Lauren Tenney: I don't think my audio is gonna bring you bell sound so.

Rob Sinclair: Oh!

Lauren Tenney: All right, so find your find your best seat. James, and Rob, and I'll do the same thing. And don't engage with the screen, if it's not supportive to you. I have a window behind you which is where I'll be putting my eyes.

I'm receiving my breath. I invite you to join me in that, receiving your own breath, and noticing the cadence of your bodies, inner emotion, heart and breath, and energy in mind, just noticing where that is.

Giving it some language, too. Inside your own space. Mine is thrumming so you might find a word that works for you.

I noticed this feels like landing, so I invite you to land by making contact with sensation and notice for me there's so much mind activity that it's a little effortful to do that.

So I have to bring my attention down into my seat and into my legs and out into my skin. Bring your attention down, or in into sensation with an appreciative gaze.

Looking at all of the mystery that is present in sensation. Feeling quite naturally, my own attention rises like a bubble in water to the heart level in my body, which feels like it extends out in all directions in a sphere.

And my attention then tunes to the realm of feeling an emotion for me, so I invite you to follow that, and let your own attention make contact with emotional tone.

How would you describe that to yourself, whatever you find and feel? And how does it play with sensation now, sort of like we're carrying sensation up and meeting emotion? And now they're here together.

And now the bubble of my attention rises into my mind space and into the with a appreciative inquiry about the quality of my mind space.

And so I'm carrying sensation and emotion now, and bringing that up and holding that together with mind. What does the space of my mind feel like, so I invite you to join me in that if it speaks to you, and notice what you notice. With an appreciative gaze.

And holding all 3 simultaneously in your awareness, receiving your breath and receiving those 3 forms of communication. For me, this is making contact with my being. So that's how I would describe it.

Thank you for inviting me to share and thank you for following. We'll rejoin you now with my eyes. Hi! It's good to land with you.

James Redenbaugh: Thank you so much.

Lauren Tenney: You're welcome.

Rob Sinclair: Thank you for catching the ball thrown unexpectedly your direction. Appreciate it.

James Redenbaugh: I feel much more like I'm in a space with you guys now that feels good. So these sessions? I call them vision sessions. Iris, my company stands for intuitive, relational and intersubjective. And that's basically how I try to do things and let things arise intuitively, I love to follow threads.

My belief is that intuition is kind of this layer beyond the senses, and it's the pathway into relationship that we all take in different ways. We have countless intuitive faculties. So it's this whole space, and relationship is the pathway into the intersubjective and to into the we into beings bigger than us, and time bigger than us, and everything bigger than us.

So the space is really an invitation to see together what might want to be seen and what might want to be created. And I want to make my faculties and sense-making abilities and creative tools available to you guys to help with that journey. So you're both in connection with what we can call an entity. What you're calling Triphora is that pronounced right,Triphoria?

Rob Sinclair: Triphora.

James Redenbaugh: You guys have been in relationship with that in relationship with each other, in relationship with others, in relation to that. I want to get to know that. And and just see what perspectives I can bring from from this point of view. And my creative, synesthetic brain and heart. And whatever is over here?

And yeah, basically see what happens. So hopefully, what emerges will be helpful can be helpful in in branding or design, or your own thinking about this project or enrolling others in it. But it's I find it good to not have too particular of a goal at this stage, but just to be open to perceive and co-create.

So I'm curious what might be most present for either of you around the idea or entity of Triphora, and what you can tell me about it, and that can be practical, impractical, energetic, feeling, mental, whatever's just most present for you in this moment.

Rob Sinclair: Maybe I can start with a simple thing that is - The nature of the genesis of this project. Entity, process whatever it is and is becoming, has often had this kind of triangulating shape to it. So I notice I'm enjoying in this moment just being in another 3, like in another creative 3 that has certainly been a through line.

Lauren Tenney: Yeah, my pattern brain is like Trinity OP a trinity. So what does the question book say, Rob? All numbers come from 3.

James Redenbaugh: Which book?

Lauren Tenney: It's called quadrivium.

James Redenbaugh: My favorite book of all time.

Rob Sinclair: It's been wonderful.

James Redenbaugh: I'm a big geometry dork. I've always loved shape. You got some triangles on my legs to ground me and keep me moving. What does the Trinity, or the triangle or triangularity mean to you guys?

Lauren Tenney: Integration is a word that comes up pretty quickly because whenever there's a dialectic, there's a 3rd emergent that becomes possible and known when the 2 are known fully and in participation. So like the 3rd thing.

So for me, that symbol symbolizes creation. And then it's not, of course irrelevant, that the multiplicity of the story of the divine in the Judeo-christian tradition, or at least the Christian tradition, includes Trinity as a central motif structure.

And then there's the kind of mathematical geometry of stability, but I think the most alive one for me is like in any dyadic in any dyad, the conscious relationship with the 3rd thing makes it alive. I think that's how I would describe it.

