Thank you to Nathan Rix for offering these reflections on parenting, play, and The Circle Way.
Bubble in the Ring: Parenting, Play, and The Circle Way
Where parenting wonder meets Circle practice
Bath time in our cozy New York City apartment always begins the same way. Rosalind (“Lindy”), my eldest, three years old, stands over the basket of toys with the solemnity of a tiny curator.
Ducks, boats, foam shapes and glittering plastic treasures… all passed over without a thought. She selects the same thing every night: the plain plastic scoop meant for pouring water.
Meanwhile, the bathroom fills with piping-hot city steam. It’s dense enough to blur the mirror and soften the day.
Then it’s just Lindy and me, suspended together in the warm, foggy cathedral of the tub.
One night Lindy catches sight of my wedding ring. Her whole body goes still, eyes widen, as though she’s uncovered treasure. I slip the ring off under the suds and hold it to my eye like a monocle to make her laugh.
She leans in… face intent, breath soft… and blows. For a moment I don’t understand why.
Then I see it: a tiny rainbow-skinned bubble blooming from the circle of gold, rising through the steam with improbable grace.
And it strikes me, simple and electric: a circle allows a bubble to form. A ring, a breath, a shared shape… suddenly something delicate and dazzling rises.
I’ve practiced The Circle Way for years, but here, in a steamy bathroom with my small daughter, the essence of it reappears and connection isn’t incidental.
Circles are blown into being.
What the Bubble Revealed
A few days later, I co-facilitated a Circle with a group of community members connected to a Fortune 500 social media tech company.
Our intention was simple: to make introductory, human-to-human connections in a city that often rewards speed over depth and practice facilitation together.
In the center we placed an arrangement of small flowering plants, a living reminder that underneath the concrete jungle is soil, shaped by our hands and tending.
We grounded ourselves in four agreements: speak from the heart, listen with intention, be spontaneous, and be lean with your words.
Then, we opened with a simple prompt: “Tell us about a time you had a deep laugh.”
New York rewards quickness: interruptions and shortcuts. Cross-talk is practically a survival skill. But when the talking piece began its slow passage around the Circle, something shifted.
The simple act of letting one voice travel at a time pulled us into a different rhythm. The room softened. We fell into a quieter kind of listening… one that rewards presence over performance.
After one person shared a deep, contagious belly-laugh story, the whole Circle loosened. You could feel the moment land.
As I watched the room breathe together, I realized it was the same principle I’d witnessed in the tub: the bubble that rises isn’t just breath, it’s the stories, the laughter and the small truths we offer into the shared shape.
Later, as each person reflected on what stayed with them in a witness round, I could feel a kind of collective bubble forming: fragile, iridescent and lifted by our listening.
Where Wonder Meets Practice
Circles (and the bubbles they enable) reveal possibilities that rectangular spaces often suppress.
Much of my career has unfolded inside public systems that default to rectangles: cubicles, agendas and organizational charts.
Even conversations become rectangular. Corners everywhere. Places to store defensiveness.
A circle is a counter-architecture.
It softens. It redistributes attention. It reminds us that systems are built from people long before they are built from process.
When we sit in a circle, we temporarily unbuild the old geometry of power. Something loosens. Something equalizes. Yes, even in a corporate meeting room!
For an hour, we breathe inside a more ancient configuration of being human together.
A small shared bubble rises, made not of hierarchy or expertise, but of communal breath.
Sometimes, this is how real organizational change begins: not through force or brilliance, but through the softest exhale into a shared shape.
A Soft Invitation
And every so often now, when Lindy says, “Make the ring bubble again,” I’m reminded why I return to Circle practice: a ring offered, a center we lean toward, a breath shared, and a brief shimmering universe rising. It’s just enough wonder in a city dense with distraction to open the door for what comes next.
Maybe that’s the quiet bridge between parenting and facilitation: the breath we wait for, the space we hold and the way one small offering shapes the whole. Letting a single voice move through the room at a time creates the conditions for tenderness, imagination and witness.
It allows something to rise between us that none of us could make alone.
Every act of leadership, every attempt at community, and every shared moment of meaning begins the same way: a shape we hold up, a breath we exchange, and a small rising we learn to honor together.
May your Circles find bubbles, too.
Nathan Rix is a practitioner of The Circle Way who works at the intersection of leadership, strategy, and institutional change. Over nearly two decades, he has served in senior roles in Oregon state government and within Deloitte’s Management Consulting practice in Manhattan, where he advised state governments across the United States on complex institutional transformation. Today he serves as a senior strategy leader with Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business. Through Wing & Root Management Consulting, he partners with leaders in government, higher education, and nonprofit organizations seeking to strengthen institutions and cultivate thoughtful, bold leadership. Nathan lives in New York City with his wife Kristen and their two daughters, Rosalind (“Lindy”) and Vivienne (“Viv”), who continually remind him where wonder begins.