Presencing: Wilderness Immersion, Social Fields, and the Deep Architecture of Inner Change
By Boy van Droffelaar PhD – Leadership & Wilderness Researcher
4 augustus 2025
“To Boy, for your wonderful work on ‘Nature as a Teacher’, that matters now more than ever, Otto”‘
“Presencing,” the latest book by Otto Scharmer (Theory U) and Katrin Kaeufer, offers a profound exploration of how cultivating a holistic awareness can unlock our highest future potential.
By immersing ourselves in the wildness of nature, we metaphorically plant these seeds within the social field. In this essay, I explore how Presencing—the convergence of attention, intention, and agency—forms the foundation of our lived experiences during wilderness trails.
Introduction
In a time of social fragmentation, ecological crisis, and personal alienation, the search for inner transformation has become urgent. As societies confront systemic breakdowns, the question becomes not only how to fix outer systems, but how to regenerate the inner soil from which all sustainable change must emerge. Recent research into wilderness immersion offers promising insights into this deeper architecture of transformation. This essay explores the empirical findings of the Wilderness Leadership Transformation Program (WLTP), conducted by the Foundation for Natural Leadership | FNL, and integrates them with the theoretical framework of social fields, eco-system leadership, and the U-process. Together, these perspectives illuminate a path toward systemic change grounded in attention, intention, and agency.
Wilderness as a Catalyst for Transformation
Ilya Prigogine’s seminal observation that “small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to elevate the entire system to a higher order” finds practical embodiment in wilderness immersion. The WLTP brings participants—leaders from sectors such as business, finance, and public institutions—into remote wilderness areas in Europe and Africa. The design is deliberately minimal: participants travel in small groups, guided by local facilitators, carrying only the essentials. They walk, camp, engage in silence, share stories in circles, and reflect deeply in solitude. In these conditions, the absence of distractions gives rise to a unique presence. Nature becomes not just a backdrop, but a co-participant in the journey.
From the analysis of 97 participant reports (Van Droffelaar & Jacobs, 2018), the findings are profound: nearly all participants described peak experiences that included a heightened sense of self, a rediscovery of core values, deep attention to relationships, and a state of full presence. These experiences were not merely aesthetic or emotional—they led to lasting shifts in perspective, purpose, and behavior. Participants used language such as “reborn,” “cleansed,” “immense emotion,” and “connected to my true nature.” These are not small moments; they are indicators of deep systemic change occurring from within.
The Social Field: Soil for Collective Flourishing
To understand the depth of these transformations, we must turn to the concept of the social field (Kaufer & Scharmer, 2025). A social field consists of two dimensions: a visible part above ground—actions, outcomes, and tangible structures—and an invisible part below the surface: the social soil. The social soil consists of the qualities of awareness and relationship that people operate from. Just as biological soil is essential to a thriving ecosystem, social soil is essential to a thriving society.
Healthy soil in the biosphere enables connection between the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere. It retains water, cycles nutrients, and regulates climate. Likewise, attention is the living medium of the social sphere. It connects the visible aspects of systems—what is said and done—with the invisible—what is thought and felt. Without fertile social soil, no intervention or reform can yield sustainable results. Without shared, cultivated attention, no society can flourish.
The WLTP demonstrates how wilderness immersion regenerates this soil. Participants experience heightened awareness, learn to listen with empathy, and begin to align their actions with their values. These capacities are not imposed from outside but emerge from within, when individuals are given space to reconnect with themselves, others, and the natural world.
Peak Experiences as Soil Regeneration
The study (Van Droffelaar, 2021) identifies four categories of peak experience. The first is a heightened sense of self: participants rediscover their vitality, strength, and inner clarity. They describe feeling cleansed, reborn, or quiet yet powerful. The second is the rediscovery of core values: long-buried convictions rise to the surface, offering new guidance. A third category is deep connected attention, a quality of presence that enables listening and relational attunement. The fourth is full presence—living in the now, liberated from past fears or future anxieties.
These experiences mirror the principles of the U-process, a transformational framework that outlines a shift from habitual seeing and doing to presencing and co-creation. Participants first suspend judgment, redirect their attention inward, and let go of old mental models. Then they become present—tapping into deep sources of knowing. Finally, they crystallize intentions and prototype new futures. This journey is not only personal but systemic, as it enables groups to coordinate action around shared intentions.
