Presencing Series: Otto Scharmer’s Approach to Face the Polycrisis
A Comprehensive Overview of the Presencing Series
Given the profound global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Presencing Institute launched the GAIA Journey in March 2020. It was an impromptu global infrastructure for sensemaking, for leaning into the moment of disruption and letting the moment move us toward civilizational renewal.
Thanks to serendipitous circumstances, I was invited to join the Spanish track team of the program’s facilitators. It was a life-changing event for me and thousands of others worldwide.
The systemic forces that have been building up in different parts of the world during the last five years have morphed into a polycrisis. Responding to the current circumstances, the u-school for Transformation, part of the Presencing Institute, launched the Presencing Series.
The inaugural session of the Presencing Series brought together over 1,500 global participants to explore transformative practices for navigating today’s interconnected crises. Led by co-founders and faculty members, the session emphasized collective sense-making, grounding in planetary awareness, and activating leadership through intentional presence. The Presencing Series offers a profound framework for understanding and catalyzing transformation in our complex world.
The first session of the series brought together Otto Scharmer explaining the content of his latest book, SEVEN PRACTICES FOR TRANSFORMING SELF, SOCIETY, AND BUSINESS, and his guests, Arawana Hayashi, Katrin Kaeufer, and Laura Pastorini, who through interconnected presentations illuminated a path toward addressing today’s most pressing challenges through cultivating what they call “social soil” — the invisible yet essential quality of awareness and relationships that underlie all meaningful change.
This article provides a helicopter view of the four presentations. Next week, I will explore each one in depth.
The Art of Attending: Embodied Presence as Foundation. Arawana Hayashi
“Presencing is an invitation to be present in this moment, to this moment, not just what we think about it, but the felt knowing of our experience.” — Arawana Hayashi.
Arawana Hayashi, co-founder of the Presencing Institute, emphasizes the importance of cultivating presence in transformative work. She defines “presencing” as being fully present in the moment, distinguishing between conceptual understanding and embodied awareness. In our hyperconnected world, Arawana notes, it’s challenging to focus on the present, but her practice of “attending” facilitates authentic engagement with individual and collective challenges.
“However we are, whether that’s comfortable or uncomfortable, jittery, or dull, or just full of appreciation. However, it is is perfect.” — Arawana Hayashi.
The practice begins with physical grounding, reminding us that we all share the Earth. This perspective creates a sense of collective presence that transcends distances. Arawana stresses the significance of accepting whatever arises, whether it feels comfortable or not. This non-judgmental awareness promotes genuine transformation and connects individual presence to collective purpose, driven by a shared desire to contribute to a better world.
The Agricultural Metaphor: From Farm to Social Fields. Otto Sharmer
“The quality of what’s growing above the ground and the quality of the harvest of the outcomes that we create is a function of the quality of the soil.” — Otto Scharmer.
Otto Scharmer begins with a powerful personal narrative from his childhood on a biodynamic farm in northern Germany. His father’s wisdom — “the quality of what’s growing above the ground and the quality of the harvest is a function of the quality of the soil” — becomes the central metaphor for understanding transformation in social systems.
Just as regenerative farmers focus on soil health, Scharmer argues that change-makers must attend to the “social soil” beneath our visible systems. This includes the quality of awareness, relationships, and patterns of thinking, conversing, and acting together that form the foundation of our collective outcomes.
The Moment We Were Born For: Confronting Global Divides. Otto Sharmer
“What if this is the moment I have been born for? What if this is the moment we have been born for?” — Otto Scharmer.
Otto frames our current historical moment with a stirring question: “What if this is the moment we have been born for?” He diagnoses a “poly-crisis” comprising three major divides: ecological (climate change, biodiversity loss), social (polarization, inequity), and spiritual/inner (disconnection from deeper sources, mental health challenges).
