A circle needs to invite in all those that come. Everyone has a place in the circle and a contribution to make. It is a good process to create the altar together to prepare the space together.

Starting with prayer, giving thanks and walking the directions, presents the spiritual nature and intent of the work that brings people together.

The rakau/talking stick needs to have a place in the circle and be used in a respectful way. If the rakau is being used in a way where there is not enough awareness or there is disrespect, the facilitator may interrupt the speaker carefully and respectfully. This has been one of the difficulties I have had to attend to – I have always had deep faith in the power of the rakau, but in some circumstances I have had to interrupt a speaker and bring them into an awareness of what they may be saying or doing. This is rarely done and I do now practice this in particular teaching processes.

In each circle there needs to be a beginning and a completion. This allows for the teaching to occur in the sacred and allows an integration at the end into the ordinary.

Each person in the circle is equal.

When doing spiritual journeying or deep meditation, children and babies are sensitive and vulnerable to energies moving in the etheric through adult process and work. I strongly recommend that sacred circle work be for adults and not for children and babies.

If you are running a circle in your home you need to clear and clean the space beforehand, and open your home to people so that they feel comfortable and at ease. Communicate to everyone where the bathroom is, and kitchen, and be clear which areas of your home are private. Set up clear boundaries so that everyone is aware of when they should arrive and when they should leave. At the end of the circle, clear the energy and speak an intention of bringing it back as a home.

If you are running a circle in a public space you should clear the area before you begin and after you finish. You can involve the group in this process.

If, as a group, you have a space designated for sacred work, the place may become tapu or sacred. If this is the case, as a group you will need to put in place the protocol of use of the space. This means that the space retains an energy of the sacred purpose and those entering the space respect this and partake in that particular sacred purpose.

Lasavia is about creating self-responsibility and self-reflection; I also want to suggest kindness and care are also important attributes. Often though there are people who may want to join a circle but may want a lot from the facilitator. Be observant of what happens within sacred circle and what happens outside of the circle. Be thoughtful about how you feed hunger and communicate clearly and respectfully when boundaries are crossed.

As a facilitator you may observe actions and see how a person is behaving that may not be in alignment or that they are in an illusion. It’s important to be with your own truth in these moments and to be patient. Listen deeply to your heart and to your words. Check your timing and ultimately trust the process within the medicine sphere. Remember you might be bringing some wisdom forward, but it is up to the person whether they partake in that. Do not force your own perception over theirs, rather offer it up.

Many people who are new to this work do not understand how to be with sacred objects. It is up to the facilitator to share the protocol of handling sacred objects.

In exploring the meaning of symbols or interpreting a journey, do not give feedback immediately. Draw out the person’s own understanding first. Then if you sense that there is something you see that may be helpful for them, ask them first if it is ok to share your insights, remind them that your insights could be for yourself or for others in the room and not just for them. Allow the opportunity for them to respond if you give feedback. This is how we learn together. This is in alignment with creating self-reflection first and developing self-responsibility.

Sometimes it is important to remind people in the circle that the experiences of others shared within circle are not to be shared outside of the circle. I usually suggest that participants can share their own experiences outside of circle if they need to. If a circle has been impacted by gossip, it is helpful to gather together in sacred circle and ask each person to share from their heart in a truthful and respectful way what they need to communicate. This often reveals mis-communication.

As a facilitator; be aware if the truth is overwhelming or painful and give space for each person to be listened to. If it is directed towards you, try your best not to be reactionary, rather look at your mistakes (if you have made any) as an action for change and self-reflection.

If you are being projected on, it is also a powerful teaching and worth looking within how you wear that projection or how that is a pattern coming up in your life. Be truthful and communicate from your perception of the events. Often you may need to access an inner strength and a way of stepping out of those old patterns. Be sure that you connect with your mentor and get support.

Lasavia is an organisation that has grown from my own healing practice, spiritual exploration and teaching. It was originally a name given through a spiritual vision to mean a Garden of Eden. The name came with the vision of the logo and was to be the name for the essences I was creating. Later I found out its root comes from Spanish and means life force. From these beginnings it is now growing into an organisation whose purpose is to provide training, resources and mentoring for transformative growth.

