Mystery Playground
Saturday, Sept. 27 - Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025
10am-6pm
Step into an embodied space of heightened presence that supports profound intimacy and connection with yourself and others. We meet here in vulnerability and wonder at the creative edge of our self understanding, where alchemy awaits. Uncover more of your essence and aliveness obscured beneath habitual patterns and assumptions. Build and practice relational skills of attunement, curiosity, and humility. Bring your self-leadership to co-create a fertile common ground of compassion, growth, and transformation.

In this workshop, carefully designed exercises and structures provide containment and a clear context for our exploration. Warmups activate specific qualities of attention that deepen the field and build group coherence. Then two different kinds of practice circles take center stage as the core formats of the weekend.

In a Focus Circle, we gather a small group with a facilitator to center attention on one person, exploring and reflecting their world in real-time. A Flow Circle, in contrast, is more of an open space of possibility for the whole group to explore their individual and collective emergence. Within the bounds of each context, we enjoy a freedom to be self-directed, run experiments, courageously approach our edge, and assert boundaries.

This container supports a more direct participation with the dynamic unfolding of experience beyond our familiar stories and habitual assumptions. By turns, this can be both liberating and confronting, as is typical for most growth experiences. We make deeper contact with our life force, innate wholeness, and playfulness, yet also perhaps with our fear, grief, anger, projections, and self-imposed limitations.

This kind of work isn't for everyone, and can at times be uncomfortable or intense for some people. We emphasize self-regulation, mutual attunement, taking care of yourself, and setting boundaries when necessary. As in any developmental space where people are taking risks and being more real with each other, you should be prepared for the possibility of experiencing discomfort and nervous system activation.

At the same time, many people also experience delicious flow states, radiant heart connection, profound synchronicity, and feeling incredibly seen by others. We discover time and again in this work that human connection rooted in deep presence and attunement reliably taps into nature's vast reservoir of life-affirming vitality and boundless creative potential. These are under-explored frontiers of human experience in contemporary culture which cannot be replaced by technology, and are essential we believe to remembering our shared sense of sacredness and interdependence.
Location
Opening to Life Center
3942 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, OR 97214
Date & Time
September 27-28, 2025
10:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Schedule
Friday, September 26
6-8pm - Optional meet and greet potluck dinner (details will be sent by email)

Saturday, September 27
10am-1pm - Morning Session
1pm-2:30pm - Lunch
2:30-6pm - Afternoon Session

Sunday, September 28
10am-1pm - Morning Session
1pm-2:30pm - Lunch
2:30-6pm - Afternoon Session
Facilitators
Thomas and David met in a leadership training program nearly a decade ago, forging a healing bond while unraveling their trauma histories in six intensive weeklong retreats. They went on to lead circling events together in Boulder, and now support each other as peers building relational communities. Their friendship is rooted in deep playfulness, commitment to leaning into growth edges, and a passion for sharing the life-affirming magic and transformative potential of collective consciousness exploration.
DAVID CHOTT
David is a practical mystic and student of mystery. He sees us as living in a time between worlds, and works to build culture that reintegrates awareness of our intuitive felt sense and the invaluable wisdom it provides for navigating our collective challenges. He has been facilitating presence-centered group work for 8 years, with a keen interest in emergent collective intelligence. He has privately run a weekly Mystery Playground incubator for 2.5 years, and is excited to start doing public events. David became a certified circling facilitator with Circling Europe in 2017, and completed his coaching certification with them in 2021. He trained extensively in Surrendered Leadership in the Avalon field, and has deeply explored men's work for 15 years. He's a current student of John Churchill in Planetary Dharma, and studies with Lynda Caesara in her remarkable Energy Class.


THOMAS RADTKE
Thomas has studied relational technologies for a decade, and has come to recognize presence, emotional intelligence, surrender, and non-duality as profound keys for consciousness expansion. His learning began in Boulder with Non-Violent Communication and ‘T’ group practice. He then took up formal study with Circling Europe (now called Transformational Connection) to become a certified facilitator. He went on to train in and get certified in Authentic Relating and numerous coaching modalities, and is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais instructor. He has studied meditation under Dan Brown in the ’Pointing out way’ lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Thomas created and continues to lead a variety of connection courses and accelerator groups as well as the practice of Somatic Presencing, and also works with people one-on-one.


 Join us September 27-28 
Let's co-create magic together!

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