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Photos By: Alan Briskin
Beneath every group process lie subtle currents that shape what becomes possible
Quantum Information and the Discipline of Field Awareness:
A Primer for Leaders, Coaches, and Consultants
By Alan Briskin
What is quantum information? Let’s start with what it is not. When physicist David Bohm speaks of quantum information, he is not talking about data. He is not referring to a material property, or something located inside a particle. He is not talking about a static thing or a picture of something. Quantum information is not a linear progression. It does not add to something or store something. It is not reducible to cause and effect. You will find no location for it, nor a way to be separate from it.
So when we peel away all these assumptions, we are left with something far more subtle and nonlocal - a formative influence in which potential patterns become actual.
In my imagination, I see clouds of mist moving through a forest and a vast root network below exchanging signals and nutrients in ways I cannot fully grasp. Yet the feeling of being in that forest has meaning and impact.
Bohm’s insight is that quantum information behaves like a formative influence—a subtle patterning or implicate order within a field that guides how events unfold into the explicit. From the Latin in (into, within) and formare (to form, to shape, to give form), informare literally means to shape from within or to give form to something. So when we speak of quantum information, we are pointing to something with extraordinary power—a force allied with energy, invisible as it may be, yet capable of shaping our states of mind, emotions, and intentions.
Our states of mind, emotions, intentions, and bodily sensations act as forms of “information” that shape our presence—and through that presence, the field of a group or moment.
Here is why that is important. In groups, whether a dyad, a team, a political party, or a movement, there are subtle influences shaping behavior that are owned by no one, ultimately controlled by no one. Yet they are active, visceral, influential, and consequential. They give rise to observable behaviors, norms, and attitudes. These influences are not added from outside; they arise from the field itself, an inner directive already implicit within the field.
This is why leaders, change agents, and facilitators must learn to listen for what is already present. Those who wish to make change, transform outer processes, and seek new arrangements must begin to notice what is already in the field without excessive judgment or reactivity. They must begin to notice their own intentions, sense cues emerging from their own body, and track thoughts which may at first appear elusive. This is where the formative information lives—in the quiet recesses and dynamic eddies of the body, mind, and spirit.
For those in coaching or mentoring roles, the task is to respect the information already in the field: in oneself, in the client, in the spaces between. We trust that space is not empty. Our work is to bring forward what wants to emerge and nudge it toward something that is creative, life-affirming, and possible. We can honor the silence between words.
Experientially, this means that subtle meanings, gestures, and intuitions are honored as information that shapes outward expression. What we hold in awareness—our intentions, emotions, and interpretations—informs how a situation unfolds. Information in a relational field is the implicit, patterning potential that guides behavior before anything is explicitly visible.
The discipline of field awareness invites continual inquiry. Form arises from the formless. Events are not simply caused; they are not mechanical. Bohm invites us to notice how deeper states of body, mind, history, and relationships fold into the present moment. Fields carry patterns and we can learn to discern them - not as objective observers, but as participants whose own interiority is part of the unfolding.
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What feelings arose while reading this?
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What distinctions or amplifications would you add?
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How might the cultivation of awareness — the capacity to “tune” to subtle forms of information — support human development and our collective evolution?
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We hope our book, Space Is Not Empty: How Hidden Fields Are Shaping Your Life and Our World, helps you live with less fear and more courage—contributing to social fields that are less toxic and more life-giving.
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Follow our work on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, and Instagram.
Photos By: Alan Briskin
The Role of Dignity and Fields in Civic Engagement
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By Mary Gelinas
Several years ago I had the privilege of facilitating a community water resource planning process for the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District in which more than 400 people participated for close to a year. As any well-meaning facilitator would do, I developed and built agreement on detailed agendas, specific desired outcomes, and ground rules for each meeting and guiding principles for the process as a whole. I also created a map of the process, so folks knew what they were working on in each phase.
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With the benefit of hindsight, I realize that what I wanted to create was a process that intended to respect each person’s dignity and to generate fields in which people could bring their experience and wisdom to the interactions. Many times doing both was hard because the process engaged diverse stakeholders with conflicting views about water use in a historically polarized community (think timber wars).
