February / March 2005

Join AHP to receive the complete Perspective Magazine by mail!

GROUP MAGIC: An Inquiry into Experiences COLLECTIVE RESONANCE
— Renee A. Levi

The human spirit is not measured by the size of the act but by the size of the heart.
Billboard sign presiding over Ground Zero Commemoration Ceremony, New York City, September 11, 2002

W e are at a crossroads in human evolution. We have arrived on the doorstep of the 21st century in great global disarray. Anxiety, hate, terrorism, and war are the pervasive themes of our time. We live in fear, and our dealings with one another reflect this undercurrent. We mistrust others in personal dealings, and group dialogues on important issues affecting our collective future are marked by skepticism and competition for perceived scarce resources. Our media captures and magnifies it all— every unsettling detail—live and 24/7. This is dissonance: collective dissonance.

Even so, occurrences of resonance between individuals and within groups happen every day in situations in which people come together and experience intimacy and bonding, a felt sense of being in the flow or transcending, of personal transformation, and sometimes the satisfaction of accomplishing extraordinary things.

This is group magic, and these are the experiences that inform a phenomenological study I recently completed as part of my doctoral work in organizational systems. They are extraordinary but they are also ordinary because they happen every day in all kinds of contexts to ordinary people. They are difficult to describe, but we know when they have occurred. It is in the space between us, beyond the level of intellectual exchange, and felt in a different way than as a meeting of the minds. It is a meeting, but one of a different sort: it is a meeting of hearts, of souls, of energies, and memories, and although it exists in the realm of physical space and time, it may reflect a dimension beyond the immediate interaction.

Click ad to go to Saybrook.edu

Collective resonance experiences occur more frequently than we may know. They do not sell newspapers and therefore may go unnoticed in the course of a busy life, but they need to be brought to light, to be better understood because they serve as guideposts pointing to ways of working and living together that sustain human life and spirit rather than destroy it. They are points of light that illuminate the way to a better world than the one with which we entered this century, and they need to be told in the voices of the individuals who experience them.

Group Magic: An Inquiry Into Experiences of Collective Resonance gathers and interprets such experiences. In it I explore the broad range of contexts in which people report experiencing this phenomenon and the many levels of connection associated with it: energetic, physical, emotional, and spiritual as well as intellectual. I discovered, talking with athletes, soldiers, dancers, educators and students, construction workers, singers, police officers, corporate executives, weekend fishermen, and many others what the experience of collective resonance feels like, what they believe shifted their group into resonance, how significant the experience was for their life or work, and whether a similar sense recurred during the remembering and retelling of their stories.

Bringing this information to light is important, I believe, for two main reasons. First, by having access to examples of collective resonance, readers of the study may be able to recall similar encounters in their own lives, raising awareness that it is available to us all and that its effects can be transformative. I also believe that increasing conscious recognition of felt experience actually amplifies the positive energy field around and between human beings and can affect decisions leading to right action in the world.

Second, by understanding the components of such experiences, tools and methods can be created to help design and facilitate groups in ways that enhance the possibility of the emergence of resonance, again in service of decision-making that moves our societies forward, but also for the intrinsic satisfaction and joy that can heal the wounds already inflicted by a dissonant age.

Collective resonance is, by my definition, a felt sense of energy, rhythm, or intuitive knowing that occurs in a group of human beings and positively affects the way they interact toward a common purpose. The word resonance means "re-sound," indicating a flow of vibration between two things, in this case two or more people. In psychology the word resonance has been used to describe empathy between human beings. In the spiritual realm, particularly in the Eastern traditions, it refers to the sense of oneness with the universe that is the goal of meditative practices. In this study, however, the physical level of connection through vibrational interchange was the focus and suggested the use of the word resonance in the descriptor, collective resonance. It is a level that operates constantly when human beings interact in the same space, whether or not they are communicating verbally. It is based on the laws of physics, that vibrating bodies in this case, human beings transmit and receive sound waves that impact one another. When waves of similar enough frequency interact, they can entrain or become one wave with greater amplitude.

Informed by these concepts, I interviewed 34 people from 32 group situations identified as resonant ones. I wanted to include the broadest possible range of experience and participant characteristics to determine what commonalities existed in the elements of experience, that is how, precisely, it was felt, what shifted groups into resonance, how significant it was deemed to be, and whether a similar sense recurred during the interview itself. The hour-long interviews were conducted using five core questions and were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed using phenomenological and participant observation methodologies common in human science research. The study was partially funded by the Collective Wisdom Initiative of the Fetzer Institute.