Rob Sinclair: Yeah, so beautifully said. Harmony might be another word I would throw out there. The way harmonic resonance gets constructed when I'm just moving back into the world of music a little bit more again, James, from like a previous time in my life, and when I think about like shell voicings and jazz. For example, it's like there are 3 really important notes that make the quality of a chord.

Maybe it's where my attention goes next is like another part of the origin was the Triphora is actually the common name for the three birds orchid. The integrative metabolic function is another essential element doesn't necessarily link to the 3 or the triangle necessarily, at least not in ways that I'm aware of right now.

We've talked a lot about the semi-saprophytic, metabolic connecting functions of what we're up to, what we intend to be up to.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah. Say more about that. This orchid survives on decomposing matter?

Rob Sinclair: So technically, technically semi saprophytic. Can pull nutrients and most of what it needs from without doing its own photosynthesis, but can also do some photosynthesis. So exists in really carbon rich sort of resource rich areas, and comes up as a pollinator, primarily as a redistribution of those resources. And it's really beautiful.

James Redenbaugh: Looking at some pictures of it.

Rob Sinclair: Small, small, but mighty, not very big.

James Redenbaugh: So when did the name come to you guys?

Rob Sinclair: Like springtime.

Lauren Tenney: Rob and I were brought together by a 3rd friend, and the 3 of us are a trio. We actually refer to ourselves that way of collaborators. And like, there's just a lot of love. And so there was this beautiful kind of harmony of the symbolism, or just the pattern right of us being brought together by this 3rd friend. And then the 3 of us, I think forming a triad of really like loving, collaborative energy. And then that triad actually kind of revealing Rob and I's relationship to each other in a more profound way.

And so there is also like an interpersonal aspect of like just the trioness that strikes me as quite part of the origin story.

So for a while it didn't have a name for a long while, actually, maybe close to a year. It was like a space, or we called it like what do we call it? Something else?

Rob Sinclair: The center. For a little while something like that. We played around with.

Lauren Tenney: And then the saprophytic concept of that in a in the natural world kind of led us to find the Triphora species, and then the name, and then or it just landed.

James Redenbaugh: I haven't heard that word before. Saprophytic.

Lauren Tenney: Yeah, I hadn't either, until Rob mentioned it to me.

James Redenbaugh: What does that mean exactly?

Rob Sinclair: A saprophyte is that it's a it's an organism that doesn't. It's like a plant that doesn't photosynthesize.

Lauren Tenney: Like our fungi saprophytes?

Rob Sinclair: I don't think so, cause they're not like pollinators. But I don't know the technical definition well enough. It came from me walking in the woods with a dear friend of mine who's an herbalist and it was very wet, and he pointed out a saprophytic orchid and explained to me what it was and how it worked, and that idea because part of where I don't know. Another theme that we've played around with is the idea of resource redistribution, specifically capital like, where are there sinks of capital like sinks of carbon, that we might help to draw on and redistribute to places or organizations that have a need.

Lauren Tenney: Or like, actually redistribute as wisdom.

Rob Sinclair: Right or alchemize exactly. Yeah. Hence the metabolic.

James Redenbaugh: It looks like fungi are saprophytic. And it says, saprophytic nutrition or lysotriphobic nutrition is a process of chemoheterotropic extracellular digestion involved in the processing of decayed organic matter.

Lauren Tenney: Yes.

James Redenbaugh: I wonder if you guys want to tell me about and jump to what you want to do in the world? What Triphora might want to do in the world? What saprophytic process want to play in the global ecosystem?

Rob Sinclair: Well, one of the experiences we had in the summer, and then we were riding on a boat in this sort of like a little tagline we started playing with is ideas for life.

Lauren Tenney: And so just came out of a workshop with Dan Siegel, who has a very active postal for making acronyms.

Rob Sinclair: Very rich acronym library vocabulary. So, ideas being integrative, developmental experiences and approaches. For life and life stands for leadership, identity, family, and education.

Rob Sinclair: So we want to be creating, offering, participating in curating integrative events and approaches, experiences, and approaches across kind of those 3 major domains in the life cycle of a human being - growing up in the family system, being in the education space and then participating in a deployment of their life force into their adult world which we could define as leadership of a kind.

Specifically those areas each also have people in asymmetrical positions of influence that are helping shape human beings. So parents in a family system, teachers, leaders in education and people in positions of authority and organizational life have this kind of important influence over the rest of the humans in their care. Working with those folks to create a more mature developmental participatory capacity so as to create more downstream maturity and wisdom.

James Redenbaugh: Can you tell me a bit about the work that you guys are already doing in coaching and working with leaders along these lines?

Rob Sinclair: First I want to check LT. Is there anything you would add to or color what I just said?

