LOTO COMMUNITY AGREEMENTS
How We Practice Being Together
At Loto, we believe abundance is relational and belonging is something we co-create.
Our community includes people with different stories, cultures, identities, beliefs, bodies, experiences, perspectives, spiritual traditions, and ways of understanding the Sacred.
We do not gather despite these differences. We believe our differences are part of what makes relationship generative. Our intention is not to create spaces where everyone thinks alike. It is to practice being in relationship with one another without requiring agreement, sameness, or conformity in order to belong. That practice asks something of each of us.
A Loto Circle, retreat, ceremonial gathering, or community space is not something we simply attend. Community is not something facilitators create for us—Each of us participates in creating the conditions of the space, the safety within the container. We therefore enter our gatherings with a shared commitment to curiosity, consent, confidentiality, compassion, participation, accountability, and repair.
These are the agreements we practice together:
OUR COMMUNITY AGREEMENTS
1. We honor one another’s dignity.
Every person who enters a Loto space is worthy of respect. We celebrate the diversity of identities, cultures, backgrounds, beliefs, bodies, experiences, perspectives, and ways of being represented within our community. We do not tolerate harassment, discrimination, dehumanizing language, personal attacks, threats, or behavior that intentionally diminishes another person’s dignity.
Belonging does not require sameness. And belonging does not mean every behavior belongs.
2. We practice curiosity across differences.
Differences are not a problem to solve. We expect to encounter people who understand themselves, the world, and the Sacred differently than we do. When that happens, we practice curiosity before judgment.
We listen to understand rather than listening to correct, convert, diagnose, defend, or win. We may disagree. We may ask difficult questions. We may respectfully challenge ideas or name the impact something has had on us.
But we do not need to arrive at the same conclusion in order to remain in relationship. Unity does not require conformity.
3. We speak from our own experience.
Our stories, beliefs, interpretations, and spiritual experiences belong to us. We practice speaking from the “I” rather than making universal claims about what another person should believe, feel, choose, or experience. We share what has been meaningful or true for us without assuming it must therefore be true for everyone.
Loto welcomes spiritual exploration and people from diverse religious and spiritual backgrounds. Arguments over religious dogma, fear-based theology, proselytizing, or attempts to impose our beliefs on another person do not belong in these spaces. Our beliefs are ours to offer, not impose.
4. We honor consent and personal boundaries.
Participation is always an invitation. The contemplative, embodied, creative, relational, and spiritual practices we explore can sometimes bring difficult emotions, memories, grief, pain, or trauma to the surface. Profound emotional and spiritual experiences are also possible.
You are always encouraged to listen to your body, intuition, capacity, and personal boundaries. All guidance offered by a facilitator is an invitation, not a requirement. You may modify a practice, remain silent, decline to share, turn off your camera, step away, or discontinue a practice when needed.
We extend that same respect to others. We do not offer unsolicited touch, advice, coaching, healing, prayer, spiritual interpretation, or attempts to fix another person’s experience. We ask before entering someone else’s process. And when someone communicates a boundary, we honor it.
5. We share with care.
Vulnerability is welcome here. It is never required.
We want Loto spaces to be places where people can tell the truth about their lives—including the difficult parts. At the same time, communal spaces require us to remain aware that our sharing affects others. We practice discernment around what we share, how much we share, and when we share it.
We avoid graphic or unnecessarily detailed descriptions of traumatic experiences, trauma dumping, repeatedly redirecting the group toward our own experience, or asking the community to hold something that requires individualized or professional support.
Loto gatherings can support reflection, connection, spiritual practice, and healing, but they are not substitutes for therapy, medical care, crisis intervention, or professional mental health support. We can be deeply honest without asking others to carry what is ours to tend.
6. We take space and make space.
Community requires participation. We believe each person brings experiences, questions, wisdom, gifts, and ways of seeing that can contribute to the whole. We therefore practice both taking space and making space.
If you tend to speak quickly or often, experiment with listening, asking questions, and leaving room for voices that have not yet been heard. If you tend to stay on the edges, we invite you—without pressure—to practice allowing yourself to be known.
No one is required to speak. Everyone is invited to participate.
Participation may look like sharing, listening deeply, asking a question, offering encouragement, attending consistently, receiving from others, or simply bringing your full presence.
Our WE becomes richer when each of us brings what is ours to bring.
7. We protect what is entrusted to us.
Vulnerability requires trust.
Personal stories shared within Loto gatherings belong to the people who tell them. We do not repeat another person’s story outside the gathering, share identifying information, screenshot private conversations, or record another participant without their consent.
You are welcome to carry your own insights, learning, and transformation beyond the gathering. Take the wisdom with you. Leave the stories here.
8. We practice accountability and repair.
We are human beings practicing relationship. We will misunderstand one another. We will sometimes say the wrong thing. We may unintentionally cause hurt. We may discover assumptions or biases we did not realize we carried.
Our goal is not perfection. The practice is repair.
When harm or conflict occurs, we seek to remain curious about impact, listen without immediately becoming defensive, take responsibility where appropriate, communicate boundaries clearly, and participate in repair whenever possible.
Compassion does not eliminate accountability. And accountability does not require shame.
Facilitators may step in when a conversation or behavior is compromising the wellbeing of an individual or the group. Serious or repeated violations of these agreements may result in a participant being asked to step away from a gathering or Loto community space.
OUR SHARED YES
Community is something we practice.
By participating in a Loto gathering or community space, I agree to:
Honor my boundaries and the boundaries of others.
Protect confidentiality and the vulnerability entrusted to this community.
Speak from my own experience rather than imposing my beliefs on others.
Meet difference with curiosity rather than judgment.
Take space and make space so many voices can participate.
Share vulnerably while remaining mindful of what I am asking the community to hold.
Practice compassion, accountability, and repair when relationship becomes difficult.
Participate in creating the kind of community I hope to experience.
We cannot promise that community will always feel comfortable. Growth, difference, vulnerability, and honest relationship sometimes ask us to remain present with discomfort.
What we can do is continue practicing the conditions that make courageous, compassionate relationship possible. Because community does not simply happen—We co-create it. And the WE is woven through relationship.
With Love,
The Loto Wellness Collective Team
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