Relational Fieldwork
Training in how to stay human inside systems that quietly train us to dominate, withdraw, or disappear
laura geiger
I design and facilitate structured training environments that place people directly inside relational and ethical consequence.
The work does not rely on psychological interpretation, insight, or self-improvement frameworks. What matters is not what participants understand but how they participate when explanation, optimization, and resolution are not available.
Constraint is used deliberately (fewer words, fewer explanations, fewer choices) to interrupt habitual participation and make relational cost unavoidable.
You will not be given a conceptual map before you begin. The work unfolds through doing, not understanding.
Confusion is not a problem to be resolved here; it is often the condition that reveals how power is already operating and that habitual ways of participation are loosening.
Here is where to start:
relational field session
A 90-minute live practice entering group interaction without explanation, therapy, or performance, and staying with dynamics as they take shape without being resolved. Participation asks you to refrain from explaining yourself or steering toward agreement.
Next session: February 21st
ways to enter the work
Deep Puppetry™
Object-based practice that trains the capacity to stay in relation with power, dependency, refusal, and care without converting those dynamics into stories about the self. Participation asks you to work with material slowly, allowing relation to shape movement and timing without rushing to make it meaningful, legible, or productive.
relational fieldwork
Short-form facilitated practices that expose how groups reproduce hierarchy, urgency, and over-responsibility, often without anyone choosing to.
school of the small and imperfect
Weekly interpersonal practice focused on participation, ethical presence, and staying in relation through awkwardness, mismatch, and unfinished moments without rushing to repair or resolve.
Advanced / Invitational Work
Longer-term or customized engagements, offered by application or invitation.
how to read this work
This is not therapy, coaching, or performance training. It does not aim to optimize individuals or resolve personal issues.
Most offerings are live and facilitated. Formats include short labs, multi-week practice spaces, and limited-enrollment programs.
Participation is guided but not scripted. You are not asked to perform, explain yourself, justify your impulses, or arrive at conclusions.
I design and hold explicit structural constraints that shape timing, attention, and responsibility because implicit structures reproduce dominance, even in well-intentioned spaces. The primary intervention is structural, not conversational.
You do not need the right language, background, or theoretical orientation. What matters is a willingness to participate without knowing what will happen or how it will resolve.
This work tends to resonate with educators, facilitators, artists, therapists, organizers, and others working with complexity, ethics, and relational systems, especially those who feel uneasy about how quickly “good intentions” become control, urgency, or extraction.
This form emerged over years of practice and has become increasingly spare as a way of resisting premature meaning, optimization, and over-adaptation.
Speed, clarity, and resolution are how most systems secure compliance. I am as implicated in those systems as anyone else.
The work continues to challenge how I participate, especially when it would be easier to resolve, explain, or move on.