COHERE+ IS AN ERASMUS+ FUNDED PROJECT that began in 2022 and finished this month after three years of collective investigation into the topic of coherence amongst actors for social change. As part of this work we have mapped the ecosystem through dozens of interviews with people and organisations practising in the field, co-designed and facilitated workshops at conferences (such as the IDG Summit and the Holomovement), led round-tables in small villages in Germany, co-authored a book chapter for the IDG book, and designed, built and tested a learning platform for visionaries, researchers and activists – amongst many other activities. 

Part of Emerge’s contribution to the consortium has been a series of published profiles and essays. For our very last profile, we turned the lens back on ourselves as a group to reflect upon what we have experienced and learned about the topic of coherence (and beyond) over the last few years. Instead of attempting to create a single narrative, we’ve asked each member of the collective to contribute their own impressions, stories, and hopes for what will emerge out of this work. Below you’ll read the reflections and stories of Dr. Elke Fein, Ivo J. Mensch, Claudine Villemot-Kienzle, Kara Stonehouse, Dr. Bettina Geiken, Andrea Harding, Anne-Marie Voorhoeve, and Catherine Tran. Think of it as a multi-voice investigation, a kind of meta-profile of coherence itself. 

- Leigh Biddlecome, editor

After over three years of researching coherence, the group reflected on their individual learnings around the concept of coherence itself. The group’s latest co-created working definition is: ‘a state of harmony and alignment where all parts of a system work in sync to support the whole as well as the freedom and efficiency of its parts, in order to actualize its goals.’ 

For Elke Fein, coherence serves as ‘a wonderful umbrella concept that very nicely summarises what integral politics is all about. Ultimately, everything in integral politics is about more coherence between various elements and dimensions of our lives and awareness.’ This framing suggests coherence not as a specific technique or method, but as an overarching principle that can guide integration across seemingly disparate domains.

Bettina Geiken noted, ‘there seems to be an intuitive recognition in most people and groups of certain qualities or phenomena that one can describe as coherence—qualities such as flow, lightness, clarity, joy. We saw this across all groups that participated in the Sensemaker capture. When asked how "incoherence" feels, there were also common patterns, such as fragmentation and disruption.’ This points to coherence as both a felt sense and a universal human capacity, something we recognise viscerally even when we struggle to define it intellectually. Kara also noted the felt sense of coherence was something that she shifts into through ‘ceremony and singing and art,’ even through ‘big life changes.’

Andrea draws upon over a decade of research on the subject, and noted that ‘coherence can only ultimately be achieved by self-realised and heart-centered humans who are in alignment with their own soul nature and purpose. [...] After a lot of research and experimentation, it is clear to me that true coherence only emerges through the actualised and energetic realisation of our inherent unity and ability to recognise natural authority in ourselves and others.’

In a similar vein, Anne-Marie noted that coherence for her means ‘full permission to be ourselves, to bring all the praxis around heart-centered leadership and development to the table [and] build energetic and social congruent containers in service of interrelationships that serve people to thrive, be themselves in their beauty and uniqueness.’

Put most succinctly, Ivo described that his understanding of coherence after these years of work on the topic is ultimately about ‘more non-doing than doing.’ 

We were curious to get a sense of when the group felt most in touch with the ‘source code’ of coherence during the project, and how that felt. Most of the responses revolved around creative collaboration. Claudine recalled ‘the moments where each member of the project [...] began to sync and create and co-create with others, in a flow, supporting each other naturally and enjoying all the abundance we were creating.’ Ivo noted that the most coherent moments occurred during co-authorship and while designing, and researching for the events we organised (such as the IDG post-Summit workshops). Anne-Marie recalled the very beginning of the project, when the team gathered at her home in the Netherlands, and how ‘creating a field of trust to be able to open up and be vulnerable’ during that retreat was very important for her personally. 

Andrea identified specific qualities and ‘sweet spots’ that supported their coherent collaboration: ‘maturity [...], trust in the flow, trust in each co-creator to bring their gifts, encouragement of well-being and personal alignment, minimal use of force to get things done, ability to reflect vulnerably, constructive use of feedback, acknowledgement of tension, frequent expression of gratitude.’ She also noted her sense of gratitude throughout the project, even ‘at random moments in the day’ for how we were able to ‘embody coherence itself’ thanks to a significant amount of ‘inner and outer work.’

Bettina offers a particularly striking example of coherence in action during their ‘guardian meetings’: ‘It was remarkable how the vibration in the zoom meeting would change as soon as we connected deliberately to the field... if whoever, guardian or not, is connected to its essence/higher self and deliberately brings this vibration into a group, it is a game changer for any groups or individual process.’

This suggests that coherence operates not merely as a structural phenomenon but as an energetic one, where individual states of presence and alignment can catalyse collective transformation. Kara concurred, and explained how despite the fact that we were a distributed (remote) team, we could work well together, ‘work with tensions’ and change when needed to address issues.

