Picture a circle of chairs.
Someone at the front says, let's go round the room and introduce ourselves. Tell us your name, and why you're here. The first person speaks. Then the second. You can feel your turn coming, three chairs away, then two, and your heart is beating so loudly you can barely hear what anyone's saying. You're rehearsing a sentence that says enough without saying anything. By the time it's your turn, you've barely heard a word anyone else has said, and you leave the circle feeling more alone than when you arrived. It's a common experience, and it teaches many people to avoid rooms like this altogether.
For a lot of people, that moment, imagined in advance, is the reason they never book a workshop at all. Not because they don't want to change. Because they don't want to tell a room full of strangers what needs changing.
And often, the people who feel this most strongly are the ones carrying the most. Their reluctance isn't shyness. It's protection. Somewhere along the way they learned that what they feel is safest kept to themselves. Asking them to share before they're ready doesn't open that door. It usually locks it tighter.
If that's you, I'd like to set your mind at ease. You're far from alone.
Do I have to share my story in a group workshop?
Not in mine. The room never needs your story. Personal details never need to be shared with the group for the work to resolve, because the change happens inside you, not in what you disclose. You still do the work. The details stay yours. Other workshops differ, so it's always worth asking before you book.
That's not a small point for me. It's one of the principles the whole room is built on.
Why do so many workshops ask you to share?
Partly because sharing can be powerful. Hearing yourself say something out loud, and being received rather than judged, can be deeply healing for some people. Group sharing has a long history, and I don't dismiss it.
But somewhere along the way, sharing got confused with the change itself. Many people have spent years telling their story, in groups, in sessions, to friends, and the story has become smooth and polished with use. They can tell it without feeling a thing. And the pattern it describes is still running.
Telling the story isn't the same as releasing what's underneath it. Sometimes the retelling even deepens the groove. That's part of why understanding your past doesn't change you, and why so many people who've talked about their past for years still feel stuck in it.
How can the work happen without the story?
Because the story isn't where the pattern lives.
A pattern is held as a charge, a feeling fused to an old conclusion. I'm not safe. I'm not enough. I have to hold everything together. The charge is what drives the reaction, not the details of what happened. So the work goes to the charge directly.
In practice, that means I'll guide you to notice what you're feeling, where you feel it, and what it's connected to, privately, in your own awareness. You don't need to describe the event to anyone. You don't need to name the person involved. You only need to be willing to feel what's there, and let it go.
Think of it like setting down a heavy bag. You don't need to unpack it in front of everyone and explain every item. You don't even need to know everything that's in it. You only need to put it down.
People are often surprised by this. They arrive braced to be exposed, and find that the deepest work they've ever done happened in silence, in their own chair, with nobody else knowing what it was about.
What does the work still ask of me?
It asks you to take part. I want to be clear about that.
The privacy is real. The expectation of doing the work is also real. This isn't a room where you sit back and watch others change. When I guide the group through a process, you do it too, with whatever you've brought. When a volunteer works with me at the front, you do your own quiet work alongside. What's protected is your story, not a way to sit it out.
And if something big comes up and you'd like more privacy or more time, the Master Coaches in the room are there for exactly that. You can work one-on-one with a trained coach, away from the group. It's a real, supported part of the work, not a backup plan.
Why does privacy make the work go deeper?
Because the energy that usually goes into managing how you come across can go into the work instead.
When people believe they'll have to share, a part of them is always busy. Editing. Watching. Preparing the version that sounds acceptable. That part can't fully relax, and a mind that can't relax can't go very deep.
When people know nobody will ask, something lets go. They stop performing. And that's often when the real work begins. Many of the most private people I've worked with have gone further than anyone else in the room, precisely because they finally didn't have to manage an audience.
On our stories page, Talya Whitaker wrote: "There are no words for how this has changed my life, changed every cell of my being." I've always loved that she put it that way. Some of the deepest change leaves people without words, and it never needed words to happen.
How can I practise being present without explaining myself?
This practice is for your next meeting, dinner or group conversation.
At some point, you'll notice the urge to explain yourself. To justify a decision, give the background, make sure people understand why you are the way you are. It usually comes with a small tightness, a sense of needing to get it right.
When you notice it, try saying less. Not nothing. Just less. One sentence instead of five. Then stop, and notice how it feels to be in the room without the explanation.
Most people find it uncomfortable at first, then strangely relieving. They discover that nobody needed the backstory. They were fine being known a little less. And they had more attention left over for what was actually happening. Try it three or four times over a week, and notice whether the tightness that comes with explaining starts to ease.
It's a small taste of what a room that never asks for your story can feel like. You might also find it connects to how to stop people pleasing, because so much of the urge to explain comes from wanting to be approved of.
Where can I do this kind of work?
In a room built for it.
The RS Method Experience is five days in Dubai, in a small cohort. Some people take a chair at the front. Some witness and do their own work quietly. Both move. Nobody is put on the spot, and nobody ever needs to tell the room their story.
If the thought of sharing has kept you out of rooms like this for years, this might be the one where you finally get to leave it out.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.