Despite the diversity of participants and their group contexts, surprisingly common threads of experience were discovered. (See map of Elements of Experience on this page.) Asked to remember and recount the situation and how it felt to them, more than twothirds of the people interviewed mentioned six things:

1. a definite felt sensation in the body, primarily in the upper torso or heart area and secondarily in the eyes, often associated with recognition of greater clarity or comprehension;

2. a dynamic aspect to the experience characterized by movement, rhythm, or a sense of flow;

3. the involvement of emotion, primarily joy, appreciation, compassion, and love;

4. a strong sense of connection to others in the group through discovery of commonalities and to the group through a feeling of belonging;

5. an experience of shift in personal or collective boundaries that affected perception of self, of the group, or self within the group; and

6. a feeling of high energy in the room described in various ways including aliveness, excitement, heightened senses, and surges of personal power or strength. Another four elements that characterized the experience of collective resonance for one-third to two-thirds of the interviewees were

7. an awareness that physical touching or close physical proximity of the people (spontaneously or deliberately created) was present during the experience;

8. a shift from intellectual, cognitive, and brain-centered thinking to reliance on physical, intuitive, or spiritual sources of information to experience collective resonance;

9. a profound connection with self occurred and was mentioned in many ways such as realization of personal gifts or talents, important insights, and healing;

10. a feeling of calm, groundedness, or relaxation was reported, sometimes in the midst of highly charged or dangerous situations. Finally, four additional aspects of collective resonance experiences were mentioned by one-third of the study's participants:

11. a distinct sense that they had experienced an altered state of consciousness, often described as a lost awareness of time passing but also creatively expressed as being “in a bubble,” surreal, an immersion, a spell, or being “in the zone”;

12. acknowledgment of an energy field around or weaving through the group that held it together and required, for some, either letting go of control to relax into the experience, a conscious intention to hold the space, a willingness to suspend judgment of what is or is not reality, or a shift from outer to inner orientation;

13. recognition of a spiritual force or source, described in various ways such as nature, God, or Other, even though the vast majority of group contexts were not traditionally religious in nature; and

14. an awareness that they were fully and totally present, engaged, and in the moment during the experience, unaware of distractions of any kind.

Having gained an understanding of what collective resonance feels like, I wanted to know what things shifted groups into resonance; in other words, what were the behaviors, events, or other occurrences people remembered as having changed the character of the group? This is important to know when considering the applicability of these factors to group situations in which collective resonance is desired. (See the wheel of Collective Resonance Shifters on this page).

Nine factors were widely identified from this inquiry. Two, vulnerability and silence, were shared by considerably more than two-thirds of all interviewees despite their very different situations. A sense of being vulnerable, either personally or as a group, was the most widely shared shifting factor. Many ways of feeling vulnerable were expressed. Personal vulnerability in the form of self-revelation, an approach of openness in new situations, not having an answer, not knowing what to do, or fatigue or illness were mentioned frequently. Feeling vulnerable as a group due to difficult times or conditions or disaster situations was also mentioned as influential in shifting groups into resonance. All shared the theme of feeling that they had less control of the situation than usual.

Silence, the second most widely mentioned shifting factor, was described as a pause in the action, a time that allowed individuals to connect with one another and with themselves, a space to “hear” other sources of information, and as a collectively felt necessary next step in the group’s process.

Click ad to go to somaticed.com

Half of the participants in this study identified the use of story or storytelling in the group as influencing emerging collective resonance. The stories were of a personal nature and revealed aspects of the individual. This was reported as significant in establishing the close bonds that were created. Another shifting factor that half of the interviewees mentioned was the importance of the physical place or energetic space that held the group during resonance. Aspects of the physical space that were identified were its historical significance, its layout, its aesthetic beauty, or its location in natural settings. Ritual or intention was also mentioned as conscious activities that altered the energetic space resonance emerged in.

An observation by more than onethird of the study participants was a sense of the collective “boundary” contracting, either literally or metaphorically, enough to provide a kind of container that held the experience. Some collective boundaries that were mentioned were walls of fog, walls of a room, or a circle made by people standing close together with their arms around each other.