Lauren Tenney: Maybe just that the paradigm of ROI being kind of like a necessary evil, that trying to do something beautiful and good has to reckon with - well, you're gonna have to make sure you can explain it. And that paradigm becoming enlarged and expanded by the notion that the return we're seeking is a return in a different form of value. So the return on investment from capital can be transmuted into wisdom, or as more life, more goodness for life.

So James, like that's the saprophytic concept in this context. But then it's like, well, that points to some activities that we may try to be engaged in, or an identity a facet of identity, that sort of keeps being present in the Triphora space, which is, how are we a mover of resource? To convert it? Kind of transmute it in that way.

I'll answer for myself - when I look at my ecosystem of current work is pretty conventional with the exception of 10 directions and integral facilitator work. In my own rating scale of how fundamental are we, at what level are we working, I would say there's a range.

As a human one-on-one, I think I'm kind of always coming in with a center of gravity that orients in a particular way and wants to dance with people in a certain way. So maybe there are spaces of my work like one-on-one coaching where that can be more available to me and to us as a system.

And then there's contexts where I'm like we're doing level 2, whatever that is, out of how many levels. I would say I see the Triphora space as a doubling down for me, and I believe I hear this in Rob too - a doubling down for us on what matters most, but is also the hardest to articulate the value of in a kind of game a world.

Rob Sinclair: Similar. There's parallels there in terms of there being a range, and I have a foundational intention of being with people on behalf of a greater wholeness, one could say. Depending on the context of our relationship, some of those are in organizations. And so what that means, or how that's deployed is really dependent on the context of the engagement or the interests of the individual. But it's kind of always there for me.

Some of the contexts I get to play in are a little more explicitly that, like working with a couple of young men right now and their parents. A client of mine out in Eastern Africa who runs a halfway house for boys and men who've been through their judicial system. Some of the nonprofit work that we've done and are doing.

It's a little more explicitly about, how do we develop the relational capacities in the maturity to participate in the world in ways that we care about more effectively? And how do we need to be together in order for that to be the case? And how do we nurture that in others? On the surface it can look like executive coaching and team coaching and leadership development training and facilitation.

James Redenbaugh: I'm curious to go a bit deeper with each of you and I'm wondering what brought you both to this world of working with others and coaching and thinking developmentally, and all these things. Why is it important to you? Why do you think you ended up here?

Rob Sinclair: I notice how much the question of why is different than the question of how you ended up here, and I like that.

Lauren Tenney: There's like a quippy response that's not false, which is like, well, how else do you be in the world and be an active participant in the machinery of modernity, and also a religious being at the same time? How many places can you do that? And I mean religious, not as a historic reference to religion as an institution, but as the impulse to reconnect, to reweave.

I could have probably been really happy as a psychologist, although when I look retrospectively, I would say that's kind of what I'm up to. I just didn't get saturated in a particular view of how to be in practice with people in their healing, which, from my now vantage point, looks like it can be tilted toward the pathologizing or tilted towards the sort of never ending work of therapy, whereas I notice in the coaching and consulting and facilitation, it's much more natively evolutionary. There's a kind of motion quality to it that I really feel is right for me.

I don't know how else - other than art, other than communicating through the arts - I don't think there's another space where I would feel like I could be in the kind of intimate relationship that I want to be and creative, like generating new things with other people at the same time.

And getting to focus on being - because you can go be an entrepreneur, and you can make stuff with other people, but generally speaking, everyone's not there to play an intimacy game. That it's explicitly valued is, I think, why I find myself here. I value that and I want to play that game with other people.

Rob Sinclair: I feel like I'm still trying to figure out the why question, but it seems to me that I feel appropriately equipped with whatever capacities are necessary for me to participate in this work in the world. I'm coming to learn I'm a particularly sensitive dude, particularly attuned relationally in some ways that make me naturally gravitate towards this work of being a supportive presence, a kind of space holder, with and for others on behalf of their healing, learning, growth, development.

I have a growing fire for how much I care about how necessary that is in order for us to create a future that feels like it might be better for all of us.

The how - I came through more of an entrepreneurial kind of route specifically in the physical performance space. I was a martial artist for a little while, and then more in fitness, more generally in functional fitness.

Lauren Tenney: You just said "a little while."

Rob Sinclair: It was a little while. There's a chunk of time.

Lauren Tenney: Long while.

Rob Sinclair: And pretty early on, I didn't know that this is what was happening, but the understanding of the inner game as critically important to how anything else came around and working with people on how they thought about themselves, how they related with themselves and others in the world around them.

And why develop pretty early on became like, oh, so that we can show up and participate in our worlds in a responsible and caring and respectful way, and be instruments for what we care about. I started teaching when I was a teenager, and I didn't know that's what I was learning how to do. But I could look back now and say, that's what we were practicing. It was a culture of developing wise humans who also had more physical aptitude with their body. But they cared about each other and wanted to show up in their world in a different way.

