I learned that paying whole attention to someone is giving them a huge gift; it gives them space to breath, to think, to experiment; it offers them lightness of mind to play and to wonder and to get things wrong.

I learned that we are all responsible for fixing the problems in front of us; that we all have something useful and unique to contribute; that with clear intention, we can probably find a solution to anyting.

I learned that leadership comes from within, and is a deeply personal thing; that any leader who doesn’t understand that is flawed or weakened by it; I learned that there is intelligence within the group that vastly outweighs the sum of its parts.

I learned that if we choose to honour each other, we open up a crack in our daily defences that allows our deepest selves to connect. I learned that such connection is the source from which everything else springs.

I found, too, that I’ve spent most of my working life in my head, being logical, rational, political, and hierarchical, when my heart – which offers a different wisdom – is firmly rooted in my body.

I found that there are lots of people thinking and feeling the same things as me, and wanting to do something about it, who are also taking first steps out on the ice when they don’t yet know whether it will hold.

I learned that courage isn’t something that dispells fear, it exists alongside fear – it’s the handrail for the slippery walkway. I learned that *now* is the right time for the first step; and that courage will meet me in that step even when I don’t realise it’s there. I learned that the universe is on my side when I align these different parts of me, and that it offers me support beyond anything I could organise for myself.

What is my intention after all that? I want my daughters, and other children like them, to grow up with a clear sense of centre, with a way of being that doesn’t allow others (especially those further up the hierarchy) to pigeonhole or control them.

I want organisations to re-structure to enable grown-up, respectful conversations between respectful people.

I want conflict and disagreement to be something that we all have effective tools to deal with in a functional and progressive manner.

I want to be part of making that possible.

The Sunday evening saw us all come slowly together in the main hall, where the walls were covered with our intentions, sent in soon after registration; conversations started; groups formed and melted; ideas already started to provoke.

The next day started with breakfast together, during which Michael Chender spoke about Authentic Leadership, clarifying for me that leadership at a global scale is, or should be, the same as leadership at a personal level: the times are uncertain; any answers we had have run their course, leaving us in the current state of confusion over climate change, peak oil, population growth, etc. His speech was quite brilliant, although I struggled to remember much of it afterwards – I’m still waiting for the audio to be made available on the website for another listen.

Thereafter, we all sat for meditation talk and practice. I’ve never meditated with that number of people before, or with gongs, bowls and bows. It was tremendous. This took place morning and evening every day of the week, and was a wonderful sanctuary of peace amid a hectic week.

Then, in order to focus all our minds on why we were there, a world café was held to investigate the question “what time is it in the world?”. I joined in lots of conversations, and witnessed the summation of others. And that little piece of magic aligned us all together for me, because we were all seeing similar problems and opportunities, and we were all being driven by similar hopes and fears.

That afternoon, we had the first session of our chosen modules – this was the Embodied Leadership course with Wendy Palmer that was the reason for my attendance. In a just-large enough room, with bright winter sun bouncing off the snow in through the windows, we started. Suffice to say, it was excellent, fascinating, and challenging in equal measure.

That evening, we had a fabulous treat – a piano quartet playing the most hypnotic piece by a Dutch composer that I could have imagined. It beguiled me into it with simple repetitions and variations. I thought I was simply listening, but when it ended seemingly mid-note, I stopped breathing too, and realised that it had quietly taken control of me in the gentlest, sweetest manner possible.

That was an amazing evening – to be the audience at a private concert was an incredible privilege (and not the only time I felt that way during the week).

I learnt much with Wendy and her other students; with Liane Stefan who led the Deep Listening creative workshop; with the leaders of the meditations, with the speakers, and also with my fellow participants. The hosting group refered to us collectively as a community from the first moment, and I learned that ‘community’ is the right term. We are not a group of people who have come together, had a good time, and gone our merry ways. We are a community spread right across the globe, one that I hope will grow, and one of which I have every intention of being an active member.

I had revealing conversations almost every time I said hello; in fact, one of my deepest conversations used no words or noise whatsoever. I was surrounded by people who were curious, intelligent, and who are experts in asking questions.

My vague thoughts and feelings crystallised over the week, by immersion in this testube, into an intention that I can work with, that I can find a first step for. It amuses me that, even now, I can’t quite verbalise that intention – I have no elevator pitch for it yet – but that might be because, as Valmae said on the first evening, it’s the questions that pull us forward into the future.

The week closed with music, drama, dance, massive calligraphy, and a communal witnessing along Quaker lines, where those moved to speak stood up and said their piece.

I came away refreshed and full of so much hope for us – if we can all learn to be this open, this interested in each other, then surely there is no problem that we can’t overcome.

I had a fantastic few months at home, picking up odd pieces of work, playing with the baby and our 4-year old, and of course my girlfriend. Playing. Hmm. I started thinking (again) about the value of the work I’d been doing to the future generations. No value whatsoever, that I could see.

Furthermore, it became clear to me how fantastic kids are – in the early years, before we get to impose on them too much, and I looked at the kind of person I have learned to be – very much rule-bound – and I realised that I didn’t want the same fate to be waiting for my daughters.

A direction opened up for me when a friend asked me to teach her son – my first daughter’s age – Ki-Aikido. This is a practice that I’ve been studying (and teaching) for some time, and one that I believe to be very practical in daily life. Could this be the tool to help growing children keep a clear understanding of who they are in the face of constant and almost overwhelming external pressures?

I googled for information on teaching kids, and came into contact with an American teacher called Paul Linden, who happened to be running a course on an Aikido-derived conflict-resolution method in London the following weekend. This struck me as the first piece of serendipity I’d been aware of in years, pretty much because this was the first time I’d looked beyond my computer monitor in years, so I followed it up.

Serendipitous moment #2: I had a Twitter search running, showing me tweets that included the word “Cambridge”, my hometown. One of those that caught my eye was a tweet about a workshop giving teenagers confidence by a woman called Corinna Gordon-Barnes. Over the course of a short email conversation, she told me that she was registered for a freebie 2-day course based on Wendy Palmer’s work.

I’d first come into contact with Wendy’s book, The Intuitive Body: Discovering the Wisdom of Conscious Embodiment and Aikido, in 1988, and was very impressed by it. It was by far the best Aikido-inspired book I’d come across.

Corinna put me in touch with Ann Lyons & Chris Grant, the course organisers, and I was able to join in a great day of playing with a mix of arts folk. At the end of the day, Chris told me that part two would be run by Wendy herself. I signed up straight away.

The second day was brilliant – a week into a new contract in London – I enjoyed myself a huge amount, and began to see the potential for making the principles of Aikido available to non-practitioners. At the end of that day, Chris mentioned that Wendy would be teaching a 5-day module at ALIA Europe in January.

By the end of 2009, I had an urge to re-align the work I’m doing, and a number of paths I could explore in order to work out how to make that change. I also had a time and place for playing with those ideas and clarifying where I should aim and what next steps I should take: that was ALIA Europe.