In our “Exploring Loneliness” lab, we explored many aspects of loneliness, focusing on the personal, ancestral, and collective aspects. We inquired into a range of themes, including how our early history informed our current experiences of loneliness; the ways in which each of us co-creates our experiences of loneliness, how this might serve us; the forms of loneliness we learned in our families of origin and cultural environments. We also presenced some collective aspects of loneliness. Throughout the process, we cultivated a quality of receptive presence and the possibility to lean on this as a primary resource in our journey.
This lab was aimed at those open to deepening intimacy with their personal experiences of loneliness. We also wanted participants to have (or be open to developing) a curiosity and capacity to explore the wider phenomenon of loneliness as a contemporary and complex phenomenon in our cultures. Our wish for this lab was to offer an emergent space to acknowledge, presence and own our loneliness, and bring it into relation together. We tried to have an age and culturally diverse group, with most participants having some experience with Thomas’s work or with meditation. We had people from all over the globe: a majority of women, with three men.
We started with a group of 34 participants and ended with a group of 28. We met for 14 group sessions from February 2024 to November 2024. There were 12 “formal” sessions and 2 additional “informal" sessions. We decided to distribute our sessions in three groups of 4 meetings with at least one month interval between every round. The first round was dedicated to the personal aspect of loneliness, the second round continued with the personal, transitioning to include ancestral and cultural aspects; the third to include the collective aspect and integration of our overall journey. Due to a long summer break, we added an informal “reconnection session" in September, and a triad clinic to deepen participants' understanding of the triad work.
We started our first meeting by asking every participant to speak about themselves, the land they might have left, the land they were currently living on, and to bring a quality they found resourcing from this land.
We held a listening space, going slowly, introducing the possibility of feeling felt..
We slowly built a listening container, pausing between sharings, allowing for feeling what was shared by introducing space, reflection time and silence between sharings to support integration and coherence of the group field.
We introduced transparent communication (with an emphasis on active listening) and the 4 synch meditation.
We created a space on Teachable platform where resources (TC, 4 synch, poems from the session) were available to participants. The team also posted reflections after each meeting, and offered space for participants to also share.
We started each meeting with a meditation, offering another short meditation after the mid session break.
We practised slowing down, introducing space between sharings and reflecting on what was happening in the moment.
All that helped to form a resourced container which also, particularly in the later phases of the process as the field grew more present and coherent, became an ongoing resource.
The collective nature of the experience of loneliness was at the heart of our lab. It was this collective recognition and presencing of loneliness within our group that supported an undefended unmuting of the participants.
Participants and facilitators were seen as expressing voices and strands in this theme, each carrying individual, ancestral and collective elements.
It was understood throughout that each voice was a fractal of the collective.
There is a built-in paradox in the words “collective loneliness”.
We started by exploring as many aspects of loneliness as the time allowed for.
Slowly, in this process of exploring loneliness together, within the context of a group, the collective aspect of this trauma came alive.
In the second-last meeting, we invited participants to bring different aspects of collective loneliness for the group to presence together. Some of the themes evoked were the loneliness of older people, the loneliness of emigrants, the loneliness of unloved children, the loneliness of bullied children….
This was a beautiful, sad and very intense meeting. It was felt that it took all the building of the group and the work of the 10 previous meetings to be able to hold together an intense, listening, embodied space in which these collective wounds could be presenced together.
While building the container and introducing TC, Triad work and 4 synch meditation, we dedicated the first five meetings to exploring individual aspects and experiences of loneliness.
We explored:
-How does loneliness live in me? With this inquiry we created space for participants uniqueness, specificity and also supported their deepening of self-contact
-Dwelling at the edges, inviting to discover further aspects of loneliness - Here we tried to expand beyond the habitual story to invite inclusion of muted or invisible aspects that risked not being acknowledged
-How, Why we withdraw from contact - This felt an important expansion, in terms of participants agency or collusion in co-creating loneliness in our lives. We wanted to own our own contribution to our experiences of loneliness
-Disavowal of need - This again emerged as an essential theme - both in individual lives and in the culture - how we learn not to own or inhabit our need of others.