The core obstacle to addressing these crises, he suggests, is what he terms “the illusion of insignificance.” Data reveals a paradox: 68% of people worldwide feel a complete loss of collective agency, yet 69% would willingly sacrifice personal income to combat climate change. “The 68% speaks to the insignificance — ‘I have zero impact.’ And yet, this 69% speaks to the illusion part, because it is an illusion. If we would all step up, the course we are on would already be altered.”
From complexity science, Otto quotes Ilya Prigogyn, noting that at critical tipping points in nonlinear systems, “small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to uplift the entire system to a higher order.” This principle offers hope that concentrated collective action can generate a disproportionate impact.
The Radical Simplicity of Relationship Quality. Katrin Kaeufer
“We can only overcome our angst of the future we fear with an image or a vision of a future we want.” — Founder of GLS Bank (quoted by Kaeufer)
Katrin Kaeufer expands on Otto’s metaphor, characterizing it as simultaneously “very radical and very simple.” Radical because mainstream culture prioritizes the visible and measurable; simple because it aligns with our everyday experience of how relationship quality determines outcomes in teams, families, and communities.
“If the real quality of relationship is there, we can co-create, we can easily collaborate, or in other words, trust is efficient.”
This principle applies across scales — from organizational innovation to democracy, which “needs a minimum level of solidarity, of trust, a basic agreement.”
Katrin shares the evolution of the Presencing Institute, which began by developing tools and frameworks but gradually recognized the need for safe spaces to practice these methods (the U School), application projects addressing societal challenges (U Impact), research to understand their work, and integration of social arts as a foundation for transformation.
From Theory to Practice: Building Relational Infrastructure. Laura Pastorini
Laura Pastorini offers a compelling case study in applying these principles through the Ecosystem Leadership Program in Latin America. In its third iteration, this initiative has convened over 300 participants from 21 countries to build “enabling social infrastructure” for regional transformation.
The program operates through three core dimensions:
- Learning that flows multi-directionally, elevating “local and regional wisdom” alongside Presencing methodologies, “bringing the margins to the center, the voices that are unheard, even the voices that are not human — the voices of nature.”
- Connecting beyond networking to cultivate “islands of coherence” and “weave the social fabrics that can hold and co-create transformation.”
- Activating through participant-led prototypes (over 80 to date) and intentional engagement with local ecosystems wherever they operate.
Perhaps most striking is the program’s integration of indigenous wisdom traditions, co-designing with elders who offer a powerful counter-narrative: “We are in a time of rising, of awakening, of a new light. We only need to remember,” referencing Nana Amalia. This remembering involves reconnecting with ancestral wisdom about regenerative economies, decolonizing minds and hearts, and recovering respect for the earth and its biodiversity.
A Path Forward: Transforming Self, Society, and Business
A coherent theory of change emerges across these presentations, which begins with Hayashi’s embodied presence and extends through Scharmer’s systems thinking, Kaeufer’s organizational insights, and Pastorini’s regional application. Transformation requires attending to the quality of our social soil — the invisible, relational infrastructure that determines what’s possible in our visible systems.
The path involves multiple dimensions: the embodied presence that enables authentic engagement (Hayashi), the shift from extraction to regeneration at the systems level (Scharmer), the practical cultivation of trust and relationship quality in organizations (Kaeufer), and the creation of inclusive containers that honor diverse wisdom sources (Pastorini).
Kaeufer concludes with a resonant quote from the founder of GLS Bank: “We can only overcome our angst of the future we fear with an image or a vision of a future we want.” The Presencing Series suggests that cultivating this vision requires individual practices of attending and collective spaces where we can reconnect with our deeper potential, activate our sense of agency, and step into coordinated action that simultaneously transforms self, society, and business.
You can register to attend the Presencing Series for free here.
My name is Helio Borges. Through coaching, courses, and consulting, I empower professionals and entrepreneurs to ignite creativity and innovation, prevent burnout, and nurture resilience. I reside in Montreal, Canada, and consult in person or via Zoom in English and Spanish.
For a half-hour free consulting session, contact me at:
Helio Borges. Montreal, QC. Canada. SMS: +1 (263) 383–1903. Mail: hborgesg@gmail.com
