A Short Guide to Stemless
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What is this?
Stemless is a practice of awareness and expression. It was born when one person said to another, “You know how in relational practices, we do a lot of setup for most of what we say? ‘I’m noticing that…’ and ‘I have a story that…’ We talk from the witness perspective. It gets annoying.”
Months later in Greece, the previous exchange forgotten, Stemless came further out of the birth canal when the second person sat still with their eyes closed.
Then they said, “The sun is a bad man.”
Then they said, “You are a blank canvas.”
Then they said, “This is a tacky cave.”
Stemless invites us to realize that our experiences are ephemeral dreams, full of characters and scenes that we are inventing every second. It’s an attempt to dream lucidly– to wake up to “What is this.” It can be poetic, but doesn’t have to be. Metaphor is often “the best footbridge between truth and meaning.1
That is a large focus of the meditation of Stemless: meaning and import. We are less focused on how it is (textures, sensations, and emotions of experience, eg. “There’s a tightness in my chest,” “It feels airy here now.”)
We are flatly disinterested in why it is (patterns, inner depths, eg. “There’s something about my dad going on,” “This is bringing up my stuff about shame.”)
We are interested in what it is (the import, the dream logic, the occurrence of the world to the subject, the gestalt of overall perception, eg. “The curtains are pretending to keep out the world,” “You have both hands on my heart.”)
We practice using nouns to name the meanings of experience – what is this (to me); what am I (to me); what are you (to me). This is a way to express truth directly. “You have both hands on my heart” is a powerful articulation that can strike both the speaker and the receiver, tearing through the dull cellophane between them. Saying “It feels almost like you are placing your hands on my heart” is safer, but carries a different, neutered punch. The meaning is diluted by the elaborate tidying of communication. Alternatively, it might seem clearer to use “In connection with you I feel warm, comforted, supported” than the seeming ambiguity in “hands on heart”. But no literary analysis is necessary. Paradoxically, we can convey more, not less; similar to the power of sharing somatic sensation and stopping there rather than adding heady stories.
This can induce a psychedelic clarity when you get jamming with one or more people. You can viscerally surf how rapidly the nouns of experience change when you don’t marinate in them or pin them down, which we often do because it’s useful (such as, to feel seen). It also brings a spaciousness to name perceptions and meaning in a freedom where ownership is deep, backgrounded, and fluent.
The single central question of the practice is this: What does it take to own your experience?
To expand on that: what does it actually mean to own your experience (rather than blaming the outside world) and how, and where, do you do that? Who does it? The speaker, or the listener? What muscle is used? What energy? Do you have to use words? (Obviously not.) How do you do it?
Are you just saying whatever comes into your head?
If you mean just blurting out random sentences, then no. This is a practice; there is something we’re trying to do. There is a specificity to the form, even as each person has their unique style of it.
Anais Nin wrote, “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.” In Stemless, we aren’t understanding our experience by hyperfocusing on what we normally label as inside us (thoughts, sensations, emotions). We do not narrow in to listen deeply to the inner movements. Instead we open up our noticing to how we see the rest of the world. From this, we learn (and reveal) a lot about what’s inside of us.
It is an awareness practice. It can sound like people saying a bunch of random stuff– but that also might just be the tuning-up. In flow, Stemless is often lucid orchestral radiance, punctuated with irrepressible laughter: you can’t believe that could be said and with such truth.
How is it different from circling?
In circling, ownership is often overt and frequently verbally affirmed. Ownership coheres and stabilizes through every stem: “I’m noticing that…” “I have a story that…” “Being with you, I…” These are ways to signal that the speaker knows they are a subject, speaking to another subject, about their own experience. We share inarguable statements about our own experience. We edit expressions that imply we are the arbiter of someone else’s truth (eg “I am perceiving you as unfair,” not “You’re so unfair.”) This beautifully opens dialogue away from the pincer grip of controlling attempts to establish (eg “Don’t you agree you’re being unfair? Don’t you think you should cut it out?”).
But in Stemless, counter-intuitively, we go back to using almost all apparently arguable statements, as if dictating truth for the other. We might say things like, “You’re angry at me right now.” “We’re all popping up from our foxholes trying to make a good shot.” “You’re my father, looking over me.” We don’t preface these statements with, “When I look at you, I feel…” or “I’m sensing that…”
An early circling revelation is that you can drop conventional affirmations of niceness, and name difficult emotions without blowing up the moment. In Stemless, we realize we can drop explicit affirmations of ownership (though not ownership itself), and name arguable statements without blowing up the moment. Instead of using language to give evidence of ownership, we practice embodying owning. We practice answering, with our whole selves, “What does it really take, to own something? How do I live the stance of owning my experience as totally mine– rather than subtly or overtly controlling others because I blame them for my experience?”
Stemless is different from circling in that we pre-agree to “allow everyone to own” whatever they say. This means we receive every expression as if the speaker had fully owned it, even if we sense they perhaps did not. We receive it as a statement about their reality, not an attempt to establish anything with us.
Mutually assumed ownership allows deep creative expression, free of any communicative bureaucracy demanded by the practice itself. The container as a whole can create ownership, even if someone fumbles for a moment.
We also practice recognizing all expressions as acts of compassion, the generosity of revealing the inner world.
In circling, if you share a projection about another person, the culture of practice encourages you to then be curious about what the other person says is true for them, in correction. In Stemless, projections are neither corrected or confirmed; they were true of the projector. Projections can be a beautiful explosive statement of communication, rather than a tentative question.
