What we’re about
Authentic Portland is an incubator, a laboratory and a catalyst for an emerging authentic culture. It is soil from which authentic communities have the potential to grow.
We are answering the question of how to embody authenticity, presence, truth and compassion in our day-to-day lives and relationships.
We invite people of all races, nationalities, spiritual beliefs, sexual orientations, gender identities, social and economic statuses and political beliefs to join us in this exploration.
Some of our core values...
- surrendering to present-moment experience
- being fully alive, engaged, and grounded in the body
- following curiosity
- respecting ourselves and each other
- expressing from vulnerable transparency
- owning our experience
- seeing the innocence and good intentions in people, including ourselves
- connecting from the heart
- deepening our understanding of how we impact each other, and letting that matter
- treating relationship as an awareness practice
- deepening intimacy
- sharing togetherness in an attitude of play and not-knowing
We offer a variety of events:
- Games Nights: Come for some fun and potentially surprising insights. We interact with each other through various relational games for everyone to get a taste of what we are about. These games do not include board games, they may include gazing into someone's eyes, speaking your truth in the moment, or revealing through your body how you are feeling right now.
- Circling: This is a practice of non-judgmentally being with each other in a group conversation. We are looking at self and other in contact with the present moment from a place of curiosity. This tends to be more intimate and vulnerable, happens in smaller circles, and can include strong emotions. People often feel deeply seen and relational blind spots can be revealed through the process. We recommend attending a few of our Games Nights before circling. Please read through our event description before signing up, as this is not for everyone.
- Community events: Such as camping, potluck socials, informal gatherings - we hang out with the idea to include a similar level of authenticity in our interactions as we have practiced in our more structured events.
To learn more, visit our website Authenticportland.org.
To connect with others in the community, join our Authentic Portland Facebook group.
We have been inspired by and are loosely associated with Authentic World, The Circling Institute, Authentic Revolution and Circling Europe: we highly recommend their workshops.
If you need any questions answered before deciding to come, please reach out, we would love to hear from you! Thanks and looking forward to playing with you.
Upcoming events
1
- $325.00
Mystery Playground Weekend Immersion
Opening to Life Center, 3942 SE Hawthorne Blvd., Portland, OR, USStep into an embodied space of heightened presence that supports profound intimacy and connection with yourself and others. We meet here in vulnerability and wonder at the creative edge of our self understanding, where alchemy awaits. Uncover more of your essence and aliveness obscured beneath habitual patterns and assumptions. Build and practice relational skills of attunement, curiosity, and humility. Bring your self-leadership to co-create a fertile common ground of compassion, growth, and transformation.
Tickets and More Information Here!
$50 off through Dec. 14 with coupon code: EARLYBIRD
In this workshop, carefully designed exercises and structures provide containment and a clear context for our exploration. Warmups activate specific qualities of attention that deepen the field and build group coherence. Then two different kinds of practice circles take center stage as the core formats of the weekend.
In a Focus Circle, we gather a small group with a facilitator to center attention on one person, exploring and reflecting their world in real-time. A Flow Circle, in contrast, is more of an open space of possibility for the whole group to explore their individual and collective emergence. Within the bounds of each context, we enjoy a freedom to be self-directed, run experiments, courageously approach our edge, and assert boundaries.
This container supports a more direct participation with the dynamic unfolding of experience beyond our familiar stories and habitual assumptions. By turns, this can be both liberating and confronting, as is typical for most growth experiences. We make deeper contact with our life force, innate wholeness, and playfulness, yet also perhaps with our fear, grief, anger, projections, and self-imposed limitations.
This kind of work isn't for everyone, and can at times be uncomfortable or intense for some people. We emphasize self-regulation, mutual attunement, taking care of yourself, and setting boundaries when necessary. As in any developmental space where people are taking risks and being more real with each other, you should be prepared for the possibility of experiencing discomfort and nervous system activation.
At the same time, many people also experience delicious flow states, radiant heart connection, profound synchronicity, and feeling incredibly seen by others. We discover time and again in this work that human connection rooted in deep presence and attunement reliably taps into nature's vast reservoir of life-affirming vitality and boundless creative potential. These are under-explored frontiers of human experience in contemporary culture which cannot be replaced by technology, and are essential we believe to remembering our shared sense of sacredness and interdependence.
Register and Get More Information Here!
If you enjoy the practice of circling or have been wanting to try it, this event could be a good fit for you.1 attendee
Past events
985
