The Village: A Practice for Social Awareness and Collective Co-Creation
By Paola Bortini, July 2025
I participated in the Pilgrimage to the Innermost training, where we explored Social Presencing Theater (SPT) as a powerful tool for developing embodied awareness. One of the most transformative practices was the Village exercise, which helped us shift from individual awareness to experiencing ourselves as part of a social body. But the most profound lesson? True leadership emerges when we move beyond our individual selves and learn to sense, respond to, and co-create with the social field around us.
This journey is supported by a practice to help leaders develop social awareness: The Village Exercise.
The Village: A Practice for Social Awareness and Collective Co-Creation
1. Prepare Your Body and Awareness
Begin by practicing the six foundational gestures individually to build embodied presence.
- Stand, sit, lie down, walk,, turn, and greet—each with full awareness.
- Extend your awareness 360 degrees—front, sides, and back.
- Feel present, connected to the earth, and aware of the space around you.
From the Training: This draws on the embodied awareness practice and the refined capacity of getting and staying in touch with ourselves, others, and nature from the pilgrimage training.
Leadership Skill: Embodied Presence – Leaders who cultivate body awareness bring grounded, authentic presence to their interactions.
2. Join the Social Field
Practice the gestures in small groups, then with the whole group, to extend your awareness to the collective.
- In groups of five, notice your choices of spatial proximity, level, and direction.
- Observe how the group self-organizes through clustering and imitation.
- Pay attention to the whole space, not just individual movements.
From the Training: This aligns with the development of awareness that attends to the wellbeing of all beings in a system and the ability to recognize the starting point and allow each participant to work from where they are.
Leadership Skill: Social Awareness – Leaders who sense the social field can better navigate group dynamics and foster collective intelligence.
3. Co-Create the Village
Use all six gestures with the whole group, sensing yourself as part of a collective body.
- Practice walking, standing, turning, and greeting with the whole group.
- Notice spatial arrangement, direction, focus, rhythm, and tempo.
- Reflect on the experience: What did you notice about inclusion, exclusion, and connection?
From the Training: This reflects the use of yang qualities of taking initiative, stepping forward, and persevering, as well as the yin qualities of letting go, following, and letting things happen, and the deepening understanding of Theory U.
Leadership Skill: Collective Co-Creation – Leaders who can facilitate group co-creation unlock the potential of the whole system.
Why This Matters for Leaders
The Village exercise teaches us that leadership is not just about individual action—it’s about sensing and responding to the social field. The training showed me that when leaders can move from “Ego to Eco,” they create the conditions for true collaboration, inclusion, and collective intelligence.
Leaders who practice this approach:
- Navigate complexity (by sensing the whole system),
- Foster inclusion (by noticing patterns of connection and disconnection),
- Drive collaboration (by engaging in emergent co-creation).
The next time you’re in a group setting, try this: Notice your body. Sense the space. And engage with the whole.
What would change in your leadership if you could sense the social field as clearly as you sense your own body?