And the small circle is the deepest

and the small circle is the deepest

For the title of this post, I’m borrowing this line by the American poet adrienne maree brown from her poem ‘this is the only moment (species love poetry)’, which I discovered when Shimrit Janes recited it for the 2025 cohort of the Regenerative Leadership Journey.

Why?
Because this line has been with me since the beginning of the year and, again, it became very alive a few days ago, while attending the 3rd Regenerators Alumni gathering in Selgars (Devon, UK).
These yearly gatherings are open to anyone who has completed or is currently taking a Regenerators Academy course in community. Like other gatherings the participants and alumni self-organise globally, they create space for siblings (as we call each other within the Regenerators community) to connect beyond the screen.

What makes these gatherings magical is their complete openness: no predetermined program, no assigned facilitators.
Everyone who attends has committed to co-creation and self-leadership, showing up for four days to practice regenerative leadership capacities together.

Under the loving stewardship of Anton Chernikov, Morgane Oléron, and Zuko the dog, Selgars becomes a space for emergence, a home for whatever wants to arise among the siblings who gather there.
Laura Storm wrote beautifully about the lore of these gatherings after the first edition, so I will share the teachings I received from this year’s experience with Anton, Sonia, Kate, Iben, Chiara, Melody, Morgane, Sabrina, and the more-than-human world within the microcosm of Selgars.

1. The unknown comes in different shapes, and we embrace them all.
2. Trusting and caring from a place of belonging.
3. When descending also means growth. 

The unknown comes in different shapes, and we embrace them all.

The question ‘What will happen?’ tends to be a source of excitement, rather than fear. So a gathering with no plan is very magnetic to me.

That’s something that unites not just those who attend these gatherings, but everyone who steps into regenerative work. There’s a lot of mystery surrounding this field, as tending to emergence, holding questions, and rejecting setting things in stone is an everyday practice when integrating living systems wisdom in your life.

Last year, the unexpected manifested when one sibling's visa for traveling to the UK was rejected, creating both strong connections among some participants and tension around how to respond, a situation that tested the social fabric of the group. This year, the unexpected took a different form: one participant had to leave during the first day due to personal health reasons that emerged in the opening hours, prompting the rest of the group to pour themselves into caring for each other.

Can I say one year was better than the other?
Not really.

Unexpected bittersweet experiences like these contain everything we usually label as “good” or “bad”.
If we pay attention instead of rushing into binary categorization, maybe we can hear the lesson these situations carry: that there is nothing like good or bad, only the art of navigating the present moment and what stands before us. By accepting everything as it comes and surrendering to what is, we can all take the best possible aligned action: just the very next step.

My favorite regenerative practice is sensing and responding, letting go of control and expectations so that presence informs everything I do and am. This helps me navigate anxiety, encountering reality as it is with love and curiosity. Selgars turned out to be a great dojo for this practice these last couple of years.

 

Trusting and caring from a place of belonging.

The unexpected hit again, gifting us new questions like "If we can't afford to pay for somebody to cook for the group, how are we going to self-organize and prepare all the meals on top of organizing and preparing all the sessions?"

Turns out, when you have a small group, you become a family.

During my Systemic Coaching training, they told us that all the roles in a system need to be filled or dealt with for it to thrive, and the system will self-regulate toward harmony when it's healthy. Repeating in my head the mantra of trusting the intelligence and creativity of systems, it gave me goosebumps to see this coming to life so clearly during Selgars.

I keep saying that Regenerative Leadership misses the most important word in its name: self. Because all we do, learn, and practice is about self-leadership. Maybe it's so clear when you step into it that making it explicit feels redundant.

During our four days, the unfolding of each day together would constantly open spaces for practicing self-leadership. An opportunity would appear for somebody to do the dishes, to get more milk, to prepare a last-minute salad... And every single time, within seconds, that role would be filled. To the point that caring surprises for everybody would constantly pop up: homemade dessert every day made from whatever we would find in the fridge, pancakes on Sunday, fresh tea and snacks in every session, marshmallows around the fire.

There's a different intimacy that arises from cooking together, sharing meals we cooked for each other, and spending time tending to the kitchen. As a Southern European person, I grew up in spaces where a table full of homemade food was always at the center. Where you don't know if you're cooking together because you're having a conversation, or you're having a conversation because you're cooking together.

To me, kitchen and food means family. And I'm aware that family doesn't always mean warmth and love, but it does mean an invitation to be vulnerable and assess your sense of belonging.

 

When descending also means growth.

Flip the growth chart upside down and you get a line going down over time. What if descent is also growth?
The relationship between time and quantity prevails, but quantity gets redefined: it's not about more, but deeper.

One thing I learned (and felt deeply in my bones) when I joined the Regenerative Leadership Journey in 2023 was that year marked the beginning of a long journey. And you can speak to anybody in the field of regeneration and nobody will claim that they have "arrived."
We are all on a journey at different stages. Rush has no place here, as time is understood as something we surrender to, not a resource to optimize.

The gift of embracing natural and cyclical time is that regenerative practitioners stay with things: permeating thoughts, fermenting reflections, composting ideas.
Combine this with a small group of people who will spend four days focused just on each other and you get the perfect setup for going deep: deep in knowing each other, in drilling down on topics, in getting lost in rabbit holes.

Small and slow creates space for everybody to speak up.
Small and slow elevates presence and listening when somebody shares.
Small and slow enjoys multi-layered questions and sustained silence.

Small and slow is abundant because it escapes the surface to dive deep into the rich complexity of our inner landscapes.

In a world obsessed with scaling up, reaching more, and growing bigger, Selgars reminded me that some of the most profound transformations happen in intimate spaces where we can truly see and be seen, serve and be served.

Growth doesn't always look like expansion. Sometimes it looks like a few people around a fire, sharing marshmallows and singing The Beatles.

When we accept that time will bear fruit at its own pace, we understand that growth starts with roots.
And we can't see the roots. We can only trust that we have tended to the soil in our best way and that they are expanding: not up, but down.
Depth over breadth.

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Post image: The Barn and an abundance of pillows for everybody, Selgars, UK, 2025

Originally published on Substack (September 8, 2025): https://juditsaez.substack.com/p/and-the-small-circle-is-the-deepest