The Lasavia logo encompasses the concept of the three pathways; the mind, the heart and the pathway of devotion.

Lasavia is an organisation that looks at the education of the soul. This comes from an understanding that the soul needs the practice of relationship, self-awareness, understanding of the will, and the nature of devotion and service. That we look at wholeness and the integration into ordinary life and that fundamentally spiritual transformation is not some kind of conditioning but a potent experience that involves the whole of us. I see that crucial to this transformation is the work of co-creation and being in circles.

Gathering to learn and explore together in circles is not only a foundation for our growth but a continuum.

Nature connection is crucial as a core value around understanding our role and where we interconnect to our ecosystem. Part of building a healthy foundation for Lasavia is our participation and connection to nature.

The following values came out of a strategy meeting with Chalice, Deah, Meggan and myself facilitated by Annette Lees. I have looked long and hard at these values and consider them in alignment with the purpose of Lasavia.

Our first value is Diversity.

Diversity is connected to being part of a greater whole, it is linked to community, and we are diverse because we are in relationship to the greater whole. This value becomes an active principle in working with co-creative circles, mentoring and healing relationships. To value diversity is to value difference.

We value Truth.

Truth may be revelatory, and truth may be painful; what is powerful is that the more we express our truth, the more the truth grows in us. I see truth as being present and anchored within. I see truth through the ability to self-reflect, the ability to be self-responsible and to be able to look. It is powerful to receive truth, in so doing we may have to receive the pain that comes with truth, and there is humility in this. Sometimes truth is an action. As a value to uphold, truth is taking space to self-reflect, to look and to be present. Angeles Arrien in The Four-fold Way writes tell the truth without blame or judgement. It’s not just how we value the truth, it’s how we express this and act within this truth. I see love and truth in the same vein. While I was in Germany in 2017 we talked and worked around what love and truth were. It was looking at love as an unconditional force all around, and that is how truth is, and that it was looking at the resistance both to love and to truth. The following is what came through around this subject: It is not about holding on but allowing to be part of a great movement within love. When we hold on, we hold on to nothing. When we move we then have what it is we were wanting. The fear locks us into holding to nothing and the fear creates distortion in the mind and the mind creates a story of what we are holding onto. Saint Thomas Aquinas said The law of divine love is the standard for all human actions.

We value Humility.

The first action of humility is to come into connection with everything close to us. To see how all around us there is an interconnected web of life and we are intrinsic to that. To be with humility is to be of earth and to experience that our mana within us does not put us above anything else but brings a consciousness of our part in the world around us. Humility arises simply from a heart connection to the divine.

Excerpt from The Ethical Foundation for Lasavia Healing: An invitation to partake in an exploration of ethics for the community of Lasavia Healing, by Leila Lees

Introduction

I naively embarked upon writing this document a bit like the fool finding him/her self upon a path of manifestation. As soon as I started writing about ethics, ethical situations arose one after the other, keeping me on my toes as if the document itself was in cahoots with the divine and they were messing with my reality. I was also filled with a mix of awe and gratitude around the powerful evolution we are on when we sensitively open up our moral compass.

I see this document as living and I invite everyone who is moved to, to put forward your own dialogue around your personal ethics in what you do and for the ethics of Lasavia Healing as an organisation. I also see this document as unfinished and I accept that.

As practitioners, I see that the work is not some methodology but our own life pathway we choose to do. To live our life in community with others and evolve as part of a greater ecosystem; we need to reflect on our behaviour, the balance of the ideal with reality, and how do we meet with what we aspire to?

Kathy Fried, in her article on ethics, writes about how when we understand that ethics is about everything we do, we also need to bring particular focus to the different practices we do:

While this means that ethics are needed everywhere, and in everything we do, it is much easier to see how we are doing if we have a specific area of focus. This is why we need to name, not just the ethical code but also the particular practices and relationships it refers to: There may be one code of ethics for membership of a community, while there might be another code for teaching students Shamanism or for working with clients. The universal principles are most likely the same, but the ways they express themselves in our individual practices need specific attention if we want to know how to translate the moral into daily life.

