A 8-Week Training in the Practice of Unconditional Relationship
Healing happens when we offer unconditional relationship to suffering—when we turn toward what is true and meet it exactly as it is, without trying to fix or change it.
The Unfolding Circle is a 8-week training in creating this kind of space: for others, for yourself, in the company of others walking the same path. You'll learn it by doing it—through weekly practice with a rotating partner, supported by group calls where I offer teaching, frameworks, and live demonstration.
The Specifics
Duration: 8 weeks, beginning March 5th, 2026
Cohort size: Max 12 people
Medium: Telegram for organizing practice and Zoom for group calls
Weekly rhythm:
- 30 minutes daily stillness practice (strongly encouraged)
- 2 hours dyadic unfolding practice (1 hour offering, 1 hour receiving)
- 90-minute group call (to be scheduled)
Total time commitment: 5-6 hours per week
What This Is
Each week, you'll spend two hours in practice with a partner—one hour offering this kind of relationship, one hour receiving it. You'll rotate partners throughout the cohort, learning from the full range of how this work shows up across different people and different edges.
You'll also be strongly encouraged to commit to at least 30 minutes of daily silent stillness practice. The same orientation that guides us in the dyadic practice also guides us in our own individual practice.
Each week we'll gather for a group call. These calls are part teaching—frameworks, concepts, ways of orienting that help you understand and deepen your practice—and part working with what's alive: your edges, your questions, whatever is arising as you practice.
What You're Learning
You're learning to create space where nothing needs to be fixed—where truth can simply be met and loved as it is.
When we're held this way, something shifts. What's been hidden tends to surface. What's been fragmented tends to integrate. Not through effort, but through presence—that's what unconditional relationship does.
You'll learn from both sides of the dyad. Receiving it shows you what it feels like to be met without agenda, to have someone turn toward your experience with nothing to fix. Offering it teaches you how to become that presence for another—how to stay with someone without needing them to be different. Each deepens the other.
With practice this way of relating seeps into your meditation, into your relationship with the people you love, into how you meet adversity in your life.
Who This Is For
Contemplative practitioners who sense that something in their practice has been missing—that meditation alone hasn't touched certain patterns, or has even become a way to avoid rather than meet what's actually here. You're looking for practice that includes the relational, psychological, and embodied dimensions.
Coaches, therapists, and practitioners who already do relational work and want to deepen. You'll get high leverage frameworks and consistent practice hours with committed partners.
Aletheia graduates who want to continue practicing and deepening. The orientation here is complementary, and the structure gives you ongoing practice and accountability.
People who've wanted to work with me but found 1:1 coaching financially out of reach. This is a different container—you're practicing with peers rather than receiving individual sessions from me—but it's a genuine way into this work.
Why This Way of Practicing
I've been doing various transformative practices for 20 years. Looking back, I can see a clear juncture in my own development: before I was doing regular dyadic unfolding practice, and after.
The transformation since then has been faster, deeper, and more comprehensive than anything that came before. Solo practice matters—I still do it daily. But there's something about practicing this way of being in relationship with another person that accelerates everything.
Concepts and frameworks matter—some of them are genuinely high leverage, and I'll be offering the ones I've found most potent. But concepts are easy to come by. What's rare is actually practicing, consistently, with someone else. The people I know who've experienced radical transformation are the ones who did that.
This container is designed to make that kind of practice actually happen: committed partners, regular rhythm, a cohort holding you accountable.
My role is to offer the frameworks, orientations, and lived understanding that help you make sense of what you're practicing—and to hold the space where all of this unfolds. I've spent years learning this work and developing language for it. But mostly, I want to help you practice. 🙂
What This Isn't
This is not therapy. If you're in acute crisis needing clinical support, this isn't the right container.
This is not a certification. You won't receive credentials.
This is not esoteric or complicated. The practice itself is simple and natural. It's a way of being in relationship that most of us have forgotten or never learned—but it's available to everyone.
Investment
$600-800 for the 8-week program
Scholarship spots are available for those who genuinely cannot afford the full investment. Please indicate this in your application.
How to Apply
This cohort is limited to 12 people. Applications close February 19th, 2025.
Questions?
If you're wondering whether this is right for you you can email me at dthorson@gmail.com
The Unfolding Circle is the first cohort of what may eventually become a larger network of practice. Graduates will have first access as that develops—but this offering is complete on its own.