More obviously, perhaps, was the role of a shared group purpose, goal, or intention to a group’s shift into resonance. In some groups there was a specific task to accomplish that served as its goal; in others, a shared desire such as wanting to know one another better, learning something together, or a commitment to having fun were the common threads.

Telling the truth, to oneself and to the group, was identified as a significant source of group shift. The content of the truth was less important than the perception that group members were being honest with themselves and courageous enough to voice their truth in the group. A sense that the group was safe enough to allow for this was a prerequisite in these situations. One person’s example of truth-telling in a group was sometimes enough to give others permission to follow suit, and this in itself was identified as a shifting factor.

In a third of the group contexts, sound and vibration were recognized as shifting factors. These appeared in the form of music, singing, physical movement causing vibrations in the surrounding air, and the subtle gradations of the human voice in speech. One woman used the sonic abilities of dolphins to enhance emotional healing in groups in the water. [See the article “Resonating with Dolphins by Terry Kalayjian in this issue of the Perspective on page 22.]

Finally, although a felt sense of connection to spirit was identified as an element of the experience of collective resonance, spirit was also acknowledged as a shifting factor. In other words, an outside force or higher being was reported to have entered the group and affected it, according to one-third of the study’s participants. Again, only three of the group situations were religious in the traditional sense.

After learning about what collective resonance feels like and what causes it to emerge, I was curious to know what impact it had on the individual. This, for me, was an important indicator of the usefulness of further research and application in this arena. A large majority of my interviewees indicated that their experience of collective resonance was highly significant in changing their lives, their work, their relationships, and themselves. Some described it as transformational in an overall way.

Finally, and of great interest to me, was the discovery that in 30 of the 32 interviews, participants reported that they felt the same physical, emotional, psychological, and energetic feelings return during the interview as they had originally experienced. This was confirmed by the changes that I observed in their physical selves, such as tears, animation, gestures, and silences. Many realized and revealed that they were saddened by the lack of such experiences in their current lives or were missing the people with whom they had become so connected. I think this finding has significant potential for further exploration.

SOUND WAVES AND VIBRATIONAL FIELDS? Having collected and assembled the many themes that illuminate the experience of collective resonance, I sat, for a time, with them like puzzle pieces wanting to be made whole. Although the goal of a phenomenological study is to map the constructs of experience, there were lingering questions for me, mainly about how the reported felt sense of resonance related to the physical laws of rhythm entrainment. Was it possible that sound waves emanating from human beings in close proximity and in certain situations rhythmically entrain and amplify, creating a physical field between them that feels satisfactory and allows them to move together toward achieving goals? Might these fields be interacting with other, larger fields in the universe?

To my knowledge, this has not been proposed before in the context of groups, although brain-heart entrainment in the same individual has been documented, as have the effects of one person’s heartbeat on another’s brain waves (D. Childre & H. Martin, The Heartmath Solution, Harper San Francisco, 1999; J. Lynch, A Cry Unheard, Bancroft Press, 2000).

Nearly all of my interviewees felt physical body sensation and more than two-thirds of them felt it in the heart or upper torso area, the location of the largest vibrating organ in the body. In addition to physical sensation, many people mentioned a profound connection with themselves and with others stemming from vulnerability of some kind. They reported that they felt a sense of individual and collective boundary movement. They also agreed that truth and honesty in an atmosphere of safety, often communicated in story form, were conditions of resonance. Silence, as a space in which a different kind of knowing can occur, was a pervasive theme.

It may be that as human beings become more authentic, more deeply in touch with themselves and what they believe, and display behaviors that express this, that their energy fields change. In physics, fundamental frequency—the frequency at which an object most naturally vibrates—allows for the most efficient use of energy. Human beings, too, as vibrating bodies, have fundamental frequencies. In meditation, for example, it is thought to be the entraining of the mind and heart to the natural rhythm of the person’s breathing that helps reduce stress and anxiety and leads to cardiac and overall physical health (Childre & Martin). Perhaps getting in touch with and articulating one’s own truth through participation with others in various ways can also affect the waves emanating from a person and alter their electromagnetic field. As one participant, a massage therapist, told me: It’s about speaking the truth. And when you hear the truth, you relax. And if somebody says something to you, and it doesn’t feel like the truth to you, whether it’s conscious or unconscious, you say: “We’re not on the same playing field here.”

