At the 2026 Facilitation Lab Summit, Trudy Townsend closed two days of deep work with a session that went straight at a topic every facilitator encounters but rarely names: trauma is already present in every room you enter, and it shapes how people show up, engage, and disengage. Drawing on the ACEs study, Dan Siegel's hand model of the brain, and years of practice, Trudy offered facilitators a grounded understanding of how the nervous system works, what dysregulation looks like in a group, and what it actually takes to create safety. Not a checklist, but a stance. A must-read for anyone committed to building spaces where participants can genuinely show up as their best selves.

At the 2026 Facilitation Lab Summit, Brian Buck invited facilitators to ask a question most technique-focused training skips entirely: who are you becoming in this work, and why does it matter? Drawing on a three-part fire model built around ember, kindle, and illuminate, Brian offered a practical framework for shifting from a facilitator who brings the fire to one who ignites it in others. Through a paired exercise in illuminating presence, participants experienced firsthand how asking different questions and offering different kinds of attention can unlock belonging, collective intelligence, and breakthroughs that no agenda alone can produce. A powerful session for any facilitator ready to make presence their most important tool.