– find yourselfSVã Circles
Come to a place where everyone matters.
A SVã circle is an invitation from Angira. And anyone can come. It might be around drumming, or singing, or moving, or a conversation about something worth talking about. What it is matters less than what it does.
Join a circle
A circle has no beginning and no end. Energy moves from the edge to the centre, and from the centre back out. It is where people have equal power – there is no hierarchy.
A circle is not there to fix anything. It is a safe place where people share, care, and take something back with them.
Why a Circle
A SVã Circle works differently
Imagine making music you would never make in an empty room. Moving before worrying whether you are any good at it. Finding that the thing you were quietly carrying is sitting in the room with eleven other people, and that this turns out to be a relief rather than an exposure. The activity is secondary. The circle itself is what makes the difference.
This is the opposite of what the one-to-one work offers, and deliberately so. There, the attention is on you. Here it is on what the group does, and you are integral to it.
Two ways in
However you arrive.
- Join a circle
- Most people come alone. The fee is nominal.
- Bring a circle to your group
- You already have the people. A women’s group, a club, a set of colleagues. She brings the work to them.
If you are asking on behalf of an employer, the corporate programmes are set up differently and are the better route.
What happens in one
The theme changes. The circle does not.
Angira announces each circle with its theme. What you will actually be doing follows from that.
- Music
- Coffee and Conversation
- Movement
- Something else
Who forms a circle
Anyone, actually.
- Women
- An hour that is not spent on anybody else, in a room of people who understand why that is rare.
- Caregivers
- Parents, teachers, nurses, therapists. Everyone here spent today asking how somebody else was doing. In a circle the question runs the other way.
- LGBTQI
- A confidential circle for what comes with coming out, and for what comes after it – family, relationships, community. Angira trained in queer affirmative counselling practices at the Mariwala Health Initiative. The stance is not something you will have to establish first.
- Elders
- Moving to rhythm invigorates a body at any age. Clubs, residents’ associations and Rotary are where these circles usually start.
- Youth
- Peer interaction is not a side effect of the work at this age. It is most of the work.
- Men
- A room where doing something together does not have to be a competition, and where nobody has to explain why they came.
- Couples
- Something to do side by side rather than face to face, which turns out to be easier and to work better.
Who she has worked with
Groups who have asked.
- Groups and associations
- Rotary Club of Urbana · CII Indian Women’s Network · ICBI Women’s Wing, Kolkata · Young Indians, Kolkata · India Autism Center
The drum circle has run in the open street and inside groups that already existed – a youth forum, a school staffroom, a company’s Women’s Day. This list is not exhaustive.
Come and sit in one.
Just keep an eye on the SVã flo social handles for the next SVã circle announcement. It happens every few weeks. You do not need to know anybody, or to have done anything like this before. Most people asking are wondering whether they would feel out of place. They do not.
Ask about a circle