A 3-Month Training in the Practice of Unconditional Relationship
Healing happens when what has been out of relationship comes into relationship.
This is simpler than it sounds. It means creating a space where nothing needs to be fixed or changed—where we're simply turning toward what is true, meeting it, offering it relationship exactly as it is.
The Unfolding Circle is a 12-week container for learning this practice. You'll learn it by doing it—with partners, with yourself, in the company of others walking the same path.
What This Actually Is
Each week, you'll spend two hours in practice with a partner—one hour offering this kind of relationship to them, one hour receiving it yourself. 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 commit to at least 30 minutes of daily silent practice. The same orientation that guides us in holding space for another—turning toward what is true without trying to change it—also guides us in our own individual practice and in how we meet our own experience moment to moment.
Weekly group calls are where we integrate what's emerging from your practice. I'll offer frameworks and ways of orienting that help you understand what you're encountering. We'll do live unfolding practice together—sometimes I'll be in the seat, sometimes participants will—so you can see how this looks in action and learn from each other's edges.
What You're Learning
How to create a space where unfolding naturally happens.
This isn't about techniques for fixing people or solving their problems. It's about learning to offer a particular quality of relational presence—one that orients toward what is true, that meets whatever arises without agenda, that loves what is actually here rather than what we wish were here.
In this kind of space, what has been hidden tends to surface. What has been fragmented tends to integrate. Not because we're making it happen, but because that's what unconditional relationship does.
And then it translates. Into your own contemplative practice. Into how you're present with the people you love. Into how you meet difficulty in your own life. It becomes a capacity you carry with you.
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 and embodied dimensions.
Coaches, therapists, and practitioners who already do relational work and want to deepen. You'll get frameworks, but more importantly you'll get 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—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, 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.
When I first learned this work, what made the real difference wasn't the concepts, pdfs and frameworks. It was that I practiced constantly with those who were willing. The people I know who practiced like that are the ones who seemed to experience radical transformation.
This container is designed to make that kind of practice actually happen: committed partners, regular rhythm, a cohort holding you accountable.
My role in this container is to offer the frameworks, orientations, and lived understanding that help you make sense of and deepen what you're practicing. I've spent years developing language for this work—drawing from attachment theory, contemplative traditions, and my own experience of transformation. But frameworks without practice are useless. And practice without frameworks can leave you lost. This container offers both.
The Container
Duration: 12 weeks, beginning February 15, 2025
Cohort size: 12 people
Medium: Telegram
Weekly rhythm:
- 30 minutes daily silent practice
- 2 hours dyadic practice (1 hour offering, 1 hour receiving)
- 90-minute group call (4-5:30PM ET on Sundays)
Total time commitment: 5-6 hours per week
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. What you'll receive is practice—and whatever capacity that practice develops in you.
This is not esoteric or complicated. The practice itself is simple and natural. It's a way of being in conversation that most of us have forgotten or never learned—but it's available to anyone willing to practice.
Investment
$1,000 for the full 12-week program
Payment options:
- Pay in full
- Two payments of $500
- Ten payments of $100
Two 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 7, 2025.
[Apply Here →]
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.