In your creative process or personal expression, where do you hold back?

It took me only a few seconds to respond. I told Antonio there are subject matters I don’t write about on Substack, even while they are quite significant and I know a good bit about them.

I share this anecdote because holding back—learning about when and why we do—is the work of our next CLEAR Practice Circle, this Friday, August 21 from 8 - 9:30am Pacific.

JOIN THE PRACTICE CIRCLES

If you need a reminder (or a first glimpse) of what these Circles are for, they are for people like Mimi, below, who subscribed a few days ago. See Mimi’s tagline.

CLEAR Practice Circles are about working with the inner argument—the invisible argument that complicates many aspects of our lives and work.

These are small-group, multi-sensory sessions for Paid Subscribers at , my #innerGamestorming publication. If you become a Paid Subscriber there, I’ll email you details to join and I’ll send you a calendar invitation for this Friday.

A recent note from a participant:

BECOME A PAID SUBSCRIBER

Come as you are,
Sun

A few years ago, in my family’s nomad season, we found ourselves in Oakland, CA, meeting with a homeowner willing to rent to us on a monthly basis. She was a nice woman, but in our first conversation, she said something that made my Spidey senses tingle. She said she would handle all our transactions uncannily smoothly and efficiently because she was conflict-avoidant.

My immediate thought was, Oh no.

I had this thought because I’ve experienced people who avoid conflict as reliably generating more conflict—and it tends to be conflict that could have been avoided with a fairly simple conversation.

There are myriad, understandable reasons why people—and cultures—become conflict-avoidant, despite its evident downsides. As an inner scientist, facilitator, and plain old human being, I find it instructive when conflict arises and communication breaks down—and inspiring when it comes back together. And I can’t help but notice that, when it comes to conflict or difficult conversations, we have various suboptimal strategies. Many of our more challenging exchanges end up as some version of these:

1. misunderstanding and undesired outcomes

2. avoidance, brewing resentment, and passive aggression

3. emotional repression and eventual explosion

As you know from your lived experience, none of these outcomes feel good in our bodies, hearts, or minds.

What’s interesting from an inner-science point of view is that the ways we engage interpersonally—with others—often mirror the ways we engage intrapersonally—with ourselves.

In other words, we talk (or don’t talk) to ourselves like we talk (or don’t talk) to others. The same parts of us who sense behavior externally and react to it, often detect our own behavior and have the same reaction internally.

When a communication or interaction doesn’t go well, when it’s not ‘good talk’—inner or outer—I call it closing the channel. I think of the channel as the flow of information between two apparently discrete beings. There are many ways to close the channel, and we tend to be pretty good at them.

The uplifting news is that we can also open the channel—or reopen it when it closes or collapses. We can reopen a dialogue with a colleague we rudely dismissed, or we can re-engage with a part of our own mind that we previously met with antagonism. I’m not saying opening the channel is easy; I’m saying it is always available and possible when we are sincere.1 In my various roles, I’ve learned time and again that the most potent, effective way to keep the channel open, or to reopen it when it closed, is the following:

This approach works essentially every time—with human and non-human animals! But I’ve observed with dismay that we are rarely taught to open and sustain these places of warm-hearted curiosity, wonder, not-knowing, nor do we know how to speak from those places. We’re more accustomed to speaking unconsciously from places of criticism, judgment, punishment, pathologizing, and systems of punishment and reward. Even if we find it in our hearts to meet ourselves and others with an expansive view, we struggle to find the words to express that view, to stay in respectful dialogue through the natural frictions of life.

Our next CLEAR Practice Circle is about learning to keep the channel open. Together, we’ll practice one powerful technique to sustain the flow of information—with ourselves or others.

JOIN THE CIRCLE (PAID SUBSCRIPTION)

It feels important to add that there is nothing to be ashamed of when our words close the channel. The opportunity is to notice it, forgive ourselves, and find the courage to open it again for relationships we are invested in. This, I assure you, we can do.

For those of you who don’t yet know what a CLEAR Practice Circle is, you can learn more about them below.

Until then, I hope you experience a few ‘good talks,’
Sun

Here’s the recording from the May 19th Gamestorming session exploring virtual meetings.

Hope you enjoy it!

I thought you might enjoy this video from an online Gamestorming 2.0 session I co-hosted with Zsolt Viczian at the Sketch Your Mind conference.

Caution: The introduction involves explicit language so skip it if that’s not your thing.

Hope you like it! If you want to try this kinda thing for yourself you can buy the book!

Reminder: I’m hosting a virtual meeting about virtual meetings tomorrow! It’s free and you’re welcome to join.

Register here

Just for fun, if you’ve got two minutes, here’s a video of me prepping the board for tomorrow’s session:

See you tomorrow!

Register here.

It’s not a secret. Most virtual meetings are full of hostages. People who don’t want to be there. They show up with the bare minimum. They pretend to pay attention, but behind the scenes they are checking their email or doing something else. Conversations drift, energy sags, and an hour goes by with nothing much to show for it.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

On Tuesday, May 19, I’m joining Service Designers Connect for their first interactive online session, a virtual meeting about virtual meetings. I’ll be sharing techniques from the newly updated Gamestorming 2.0 that I use all the time to create online sessions where people stay engaged, the conversation goes somewhere, and you walk away with something real.

