Start your own Women’s Circle

5 tips to help you create your own Women’s Circle. By Anna Brook

Reading time: 4- 5 minutes

Women’s Circles have increased in popularity in recent times. Circle is in our bones as women. For thousands of years, we have gathered to share experience, work or look after children within circles. Yet in our modern lives, many of us may feel connected to them online, yet still craving genuine friendship and a chance to be deeply listened to.

Circle offers us an opportunity to make new friends, and share freely what we choose, in a supportive and non-judgemental environment. To build a sense of sisterhood in our lives. Furthermore, creating your unique circle offering can offer an enjoyable chance to blend in skills and practices you may already hold.

Whether you’d like to create a monthly circle for your friends, a workshop with a new moon focus, or confidently blend in sharing circles on your yoga retreats — the core of a successful circle is often in the preparation we do before our guests arrive.

Here are 5 top tips for planning your own circle:

1. INTENTION Gaining clarity on your intention for setting up the circle can have a magnetic effect on drawing in the women who are most aligned with you at this time. Ask yourself: Why do you want to create a circle? Could you create an aim for your circle? For example: My aim is to create a circle that empowers women to share about their menstrual cycle.

2. EXPLORE PRACTICALITIES Where would you like to hold your circle? Perhaps at home, a yoga studio, or in nature? What timings will work best for the kinds of people you hope to attend? For example: If you’re holding a Mama Circle, perhaps mornings are preferable to evenings (bedtimes for children).

Will you charge or offer your circles for free? If you’re aiming to offer your circles for free, this can be useful to help build confidence. Yet it’s worth considering the time and energy that creating a circle requires (and possible hire costs for a venue). For the circle to feel buoyant and appealing, it’s important that the host feels comfortable with the amount of energy they are putting in.

Women’s Circles are also part of the movement for women’s empowerment, so perhaps it is fair to ask for an energy exchange for your time. Ultimately you will know your community best, so trust your intuition and charge what you feel is right.

3. GUIDELINES/AGREEMENTS When circles are well held, it can seem effortless. Participants take it in turns to share, the group listens attentively and the person speaking feels deeply supported.

There is a sense of camaraderie in the room. When we step into circle, we step into a sacred space which exists outside normal conversation (where sometimes even with closest friends and family, we may interrupt each other, or focus more on what we want to say).

When we set up guidelines for our circle at the start, it helps everyone’s voice be heard more equally. We may use a speaking stick or object – when someone is holding it, it is their turn to speak, or we may encourage the group not to feel they need to ‘fix’ another person.

You can create guidelines for your group before you start, and also ask the group if there are any that they’d like to include.

4. WHAT RITUALS, THEMES, PRACTICES TO BRING IN? So, here’s the creative part: what skills do you have that you could draw in to your circles?

Sound healing, meditation, yoga, menstrual cycle awareness…the list is endless.

If you teach yoga and are aiming your circle towards your community, you could theme a practice around what time of year it is, or the moon phase.

If it’s the height of summer, or full moon, a more yang, flowing practice could work. Or if it’s deep winter (winter solstice perhaps), a calming yin or yoga nidra practice could be more in tandem with the cycles of nature.

If you choose to have a theme for your circle, what resonates for you at the moment — for instance, stepping into your power, radical rest?

You can blend in rituals, like writing down what you want to let go of on some paper and burning it in the fire. Or include journaling, drawing, ecstatic dance style movement or oracle cards. The list is endless, have fun with it!

5. LET GO Lastly, having given our circle some thought and an invisible architecture, once the circle starts, it’s time to sink into feminine flow. Trust that you have everything in you to hold a supportive circle and let go of sticking to the structure too tightly. Allow the flow of the group to be your guide…and enjoy!

Anna Brook is a Women’s Circle facilitator, senior yoga teacher and founder of Shala Women. She has created the Women’s Circle Training (which is accredited by Yoga Alliance Professionals). Visit: shalawomen.co.uk or connect on Instagram @shala.women