She suggests that: to discover and monitor our own ethical code we need to engage with an inner dialogue between our values and our actions. We can use whatever means we choose: self-reflection, journaling, journeying and so on, or a mixture of any of these. This can be a very deep process that grows and develops as we do. It is an on-going exploration where we often uncover things about ourselves we were not previously aware of. This process hones and matures our practice, making it strong and sustainable.

As part of the participation in the ethical foundation of Lasavia Healing I would ask all of you who read this to engage with this inner dialogue around a personal ethical code. From here we can create active discussion to look at how we relate to the principles of Lasavia, the purpose, the values and what I put forward here as a guideline for ethical relationship and work as a teacher and practitioner within Lasavia Healing.

I have always been thoughtful around rules that govern our behaviour. I have seen the terrible impact of righteousness on a group, ostracising and splitting people from family, friends and community. I have witnessed how righteousness could warp the notion of ethics by shaming and focusing on one misdemeanour, blow it right out of proportion, whilst others were unable to act ethically in the face of the righteous. In those moments I wondered where the heart was, the understanding of the whole, creating space for self-reflection. It was from these kinds of experiences within a group that I started to realise the importance of growing and keeping alive an inner ethical foundation rather than look to the external for guidance.

I see when people gather together for the purpose of spiritual work that many patterns of defensive behaviour arise simply because change is in the air. Ethics are like the walking stick that could support us through those times when we are only just beginning to open up to our moral sensitivity. Simple processes like checking assumptions one makes, or giving positive feedback and reflecting on our reactions, before putting forward critical feedback.

In writing this document for Lasavia Healing, I bring forward the purpose of Lasavia, the structure and parameters of the teaching, the values of Lasavia and some thoughtful reflections around my own journey through teaching, facilitating and participating in spiritual, shamanic, therapy and improvisation groups. I also look at natural laws or cosmic laws – I want to bring this up for discussion as when we work in accordance to these laws it may impact how we define our personal ethical approach to our own lives.

When we form a group we share a purpose, we learn the most when we are able to work co-creatively with a group. Briefly this means that we gather with some purpose and we give space through being with each other. I put the being with in italics as to mean the process of deep listening and empathy. Groups are difficult for many people for a variety of reasons. Many participants have been wounded by people who have some kind of power within a group, these wounds have happened through family, through cults and through spiritual and therapy groups.

Ethics are about relationships, and I see that ethics is a heart issue.

How to facilitate effectively working with patterns of pain and vulnerability takes skill and requires a strong innate ethical foundation. It also requires a continued personal journey in reflection and spiritual practice. In her book The Ethics of Caring, Kylea Taylor writes: The degree of our willingness to delve into the dark truth of our own motivations, desires and fears will determine our ability to be caring, flexible and ethical.

This is very true, I see within myself and others that my mistakes, assumptions and misaligned reactions are always triggered by my own survival patterns or anxieties and that the ability to reflect healthily upon mistakes is an important practice in growing our work within an ethical framework.

In practice, an ethical document for an organisation, although appreciated in principle, can become an abstract document. An ethical foundation needs to be alive and the only way I see this to be alive and connected to people is for people to participate and contribute to the ethical foundation. Firstly this can happen by people finding and landing within themselves their own set of values, what is innate in them and how do they translate those values into their everyday lives. I realise the importance of this because the fundamentals of what the Lasavia Healing Course is about, is about transformation, and this happens through an evolution of consciousness and this is about our lives.

Exploring your personal ethical foundation >>

Write down five values that are important to you.

Under each value write down what this might mean for you. Research what other people write about these values.

Start to engage in an inner dialogue around these values and your actions. How do your actions and your values connect?

Think of this as an on-going exploration, rather than a self examination. Explore how you feel about making mistakes and the value of mistakes.

Look at the roles you have in your life. Do some roles have certain ethical practices?
How do these roles and ethical practices overlap in your life?

Take time to reflect and write.
Share your ideas and reflections with others.