We’ll get into how to keep energy up, how to design for genuine collaboration instead of vague discussion, and how to move a group from talking to producing. If you run meetings, sit through too many of them, or just want remote work to feel less draining, come hang out.

It’s free, it’s online, and places are limited, so register now to reserve your spot. Every attendee gets a shot at winning a free copy of Gamestorming 2.0.

Tuesday, May 19, 2026, 10 am Pacific time, 6 pm in the UK.

Register.

Hope to see you there.

Dear subscribers, I’m excited to invite you to our second workshop on one of your most powerful, underserved, capacities: IMAGINATION. This Friday, February 27, Patti Dobrowolski and I are co-facilitating The Art and Science of Imagination: Amplifying the Force that Powers Gamestorming.

In this workshop, we give imagination the respect that’s long overdue. Our imaginal capacity runs very deep—nod to Carl Jung—and it’s important to realize how much agency we have to shift it from passive day-dreaming or fantasy toward a force that generates energy and momentum to change future states. Our last workshop focused on individual futures; this one focuses on techniques to engage the collective.

REGISTER FOR IMAGINATION WORKSHOP

In this four-hour online session, Patti Dobrowolski and I will share gamestorming techniques that help you:

• Understand the imaginal capacity as a dynamic perceptual system, not a trait

• Learn the difference between fantasy, projection, and generative imagination

• Experience the distinction between low-imagination mode and amplified-imagination mode—and learn how to dial those up or down in a group

• Work with advanced gamestorming techniques to deepen problem-solving and surface non-obvious futures

• Recognize facilitators as stewards of the imaginative force in a collective process

Based on their reflections, participants found our last workshop on imagination to be provocative, practical, and empowering. It was great to be together, working to understand this awe-inspiring ability and attune to a much broader field of inspiration and possibility.

REGISTER NOW

NEED-TO-KNOWS:

🗓 Friday, February 27 | 9a–1p U.S. Pacific Time
💻 Live, online, experiential—with two seasoned game facilitators
🎨 Materials: Bring paper, markers, and curiosity.
💰 $282 | Venmo or PayPal

LEARN MORE & REGISTER

Paid Subscribers to Nothing in the Way get 10% off. Type IMAGINE10 in your Registration Form. If you bring a guest, you both get 20% off! Type GUEST20 in your Registration Form and I’ll refund you. We hope to see you there. In the meantime, I’ll imagine it. :)

To collapsing the wave function toward the greater good,
Sun

These major and minor antagonisms that take place inside our heads are what I sometimes call ‘the inner argument.’

The inner argument is a naturally occurring phenomenon based on a design feature of the mind—modularity.1 That feature, in itself, is nothing to be concerned about. It’s when that inner conversation heats up, gains momentum, and is left unattended that it can lead to anxiety, aggravation, and fruitless expenses of energy.

To help us understand and work with the inner argument, I offer Practice Circles to Paid Subscribers.

BECOME A PAID SUBSCRIBER

If you’re not ready to commit to a paid subscription, you could buy me a coffee, try one Practice Circle, and decide if there’s value in it for you.

Buy a Coffee & Try One Practice Circle

The purpose of the Practice Circles will be to respectfully familiarize ourselves with our inner activity relative to a challenge so we can alleviate that challenge.

The reason this work is valuable (I would argue invaluable) is because our moment-to-moment experience—and all it adds up to overtime—is largely determined by what’s happening in us that we’re not aware of and aren’t taking care of. FYI, the group facilitation will not require a confounding inner spelunk in front of strangers. We’ll use effective and helpful multi-sensory techniques and you can keep your discoveries to yourself.

The last CLEAR Practice Circle took place on a working day and everyone stayed the full 90 minutes + 20 minutes past closing time. I took this as an indication that something valuable was being exchanged.

1. Each time we meet, you’ll come with or discover something that feels like an inner argument or inner friction related to a project, event, relationship, dream / longing, or daily interaction in which you get off-centered.

2. As a group, we’ll slow down, take a purposeful pause, focus inward, wonder, and map that inner argument using visual, embodied, and multi-sensory techniques.

3. We’ll then use one multi-sensory practice to respectfully relate to it and learn about it so your energy can be freed up.

BECOME A PAID SUBSCRIBER

This work is not about trying to fix and change everything outside of us but about learning to notice and appreciate what is happening in us and stop fighting with it—maybe even radically come alongside it—so we can soften our grips and more spaciously lean into what we CAN impact.

FYI, these Practice Circles leverage techniques from our recent book and highlight a method I’m teaching in another upcoming book (just sent the proposal to my literary agent yesterday :).