Catherine reflected at length about a collaboration she had during the project with her colleague Elisa while working on the research for the ecosystem mapping work, and remembered how both the affective qualities and working methods combined to create a strong sense of coherence. She recalled: ‘We seemed to really “click” and enjoy a kind of flow where it felt as though we were working from a joint, shared space between us versus as two separate individuals alongside each other. We built well on each other’s ideas, and [...] we were in a shared sensemaking process where talking through our different thoughts and perspectives helped us to arrive at some understanding together that we wouldn’t necessarily have arrived at on our own.’ She continued, ‘It felt like being in an improvisational play, where you’re dancing between really listening to your partner (and the information around you) and leading with your own impulses, and you create something together which neither of you could have fully predefined or controlled from the outset.’

She also helpfully reflected on some of the reasons she believes contributed to ‘clicking’ in this way: ‘developing a friendship (simply liking and caring about each other), trusting each other (both trusting each other’s competence, intelligence, and reliability to share the workload; and trusting in the sense of having good faith), being peers (similar age, seniority and experience levels), some kind of psychological or emotional safety which meant that we didn’t feel the need to defend our own ideas or prove ourselves in some way, and the fact that there were some external constraints – time, resources, and a certain task we were committed to deliver.’

The team noted concrete outputs such as the ‘Guide to Coherence’, the development of ‘13 capacities of coherence’, a map of 300+ organisations working for transformative social change in Europe and beyond, and learning journeys that were developed for an online learning platform as amongst the most meaningful results of the grant. 

Bettina takes pride in ‘the Guide for Communities of Coherence, as a ground-breaking “manual” for the times to come, the taxonomy that we developed jointly, the wonderful learning platform as well as the ecosystem map that provides more than 200 entry points for different types of public to access our work.’ Kara celebrates how ‘the 13 capacities [...] help [her] describe the needs of the network with clear direction on how to come into coherence,’ and hopes that this will ‘help groups see their gaps in a positive light.’

Andrea, who was deeply involved in the design and delivery of the learning platform, believes that the courses there ‘will be an incredible useful resource for those starting out on the path and connect people with valuable understandings that can accelerate learning in this area significantly (especially contrasting to the years it has taken for the initial learnings to be developed/harvested by wayshowers in the community).’ Claudine also reflects on the courses and hopes that they ‘bring coherence as a unique approach to consciousness and give guidance on how to "play" with it to the benefit of all.’

Beyond tangible deliverables, their work has generated what Kara calls ‘the relationship building and strategic alignment of the field.’ She describes how ‘powerful networks are becoming a community of coherence capable of creating deep cultural shifts as they move as one’—pointing to coherence not just as an internal quality but as a catalyst for broader systemic transformation. Elke saw the process as one which, on a high level, has articulated a ‘deeper understanding of what coherence can look/feel like in very different contexts’. Similarly, Ivo hopes that our process and findings have generated the possibility for ‘different kinds of insight and realisation by groups.’

 

Equally valuable are the team's reflections on when coherence broke down and what they learned from those moments. Ivo describes a time during the second round of grant writing when ‘we were less focused on a common goal, but more on what we as individual organisations wanted to do.’ His response was to ‘formulate a meta-narrative that aimed to bring the different threads of intent together in a coherent purpose.’

Claudine faced incoherence when members were ‘overwhelmed by the different projects and lost focus and energy, which led to not honouring deadlines.’ Her approach was to ‘address it as a tension and take over responsibility and lead in order to bring clarity in the process. I tried to flex-flow and act where it could best serve the 'field' at that time.’

Kara's response to similar challenges (some members ‘less present, not showing up or communicating as much’) reveals another approach: ‘I mostly let people be, noticing if deliverables were negatively affected. (They were not.) I tried to offer gentle care and healing where openings arose.’ 

Bettina zoomed in on a few moments in particular in which she experienced incoherence. In summer 2024 she sensed overwhelm while trying to make sense of the structure of the learning journeys. Her response was to look into the structure of the application and ‘take stock of what we promised, and provide a basis to write the second report.’ In early 2025, she also noted that the group process ‘felt quite incoherent’ – team meetings became less attended as deliverable pressure mounted and time spent writing the new proposal interfered. Her reflection that ‘so far we did not yet draw learnings on these phenomena, because of the deliverable time pressure’, points to one of the key challenges in reflecting on coherence within the context of tightly-packed project structures.

Andrea gave an account of ‘disconnection and dissonance’ between different organisations during a particular moment of the working process, and how she did some inner work around this and spoke her concerns to the group, but ‘regrets now not speaking to the energetics as I feel we could have learned more from a coherence perspective.’