James Redenbaugh: Lauren mentioned if she wasn't doing this work, maybe arts. I want to ask you more about that in a minute. But Rob, if you weren't doing this work, would it still be martial arts? What would you be doing in a parallel universe right now?

Rob Sinclair: Yeah, I think there are parallel tracks from a few of my previous chapters of life. There's one that had me just continue on the martial arts path, and having my own school, or network of schools, and stewarding that community. There's a pathway that probably went musical and made music the thing. There's a pathway that was some more like general fitness and communities of fitness. Each of those I could see. There are I'm sure a whole other multiverses where that guy just kept doing that thing.

James Redenbaugh: And Lauren, what is - you briefly mentioned the art - but what does art mean to you?

Lauren Tenney: Yeah, I'll do the same structure that Rob did. I think there's a world where I'm a writer and a poet, and words are my medium, and that's kind of what I'm up to. And there's a world where I'm in the visual arts specifically like different varieties of painting mediums, and that's always been a part of me.

When I'm facilitating, especially co-facilitating in spaces that value broader, deeper values, I feel like I'm painting. There's something very consonant with what I experience when I'm writing poetry or painting, which is like there's this intent immersion in the thing that's right here.

And then there's kind of like that situated within a view that has somehow appeared of what could be. It's got a beauty quotient. So like with poetry, a poem starts to happen when there's contact with the Gestalt of the whole thing on the other side. But it's not all the words - it's like the spirit of the thing, same thing with a painting.

If I'm caught by the beauty of a view, it's like the whole thing sort of has its own wholeness and resonance. And then that's why bother sit down and try to put color on the canvas, or whatever - it's to be in the relationship with that.

And so there's something of the same thing that happens for me in working with groups where the great beauty that's possible here is somehow revealing itself, and I don't imagine it's complete, but it's somehow apparent. And so then the intent presence with what's here is in relation to that. I'm painting or writing - it's like the same process actually for me, very consonant.

James Redenbaugh: Rob, how do you relate to that? Is it similar or different for you?

Rob Sinclair: Yeah, similar. I would say Lauren has a pretty amazing ability to be seeing the whole, where for me it might feel more like a progression through time. You know, when I think of musical improvisation, there's a kind of linearity to it, or like riding a mountain bike down a hill - there's a kind of flow through experience that's happening for me. That creative participation with that doesn't have necessarily as much a sense of the whole. But musically, that can be true also.

I think I'm learning to be more sensitive to what is my part in what seems to be the emerging song, and to not be either sitting in the audience or trying to play solo. I'm doing a lot more collaborative play, realizing that that's where - that's actually in your - I was really moved by your description of your company name - that the relational is actually where creative is born through. I relate to that a lot.

James Redenbaugh: I'm curious to ask about superpowers. Now, if Lauren has this power to be seeing the whole, what other powers does she have? Let's start there.

Rob Sinclair: Well, I'm aware we only have about 45 min left. James, are you sure I don't know if that'll be enough time? I've described one of Lauren's superpowers in that - you know, in the X-men movie where there's a guy who can move really fast? At one point they show the movie at his perspective of pace and time, and everyone else is in this kind of super slow mo, and he's kind of walking around tilting people's hats and moving things around.

Lauren's ability to like, navigate and facilitate interpersonal dynamics is a lot like that - she's seeing a hundred things when other people see one and is not only seeing them and mapping them and understanding what's happening, but able to influence them in a way that makes spaces and relational interactions more generative, more connected, more seemingly more valuable to the people who are in them. And it's really astounding.

Word magic is definitely another one - relationship with language and poetry. And her sincerity is probably another one, just the genuineness of how she shows up in the world is very unique.

Lauren Tenney: Do I get to go? Okay. Great.

One of the first things - this is gonna be kind of a funny metaphor - but two things come up for Rob's superpower. One is like Rob is earth element in a very extremely visceral kind of tangible way. Contexts and spaces are energetically stabilized by Rob, full stop - that's what happens.

And then the kind of appendage metaphor to that which just came up for me is, you know, you can go buy those like charcoal sticks and stick them in your water bottle, and they like suck the yucky things up. Feel sometimes like when there's tension in the room, Rob is like the charcoal stick, where he just sort of makes the things not there, or become less sticky or pointy. So there is this harmonic - Rob increases harmony, I think, really.

Another that I think is really important is Rob's heart quality is extremely elastic - he can be with people in a lot of their different sufferings and joys and struggles, and he's with them in the heart space. So like his heart is moved with them, and his mind is totally sparkly and tracking the complexity. But it's the heart quality of like Rob is willing to be moved into the joining with somebody in their experience and by being with them in it, their experience changes.

The other thing I would say is movement. Rob moves things along - they don't stay stuck in static. Rob makes action happen. So it's this really interesting blend of like that unshakable kind of earth quality, and then the movement, and then the heart.

James Redenbaugh: I want to come back to triads and quickly name a few. And I'm just curious if you guys would see, maybe I'll share my screen and do a little visual exercise here.

