Social Arts

Otto continued, “the question on the table, of course, is how. How we do that?” He then shared, “what we have found is that to do that well, you need to develop new methods and tools. One of the most powerful tools we have found has to do with social art practices. It is one leverage point to investigate these deeper aspects of change: systems change, collective change, and personal change. The second thing we found is that you really need to investigate these tools in an extended context of science that we refer to as Awareness Based Action Research that blends third, second and first-person research methods.”

Awareness Based Action Research

Otto proceeded to describe Awareness Based Action Research: focusing on bending the beam of scientific observation that usually looks at reality as something out there, in a way that allows us to also include our own interior condition, our own way of enacting the social system that we see out there.

Bending the Beam of Scientific Observation. Presencing Institute

He posed the question, “what does it mean, bending the beam of scientific observation back on to our own behavior, back on to our own selves?” And answered as well, “It means that we help communities and systems sense and see themselves, to look into the mirror and to see our own collective shadows. Last time when Danya Cunningham spoke about structural violence and structural love, it was a powerful example of looking into the collective mirror to see our own paradox enacting these shadows. That is basically what state of the art systems thinking is doing.”

Dayna Cunningham. From Structural Violence to Structural Love. Presencing Institute

“State of the Art Systems Thinking blends systems thinking with systems sensing and focuses on making systems and communities see and sense themselves, by which we mean integrating all three of these levels: Source Conditions, Quality of Relating, and Practical Results. And, to see how the results that we enact arise from these relational and deeper source conditions.” Otto Scharmer

Otto finished by introducing Arawana Hayashi. Arawana is a co-founder of the Presencing Institute, and the originator of a new social arts form that we call Social Presencing Theater. Otto further shared that Arawana would introduce us to Manish Srivastava, a core team member of the Social Presencing Theater Group. We would also be joined by Eva Pomeroy from Concordia University, who is in charge of the GAIA research team and a member of the Presencing Institute.

GAIA Journey Action Research

Eva Pomeroy spoke next. “I have been doing the GAIA research, gathering quality data from the survey and focus groups. It helps us to understand and see what’s happening in GAIA as it unfolds. It helps us to surface and make visible some of the invisible dimensions of change.” She shared that bringing it back to the team was critical to see if the research resonates, and if it reflects what the group is experiencing collectively and individually in GAIA.

We were then presented the research from voices of the focus groups.

Voices from the GAIA Journey. Presencing Institute

I would like to add one more piece from the focus groups. It is a framework brought from the social field — “ early-stage action”. One of the focus group facilitators asked her group: “Instead of asking how do we get the economy back to normal, we could ask, what would be like to create an economy that contributes to wellbeing for all?” By asking that question, she changed the nature of the conversation, opened up some other conversations, and shared some qualities about herself and her work. It was a beautiful and very realistic example of what first step action looks like.

Small Groups Session

Next, Antoinette gave the instructions for the small groups’ session in which the attendants were asked to discuss following question: What micro-changes if any are you observing in yourself? Is it the way that you are listening or the questions that you are asking?

I was directed to a small group with the following people:

Mc Allum Alison from South Africa who shared, “I have let go of my need to control things, and the things that I thought I need, I don’t need them anymore. I miss the outdoors”.

Francesca from Italy shared, “I focus on being more helpful, I sense that need when I lead groups online. I am more aware of my feelings, accepting them”.

Irene Anyango: “I am more aware of what is going on within my body, within myself, than I ever have before. I now exercise and cook during the time I used to spend in traffic jams”.

Me, Helio: “I feel that I am living in two spaces simultaneously. The physical space, where I feel trapped, and constrained by forces beyond my control, and a virtual space where I have the opportunity to expand myself and to use my gifts for the wellbeing of all”.

Social Presencing Theater

After this small group session, Arawana Hayashi spoke next, asking us to start the session by engaging in embodiment and moving into a Social Presencing Theater practice. She led the audience into an embodying exercise where all of us experienced our bodies not as instruments, but as part of our coherent being.

