Circle Holding: A Practical Guide to Facilitating Talking Circles
By Julia Davis and Tessa Venuti Sanderson, Singing Dragon
A circle, as Davis and Sanderson explain in their introduction, is “a space where each person has the opportunity both to speak and be listened to without interruption or comment”, and for anyone considering venturing into facilitating a circle, this book is essential reading. It is a comprehensive guide to everything you will need to consider and covers practical information about how to set up the space, the importance of welcoming, suggestions for opening and settling, how to manage timings, how to market your circle, and more. There are troubleshooting topics too, such as how to manage power dynamics and how to ensure everyone feels able to participate fully. Davis and Sanderson are wise and encouraging guides. Throughout the book, they share their own experiences and there are anecdotes from other seasoned circle holders too.
The likelihood is that if facilitating a circle is something you are considering, you will have already participated in a circle and are aware of how powerful they can be. But the book is also interesting reading if circles are something you have been drawn to but haven’t yet tried. It gives a real insight into what they can offer.
This book provides a foundation on which to build your circle facilitation skills, but, as the authors say, these will only really start to grow as you gain confidence through practice. Circle Holding will support you to take your first step. AE
How to Get Your Teenager Out of Their Bedroom: Tools and Strategies for Understanding, Connecting with and Being There for Your Teenager
By Anita Cleare, Watkins
This is an excellent book. In supporting us to understand our teens, Cleare explains that there are four developmental areas that drive teenagers – separation, autonomy, individuation and assimilation. Difficult as it might feel for us because our teens seem to have changed beyond recognition, most behaviours can be explained by linking them to these processes. Cleare reassures us that it’s normal, and important, for teens to go through this metamorphosis – they need to move away from us as parents and become their own person. If they are doing this, it probably means we have done our job right as parents!
Cleare gives us practical ideas on how to maintain connection – don’t dive into intense conversations whenever you see your teen, but try and chat about common interests – the dog, a Netflix show. Or take a hot chocolate up to their room, just to say hi. Even though your teen might brush you away, deep down they see that you still care, whatever they are like, and that’s crucial.
I like Cleare’s anecdotes and practical suggestions of what to say and what not to say. She reminds us that when our teens snap at us, it might just be because they are working through the inner turmoil of finding out that everyone else is at a party they have not been invited to. They can’t articulate that to you, so their reaction just looks rude. I also found it helpful to understand why negotiating with your teen about, for example, going to Grandma’s, is helpful – it’s about role modelling life skills and supporting them to develop their independence. This is why our role is to stay calm and find those moments of connection.
However, it’s also a balance. The chapter on gaming is interesting. Cleare suggests that if we are always nagging our teens to come off, we are allowing them to outsource their self-control responsibilities. Again, the key here is negotiation and compromise. There is a helpful ethos of reflection. What is our own phone use like and do we also respond to its addictive qualities? Can we remember what it feels like to hate how we look compared to our peer group? What is our own behaviour communicating to our teen? We can then stop and think about how our words and actions are being received by our changing teen. Cleare also gives helpful pointers on how to respond if your teen does start to open up – especially about really tricky subjects. The key is to guide them to explore their own feelings and to avoid the parental instinct to fix!
Most of all, this book is reassuring: don’t panic if your teen won’t come out of their room – they are still developing life skills in there – and this is a phase that will pass. You just need to stay calm and adapt your ways of connection. It’s also about accepting that yes, there is an element of grieving the child that has gone, but also celebrating the young adult that is emerging. SF
When children open up about a problem, it is seldom because they want the other person to fix that problem. It’s usually so they can understand the problem better by articulating it and to find some relief through sharing. Teens don’t always understand exactly what’s going on inside them. Talking is a way of exploring their thoughts and shifting some of their stuck feelings.
The Perimenopause Journal: Unlock Your Power, Own Your Wellbeing, Find Your Path
By Kate Codrington, David and Charles
This beautiful hardback journal makes you want to pick it up and engage with it. I love Codrington’s approach to perimenopause. She encourages us to be positive about this stage of transition, rather than negative in seeing it as a crisis. That’s not to belittle how our bodies might be changing, and the impact of that, but it’s about feeling your way into the seasons. Overthinking about symptoms, Codrington says, can add to the anxiety. The purpose of the journal is to encourage reflection on how this stage of life is feeling for you. Codrington sets out the menstrual seasons and the benefits of tracking. She then provides more detail about how each season might manifest itself and what can help. The suggestion is that, if you are aware of which season you are in, you can adjust your lifestyle in that time, or just recognise why you aren’t coping with decisions or stress in the way you usually do. I really like this approach, and, as always, I think there is a balance to be found – while awareness helps us understand what we are experiencing, we don’t want to make perimenopause more of a ‘thing’ we have to worry about.