In rhythm entrainment, wavelengths of similar frequency merge into a single wave and amplify. Could this be what is happening in the felt sense of an energy field, an altered consciousness, palpable high energy, or the distinct sense of rhythm and movement reported by many of my study’s participants? In the emotional realm, could the widely shared reports of connection to others in the group in the form of feelings of belonging, common humanity, and even love be another manifestation of the entrained energy waves? And perhaps mention or connection to spirituality, outside forces, nature, or the universe may also be a form of entrainment of the group with larger collectives.

How is collective resonance different from groupthink (or mob psychology), a phenomenon in which the buzz in a group can lead to acts of violence and war? What prevents the tilting of the balance toward evil? There is one major difference that I believe is perhaps the essential element of collective resonance experiences, and this is the deep, self-connection that occurs alongside the bonding with others, grounded in personal truth and authentic expression. In examples of groupthink—that is, cults, gangs, terrorist organizations, and nationalistic movements that profess superiority of themselves over others—the bond between people usually involves what I would call a “third party” to the experience: an ideology, a perceived enemy, a common cause, an idealized leader. As individuals connect around this third party, potential for evil emerges. In collective resonance there is no third party, necessarily, around which the bonding occurs. The connection, instead, is through the self, through internal authenticity and truth-telling, which influences physiological and energetic processes and ultimately entrainment with others who are doing the same. Although there may be a specific collective purpose, it is the inner component in collective resonance, indeed its key component, that shifts the individual and the group into resonance and possibly affects the group’s connection with still larger forces. This connection, then, can propel the group toward its goals, sometimes enabling them to achieve extraordinary things.

In closing, I believe that knowledge of the physical ways human beings are fundamentally connected can accelerate progress toward collaborations toward common human goals, complementing the many intellectual efforts to the same end. I believe that collective resonance is healthy for individuals, organizations, and whole societal systems on a physical level as well as a behavioral one. I also believe that the integration of many kinds of knowing fuses perceived opposites— East and West, male and female, mind and heart, science and spirituality, contemporary and indigenous cultures, and others. Balance and wholeness are fundamentals of all healthy systems and essential to successful functioning in all spheres.

Finally, where might we go from here? Physiological validation of the theory of rhythm entrainment among people in groups seems important for those inclined toward scientific proof. Monitoring heart activity during group work designed with collective resonance principles is being explored at this time. Also, it seems important to know if collective resonance can occur at a distance, especially as we move toward ways of interacting, enabled by technology, that take human beings further and further apart physically. [See in this issue of the Perspective “Thought Fields and Nonlocal Consciousness by Nick Arrizza on page 21.] The conscious convening of groups using practices that enable resonance to emerge is another important application of the information uncovered in this study. Using storytelling formats, incorporating questions that invite honesty and self-connection, providing opportunities for relationship- building through seeing oneself mirrored in others, attending to the place or space in which groups convene, taking time for silence as well as dialogue or action, being clear about collective expectations or group purpose, incorporating sound and vibration into the gathering, and attempting to create emotional safety in the group are some ways to craft environments that cultivate collective resonance.

These findings could be useful in designing groups to cultivate resonance toward collective goals that enhance human spirit and life. They have potential impact for the fields of organization development, health, spirituality, and conflict resolution.

Have we been focused for too long on “figuring out” fundamental problems that plague our world and on analyzing how we might live together in peace and prosperity? Maybe the direct, aggressive, laser-like approach can be complemented by “relaxing into” the intricate web of physical connection that surrounds and enfolds us, a level of connection that only needs to be sensed, intuited, felt, and accepted, instead of actively produced by discussion, negotiation, compromise, and agreement.

Can we feel it? Our challenge is to let go and receive, to be as well as do. For all the good things our doing has provided, the mystery and the magic that are life need to be remembered. I believe that awareness is always the first step toward change. The voices from this study help to make us aware of the physical web of connection that can inform our evolution toward the future we desire.

RENEE LEVI, Ph.D., is director of The Resonance Project, a research organization promoting further inquiry into Collective Resonance™. She is also principal of Resonance Consulting, dedicated to individual and organizational transformation. The book Group Magic: Collective Resonance at Home, Work, and Play is forthcoming in 2005. To contact her or to order her complete dissertation on Collective Resonance, visit www.resonanceproject.org.

Second Cover Story

The Entrainment Of Intent — Carla Woody