James Redenbaugh: You can see the name and working up, and if we had a triangle, let's take this one - and without thinking about it, what's your favorite color each of you?

Lauren Tenney: Blue, green, dark.

James Redenbaugh: Dark blue green, something like this?

Lauren Tenney: Sure, sure.

James Redenbaugh: Cool, and Rob?

Rob Sinclair: Yeah, I would have gone a more like Forest green.

James Redenbaugh: So if we took something like classic Plato's truth, beauty, and goodness - where in here would you find you gravitate most towards?

Lauren Tenney: I mean I do experience them as inseparable, but I think the like gut response is beauty.

Rob Sinclair: I'm mildly distracted by just watching you work, James. I'm enjoying that. But yeah, I think I have a bend towards goodness. And it's - I can just in trying to locate myself there, I can feel the tension on the other two. But yeah, I would say my center of gravity leans that way.

James Redenbaugh: And then let's say, visual auditory tactile. Where would you find yourselves?

Lauren Tenney: Visual.

James Redenbaugh: Like way up here or?

Lauren Tenney: Close. Yep.

Rob Sinclair: I'm also more visual. Probably not as far. Yeah.

James Redenbaugh: Leaning either to the tactile or the auditory?

Rob Sinclair: Hard to say, depends on the situation I guess.

James Redenbaugh: Right, middle is fine. No wrong answers. What other triads can you think of?

Lauren Tenney: Mind, heart, gut.

James Redenbaugh: And where do you find yourself on those?

Rob Sinclair: I definitely lean mind, heart, probably more heart than mind.

Lauren Tenney: Yeah, I think probably mind, gut - they ping back and forth. I don't know. Something like that.

James Redenbaugh: Let's do three more real quick. Since you're both so visual, how about the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary?

Lauren Tenney: Instinctively I would say the symbolic for me.

James Redenbaugh: Super symbolic kind of balanced?

Lauren Tenney: Yeah, symbolic towards imaginary a little bit.

Rob Sinclair: This one feels pretty middle of the road for me. I don't feel as strong. I feel they all... I don't feel a strong lean anyway.

James Redenbaugh: Any other triads important to you?

Lauren Tenney: I just thought of me, you, we.

Rob Sinclair: Self, other, system.

Lauren Tenney: I think they're different.

Rob Sinclair: Like, intrapersonal, interpersonal.

James Redenbaugh: Self, other, us.

Rob Sinclair: Self, other, system was what I meant.

Lauren Tenney: Heavy on the we in that one.

James Redenbaugh: Down here?

Lauren Tenney: Yeah, somewhere down there, somewhere towards the we.

James Redenbaugh: You're leaning more towards me, or you?

Lauren Tenney: I don't know. I don't think there's a lean really.

Rob Sinclair: I think I've got a pretty strong you-we leaning, a little more you.

Lauren Tenney: And I would say, system for me on this one is more pulley, more magnetic.

Rob Sinclair: Yeah, me too.

James Redenbaugh: Are you guys right on top of each other on that?

Lauren Tenney: Sure.

James Redenbaugh: Let's do one more - interior, exterior, allterior.

Lauren Tenney: What's the third one?

James Redenbaugh: Allterior.

Rob Sinclair: Sort of like a both.

James Redenbaugh: Either both, or like ulterior motive. Just other cosmos.

Lauren Tenney: Then I would go there.

James Redenbaugh: Up here?

Lauren Tenney: Yeah.

Rob Sinclair: And I'd probably have to be like exterior-allterior.

James Redenbaugh: Over here? Cool. Awesome. Not sure what this will lead to, but helps me get to know you guys, map the territory a bit. The whole exercise is very symbolic, the whole name Triphora. It's very symbolic. The trinity, the harmony. I love the three kind of being born out of the two being this beginning, like the requisite materials for life, the start of anything.

You know, I think of the origin of the cosmos, and whatever happened there, and and new ideas, and when we come to ideas for life. There's something inherently novel about the idea of ideas, for me at least.

We have this action process that I'm kind of always evolving and working on, inspired by different systems, and it starts with ideas. And then the kind of energy or the knot, or the wave kind of moves into denser forms of matter, and it eventually becomes real.

But the idea sphere, the newest sphere, is a potent one, and it's the source of all novelty and the root of all change. I'm curious about the conceptual relationship between kind of emergence and creation and the new kind of verse, or in collaboration with the transmutation, or the transformation, or the composting, that the saprophytic word that I still can't pronounce implies.

Are those forces in collaboration like the creativity and the transmutation? Or is it one thing, or is it one or the other?

Rob Sinclair: Wonderful question. As I listen to you ask that, James, I have a sense of like on an elemental level, nothing is new, and there's like a saprophytic is a kind of recycling. And yet there are new and novel expressions, always being always emerging. So there's both the new and not new, the metabolic inclusion or use of former materials cycling through into a novel expression is what comes up for me.

