The Practice

You are now ready to practice The Hologram. The following will offer you the basics. The Hologram remains a work in progress and is designed to be highly adaptable, so you are encouraged to change it and make it your own. A triangle consists of three people who accept an invitation from a hologram to make a formal commitment to supporting her health by participating in seasonal meetings. In these meetings, each member of the triangle focuses on one of the three aspects of her health: physical, psychic, social. The job of each member of the triangle is to ask really good questions, help identify the hologram’s patterns, and to support her with co-research and in-depth knowledge of her health when she needs to make big decisions.

The hologram’s job is to facilitate a conversation with three people who have accepted her invitation to join the triangle. Unlike a patient being treated by a doctor, a hologram’s role is like that of a teacher, helping the Triangle to understand how she achieves her healthiest possible state and also recognize their own patterns, needs and wishes in contrast and conversation. The hologram shares their personal stories, their powers of communication, and their well-articulated vulnerability to teach the triangle how to care for and with her. She shows great respect and gratitude for the members of the triangle, and is also observant of their needs and desires, helping them to become better at offering useful questions.

This guide is written for holograms seeking to assemble triangles, but can also be used for triangle members seeking to find holograms.

How Will You Identify People For Your Triangle?

No one knows what will work until it does. Invite people who make you feel comfortable, whose attention and care you enjoy, and people who would like to do it for you. Additionally, you might ask yourself these questions before deciding who to invite:

Do I want the members to know each other?
Do I want to see the members of the Triangle on a daily basis?
Do I want the members to all be local?
Do I want to use this as an opportunity to develop new relationships, or to add a new layer to already existing relationships?

Finally:

“Oh no, I invited the wrong person out of cruel optimism about them or us and it was a bad idea. How do I get rid of them and pick a new person?! We recommend that you provide a trial period where you can experience the group for 1-2 sessions with the awareness among the group members that if the dynamic of the group is not great, there will be a chance to change the group.

How Much Personal Information do I reveal?

You can decide. Whether we are online, on the phone, or at work, we are constantly warned to protect our privacy, but it is hard to keep in mind what we are guarding it from. The truth is that there are many types of predators who are seeking to profit off of our information and our vulnerabilities, but those individuals and corporations are not here in this triangle. The goal is to learn to trust, and to want to share as much information as is necessary (but maybe not more) to help your triangle understand where you are coming from and where you may be going, so they can go there with you!

How Do I Reciprocate?

Reciprocation is somewhat automatic in this project, but is not a one-for-one exchange, like paying for a hot dog. For The Hologram project to really work, every person must be a hologram as well as a member of someone else’s triangle (not for someone in your triangle, though). The most important healing that you will receive from this project is when you successfully care for someone else. This networked reciprocation means that you will not be directly giving back what you receive from your triangle, but you will be a part of a larger cycle of reciprocation and the production of health, which can never be transactional. For this reason, it is the calling of each hologram to proactively help her triangle all find their own triangles and become holograms themselves. She must also seek to become part of a triangle for someone not in her triangle. The hologram can reciprocate by virally reproducing The Hologram.

Important Things for The Triangle to Remember

While it is possible that someone might have a medical or social work background, no one in a triangle is an expert, and no one should pretend to be. Being in a triangle is not about offering professional medical advice, it is about learning to ask supportive and transformative questions.
While The Hologram is about asking questions, the triangle members one should not disappear their own stories, their needs, or their wisdom. Triangle members are welcome to share anecdotes and stories from their lives that might help the hologram see their situation and clearly state their personal needs.
The triangle, with the hologram, will make group decisions, and will structure the way the group meets.
When called upon in an emergency or a pressing situation, the triangle can choose to show up to support The Hologram as individuals or as a trio. The triangle becomes most active when the hologram needs to make a big decision. This is when all the accrued knowledge of the triangle, about the hologram, and notes, become valuable. In an emergency, the triangle may support the hologram by providing in-person support, accompaniment to or coaching for important appointments, and cooperative research. The goal of the triangle is to back the hologram to make good decisions with support.

What Role Does Each Person Play?

A Hologram begins when the hologram and triangle agree to meet for a certain period of time at a certain frequency: once a week for a month; once a month for three months; around the solstices and equinoxes for two years; on the hologram’s birthday for the rest of her life. It might make sense to begin with a shorter period of more frequent meetings then change later, or, if the group does not gel, to reform the triangle with new members. But The Hologram works best when practiced consistently over a long period of time to facilitate pattern recognition and transformation. Within the given period, the three members of the triangle will select one area of focus in the meetings with the hologram. One person will focus on asking questions and taking notes on one of the three zones of health: the physical (body), the psychic (mental, emotional, intellectual), and the social (relationships, work, money, housing). Of course, these health zones of each person are completely entangled and overlapping, and the conversation will be, too. The important thing is that there is a member of the triangle to hold the awareness of each of the various zones of health, who can watch for patterns and feel when something is going well or not. We have not yet experimented with rotating roles within the Triangle, but that is an option.

What if I Want to Quit? What if I Want Someone Else to Quit?

The group should decide what to do in the event that one of the members of the triangle wants to quit. Because the project is about constructing new experiences of trust and cooperation, it is ideal if the group can adapt to support each member to stay in a healthy way. When that cannot happen, there needs to be an exit plan in place, wherein the triangle member that exits is replaced, and that the new member is welcomed into the group with care and patience. This exit strategy should be discussed at the first meeting of the Hologram.

How do we Keep Notes and Records?

This is up to your group (including the Hologram) to decide. The notes are a tool for the future, to help you remember when something that occurred in the past and help everyone recognize patterns and habits that can only become clear in hindsight. Well-labeled and organized notes can be really useful. The notes can be shared among everyone in the group, or just kept to individuals who wrote them. Since some people find drawings and diagrams more useful, we have built some tools for how to organize and document some patterns visually. Notes can go into a shared folder online if you feel safe doing so, and we are making a safe space for that to happen.

When do I Become a Hologram?

As we described in the Time section of the course, each member of the triangle will become a Hologram. This means you will invite three people to make a Triangle for you, and begin the process again. We recommend that this happens shortly after your second or third successful meeting supporting your original Hologram. This is something you can and should discuss with the Hologram you care for. Since you support her, it is in her best interest to support you in getting the care you need.

Initial group decisions to make

How will the hologram meet? (Online, in person, where, and by what platform?)
How long will this Hologram continue?
How frequently will the Hologram meet?
How long will each meeting be?
How do you want the session to feel and what needs to happen to produce that feeling?
How should a meeting begin? How should it end?
How should notes be kept?
What if someone wants to leave the group, or people can’t work together?
How will you deal with conflict?
Can the triangle meet without the hologram?