> > rigorously trained in the inner sciences for 20 years with some of the most respected teachers in the U.S.2
> > designed multiple systems of experiential learning including #Gamestorming, #Infodoodling and #DeepSelfDesign®
> > highly-seasoned visual facilitator, having led hundreds of group experiences with participant sizes ranging from 5 - 5000
> > demonstrated personal post-traumatic growth and resilience in significant ways, defying clinical odds of thriving
> > authentic presence who encourages questions and does not profess to have all the answers

» 8am (San Francisco) / 10am (Austin) / 11am (New York) / 4pm (London)

» 90 minutes - one Friday a month for nine months - starting January 30, 2026

1. January 30

2. February 20

3. March 20

4. April 17

5. May 15

6. June 26

7. July 24

8. August 21

9. September 18

JOIN THE PRACTICE CIRCLES

If you become a Paid Subscriber (or buy a coffee!), I’ll email you details to join when a Circle approaches. And hey, if you already are a Paid Subscriber, this is my way of extending thanks. No one can say what the world will bring; I’m glad for every glimmer.

To pacing in the Year of the Fire Horse,
Sun

- REGISTER TODAY -

* * * This is your final boarding call to join us. If you become (or already are) a Paid Subscriber to Nothing in the Way, you get 10% off the ticket price. Just type ‘IMAGINE10’ into your registration form. * * *

LEARN MORE & REGISTER

Workshop Details:

Workshop Title: Imagination Unbound: Gamestorming Your Future
Workshop Purpose: Combine gamestorming with techniques for future-simulation to help you to discover, design, and activate a personal aspirational state using two of your most powerful innate capacities: visualization and imagination.
Date, Time and Duration: Friday, February 13 / 9a - 1p U.S. PST
Format: Facilitated Live on Zoom (four hours of didactic and experiential content with two seasoned game facilitators)
Cost: $282 (10% discount for Paid Subscribers to Nothing in the Way. 20% off if you bring a guest! Type ‘IMAGINE10’ or ‘GUEST20’ into your registration form.’)
Recording Available?: Yes

- REGISTER TODAY -

FYI, our guest facilitator, Patti Dobrowolski, is the inventor of the Draw-Your-Future method. Tens of thousands around the world have leveraged this technique to change the course of their lives—sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes in startling ways. Patti has stories of future simulation and activation that are truly inspiring.

I hope you take this chance to collaborate with us. Think of it as adding a silver lining to your future.

Warmly,
Sun

Hello friends, y’all may be noticing I’m experimenting with video. I have actively avoided producing video content for reasons that aren’t interesting enough to share, but I know this excludes me from the zeitgeist and the vanguard (which I do not care about) so, having harrumphed around that, I want to invite you to our workshop this Friday, February 13 using this video teaser. While much of me is averse to video, I am NOT averse to the subject matter of our next workshop, which is creative and profound:

IMAGINATION UNBOUND: Gamestorming Your Future.

In a four-hour online session THIS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, Patti Dobrowolski and I will share gamestorming techniques to help you simulate and activate your future using two of your most powerful innate capacities: visualization and imagination.

LEARN MORE & REGISTER

The imaginal field is a subtle realm in which possibilities can be related to, experimented with, visualized, and activated. Lest you are concerned this is nonsensical hoo-ha, let me emphasize that WE ARE ALREADY CONSTANTLY ACTIVATING IMAGINATION IN THIS FIELD. Federico Faggin, physicist and co-inventor of the microprocessor, theorizes that imagination is a fundamental, non-algorithmic, creative capability that allows humans to envision and bring forth possibilities within a vast, non-material sea of potential. Stated differently, we are Observer, Observed, AND Agent of our lived experience, ceaselessly enacting co-creation with life.1

In this workshop, we carve out deliberate space and time to gamestorm your future state using memory + feeling + intention + experimentation + alignment.

In the absence of efforts like this, we are significantly more likely to simply play out the scripts we inherited. Why not give ourselves a shot at a silver lining?

Paid Subscribers to Nothing in the Way get 10% off. Type IMAGINE10 in your Registration Form. If you bring a guest, you both get 20% off! Type GUEST20 in your Registration Form. I’ll refund you.

NEED-TO-KNOWS:

🗓 Friday, February 13 | 9a–1p U.S. Pacific Time
💻 Live, online, experiential—with two seasoned game facilitators
🎨 Materials: Bring paper, markers, and curiosity.
💰 $282 | Venmo or PayPal (10% off for Paid Subscribers or 20% off if you bring a guest)

LEARN MORE & REGISTER

To actively calling in a better future—
Sun

I recently had the profound pleasure of spending time with author and psychonaut . In the terrible months after my sister’s violent death, somehow I found his book Wetiko—probably through another extraordinary psychonaut we’ve hosted at the Center, Bob Falconer—and it spoke to me directly through a blistering fog of pain. Paul is one of the few people I know who has also had ongoing, direct confrontations with archetypal evil and not only lived to tell the tale, but extracted its poison from his very soul, and is thriving and educating around it. We established that we’re long-lost karmic siblings—awe-struck spiritual warriors and students of the psyche—and we were overjoyed to find each other.

I’m thinking of Paul this morning relative to my upcoming workshops on imagination with author, 3x TEDx speaker, and potent future-simulator .

Patti and I arrived at imagination workshops as offerings because we sense that, if ever the world has needed to summon its imaginal power to awaken the good in us and design a luminous future, it is now.

It’s been my experience that, in our culture, we don’t see imagination clearly. We think of it as Wonka-vision, science fiction, or harmless, silly fun. But and I know imagination very differently—not as deluded escapism or hallucinatory patterns of thought but as a literal force to summon the velocity to pull oneself out of hell. For us, imagination is not a nice-to-have. It was and continues to be absolutely crucial. This is why Patti and I are prioritizing it as a skill that can be taught and we’re using #gamestorming techniques to do it.

