ZEGG FORUM TRAINING

2027, The Netherlands

BASIC TRAINING

This immersive course offers a deep introduction to the ZEGG-Forum process — its background, cultural philosophy, and view of humanity.

You will explore:

• How Forum works as a powerful tool for personal and collective transformation

• Creating real trust and transparency within a group

• Deep listening, authentic sharing, and embodied presence

• Feelings as positive social forces that create genuine connection

• Giving and receiving both supportive and challenging feedback

• The foundational themes of love and partnership: moving toward a love that wants to give rather than take

• How shared values emerge from this process and can guide a group

Methods: Forum, Teachings, Meditation, Body Awareness, Improvisation, Small groups. All levels of experience welcome.

Language: English

THE PATH FORWARD — Transfor(u)m

FACILITATOR TRAINING

Half year training (16+ live days) — May-October 2027

Beyond participation, toward facilitation

You may have experienced Forum before: that rare quality of presence, the courage of someone stepping into the center, the way a group can suddenly breathe together. Perhaps you have felt the call to help create that space for others.

This training is for those who want to go further. Not just to receive the process, but to learn to hold it. Becoming a Forum facilitator is not primarily a technical skill, it is a path of inner development. It asks you to deepen your self-knowledge, to work with group dynamics, and to cultivate a quality of presence that others can trust. This takes time, practice, and real experience in community.

After the Basic Training, the program continues with 4 parts:

• Training 1 (4 days, 19–23 May 2027): Deepening community experience — learning to read the field and feel what is alive

• Training 2 (6 days, 22–27 June 2027): Learning to hold Forum, practicing facilitation under supervision

• Supervised practice period: Facilitating in regional groups, receiving feedback, building real confidence

• Training 3 (6 days, 12–17 October 2027): Integration, refinement, and networking — stepping into your role as a facilitator

What is in the mix

Across the full year, you work with Forum practice, teachings, meditation, body awareness, improvisation, and small group work, alongside individual processes and peer supervision. The learning happens not just in the training room, but in the spaces between: in how you relate, how you listen, how you show up.

Rooted in decades of lived community experience at ZEGG, the training draws on a wide range of approaches to conscious community-building. You will develop your own facilitation style while being held by a clear ethical and human framework.

Ready to dive deep and experience the magic of real community? Come and train with Ina and Achim in this intimate, transformative journey.

All trainings will be organised at De Uelenspiegel.

De Uelenspieghel is a small community in Uffelte, Drenthe, hosting retreats and creative gatherings for many decades. Located next to the Holtingerveld, you can easily find owls and deer cross your path.

Address: Winkelsteeg 5 7975 PV Uffelte

By public transport you can get to Meppel by train and take a bus to 'Weg achter de Es, Uffelte’.

Pricing

To promote accessibility and fairness we created a sliding scale for the price of the course material. The location is fixed price (all-inclusive lodging and meals).

BASIC TRAINING

3-day: € 615,-
4-day: € 845,-

sponsored prices: € 535,- / 715,-
sponsoring prices: € 710,- / 955,-

FACILITATOR TRAINING

Half-year training: € 4385,-
sponsored: € 3590,- | sponsoring: € 5180,-

Combined ticket (basic+fac.): € 4795,-/4995,-
sponsored: € 3985,- | sponsoring: € 5655,-

Please inform for options if the sponsored tickets are above your means or if you would like to reduce costs by volunteering.

More about Forum

ZEGG Forum — Integral Community Building

Becoming relatable for the world of tomorrow

Origins: Born from a Desire for Truth and Healing

ZEGG Forum was born in 1978 inside an intentional community with a radical ambition: to lay the foundation for a new culture — one free of violence, in deep cooperation with nature and all living beings. The founders wanted to challenge many of the taken-for-granted social structures of modern society, particularly around love, relationship and belonging. Their core conviction was that the way mainstream society organizes intimacy and connection limits our capacity to love — and that limited love, over time, becomes the root of hurt, conflict, and ultimately violence.

To transform a collection of individuals into a genuine community of committed people, they needed a powerful process for building trust. That process became what we now call ZEGG Forum. ZEGG stands for "Centre for Experimental Social Design" — an intentional community, ecovillage and seminar centre founded in 1991 near Berlin, Germany.

Over the decades, Forum spread from ZEGG into the world. Communities across many countries have learned it through ZEGG's trainers and integrated it into their own community-building processes. It has also evolved continuously, incorporating insights from Non-Violent Communication, Deep Ecology, Integral Systems Constellations, Possibility Management, somatic feelings-work, and the spiritual practice of presence.