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Dignity. Derived from Latin dignitas, dignity means “worthy,” the right of every person to be valued and respected for their own sake and to be treated ethically. Four of the ground rules we followed directly supported people’s dignity:
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Listen to understand, first;
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Ask questions of genuine curiosity;
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Encourage everyone to participate; and
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Let people finish their thoughts (i.e., don’t interrupt).
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Thanks to the experience and research of Dr. Donna Hicks, we now know how respecting people’s dignity is an essential element of resolving conflicts. This is a new way to conceive of ground rules: they help people respect one another’s dignity.
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Fields. Working with Alan Briskin for the past seven years to write Space Is Not Empty: How Hidden Fields Are Shaping Your Life and Our World, I have a deeper appreciation of how everything I and the Water District did to design and lead the planning process created a field in which people felt safe to contribute and respectfully challenge others’ positions.
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Fields are the spaces in which we interact. They are filled with forces both visible and invisible that affect how we feel, think, and behave. Now I also include ground rules to create forces that support constructive interactions such as:
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Speak from your own experience;
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Allow space for difference;
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Each of us is responsible for the quality of our interactions (i.e. the social field*).
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These ground rules are easy to put in a Power Point and post on a flip chart. They are much harder to follow since our visible habits can be just the opposite: Ask gotcha questions; Dismiss those whose opinions we don’t value; Interrupt when others disagree with us. Others that are less visible are: Assume the leader is responsible for the quality of the interaction; Advocate for your predetermined position; Discourage difference.
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How can the implicit or explicit Ground Rules (or norms) you follow in civic engagements or governmental planning processes respect or threaten people’s dignity and create fields for constructive or destructive interactions?
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*For more information about a social field, read Chapter 7. Embedded and Embodied in Relational Fields in Space Is not Empty.
Alan Briskin and I wrote Space Is Not Empty: How Hidden Fields Are Shaping Your Life and Our World in part to help engender fields for constructive interactions. We invite you to follow us on Linked In; Facebook; BlueSky; and Instagram.
Photos By: Alan Briskin
What If Nothing is as Solid as it Appears?
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By Alan Briskin
This shifting visibility is not a trick of the eye; it’s a revelation of physics.
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Julian Voss-Andreae, both physicist and sculptor, draws on quantum principles that challenge our ordinary sense of solidity. At the quantum level, particles are not fixed objects but wave-like probabilities, coalescing into form through relationship and observation. Likewise, Isabelle exists in a dynamic tension between presence and absence. When viewed from the rear, she seems almost to disappear—her body dissolving into thin, parallel slices of steel. Move a few steps to the side, and she re-emerges, radiant and whole.
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Seen through the lens of Mary’s and my book, Space Is Not Empty, Voss-Andreae’s sculpture becomes a meditation on field awareness.
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Each steel plane is like a moment of perception; together they create coherence. Step aside and the coherence collapses—form returns to flux. From one angle, the human figure is clearly visible. From another, it nearly disappears. Nothing changes - except where you stand.
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In this way, Isabelle invites us to sense the invisible architecture of connection and movement that holds everything in flux. She reminds us that space itself is alive—with energy, information, and relationship—and that what we call “empty” is simply the field waiting to be seen.
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We hope our book, Space Is Not Empty: How Hidden Fields Are Shaping Your Life and Our World, helps you change where you stand—physically, perceptually, and relationally—so you can notice absence as well as presence, and contribute to social fields that are less toxic and more life-giving.
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Follow our work at www.spaceisnotempty.net, and on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, and Instagram.
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What if clarity isn’t about answers, but about position and perspective?
What changes when you intentionally shift your position to one of courage and caring?
Photos By: Alan Briskin
Dignity, Listening, and Field awareness: Three Keys to Resolving Conflict
By Mary V. Gelinas
How might dignity, listening, and field awareness help resolve conflicts?
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When people are in conflict, or when they simply disagree, emotions inevitably roil under the surface. Evoked by emotions like fear, anger, or indignation you might notice thoughts running around in your mind such as “How dare they talk to me like that. . .Who do they think they are. . .If he interrupts me one more time. . .How could they possibly believe that?”
