GRACE AND CHAOS
AN INTRODUCTORY COURSE ON GROUP FACILITATION
led by Nick Totton
April 24th-26th 2026, in Langridge, between Bath and Bristol
£350 for three non-residential days
This course is for anyone who wants to learn more about groups, how they function and how to facilitate them. It will focus primarily on psychotherapy groups, but should also be useful for counsellors, educators, activists, voluntary workers, alternative health practitioners etc. who have had some experience of therapy.
Grace and Chaos: opposite poles, yet both crucial for successful group process. Grace – the gracefulness of a well-functioning group or good group facilitation, effortlessly yielding to reality; also a transpersonal gift that can emerge from deep quiet listening or from the storms of Chaos. Joanna Macy says group synergy: ‘is like grace, because it brings an increase of power beyond one’s own capacity as a separate entity’. To reach this state groups need to go down into the primal state of Chaos; facilitators need the courage and grace to allow this to happen, and model openness to Chaos, openness to not knowing, so that beauty and structure can emerge spontaneously.
Grace and Chaos, Chaos and Grace: in a successful, living group process the two dance together, mirror each other, marry each other, become each other. We will learn about groups by being one – holding an open space for the group to do what it needs to do, and using theory in a creative and accessible way to make sense of our experience. This combines two possible group functions, process and task – in this case, the task of learning about groups.
A group behaves in some ways like an organism, with its own needs, impulses, beliefs, dreams and moods. Each group has its own journey, which has to be travelled rather than analysed. The group field constellates people into the roles it needs filled: one individual’s work on themself, or two people exploring a conflict, can often achieve something for the whole group. In any group, conflict is inevitably present, and will often emerge around big life themes and social issues. The group field develops through setting up polarities and resolving them. Conflict and chaos are creative forces, we will explore how to support and survive them.
Central to any group is that what we find difficult to acknowledge and accept in ourselves, we perceive and attack in others. Expressing and reowning projections is key to group development. Everyone has their role to play; each person is needed to share their story, their facet of the whole — needs at times to take their own side, to be present as themselves without trying to be objective or facilitative. Arnold Mindell calls this Deep Democracy: attending to every voice in the situation.
We will experience and explore the difference between facilitation and leadership, and encounter other important and recurring group roles like disturber and silent witness. As designated facilitator, I will seek to use my awareness to witness and support the group’s process, identifying and encouraging whatever is trying to emerge. I also expect at times to find myself in the leadership role – but only at times. Throughout, I’ll do my best to track and report my experiences – what I am feeling, what I am thinking, and how I move in and out of all the above roles. I will not always succeed, so others may spontaneously step into the facilitator role. There may also be spaces for you to temporarily become designated facilitator, finding out how it feels to ‘take the wheel’
Recommended reading: Grace and Chaos: A short book on group facilitation, by Nick Totton. £9 on Amazon (£6 Kindle) or direct from me.
Bookings and enquiries to Nick Totton. nick@3-c.coop.
If we haven’t met before we may need to have a brief online chat. A deposit of £100 will be needed, returnable if your place can be filled. There may be some reduced price places, please enquire. I strongly welcome people of colour, trans, neurodiverse, disabled people and those from other marginalised groups, and will do anything I can to make it possible for you to attend.