What Is ZEGG Forum?

ZEGG Forum is a ritualized form of transparent communication for larger groups — typically up to 50 participants — guided by trained facilitators. It is at once a method, a culture-building process, and a form of collective inner work.

One person — "the presenter" or protagonist — steps into the middle of a circle formed by the group. They are invited to share what is alive inside them: a situation, a feeling, a question, a tension. They use the whole space: moving, speaking, gesturing, connecting with their body and emotions. The only goal is authenticity — not performance, not resolution, but genuine presence, layer by layer, step by step.

The circle holds the presenter with full, loving awareness. The group witnesses. The facilitators — ideally one of each gender — guide the process with experience and intuition, intervening when needed to help the presenter access their deeper truth, their power, their highest potential. They are not neutral; they are value-oriented. They act as midwives to what wants to emerge.

When the presenter has finished, others may step into the circle to offer a "mirror" — sharing what they perceived, felt, or recognized. This social feedback is an essential part of the practice. It broadens and sharpens what the presenter brought forward, offering perspectives they may not have had access to. Importantly, it is always the presenter who decides what to take in and what to let pass. Even the best mirror is only a signpost — it doesn't walk the path for you.

More Than a Technique: A Paradigm Shift

ZEGG Forum is far more than a communication tool. It represents a fundamental shift in how we understand ourselves in relation to each other.

The dominant cultural paradigm tells us we are separate individuals, competing for recognition, safety, and love. This produces a culture of winning and losing, of hiding and performing. ZEGG Forum works from a different premise: that we are deeply interconnected, and that what moves in one person moves in many. The pain someone expresses in the centre is rarely only theirs. The shadow one person gives voice to is often something the whole group carries. This is what practitioners call the representative aspect of Forum — what happens in the centre is an example for everyone around.

When feelings are hidden, life energy gets stuck. Stuck energy breeds fear, disconnection, and eventually violence. Forum creates conditions where feelings and energies can flow freely — where conflict is not avoided but welcomed as an opportunity to go deeper. Where vulnerability is met not with judgment, but with support and recognition.

As the founders put it: "Seeing deeply is loving." This is one of the most common experiences people report from Forum.

What Forum Develops

Participating in ZEGG Forum — and especially training as a facilitator — develops a distinctive set of capacities:

Authentic self-expression. The ability to show up fully, to speak from the inside rather than from performance or strategy, and to let one's body, voice and feeling work together.

Empathic witnessing. The capacity to hold others with full presence — without fixing, projecting, or withdrawing — and to offer reflections that genuinely serve rather than impose.

Shadow integration. Forum helps participants uncover unconscious patterns, wounds and defenses — the "shadow" — and bring them into the light with humor, compassion and sometimes theatrical flair, so they can be seen without judgment and gradually integrated.

Conflict as resource. Rather than managing or suppressing conflict, Forum trains participants to meet it with curiosity. The evolutionary change the world needs requires exactly this: the ability to profit from conflict and the ability to cooperate. These may seem contradictory — Forum shows they are two sides of the same competence.

Collective intelligence and group trust. Over time, Forum builds a field of transparency and mutual understanding within a group that is qualitatively different from what most groups experience. It becomes the connective tissue of community life — what the founders call "the glue that keeps community alive and together."

Who Is It For?

ZEGG Forum is for anyone who senses that genuine community — whether in an intentional living situation, an organization, or a close-knit group — requires more than good intentions and good communication skills. It is for people who are willing to look honestly at themselves, to be seen by others, and to grow in the process.

It is especially valuable for community builders, facilitators, therapists, educators, and social change practitioners — anyone who works at the interface of inner development and outer transformation. Training as a Forum facilitator is a demanding and deeply rewarding path: it requires becoming more authentic in oneself, and learning to hold a wide range of human experience with steadiness, warmth and skill.

At its heart, ZEGG Forum is a practice for the world we want to see — one that forms from deep within the hearts of people who are willing to stay present with each other, through difficulty and beauty alike.

For more information, check: https://www.zegg-forum.org/en/

FAQ

• Is there a way to lower the price? For people on a tight budget we will try to arrange subsidies. Additionally, people can apply to help by volunteering. Please inform for options by using the contact form.

• What language is used? All material and courses will be in English. German, French and Spanish courses are organised in other countries.

• Can I stay over the night before? Yes, for an extra fee you can arrive early so you can start fresh in the morning.

Please let us now about questions or requests with the form below.