Arawana Hayashi’s body shapes

Arawana shared, “that little practice was an introduction to a Social Arts method that we use at the Presencing Institute. It is a way to make our systems visible, as Otto said earlier, that can include our own body-mind system, which we make visible to us because it is a whole system.”

“We don’t separate the mind, from the heart, or the body. My colleagues and I at the Presencing Institute are conscious of this holistic being. We are one coherent, genuine person. We make this system visible to others as well.” Arawana Hayashi

Stuck is a Treasure

She invited us to do this together. “I am going to stand, and I invite you to do so. Please think of a question in your life which is a challenge. It can be an obstacle, a question, or a challenge, an area of your life where you feel stuck. This practice is the “stuck practice”. My invitation is to consider it as a treasure. Think of something that you are trying to create and it is not quite moving forward.”

Sculpture 1. Touching out.

She continued, “In my case, this is how it is coming for me (she adopts a position, sculpture 1). Just make a shape that expresses the sense of being stuck in your life right now. While in that shape, say a few words to yourself. In my case, I will say touching out. The words can describe something or a little feeling. Just stay with your shape. That shape is not sustainable. Stuck wants to move. So, let stuck, your shape, start to move. Feel your back, your hands, your legs. Keep moving slowly until your body reaches a resting place. In that new shape, please say to yourself another word, or two, or a little phrase. In my case, the word is contained.”

Sculpture 2. Contained.

Turning Challenges into Creative Insights

Manish Srivastava led us in the next activity. “I do this little practice on a daily basis, and it has helped me transform my challenges into creative insights. Now, in the breakout groups, we are going to practice it with others because you don’t practice it for yourself only. You are a witness to others’ journeys, giving them your resonance. To be in service of someone else is really beautiful.” He further explained the stuck instructions so that the participants could practice it in breakout rooms.

Stuck Activity. Presencing Institute

There were four of us in my breakout group. Karen from the Netherlands, Asley from Turkey, Hannah from South Africa, and myself from Venezuela.

Karen began. Sculpture one, “holding back”, sculpture 2, “letting come”. Hannah next. “I moved into a different kind of stuck”. And then Asley, sculpture 1, “too heavy”, sculpture 2, “feeling capable”. Myself, sculpture 1, “trapped”, sculpture 2, “ another vision, wonder”.

Manish ended by guiding us in a resonance of the stuck exercise, consisting of drawing the two sculptures and reflecting them in two or three phrases.

Helio’s Resonance

Social Resonance. The Three Bodies

Otto thanked the SPT team and invited everyone to participate in a group social resonance. “We started the session with the concept of the Social Fields, with the level above the water line and the deeper layers. What we did with Social Presencing Theater was explore some of the deeper layers. That’s just a beginning. But you can investigate it more by doing the Social Solidarity practice. Now we will move to Berlin where Olaf Baldini has been capturing the process using the method of Generative Scribing, which is another social art form that was developed by Kelvy Bird and co-pioneered by Olaf.”

Olaf began explaining the graphic he drew. “I tried a new method which was to start with a black canvas and then take layers off, so images could begin to emerge from the canvas. When everyone went through their sculptures, they were changing the space around them, creating a new body here.”

Otto thanked Olaf and shared Arawana’s idea of three bodies, which resonated with him when viewing Olaf’s scribing — that we have our small body, the physical one, and there is a big body, which is planet earth, and there is a third body. The third body is the Social Body that we collectively enact, and that is really, what we mean by the Social Field.

Olaf Baldini explaining his Generative Scribing from the session

With the idea of the three bodies in our minds, he led us in a final exercise, a visual resonance process in two steps:

The first is to see and sense individually the image, allowing it to penetrate into your mind and heart.

The second step is to share the resonance in the chat by using the sentence structure I see, I sense, I feel.”

I invite you, the reader, to do the visual resonance that Otto invited us to do during the GAIA Journey’s live INHALE session Grounding in the Body in Times of Crisis.