The Circle is the oldest, most respectful and authentic form of encounter, where each person is on the same level, with equal rights, equal opportunity to express themselves and is committed to listen openly, deeply and without judgment.

The Circle Way was born on the inspiration of a North American native, Manitonquat (Medicine Story) belonging to the Wampanoag people, who after deep research of native traditions created a path to delve into the original instructions of the human being.

Medicine Story Manitonquat, or as his friends used to call him simply Story, has developed over decades a path by combining native traditions with the tools of supportive listening, co-counseling and nonviolent communication. A path that allows people to learn how to go deeper into listening to themselves and others, to get in touch with their own emotions and the ones of those in front of them. This helps to get to know ourselves better, dissolve relational conflicts and improve personal relationships in the family, in the workplace and in everyday relationships by connecting with ourselves, others and everything around us.

In the last 40 years seminars have been organized all over Europe and in the United States open to everyone, families, teens, grandparents and children, with the deep belief that is never too late to meet each other and change the world.

Since Story's death in 2018, Ellika, his wife, and Simon continue to share the vision of Story (Manitonquat), who understood that changing the world has something to do with learning again, to live in circles, where all human beings belong, feel heard, accepted, understood and cared about. Especially now, when the world is experiencing the pressures of separations, circles bring us back home into connection with ourselves, each other and our beautiful mother earth. In the circle, we are reminded of our roots and our belonging within the Great Mystery. We enjoy stories and teachings about the Old Ways, our Original Instructions, and the practice and enjoyment of being in the field of listening, playing, celebrating, giving thanks, humility, honesty, generosity, courageousness, wisdom and beauty.

Now the time has come for another chapter of circle way's story, as a seed give life to a tree with many fruits, each one of them containing many seeds, in the same way the circle way is growing, so it won't be only one persone carrying this heritage but an entire group of people, a circle. Since few years Ellika and Simon have felt the need to prepare their replacement: new people that take care of circles and are commited to keep it alive and evolving it into the future. And to do that this new group needs to partecipate to as many camps as possible and receive formation in order to learn and develop directly from the experience and be ready when the time will come when Simon and Ellika won't be able to lead the circles anymore. The money we receive will go to support the travelling and the preparation of this new seeds of the circle way tree, to keep it growing and flowering all over the world to offer his fruits of peace and connection to the next generations.

In this fourty years the circle way has always been sustained by the economy of giving and we want to keep it as one of the pillar of our vision. If you feel the importance of the circles for a sustainable and healthy future as we do, if you believe the time of separation is over and you want to help us making this movement move please help us with a donation, any little gesture can support us.

"Together there's nothing we can't do."

Here an overview of Story's intention and his mission coming directly from his mouth:

"The system or the set of systems that are working throughout the world today have been developing for the past 5000 years and they don’t work well there’s a lot of oppression there’s a few very rich and masses of poor and a lot of violence: is not a very happy society. However before that we had societies that were very happy, they were peaceful they took care of everybody in the group and the systems that they all function on, all our ancestors wherever they were, I call the circle way because they live together in the circle taking care of each other from birth to death, everybody in the circle took care of the circle and the circle took care of them. As I said it was very harmonious and it wasn’t hard, it was very successful for 100,000 years, it was a successful way for humans being together. My people on the North American continent continued that way until they were invaded several hundreds years ago by the new system so my elders said that human beings are supposed to live in circles and that is part of our instructions and as Black Elk said “when we were a strong and happy people all our power came from the sacred circle as long as that circle wasn’t broken the people flourished”. So the elders were saying the world should get to know this knowledge and I’ve been developing it down for the past 40 years to the extent I could see how it could be adapted today, not exactly in the system but not exactly out of the system either, and how it was legally co-existing with the current system but developing it’s own way and eventually being completely self-sufficient so that people could live in those old ways. That’s what we’ve been doing in our camps for the past 15 years or so, developing this way of living so that for a week or two weeks people come and live that way experiencing how it used to be for people in the old days."

Manitonquat - Medicine Story