Lauren Tenney: There's this book that we've both been influenced by, which also has beautiful geometric stuff, James. So if you haven't heard of it, you might dig it. Which they have a phrase - I think it's "ancient, new, emerging."

I think they say that, and that just came into my mind as you were responding, Rob, and James, in response to your question. You're asking a question about our maybe perspective on the creative-destructive polarity which is the dialectic that has got to be here, and certainly is in that saprophytic depiction.

I would say my own stance with relation to that is something like that spirit of ancient new emerging - it's not new and it's got to be newly vitalized. Like the ancient knowing of the Big 3, for example, has got to continuously be revitalized in context. And so there's something both ancient and new about it, and the destruction or the natural destructions of being living and dying can be participated with to midwife what's the new creation from destruction.

When I hear the saprophytic, I'm like, yeah, the spirit of that for me is - it's very different from the "come into the breakdown and plant a flag" - that's not the vibe for me, but it's definitely not also like "we're all just gonna sit and be in the wash of the breakdown" - that's also not it. So I feel like whatever that open handed but simultaneously leaned in fierce kind of participation.

James Redenbaugh: Awesome. In the "ancient new emerging" - does the ancient have a relationship to the emerging like this? Or is the ancient just old?

Rob Sinclair: When I hear ancient in the way that I hear Lauren describing that I think of it as more the timeless, and then new is contextual - like is contextually relevant and maybe new across linear time. It's a differentiated, it's a new thing than what's come before. But it's also just a different representation of the ancient that's fit for its environment.

I love the word fierce there - just really kind of rang out in me when you said that, Lauren. There's something like - which a lot of the pictures that I've found of the saprophytic orchid there's like a deliberate in the midst of all of this, like wet kind of decaying, there's this like committed stance of something beautiful. And there's a fierceness about that.

Lauren Tenney: Yeah, the word fierce is interesting - I resonate, it does something good in my body. And at the same time, when I look up the definition, it's like "aggressive". I think maybe the Gestalt there for me is there's a lot of urgent pointy energy that comes up in the world and in individuals when they're faced with suffering and inequity and tragedy, and the breakdown of beautiful things. And then sometimes that's often unfortunately, it seems like that exacerbates suffering.

And yet that energy of leaned-in-ness is maybe more what I'm trying to capture with the word fierce - like none of us are getting off this spaceship alive, you know, but if we take it upon ourselves to kind of brandish fierceness, then I think that's not the way. There's a Taoist Gestalt, I hope that's coming through.

Rob Sinclair: Yeah, like it's not aggressive in a violent way. It's like willful, intentional, deliberate, potent.

Lauren Tenney: It's interesting, James. Actually, the more I look at that little swoosh that you made there with ancient new emerging, the more I see it as like ancient and new, with a dialectic emergent.

Rob Sinclair: Yeah, nice. Yeah, same.

Lauren Tenney: Could do timeless now as well, timeless and now and emerging.

James Redenbaugh: These ideas for life - practically speaking, how do you see them finding their ways to the leaders and the systems of influence that you want to influence?

Rob Sinclair: Can I just ask you to do something to satisfy my visual? What Lauren just said - can you go back to that ancient new - Lauren, did I hear you correctly, and saying like, could you move new and now to the end and put emerging in the in-between?

Lauren Tenney: Yeah, I think it's another triangle.

Rob Sinclair: I do see it with that kind of processional direction from ancient to new is the process of emergence.

Lauren Tenney: So I'm gonna just, I think a good example, Rob, for now is like the valor conversation. So we have a friend who's leading innovation in a charter school network. He's currently working on getting funding for the design and deployment of an alternative path for high schoolers through the High School charter system that they run that is focused on cultivating the capacities that could be called from a conventional standpoint, mental health field preparatory skills - like you were preparing for a career in mental health.

But the bigger game that that's sort of a Trojan horse for is - what kind of humans are we trying to make? We're trying to cultivate wisdom. And we want to start in a way that's developmentally appropriate and involves families. But it could be funded. So that's just like a saprophytic kind of spirit is like, get it funded by the current interest in funding basically those fields where there's not enough skill and labor.

So a central question that he has to and wants to answer in collaboration with us is - what are we trying to cultivate in humans? And what's our domain-general kind of language and depiction of how we do that? That's very portable, it's very elastic.

Lauren Tenney: So for us, working at least for now more closely in the leadership and organization context, to have a kind of elastic and portable way of talking about what is that we're cultivating, and how that is like both elegant and simple, and also really has a lot of utility for us to collaborate on that as an example of like a Triphora activity.

Rob Sinclair: Yeah. So maybe I could offer like a distinction - we've talked about there being multiple kind of activities or processes that we're participating with that make for a kind of metabolic cycle of taking in - like we're actually out participating and connecting and training learning in our own ways to bring in the material that informs that context-agnostic kind of central sense of what do we care about and what's most important.