Looking forward, the team envisions diverse applications for this foundation of work. On a high level, Anne-Marie is excited that we can ‘share the work [...] in many different ways and in easy language and  images in order to inspire people to focus on coherence and join future training.’ Elke sees opportunities for ‘bringing more coherence to politics with Deep Democracy and similar tools.’ Ivo is excited about how our insights on coherence can affect group processes, including designing for ‘facilitation of groups that go through multiple integrations and stages of coherence and complexity in order to arrive at collective insights sourced through the field of interbeing.’ 

Claudine aims to develop ‘the learning journeys as an interactive portal for building communities of coherence.’ Bettina also sees value in continuing to develop the learning portal and to create ‘specific onsite and online courses around coherence for different target groups.’

Kara's vision extends to ‘Holomovement-type systems transformation projects,’ and Andrea focuses on the benefits of applying this learning to ‘technologies she is developing that can help people align with their natural authority at the soul level and understand their resonance patterns with other co-creators.’ 

What emerges from these reflections is coherence as effecting change in modes more profound than the obvious examples of ‘improved teamwork’ or organisational flow. As Ivo puts it, our learnings demonstrate ‘that reality is a co-created affair and that we have agency in how we shape our relationship to it.’

Andrea frames their impact in evolutionary terms: ‘accelerated learning and sense-making ultimately [can] speed up evolution and humanity's capacity to harmonise and unify.’ Claudine envisions ‘a narrative where coherence is the game changer for a world anchored in love, compassion and peace.’

Kara sees the ‘coherence weaving’ as the most important piece of work to emerge from this project: ‘relationship building and strategic alignment of the field has developed tremendously, thanks to the work of Anne-Marie [Voorhoeve, of The Hague Center] and other Evolutionary Leaders, who have woven several impactful initiatives into coherence, such as Solstice Unites, a media collaborative, One World, Spirit of Humanity, the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, deep and rapid transformation convergence, and Living Cities Earth. These powerful networks are becoming a community of coherence capable of creating deep cultural shifts as they move as one.’

Bettina sees the main contributions as ‘bringing the phenomenon of coherence into different fields and supporting this with tools, processes, a learning platform, and granular descriptions of what enables coherence.’  She also reflected on one of the key insights from the research, which was the necessity of diversity of thought within groups as a prerequisite of coherence, and how ‘temporary dip[s] into incoherence are necessary to navigate in order to “scale” coherence.’ (See Anne Caspari’s essay for us in which she gives a wonderful description of the dynamic process of coherence, and a comparison with ‘cohesion.’) Also relevant is our set of experiences in group facilitation on the topic, which proved the need for different approaches between smaller groups and larger collectives. 

Anne-Marie ended on a positive future note, as she sees coherence developing as ‘the big thing in leadership in many conscious groups, and we are now seen as a team with relevant expertise and embodiment.’

Dr. Elke Fein, social and political scientist, expert in integral politics with a passion for updating and deepening our democracies towards more wholeness and coherence

Dr. Bettina Geiken began her journey in science and international development, and now weaves her lifelong passion for inner growth, systemic change, and human connection into learning journeys and facilitation that help people navigate complexity, find coherence, and act with purpose.

Ivo J. Mensch, designer of practices for the liminal arts

Claudine Villemot-Kienzle, Social Architect dedicated to co-creating coherent spaces for the integral-holistic age

Kara Stonehouse, artistic and spiritual leader meshworking for the vision of Love Organized - new governance and finance systems for thriving

Andrea Harding, Founder of Sacred Synergetics – a metaphysics of co-creation and resonance-based organisation

Leigh Biddlecome, writer, curator, and facilitator

Catherine Tran is a researcher and community facilitator exploring what it means to be an ecologically response-able human being. Her work as Head of Delivery at Life Itself is dedicated to cultivating inner-led change for a radically wiser world. 

Drs. Anne-Marie Voorhoeve is co-founder, strategic connector and social architect of The Hague Center for Global Governance, Innovation, and Emergence. At the heart of her work is the uplifting of networks and the development of complex multi-stakeholder projects (meshworks) to co-create a world that works for all. 

The Hague Center for Global Governance, Innovation and Emergence is an organisation and co-creative collective, serving the emergence of a conscious, harmonic, humanity.  We innovate heart-centered, planetary governance with all domains of life.  

IFIS (Institute for Integral Studies) is a transdisciplinary think-and-do tank dedicated to exploring and applying integral, systemic, coherence and complexity-informed approaches to today’s pressing challenges. Through research, dialogue, and transformative learning programs, IFIS supports the emergence of integral politics and the development of conscious, future-ready individuals, institutions.

Life Itself is a collective of artists, academics and activists committed to rigorous inquiry, practical action, inner development, and conscious community. We offer gathering places and incubators for people and projects who are responding to the metacrisis and pioneering radically wiser worlds.

The Center for Human Emergence, D.A.CH is dedicated to foster holistic consciousness as a driver for co-creating regenerative designs. 

Emerge is a social systems change initiative led by Perspectiva, with an independent non-profit media platform.