REGISTER FOR IMAGINATION UNBOUND

and I are discussing imagination as a forceful future-simulator tomorrow, February 5, at 9am PST. You can join us by clicking this StreamKey.

and I are scheduling a Substack Live in the next few weeks—also related to imagination (and endarkenment)—and I’m honored to soon host another Substack Live (and online book launch party!) with best-selling author and remarkable human being Rene Denfeld. If you read ANY of Rene’s books, you’ll see that—like Paul, like Patti, like me—she has harnessed the force of imagination to co-create a life that defies the odds.

Come to any of these gatherings and be heartened. The first Substack Live is tomorrow. The IMAGINATION UNBOUND workshop is Friday, February 13.

Love,
Sun

That said, our next workshop is decidedly on my turf: IMAGINATION UNBOUND: Gamestorming Your Future.

LEARN MORE & REGISTER

One could argue my entire improbable life is an outcropping of a forceful imagination—not in terms of delusional knowledge but as awakeness to the potentials in a lived experience.1

In a four-hour workshop on Friday, February 13, author + game facilitator and I will share gamestorming techniques to help you simulate and activate your future using two of your most powerful innate capacities: visualization and imagination.

The imagination is sometimes referred to as the second universe, so we’ll elaborate on that—and the invitation of our workshop—in a live-stream this Thursday, February 5 at 9a Pacific.

JOIN THE LIVESTREAM / 9A PST ON FEB. 5

The world could be otherwise—let’s learn how together.

Sun

For those of you needing mindful presence and artistic inspiration, our online workshop with Sharon Zeugin is this Saturday, January 31—Drawing In: Creative and Contemplative Mark-Making to See the Light in Dark Times. The purpose of this intimate four-hour experience is to deepen your perception of the natural world and explore mark-making as a creative, centering, and contemplative practice.

- REGISTER TODAY -

* * * This is your final boarding call to join us. If you become (or already are) a Paid Subscriber to Nothing in the Way, you get 10% off the ticket price. Just type ‘CALLIGRAPHY10’ into your registration form. * * *

Workshop Details:

Workshop Title: Drawing In: Creative and Contemplative Mark-Making to See the Light in Dark Times
Workshop Purpose: Deepen your perception of the natural world and explore mark-making as a centering practice by learning to notice and visually express extraordinary details in ordinary objects
Date, Time and Duration: Saturday, January 31 / 9a - 1p U.S. PST
Format: Facilitated Live on Zoom (four hours of didactic and experiential content)
Cost: $108 (10% discount for Paid Subscribers to Nothing in the Way!)
Recording Available?: Yes

- REGISTER TODAY -

FYI, our guest facilitator, Sharon Zeugin, is one of the world’s precious few female master calligraphers and she has over 35 years of expertise creating and teaching mindful art and calligraphy in the U.S. and abroad.

When I describe Sharon, I refer to her as a ‘quiet renegade.’ She regularly flies under the radar while blasting norms out of the sky, positively disrupting the foundations of a very old tradition by turning it toward intuitive, expressive techniques.

I hope you take this chance to collaborate with her. Think of it as an artful prescription.

Warmly,
Sun

The imagination is powerful. It creates its own self-validating truth strong enough to effect inner and outer transformation.

—Norman Fischer

Dear ones, my friend and colleague, is facilitating a trilogy of workshops with me in 2026—a blend of my #gamestorming techniques with her expertise in imagination and drawing the future—so I wanted to invite you to the first two online (the third will be onsite at our new spot on April 9 and 10 in Austin, TX!).

Workshop #1: Imagination Unbound: Gamestorming YOUR Future

Our first workshop is a four-hour multi-sensory workshop online during which you’ll discover, design, and activate a personal aspirational state using two of your most powerful innate capacities: visualization and imagination.

Date and Time: Friday, February 13 / 9a - 1p U.S. PST
Price: Early Bird Price = $282 $197. Offer ends on February 1.
**Workshop includes signed Gamestorming 2.0 books shipped to your home anywhere in the continental U.S.!

LEARN MORE & REGISTER (EARLY BIRD RATE!)

Workshop #2: The Art and Science of Imagination:
Amplifying the Force that Powers Gamestorming

Our second workshop is a four-hour multi-sensory workshop online for facilitators and change agents who already leverage innovation and imagination and want to use gamestorming techniques to work more consciously with those capacities within a group process.

Date and Time: Friday, February 27 / 9a - 1p U.S. PST
Price: Early Bird Price = $282 $197. Offer ends on February 14.
**Workshop includes signed Gamestorming 2.0 books shipped to your home anywhere in the continental U.S.!

LEARN MORE & REGISTER (EARLY BIRD RATE!)

I know it’s a volatile time in history but the world can be otherwise. Turning the tide involves imagining a better way. Come simulate the future with us.

Sun and Patti

As you know, visual language is one of the main ways facilitators “speak” gamestorming. (I wrote an entire book about it.) It has a profound impact on helping people see what’s invisible—processes, systems, mental models, ideas that long to surface. This online experience called DRAWING IN—four hours on Saturday, January 31—is about expanding our visual vocabulary and leveraging our powers of perception to look more closely and see more clearly, all while soothing our nervous systems.