-Acknowledging our relational needs - In this, we explored and practiced owning our need more openly
Lab 6 was an invitation to connect with our ancestors, tuning in with them.
Touching into their loneliness, including and bowing down to their sufferings.
Starting with our parents, grandparents, great grandparents…
Evoking their traumas and losses but also their strengths that still support us.
We revisited and expanded our support system: resources, breath, connection to the earth.
Lab 7 was dedicated to exploring the culture and co-creation of loneliness.
We stepped out of our habitual way of conducting the meetings, dividing the group in 3, with each facilitator joining a small group in a more undefended way as a fellow-explorer.
This was an invitation to co-create something new in our group culture, reducing hierarchy, inviting empowerment and a fresh constellation of energies. It was a refreshing and change-evoking meeting, opening our work together.
One of our deepest ongoing commitments was to keep inviting the voice of the collective, particularly muted voices. We did this by creating a receptive space, receiving and supporting participants’ expression, and mirroring possible energies in the field. Of course, not all voices find their way to language, but a rich aspect of our lab was the delicate, vulnerable arrival of voices and ways of speaking that felt fresh and new to participants yet captured experiences many others valued deeply.
The integration and restoration was sort of built-in in the meetings,
The fact that a group is regularly meeting for exploring loneliness is by itself a restoration.
There were many new insights, in the group and in the lead triad. Mainly these insights were integrated in life because they came out of the presence in the group and of the group.
We didn't have to “work” on integration because a natural and ongoing integration was emerging from our work together. This was something many participants referenced often, and was beautiful to see.
We could speak about “ethical upgrade" regarding understanding more of our needs for connection and respecting them more, while respecting at the same time the intelligence of disconnection. Beyond this very broad principle of deeply honouring relational need, and creating an environment where deep healing movements could occur, the theme of ‘ethical upgrade’ was not such a natural fit for our process. Had we continued to deepen, particularly in relation to the collective and cultural structures that amplify loneliness (particularly in the west), this aspect would have become more central.
Participants regularly reported experiences of meaningful change arising from the Lab process: transforming their inner relation to their own loneliness, and transforming the quality of relating within the lab and with others in their lives.
Many participants emailed us to acknowledge the deep impact of the Lab; others expressed this within the meetings. In our last meeting, each participant bore deep witness to how the process had reached them. This last meeting was profoundly moving. As facilitators we were deeply touched by the levels of transformation and insight many reported. (a small portion of this is captured in the survey testimonies).
People reported that their relation to their own loneliness changed significantly: many described no longer pathologizing themselves; understanding the source and intelligence of the symptom; and deepening in compassion and appreciation for what their loneliness brought them. The context of a Loneliness Lab enabled participants to speak openly, freely and often about an aspect of their experience which had rarely had a shared context before. For many, it was the blend of our lab meetings, voluntary triad meetings running in tandem, and their own dedication and practice that enabled this deep transformation.
"I gained profound insights into how the experience of loneliness has been central to my life. It … became less of a concept and more of a lived transformation, far beyond what I initially expected."
"That was a very special experience. I feel more connected to my body after the lab, I live more in my body, I am more connected to my loneliness, I am in the group of my ancestors with the topic and am part of the collective, I am "in" instead of "out."
"Being in the lab gave me the support to watch my father’s interviews for the holocaust project and integrate the loneliness of my family as well as the profound sense of loneliness I experienced as a child… the sense of isolation around that fell away."
"The depth of trust created. The depth of silence. The very high quality of feedback from the facilitators. My ability to speak my very uncomfortable truths."
"This lab has facilitated my journey toward greater authenticity—both in connecting with my own feelings and in bringing my authentic self into relationships…The depth of transformation far exceeded my expectations."
"This was a life changing experience. It was intense, challenging and deep… an insight into the healing mechanism of the web of Life. Sensing so much isolation, loneliness of humans from the light was a great honour... It was so incredibly touching…like a return journey to what is possible in this world of separation and hurt."
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