Following the introductory pages, the book has plenty of space for daily journaling, monthly reflections and charting the moon phase. Codrington emphasises that this is to be done simply and in a way that brings joy and support – it’s not something else to add to life’s pressure. The idea is that in writing how we feel and reflecting on where we are, we can better support ourselves. There is space to chart 13 cycles followed by some final reflections. I love the illustrations and colours of this book – it feels gentle and beautiful and something you want to treasure as part of life’s cycle. SF
Good Nature: Why Seeing, Smelling, Touching and Hearing Plants Improves Our Health, Happiness and Longevity
By Kathy Willis, Bloomsbury
Good Nature brings together studies from the last 15 years that prove the link between the amount of green space in our lives and our health, happiness and longevity. Willis explains the outcome of these studies in a way that’s easy to understand and it’s really interesting to discover the quantifiable impact nature has on us. What’s fascinating is the way it works on all our senses. She includes a study that shows how hearing birdsong reduces pain for hospital patients, and another that reveals how seeing trees helps schoolchildren learn better, reducing levels of anxiety and improving cognitive function. Many of these outcomes feel like things we already know on some level, but the evidence that supports this is quite amazing.
Willis is an entertaining writer and I love the insights she gives us into how writing the book changed her own behaviours. She has diffusers in specific rooms pumping out fragrances with particular benefits: rosemary in her office helping concentration, and lavender in her bedroom encouraging relaxation. She also now has more plants around her house, and takes less direct but greener routes if she’s walking somewhere. I’ve always, rather unfairly, had it in for spider plants, but now I’ve learned that having one in your room can improve the microbial density in the air, thus improving the health of your gut, I’m on the lookout for a cutting!
Much of the learning feels instinctual, and reading this book might simply endorse some of the behaviours you’re naturally drawn to, but I found it really helpful to understand the science behind what’s actually going on. There are policy implications too. We can use this evidence to apply the tangible benefits of nature to the way we design the modern world, to help make everyone healthier and happier. AE
Wild Creature Mind: The Neuroscience Breakthrough That Helps You Transform Anxiety and Live a Fiercely Loving Life
By Steve Biddulph, Bluebird
Our “Wild Creature Mind” is the right hemisphere of our brain that ‘thinks’ in feelings rather than words. In this book, Biddulph teaches us how to listen to those feelings – how to locate them, communicate with them and understand what they are saying to us. These are our gut feelings, our animal instincts, which have been suppressed by the fast pace of our modern world. Through anecdotes and exercises, Biddulph shows that if we slow down, stop, listen and reflect, we can learn what our bodies are telling us. This can help us relate to people around us, but also help us release anxiety, trauma or tension, which might be holding us back from an emotionally whole life, or making us physically unwell.
There is a lot of science in the book. Biddulph explains how developments in neuroscience, and the ways scientists are using this research, are leading to this ‘new’ way of thinking. This new way could be seen as actually reverting to the old, more animalistic way, when we were more aligned to nature and, therefore, more in tune with what our bodies were telling us. Reading Biddulph’s words, it all just felt ‘right’ to me. Why aren’t we all listening to our Wild Creature Minds? But I recognise how easily the urge comes to solve something – to soothe the hurt, to medicate, to move on – when, actually, the longer-term, healthier resolution might be to just sit with it, feel the pain, listen, and let it work its healing magic.
Biddulph explains how we can use these methods with children too – there’s more in his article on pages 18 and 19. When children are upset, we can ask them if they can feel it in their body. Where? What does it feel like? What does it look like? What is it saying? This, as for adults, can help them process emotions, come unstuck, and move on more freely. The approach is available to us all.
Biddulph’s tone in the book is chatty and relaxed. He wants to make these ideas accessible, and he’s excited that everyone can benefit from approaching problems in this slightly different way. He writes, “This is a radical idea – that our body is a thinking creature, and we can talk to it. And our fullest human potential is when we once again operate as a whole.” He is keen that we all give it a try, find out how it works, and pass on the good news. SF
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Reviews by Alice Ellerby and Saffia Farr
Published in issue 92. Accurate at the time this issue went to print.