LEARN MORE & REGISTER

Our facilitator, Sharon Zeugin, is one of the world’s few female master calligraphers, among the first to metabolize the technical precision of the craft and then blow it open with an artist’s heart, using mindful, intuitive practices to shake the foundations of the tradition. In her role, Sharon is patient, attentive, inspirational, and sought after. She encourages experimentation and creative risk-taking.

REGISTER FOR DRAWING IN WORKSHOP

Basic materials—the same kind we use for gamestorming—will suffice for this workshop, and artistic inclinations are not needed. We are not aspiring to “make art,” but learning to come to the present moment, pay close attention, see differently, and enrich our relationship with visual language—and ourselves. Find more details about our guest and the Learning Objectives for this workshop on the registration page.

Date and Time: Saturday, January 31 | 9a - 1p U.S. Pacific Time
Format: Online Experiential Facilitation
Cost: $108

REGISTER FOR WORKSHOP

To taking lines for a walk,
Sun

Some of you know that many moons ago, I started a Doodle Revolution. I was aware of the connotations of the word ‘doodle,’ aware that many people wouldn’t take me seriously, aware it was a “weird” career move. But the book is a great prequel to Gamestorming 2.0 and doodlers around the world—along with educators, entrepreneurs, executives, and visual thinkers—sensed the purpose of my mark-making roar. I wanted people to question the tyranny of only-words and welcome the visual instincts of the mind to see and solve past the surface. And so it is with the calligraphy and art of our next guest at the Center, Sharon Zeugin.

LEARN MORE & REGISTER

I call Sharon a ‘quiet renegade’ because she regularly flies under the radar while blasting norms out of the sky. She’s one of the world’s few female master calligraphers, among the first to metabolize the technical precision of the craft and then blow it open with an artist’s heart, using mindful, intuitive, perceptual practices to shake the foundations of the tradition. As a teacher, Sharon is patient, attentive, inspirational, astute, and sought after. She globe-trots and encourages authentic expression everywhere she goes.

REGISTER FOR DRAWING IN WORKSHOP

This online experience called DRAWING IN—four hours on Saturday, January 31—is about coming to the present moment and noticing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Using contemplative exercises and basic materials, Sharon will teach us how to expand our visual vocabulary and find our voice while soothing our nervous systems, despite the quakes all around. She’ll show us ways to enhance our perception, link our inner experience to the outer world, and leverage the power of imagination to see—and shine—a light. Find details of the Learning Objectives and more about our guest on the registration page.

Date and Time: Saturday, January 31 | 9a - 1p U.S. Pacific Time
Format: Online Experiential Facilitation
Cost: $108

REGISTER FOR WORKSHOP

FYI, artistic training or creative inclinations are not needed for this experience. You’ll have two facilitators in the room who advocate for visual imperfection and experimentation. :) So come as you are, and bring a good intention for your practice.

To art in the dark,
Sun

Refrain from speaking a second time until everyone has had an opportunity to share.

I cringed when I saw this protocol. This is one of those facilitation “rules” that sounds good on the surface—considerate, pro-social—but often ends up being a disservice to the group, the individuals, and the outcome.1

I trust that the people leading the compassion training have positive intent for all, but if I were to lovingly rewrite their rule, it might say, Pay attention to who has spoken and be aware of how often you are speaking. Be mindful of your desire to speak and curious if a motivation behind it serves you, but not you AND the group.

Or it might say, If you feel moved to speak more than once, consider your offering, intention, and potential impact on the group, and then make your choice to speak from that awareness.

Rather than propping up a suboptimal guideline, these approaches can accomplish a similar goal while teaching two valuable practices: situational awareness and self-awareness. I’m bringing this up to name a view that has served me well in facilitation and in life. That is:

As a facilitator, out of abiding respect for each person in the room, I choose to assume three things:

» agency
» autonomy
» strength

In other words, I purposely and consciously do not assume their counterparts: helplessness, powerlessness or dependency, and fragility. I strongly prefer that people make empowering assumptions about me, not only when I’m in a working group but when I’m navigating life itself. I do not want people to handle me with kid gloves, to treat me like I’m a transparent egg. I do not want people to prescribe for me the nature of courteous speech. I do not want people to shield information me from because they worry I can’t handle it. I do not want people around me to be reluctant to speak, or to wither in fear of being villainized, shamed, blamed, judged, or reduced to a caricature of a person.

Do I have parts of me that have been seriously injured by relationships, institutions, and systems, parts that are tender and can be activated by ignorance in other peoples’ thoughts, words, and deeds? Of course I do. But taking care of those parts is chiefly my responsibility, my opportunity to steward my experience. It is unwise and unrealistic to expect other people to recognize and enforce our emotional and psychological boundaries,2 unwise to hand the reins of our internal stability over to someone else, hoping they’ll read the nuance of our hearts and minds and sense where not to tread. I will not hand that responsibility over, and I don’t want people handing it to me.