Stemless is not about arriving at shared reality (as circling can often be: an attempt to know each other’s worlds), although it can create a deep sense of others’ reality and of being in a shared psychic space. Stemless is easing into recognition that we are already in shared reality, without needing to generate proofs of it.
Stemless can feel less vulnerable than circling because we don’t dig into anything; there aren’t many follow-up questions, if any. Question structure becomes more subtle – simply flavors of jam, expressions of the questioner – rather than carrying the usual implicit demand or bid. Our attunement is not arranged with overt words or gestures. We aren’t mapping each other’s worlds. Within the practice, we presume no one’s world is compact or stable enough to map. Whole dream civilizations rise and fall in minutes. In seconds.
Stemless can also feel more vulnerable for all of those reasons.
You’ve mentioned projections a lot of times!
Is Stemless mainly about sharing your projections about other people?
A rookie mistake is thinking Stemless is solely variations on: “Oh! I know what’s going on with you, and it’s this!” This sounds like, “You’re angry right now,” “You’re bored right now,” “You’re judging me.” Those statements can all be said in the practice. But Stemless isn’t about restricting your attention to other people. It definitely isn’t about catching other people. It isn’t about getting to blurt out the judgments you normally keep inside (though this is often a useful and important phase to go through).
Stemless is about catching yourself. Stemless is outing yourself. Vulnerability is an essential aspect of virtually all relational practices, and it is no different here.
When approaching the practice in connection with others, you can move beyond the earliest stages by holding the question “How does this person occur in my world,” rather than “What do I think is happening over there in them.” Stemless expression-by-projecting is saying a version of, “Oh my god, you’re X to me right now, I just realized.” Each projection then becomes the gift of revelation of the speaker, not attempting to pin down the person spoken “about.”
And given that “aboutness” works in unusual ways here, connection is found just as often in answering, “How do I occur in my world?” Or “What is my world?” Or “What is that wall?”
“What am I” and “What is this,” as much as “What are you.”
Does Stemless have any principles?
Let go of obedience to pointers. Words, gazes, emotions can carry an “aboutness” that are not necessarily to be followed to “their referred object.” When someone points at something with their finger or their words, you instinctively look where they’re pointing. In Stemless, we also follow their finger back up their arm, right back home to them. We savor their beautiful pointing arms and fingers as vivid displays, without being directed anywhere, forward or back. We certainly don’t let arising intensity misdirect into management of other aspects of experience.
Let go of establishing or affirming reality. Since we've let go of pointers, we don't conspire to establish things. Do not expect or strive for shared reality. Do not attempt to shake hands on intersubjective truth. Always allow others to own their experience by making their expression about them– but not in a way where you’re trying to figure out What It Means. More like you would take in the wind billowing off a sail. Implicating no one, receiving more fully.
Let go into compassion. Receive every expression as a gift of compassion and a revelation of the person offering it. Don’t get stuck marinating in what would otherwise be passing; wake up again; “flush” whatever just happened and look again at the Gods/babies before you, in their daring to exist, so fully, each moment.
Let go of proofs of ownership. Assume ownership in others, and speak from full ownership; but do not overtly affirm it. Words are not core to ownership. You could say, “I’m angry,” with a curious, surprised chuckle at yourself. You could say, “I have a story that you are blaming me,” with a subtext of fiery self-justified outrage. Is it just a matter of tone, then, or feeling? Is it something inside me? Stemless invites us to stop relying on any compact trick and research ever finer into fluency with the subtleties of ownership.
Relax, completely. The easiest way to do stemless, is to let go of any interpersonal management, at all meta levels. Drop the stems. Just find yourself here, with me, on this beach we’ve been walking for so long, and put a pebble in my hand.
Nouns, not adjectives. Look for the “what’s” that describe your experience, not the “how’s” and definitely not the “why’s.”
Should I do it?
Stemless became a movement when a third person said “Circling was close, but Stemless… Stemless is it.”
Although it can be an edgy practice, we’ve devised a core progression and many supplemental practice forms that make it possible for anyone to start doing the practice.
Experience with overt ownership (as often seen in practices like circling, T-group, authentic relating, NVC) can be quite useful for transitioning into subtle ownership. If in your practice with these you’ve been noticing a lack or a weaponization, then it might be the perfect time for you to explore Stemless.
Here are some testimonials from an in-person weekend and online events (the photos are also from there):
I've been circling for I don't know 3 years or so, and this was one of the best circling (or circling related) events I've been to. The main novel thing for me is seeing my perceptions, in particular of others as part of my experience, and something I can own. This may sound a bit technical or something, but it feels minorly revolutionary for me. Great stuff, I want more.
- Harri
It felt like a process of softening and unraveling my perceptions of reality, opening the door to greater inner freedom.
- Emilija
It's so DAMN EXCITING!!! Like stepping into the dark, and somehow ending up seeing each other a little more clearly.
- Jasmine
There's an unbridled freedom, power, playfulness and life that emerges when the stems are dropped... I feel like I have only just scratched the surface of the unbelievable power of this practice. Like "normal" circling on steroids!
- Ash
Stemless gave me a taste of how it feels to turn my world completely subjective. Consensus reality dissolved, and I didn’t need anyone else’s witnessing
- Aditya
How do I get in on this?!
Saturday, 6pm UK, online for our drop-in alpha (shoot us an email if you want to join). Or at future weekend immersions. Stay connected below.
"Whole dream civilizations rise and fall in minutes. In seconds" - lovely. This practice sounds like a treat!