And then there are offerings and experiences that translate into context that are the sort of specific expressions and contributions. So like a partnership with valor for us, I think, is a great one because it's embodied all of those - we've gone and had learning experiences with that partner and one of his teammates. We've connected and related with them and their team in a leadership development way.

We're being thought partners on discovering what is that context-agnostic framework, meta principles, capacities. And then also, how can we support them in translating it specifically into that education context? So that one encompassed all three.

Lauren Tenney: And just before we got on with you, James, we were talking about - we're in the process of now committing to and planning for an in-person event that feels like it's a Triphora hosted experience that would be probably to our minds so far leaning heavily on like a convening, an invited convening of practitioners who are working kind of in harmonic ways with this. That one of Triphora's ways of being in the world is to convene and curate community and relationships that are vibrantly generative seems like it keeps showing up.

James Redenbaugh: Where and when will that be, do you think?

Lauren Tenney: End of May.

Rob Sinclair: We're aiming at end of May at Hollyhock. Are you familiar with the Hollyhock Leadership Institute on Cortez Island, up here on the west coast of Canada?

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, I've heard of it.

Lauren Tenney: Well, you know we might need you to be there.

Rob Sinclair: That's what I was just thinking. Part of the idea we talked about is like that there are beautiful artifacts. So your question again, about like, what does this look like kind of more materially, that when we're in these kinds of experiences, there are beautiful things that are created as expressions of that convening.

James Redenbaugh: So there's kind of a triad trinity here in my sketchy notes of potential offerings from the kind of creation of artifacts. Which, or models - the, you know, I just wrote participating with, but we could call it consulting or supporting other organizations, other movements, other initiatives through research collection gathering, thought partnership and the offering of experiences which would be fertile ground for collecting and participating with and informing the creation of artifacts. Is that how you're kind of seeing the ecosystem emerging?

Lauren Tenney: None of that seems wrong to me. I just noticed the question is probably like - do those 3 capture all the different things that have sort of maybe at one moment or another popped up in our awareness? The thing that seems like it's either underneath it or behind it or adjacent to it that is still a question for us is this - are we moving? Are we an active agent in resource redistribution? And if so, how? But I don't know that that has to be represented there.

Rob Sinclair: Yeah, there's sort of another triangle of a kind, maybe, but there's like the taking in, the metabolizing or alchemizing, and there's the distribution. So like learning, synthesizing and evolving of models or things like that, and then the offering it out. Obviously, many of them are happening multi-directionally while any one of the other ones is happening. You know, while we're doing an offering, we're also learning and we're also metabolizing.

Lauren Tenney: I was just getting like a visual - I was imagining like a triangle on 2 dimensions, and then I was imagining a point, and then I was like, "Oh, is it underneath it?" I was doing a geometry thing in my head of that 4th thing that's maybe the hardest for us to kind of get our practicals around right now, but feels like it touches all the other ones.

I think there's a bigger question here for what kind - cause we are in the question of like, what kind of entity are we? And you know, being a not for profit or being a foundation have different implications for how we could be a redistributor of resources, and then how we would be dependent and independent.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, like that very shitty tetrahedron I'm drawing. The triangle becomes three-dimensional. You mentioned the 2D plane. The 4th thing is kind of the 3rd thing, or the dialectic of the triad. You're playing 5D chess, you know, and doing a lot at once. The overall goal is being this active agent in redistribution of resource. Is that accurate? First of all - would you put it that way? That everything is in service to doing that well and doing that well requires learning and synthesizing, evolving models, and convening and gathering in these ways?

Lauren Tenney: I think I might flip it or something, James. Maybe I'll just pull on like aqua here for a second - if we're going to be coherent with the great story of value that you're hearing bits and pieces of here from us that brings this Triphora into being - like, why bother? Then there's a systemic dimension to that which, in order to be coherent, congruent - how we're in relationship to resources and the movement of resources is part of a broader conversation of what it is to be in the world today.

That's a present moment reality for humans to grapple with - our modes of being, exchanging value. So this entity has to be in participation with that conversation to be congruent, really. And the way for us currently to conceive of that is like the saprophytic depiction - how are we participating lovingly with what's breaking down and helping that to be in service of what can become that isn't just novelty for novelty's sake?

I would say right now, when we talk about offerings and experiences and artifacts, or like creative output, whatever forms those may take and partnerships - those feel right to me. I just don't know how that's going to refine. I imagine it will keep refining, but it doesn't feel wrong.

I think maybe the question, if I'm hearing me right now, is kind of like - what's the primary purpose of this entity? Is more of our energy being poured into how we are an agent redistributing resources, or is more of our energy being poured into what we're embodying in the world? I don't know, Rob, how do you relate with all that?