I advocate facilitation norms that teach and model agentic behaviors. I’d like participants to be aware of other people but not paranoid about them. I’d like people to express themselves authentically but anticipate that those expressions might be challenged. I’d like people to make the effort to read the pulse of a group, to work to read the pulse in themselves, and determine when to speak from that insight—or that blindness. If I had to err on one side or another—and believe me, there’s no perfect middle—I would rather we talk too much, talk out of turn, messily overlap, say things off-the-mark and deluded. I would rather we be honest, clumsy, outright wrong, and let that friction course-correct us, use it as fodder for the process of learning itself. I have no interest in creating environments that shield adults from confusion, imperfection, dissonance, or healthy lines of inquiry. I’m not in the business of discouraging challenging but crucial conversations. I’m not in the business of enabling flimsy forms of personhood.

Unless the world turns upside down—and it’s doing a good job at the moment—it is unlikely I will ever be interested in a guideline that treats adults like children. If we cannot tolerate friction and ignorance, we cannot tolerate the world, and we could not possibly tolerate undesirable truths about ourselves.

I would be remiss in my role as facilitator to design a group process in which my own guidelines suggest that I don’t believe people are capable of productive discomfort, capable of navigating uncertainty and complexity. Who would I be saying they are? Who would I be saying they can become? Out of abiding respect for them, I will not disinvite the struggle or the mess.

Having staked that in the ground, please hear this, too.

It is good for us to be conscious of the ever-presence of human vulnerabilities and tender spots.

It is good for us to be humble in sensing where we might be situated—neither through fault nor merit—in a group’s composition of power, status, and social acceptability.

It is good for us to stay open to the truth that we all come in with blindspots, sometimes big ones, and it is good to allow those blindspots to be reflected back in ways we can choose to learn from.

And the power move: It is good to practice not taking offense, even when offense is meant.3

What is not good, what is far less useful, is to engage in idiot compassion. This is a near-enemy of true compassion, and it shows up with disastrous results: victimizing, enabling, disempowering, pitying, or infantilizing the parties involved.

I know this can be a fine line to walk, a constantly-shifting sand dune unique to each group experience. I’m sure you could challenge all that I’m saying, share provocative examples that would help me see differently—and respectfully, you should. That’s exactly what I’m pointing to.

One of my favorite group mottos is “There’s more than one way to do it.”4 I love this motto because it points to an axiom that reality has stunning variability, and there are exceptions to every “rule.” Indeed, there are exceptions, but the work of facilitation is to support participants in bringing out their best, taking creative risks, going to places that scare them. We are there to encourage people to wonder, expand, stumble, crash, get up, marvel, and grow. I err on the side of assuming agency, autonomy, and strength out of abiding respect—at the very least, hope—for our greater capacities. This feels like an empowering stance to me. It feels like the right thing to do.

A few days prior, I noticed similar chaos in my own creative process when I was grappling with a proof and I went from ‘This is incoherent’ to ‘I’m never going to be able to express this’ to ‘Why can’t I let this go?’ to ‘I’ve wasted years’ to ‘I have to go lay down.’ Minutes later, my partner found me with a pillow over my head.

These head-spinning loops are what I sometimes call ‘the inner argument.’

The inner argument is a naturally occurring phenomenon based on a design feature of the mind—modularity. That feature, in itself, is nothing to be concerned about.1 It’s when that inner conversation heats up, gains momentum, and is left unattended that it can lead to anxiety, aggravation, and fruitless expenses of energy.

To help us work with the inner argument, I’m offering Gameful Practice Circles to Paid Subscribers at .

This involves the #innergamestorming I polled y’all about.

BECOME A PAID SUBSCRIBER

If you’re not ready to commit to a paid subscription, you could buy me a coffee, try one Practice Circle, and decide if there’s value in it for you.

Buy a Coffee & Try One Practice Circle

The purpose of the Practice Circles will be to respectfully familiarize ourselves with our inner activity relative to a challenge so we can alleviate that challenge.

The reason this work is valuable (I would argue invaluable) is because our moment-to-moment experience—and all it adds up to overtime—is largely determined by what’s happening in us that we’re not aware of and aren’t taking care of. FYI, the group facilitation will not require a confounding inner spelunk in front of strangers. We’ll use effective and helpful gamestorming techniques and you can keep your discoveries to yourself.

1. Each time we meet, you’ll come with or discover something that feels like an inner argument or inner friction related to a project, event, relationship, dream / longing, or daily interaction in which you get off-centered.

2. As a group, we’ll slow down, take a purposeful pause, focus inward, wonder, and map that inner argument using visual, embodied, and multi-sensory methods.

3. We’ll then use one #innergamestorming practice to respectfully relate to it so your energy can be freed up.

BECOME A PAID SUBSCRIBER

FYI, these Practice Circles are based on our recent book, Gamestorming 2.0, and a technique I’m teaching in another upcoming book. The power of this work is not about trying to fix and change everything outside of us but about learning to notice and appreciate what is happening in us and stop fighting with it—maybe even radically come alongside it—so we can soften our grips and more spaciously lean into what we CAN impact.