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Such thoughts and emotions get triggered when we think our dignity is being threatened and we feel vulnerable, as if we don’t matter.
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Decades of experience and research led Dr. Donna Hicks, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, to believe that tending to people’s dignity is essential in resolving conflicts. As Hicks writes in Leading with Dignity, “The emotional volatility associated with our dignity honored or violated cannot be overstated.”
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She defines dignity as each individual’s inherent value and worth. Derived from Latin dignitas, it means worthy, the right of every person to be valued and respected for their own sake and to be treated ethically.
Hicks identified ten essential elements of dignity two of which are (1) acknowledgment: giving people your full attention by listening, hearing, and validating their concerns and experience; and (2) understanding: believing that the perspectives of others matters and listening deeply to understand them.
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Field awareness is an influential element underlying both of these elements. Fields are the spaces in which we interact. They are ever-present, dynamic, and discernible. In other words we can sense the energy and information in fields through our body sensations, subjective experience, intuition, and trial and error observations.
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Becoming aware of fields entails expanding our awareness to include what is going on underneath the surface of a conflict or disagreement. Awareness allows us to sense inside ourselves in order to better understand what might be going on for the other person(s) beneath their words. (You can find guidance on how to expand awareness in the Appendix in the book Space Is Not Empty or visit www.spaceisnotempty.net and check Cultivating Field Awareness/Practices.)
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We can test our understanding by restating aloud in our own words what we are hearing and reflecting what we sense the other(s) might be feeling but not saying. We test by asking “Am understanding you accurately?” Many of you already know this as active listening.
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Doing both of these demonstrates a respect for the other, that they, along with what they are feeling and saying, matter. You are tending their dignity. You are also respecting your own.
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How might tending the dignity of other(s) at work, at home, or in your community help you more effectively work through conflicts or disagreements?
Staff of Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants (CERI) with Alan Briskin
Jan. 30, 2026 Post
When Community Becomes Medicine
By Alan Briskin
The Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants (CERI) was founded by Mona Afary, Ph.D., with the support of refugees and immigrants from around the world who shared a profound belief in its mission.
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Over twenty years ago, Mona walked out of her clinical office and into the waiting room where many of her patients and their families sat together, survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide. What she witnessed was that space was not empty. Healing was already happening—before a word was spoken. Nothing was the same after that.
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I wrote about the founding of CERI in my co-authored book, The Power of Collective Wisdom. In it I describe how Mona, hired as a mental health counselor, encountered the traumatic stories of her clients, absorbing their pain—nightmares, insomnia, flashbacks, panic, depression, fear—while sensing that the one-to-one clinical model could not hold what was being carried.
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One day, leaving her office and walking into the waiting room, something startling happened that changed her life forever. In the waiting room were Cambodian men and women drinking American coffee and Persian tea. They were talking and laughing and knitting together and the fabric of their connection was unmistakable. She wondered whether the possibility for healing was already present—right there in the waiting room. This was the ignition point that gave rise to CERI.
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The vision found its heart and strength in the partnership of CERI’s participants, survivors of genocide, who, for over 20 years, carried the heavy burden of PTSD and decades of silence. Their courage and hope became the foundation of CERI’s story -- a testament to unity, healing, and the unwavering spirit of humanity.
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Today, CERI offers a holistic array of culturally attuned services for elders, adults, and children – multilingual services that support the mental health and wellbeing of refugees and immigrants from all over the world. Ranging from support groups to mental health counseling to alternative healing modalities that include dance, yoga, knitting and sewing, and deep relaxation, the spaces between them are knitted together by love and kindness.
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When I visited them a few weeks ago, I confessed concern about giving them visibility in these turbulent times. Mona took my hand, looked me in the eyes, and said firmly, “Yes, this is a time for understandable caution—but also for boldness.”
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CERI reminds us that healing does not always begin with expertise or intervention, but with the social space we create—and the courage to trust what is already moving there.
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Learn more about and support the work of the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants:
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I wrote about the founding of CERI years ago, but being with the staff recently made it clear that the field they tend is still very much alive.
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Who is already healing one another in your waiting rooms, community spaces, or workplaces—without being named or seen?
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