“My spirit seeks interaction in community. I am curious about the diversity of stories that surround me. In my relational interactions I experience the felt sense and qualities that spark a deeper knowing of self. in the congruent collaborative association with the other, I feel the expansion of moving and reflecting. These moments colour the dynamic landscape that surrounds me. In the process this embodied experience questions and reconstructs preconceived judgments.
[Nielsen & Kowitz Feb 15th, 2017].
Key elements
'Key elements are a form of data generated from expression and description and involve focusing the inquiry towards signification or meaning' [Miecat Inc., 2016, p. 8].
In the following example, the reduction of key elements was using words in response to the Miecat Ethical Guidelines [2014]. Our task was to go through a process of mutual reduction [with our companion] and use those key elements [words] to create a poetic summary. Privy to all relational work with the procedures, there is an immediate space to navigate [particularily when working with someone for the first time]. With this in mind, my companion and I seemed to navigate these beginning moments of working together with exceptional flow. Here, we quickly navigated how to communicate, how we placed ourselves in the space, how we sat in relation to each other and how we were to navigate our process. This reminds me of something that Pearmain discusses in response to the process of relating where it is stated that 'the relationship in its earliest forms seems to require a kind of echo and resonance with what is communicated from the other. A balance between what is like me and what is different is the most interesting and enlivening counter-point to the tune of each person' [2001, p. 3].
This, throughout many of the companioning brought about such interesting and surprising relational ways of being, making the process dynamic and an exciting journey to co-travel. After these first moments, we both read silently and selected words independently that were of resonance. We then conducted a further reduction by sharing those and selecting ones that were of mutual resonance. From this point, we compiled a collaborative list and proceeded to attempt the poetic response. This, is where we arrived at the idea of sharing one sentence at a time, slowly and mindfully adding to the landscape inspired by our dialogue. This creative response was influenced by; the words, the prior life of the individual, the sentences that were forming the ‘sense’ or topic aided the development of this response. The further along we travelled, the more collaborative it became, aided by a growing understanding of the emerging theme of the poetic response and through a navigation of each other's needs and values.
It was here that I noticed 'a deep mutual respect, the flow, a finer attunement' [Kowitz, Feb 15, 2017].
When we finished this process, I felt surprised by the organic adjustments and developments as a result of our chosen reductions. What started in the ‘self’ became something that existed ‘between us,’ still honouring a sense of independent contribution. In reflection, this resonates with a passage I read on Geller's [2013] description of relational dimensions of presence which is discussed as 'a deepening of presence occurs as a function of two (or more) people being fully present with one another. The relationship between creates a larger sense of spaciousness and access to wisdom and flow that is opened in relationship to each other and the moment’ [pp. 180].
Taking a moment to mark those shifts, it’s exciting to note the invisible frameworks that support our relational ways of being.
Our poetic summary follows with the keywords highlighted;
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