> > rigorously trained in the inner sciences for 20 years with some of the most respected teachers in the U.S.2
> > designed multiple systems of experiential learning including #Gamestorming, #Infodoodling and #DeepSelfDesign®
> > highly-seasoned visual facilitator, having led hundreds of group experiences with participant sizes ranging from 5 - 5000
> > demonstrated personal post-traumatic growth and resilience in significant ways, defying clinical odds of thriving
> > authentic presence who encourages questions and does not profess to have all the answers

» 8am (San Francisco) / 10am (Austin) / 11am (New York) / 4pm (London)

» 90 minutes - one Friday a month for nine months - starting January 30, 2026

1. January 30

2. February 20

3. March 20

4. April 17

5. May 15

6. June 26

7. July 24

8. August 21

9. September 18

JOIN THE PRACTICE CIRCLES

If you become a Paid Subscriber (or buy a coffee!), I’ll email you details to join when a Circle approaches. And hey, if you already are a Paid Subscriber, this is my way of extending thanks. No one can say what the world will bring; I’m glad for every glimmer.

To the Year of the Fire Horse,
Sun

Due to a host of fairly excruciating circumstances, I’ve been content to host CDSD workshops online only. I have not been seeking a physical space, yet one in Austin found me. More accurately, we found each other, through semi-spontaneous sacred events, surprising conversations, and serendipity.

This message is me sharing that now there is a THREE-DIMENSIONAL SPACE in Austin for us to gather—to work, play, learn, stumble, get up, and grow together.

It is a beautiful space, a sacred space, a space made possible by the open arms and open minds of a matron and patron of the arts, sciences, and spiritual techniques. I’m sharing some images2 of the space below, in the hopes that your eyes will brighten with mine, and you can imagine yourself participating in our future in-person events.

This space brings together a tiny, mighty crew of collaborators—dear friends and seasoned facilitators. Together, we call ourselves the *Peace Path Collective* since the space will house experiences from each of us that are—in unique ways—related to group work, transformation, change, contemplation, and feeding the creative flame. For now, we’ll have access to the space for one year and we aspire to make the most of it. I’ll be personally designing and co/facilitating experiences in 2026 and, of course, inviting stellar teachers.

Currently, in motion, we have:

• A two-day onsite led by Yours Truly and called BOOSTING YOUR BRILLIANT LIGHT: Gamestorming for Impact. You can add your name to the interest list here.

• A two-day onsite (gamified!) writing retreat3 with four-time best-selling author Rene Denfeld (tentatively) titled Writing from the Truth.

• A multi-day Neuro-Mysticism training with the founding teacher of the Austin Shamanic Center, .

I assure you, there will be more.

My challenge has never been about calling up ideas or teachers. It’s more about curbing my enthusiasm. For now, I wanted to share this news—in the hopes that you’ll join us wherever you can—in Zoom or this new sacred playground.

To the mystery,
Sun

Kloud has three-feet-long legs and weighs over 100 pounds, but he regularly boulders on top of me and plops down with a sigh. He blocks my view of the television, knocks the book I’m reading out of my hand. He forces me to put down my tea, lest I scald us both, and he hovers his face precariously close to whatever I’m imbibing—wine, cereal, pasta, soup. Kloud wantonly shoves his nose into the crack of my ass and circles around to look me in the eye and affirm this action. He waltzes into the bathroom when I’m bathing, peeing, shaving, or flossing, in order to sniff the happenings, evaluate the situation, and stand at attention for me to massage him. Kloud regularly barks or cries at three in the morning because he’s bored, or needs to pee, or he wants to make sure we’ve been notified of the hooligan street cat outside.

When Kloud was smaller and a ball of pure energy, the day came when I ran out of ways to entertain him. But I noticed he enjoyed shredding cardboard boxes and I decided that, since we had reams of paper!, I could get work done and simultaneously burn off his energy by letting him tear sheets of paper into bits. Because of this poor decision, Kloud has since destroyed a meticulously-curated handwritten guest list for my father’s funeral, a vehicle registration sticker that comes only by mail, and—just yesterday—$60 in cash.

In perhaps any universe, it could be said that Kloud has no boundaries—or precious few—and this is my imagining of how he feels about that.

Because I love Kloud with a ferocity that borders on intrusive, it is rare that I mind his trouncing of my personal boundaries. Chet and I have trained many dogs to be Good Citizens, so Kloud is not free to be a menace to society or a nuisance to guests, but he can splay his unselfconscious zest for life willy-nilly around me and I consider it part of our exuberant relationship.

Contrast my expansive view of Kloud’s relational carte blanche with the more complex exchanges that happen in human relationship. Just in the last few days:

> > > a colleague requested a favor right on the edge of uncomfortable, inspired by my untempered enthusiasm;

> > > I got a request via text to make myself available (in the next few hours!) so that my brain could be picked;

> > > I sent an email to a Zen teacher inquiring about the practice edges of my new binji role;

> > > a friend’s mother told my friend to tell me when I should be at the airport so I’ll have time to do what she felt I needed to do.

In each of these instances, suffice it to say, Kloud’s carte blanche boundary-smashing was not the default. These folks and I don’t have the same high-trust, goofy, intimate understanding that Kloud and I share, so each instance requires a pause, a discernment, and an approach toward a boundary—sometimes on both sides of the equation. Each exchange requires a multi-step process that leads a human duo toward a unique result.