Rob Sinclair: It's really good question. I think it's an important question, especially the allocation of attention and energy. I can imagine like there's kind of primary-secondary relationships to that - like the primary is the redistribution of value in the form of wisdom, applied wisdom, like the humaning capacity. And there's a secondary that is about participating in the systems of resource exchange in ways that are more aligned to the primary content that we're actually relating with.

Cause I don't think we want to be putting our primary energy and attention in like policy change for new economics. And yet we want to be participating in an innovative way that represents the values in that 2D plane.

Lauren Tenney: Like, we want to participate with new economics, but we're not necessarily - our primary identity isn't like to be a voice for that body of work in the world.

James Redenbaugh: Words are beautiful and powerful, and they can be living, but they can be limiting. You and Triphora are already guided by and driven by something higher. It can be a helpful exercise to name that, but it seems more fitting in this moment to let it be open, understand these different planes.

I'll share - I'll stop the screen share, so we can see this - on the 3 page is very fitting.

Rob Sinclair: Yeah, beautiful. Oh my God, nice. Cause that works. That's what I was picturing exactly because you could dig up - you know you could look under, and you would find the roots. So there's sort of this invisible but very tangible participatory thing happening. And then there's the 3 petals of the Triphora orchid. And then there's the like - okay, so what's it doing? It was like, well, what's the sound of one hand clapping?

James Redenbaugh: I love that. Awesome. We are at the end of our time here. I want to respect your guys's time. If you have a few more minutes though, I'm happy to just offer a space for any reflections on the process. We covered a lot.

Rob Sinclair: I feel a particular wave of gratitude, James, for the generosity you've extended, and being with us today and offering to do this. The process itself has been - it's so nice to have been guided. I really appreciated your light touch, and your steady holding of where we went in our time together. It flew by and felt really rich and connected.

Lauren Tenney: I'm excited to see what comes back. I just am aware of the feeling of being seen and getting to see both in a deeper way, because of your thirdness of you here being with us, James. You know it feels like that shape on the screen has been representative of this as well.

And yeah, I feel a lot of curiosity and openness and relaxation about what confluence emerges as you perceive us. I'm also a little curious - we were putting our eyes on our own vision board space on a mirror board earlier - I wonder if there's utility in us sharing anything with you? It's not needed like you've got enough here, and I feel open in either direction.

James Redenbaugh: Yeah, feel free to share that - more the merrier. We haven't talked about Brand. We talked a little bit about identity. But I definitely had some ideas about your brand, about what could be the seeds of a fruitful visual language for you guys.

But essentially, I just love that this trinity was so present, and this our shared love of quadrivium. It was such a privilege and a pleasure to be with you both in this, and it's great to get to know Triphora and what you guys are doing. I think it's just what folks like you should be doing in the world right now. Nothing is needed more than this.

Rob Sinclair: And we did hear your intention to kind of step away from more practical execution and project delivery. But I will say we were also curious and interested about how this might translate into something real fairly soon. We're still in discussion about how that could happen, when that could happen - really practically like basic brand identity in a page or two website that we could say, we are now in bloom in the world.

James Redenbaugh: Awesome. Yeah, to clarify and reckoning with my own shifting relationship around web building, I'm realizing that I've been in this - I've had this relationship to it, where every project I've taken on, I always want to challenge myself and learn something new and obviously serve the project and the client really well.

Even as I've grown my team over the years and learned to team up with others, I've been unable to like separate myself and really hand things off to the people I work with, with exception. I mean, people on my team have done projects within Iris that I haven't been involved in, and they've gone great. But just kind of looking back at the last year and years, and like frustrated with how much time I still spend in web flow, and just developing websites and doing these little details that I know other people can do just as well, if not better than me.

So Iris is definitely going to continue doing this work. And I'm just rethinking my role in it or finding a way to put myself into something different, while I'm also starting to get back into architecture and physical space design. But I am always gonna love working with organizations on their brands. That's never gonna leave my world. I don't want it to. I think it's just gonna look a little differently.

Mostly when it comes to the website, I mostly just have to be like - let's do this branding work. I'd love to bring in other brand designers in that process that goes well, we've got a couple of really awesome brand designers that we work with who can make incredible logos and graphics. So I've gotten better at doing less of that myself.

The website building can be so involved that I haven't been able to resist getting into it and always trying to innovate everything. But the drain on that has mostly been with these big websites that we're doing that are like huge CMS's and online learning management systems and complicated integrations. The one to two page site is pretty easy and pretty easy to delegate. Definitely something we can handle in the short term.

Rob Sinclair: Thanks for clarifying.

James Redenbaugh: Thanks for being in my process a little bit as we think about it. Yeah, I'll follow up with some harvesting from this, and also some information about what that could look like in the coming weeks to generate that with you.

Rob Sinclair: Fabulous.

Lauren Tenney: Thank you.

James Redenbaugh: Sweet. Have a great rest of your days. Take care.

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