exercise · all tools
Widening Circles
In groups of four, each person speaks about an issue they care about four times over: first as themselves, then from the perspective of a person who opposes their view — in first person, as that adversary — then as a non-human being affected by the issue, and finally as a future human affected by the choices made now. Two to three minutes per perspective. Named for Rilke's "I live my life in widening circles"; perspective-taking stretched past the comfortable edge.
Prerequisites
- Announce the perspectives one at a time (Inner Pathways' note) — knowing round three in advance flattens round two
- Speaking AS one's adversary can stir real resistance or unexpected empathy; both are the exercise working — name that in the debrief
- The non-human voice can move people deeply; leave room, don't rush the close
Practical
- Time
- 30-60 min + 10 landing
- Group
- 4–40 · small-group
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Materials
- Timekeeping; groups of four
- Mechanisms
- perspective-taking, dialogic-encounter, emotional-processing
- Change scope
- state → skill · repeatable
Instructions
- Where
- innerpathways.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/IO2-IP-FACILITATO… — The Inner Pathways Guide for Facilitators, open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
- Licence
- Open source — "a gift freely given" (Work That Reconnects); acknowledge the source: WTR, Joanna Macy as root teacher, and named adapters
Source link checked 29 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 28 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Joanna Macy (Work That Reconnects; Seeing with New Eyes stage) — The Work That Reconnects
In this directory via The Work That Reconnects (Joanna Macy & Molly Brown) · The Inner Pathways Guide for Facilitators
Dual-sourced from the start (WTR practice carried by Inner Pathways), and the cleanest single exercise for the revised framework's Perspective Skills (T2) — it operationalizes the skill's definition almost literally.
status: checked · added 2026-08-25