That result might look like the onset of a frank negotiation, the choice to ignore a request (and care for the parts of me unnerved by that), or a firm no, without explanation. Whatever the result, all roads lead to at least the exploration of a boundary, and all sentient beings1—even those strip-mined of dignity from day one—retain a basic need for self-preservation, respect, agency, and sovereignty. The negotiation of those drives is where friction comes in, often in the form of needing to set and enforce boundaries—or fail to and deal with the consequences.

There are clinical ways to describe a boundary but, in anticipation of the holiday season—famous for stressing people out—I wanted to share a simple way I think of a boundary when I find myself facing the need to set one:

A boundary is how I choose to not abandon any part of myself in the process of relating to or exchanging with you.

If that’s not elegant enough, let me call in a now-classic Internet quote from therapist and author Prentis Hemphill: Boundaries are the distance at which I can love both you and me simultaneously.

Setting a new boundary may initially feel anxiety-provoking to our mammal bodies—how will both parties react?!—but a boundary is an act of preserving a relationship, rather than creating the conditions for its eventual demise. I’m not an expert in the sociocultural nuances or neurobiology of boundaries, nor do I exhibit mastery over their application. But I can say with confidence that when two people attempt to know their healthy restraints and communicate those restraints without alienating each other, we have given ourselves a significantly better shot at staying connected.2

If you sit with that idea, it becomes intuitively obvious. We all know from a thousand tiny cuts3 that the absence of clear boundaries elicits painful emotions—not liberating ones—and they’re emotions we know all too well: self-doubt, disappointment, longing, resentment, sadness, bitterness, rage. When a relationship elicits those painful emotions often enough, we don’t want to stay connected.

The tragedy of holiday merry-making is that many of us feel socially obligated to permit and cause harm to ourselves—great and small—to experience the alleged “joy” of being together. Family members are often the worst boundary-offenders, believing that blood is thicker than water4 and they have a right to run you over with impunity. Perhaps you have a healthy family culture and, if so, more power to you. Still, odds are that, at some point, with some person in your tribe, there will be a relational violation—some transgression, subtle or overt, of your sense of being respected or autonomous. You may ignore this violation because your culture demands it, or because it happens so often you’re numb to it, or because some part of you thinks you deserve it, or you may shrug it off because it genuinely didn’t bother you. But when it’s a true relational violation, your mammal body will sense it, feel it, and know it. You can override this physiological feedback with an over-developed intellect, a quick rationalization, or a snippy clapback, but the emotional charge will linger in your body, looking for an exit.

It does not matter what marketers jingle, the holidays are potential landmines for hurt feelings.

Call me a humbug, but I’m embodying the anti-Scrooge since I’m about to offer a game to make the holidays feel good—or at least better—which is allegedly what they’re about. For Gamestormers, there’s always a game for that. :)

GAME: YOUR BOUNDARY IMAGE

OBJECT OF THE GAME: The goal of this game5 is to use an image to help you build and reinforce an inner (psychological) boundary that helps you keep out (a) what is not true for you and (b) what is not about you. You can use this image repeatedly over the holidays to buffer you from untrue / inaccurate and impersonal / third-party statements that can cause you unnecessary distress or harm. This game is about visualization and discernment. It activates:

• the primary visual cortex,6 which helps us process, imagine, and make sense of visual information (90% of which comes from the content in your brain rather than your eyes)

• the mentalization neural network, which helps differentiate your mind from another person’s mind, discerning what is and is not true for you

CONTEXT: a holiday meal, outing, or gathering with your family

HOW TO PLAY AND PRACTICE: A boundary image is an image you can use over the holidays (and beyond) to gently prevent yourself from absorbing information that does not belong in your awareness or in your emotional field. To use your boundary image, you must first find your boundary image. To do that, you’ll need to slow down, close your eyes, turn your awareness inward, and make this request of your visual imagination:

• <Quietly asking your Inner World> “When I’m in a social situation and I’m hearing something that is BOTH not true for me AND not about me, show me an image that represents that reality.”

You are requesting an image from your heart and mind that visually represents the simultaneous presence of these two conditions. Let the image come when it comes. Just hold the question.

Whatever image you receive—and there’s no need to have a preference—that image will be the signal, the shortcut, the heuristic, the sign for you to not absorb the information you’re hearing because it is information about the other person, it has nothing to do with you and, therefore, you do not need to take it in. Your brain will learn to actively use your boundary image to sweep that information from your field. You can conjure this image if and when a family member is issuing passive-aggressive, sarcastic, antagonistic, teasing, diminishing, or inaccurate statements.

The brain is muscular in its own way, so if you embed this image in your inner ground through recurring use, it will become more effective. The boundary image can be simple or elaborate—flowing water, a lotus flower, the face of your fun-loving dog—whatever your incredible brain offers. Below is what surfaced for me.

Much of the time, holidays with family are pleasurable—but not all of the time. Since we have the power to resource ourselves, we may as well use it. Play one game that is small but mighty. And if the idea of practicing a psychological boundary causes you distress, keep this in mind: There are four general boundary types7 and for this type, no one but you needs to know it’s there. You can generate inner peace without exposure or interference. This may be your greatest gift for the holidays—one ultimately in service to all.

Love,
Sun