Eco-System Leadership: Aligning Attention, Intention, and Agency
True leadership today is no longer about control or prediction—it is about cultivating coherence within complexity. Eco-system leadership, as described in the U-process, is the capacity to align attention, intention, and agency at the level of the whole. The WLTP offers a living example of how this alignment begins. Participants learn to bend the beam of attention back onto themselves—”becoming aware.” They practice listening with open minds and hearts, holding space for others and for what wants to emerge.
They move through dialogue and shared sensing, discovering that systems can only change when they learn to see and feel themselves. As attention shifts from self to system, from ego to eco, new futures become possible. The practice of “presencing”—connecting with the future as it emerges in the now—allows participants to act not out of reaction, but out of resonance with deeper purpose. This is not theoretical; it is deeply practical. Participants return to their professional lives with new clarity, courage, and commitment.
The Principles of Deep Change
Embedded in the U-process and embodied in the WLTP are a set of principles that describe the stages of systemic transformation:
Becoming aware: Turning attention inward, seeing oneself not as separate from the system, but as part of it ( Becoming one with Nature, Solo Quest)
Listening: Holding space within, opening to others and to what wants to be known.(Deep listening in the Talking Stick Circle)
Dialogue: Enabling the system to sense and see itself through conversation and reflection.(Group or dyadic dialogue in nature)
Presencing: Entering the still point of now, where future potentials can be accessed.(Anywhere in nature and senses amplified)
Emerging: Letting new insights crystallize, new purposes form. (Sitting at night watch and journalling)
Co-creating: Exploring those futures through collaborative action. (Sharing intentions in landing conversations)
Eco-system governance: Coordinating around shared intention, designing systems that reflect and reinforce this deeper alignment.
The WLTP program is a living enactment of these principles. Participants do not simply learn them—they embody them through direct experience. Sitting in silence beneath a vast night sky, sharing stories around a fire, walking alone in a forest—these moments dissolve the boundaries of ego and reconnect individuals to a field of life much larger than themselves.
Attention as the Foundational Medium
Perhaps the most critical insight is the central role of attention. What soil is for the biosphere, attention is for the social sphere. It is the medium through which everything grows—or withers. Poor attention leads to superficial relationships, fragmented action, and systemic dysfunction. Cultivated attention enables empathy, dialogue, creativity, and coherence. This is why the success of any social intervention depends not primarily on its methods, but on the inner condition of those who carry it out.
In the WLTP, participants practice “paying attention to attention.” They observe their thoughts, feelings, reactions. They listen to others not to reply, but to understand. They become aware of what is emerging—not only around them, but within them. This is the beginning of inner leadership, and it is inseparable from outer change.
From Not-Knowing to Co-Creation
Transformation does not arise from mastery, but from humility. The most profound moments in the WLTP are often those of “not-knowing”—standing at the edge of uncertainty, discomfort, and stillness. These are not failures to act but invitations to listen more deeply. In a culture obsessed with certainty, wilderness reintroduces us to mystery. It teaches us to trust emergence.
From this place of humility, new futures can be co-created. The participants of the WLTP do not return with answers; they return with orientation—toward values, relationships, and purpose. They leave with commitments that are not externally imposed but internally discovered. This is the essence of eco-system leadership: not to impose change, but to create the conditions where change can emerge.
Conclusion: The Future That Needs Us
At its core, the U-process describes a journey—individual and collective—from ego-awareness to eco-awareness. It is a movement from control to connection, from reaction to resonance, from separation to belonging. The WLTP demonstrates that wilderness immersion can serve as a crucible for this transformation. By entering a space of stillness, silence, and simplicity, individuals rediscover their essence—and their part in a larger whole.
These findings suggest that change does not begin with strategy, but with soil. It does not begin with institutions, but with awareness. As societies search for new models of leadership, sustainability, and community, the lessons from the wilderness point us homeward: to attention, to presence, and to the future that needs us in order to come into being.
Van Droffelaar, B. (2021) Episodic memories of wilderness experiences foster sustainable leadership style transformation. Journal of Management Development, 40(6), 486– 502.
Van Droffelaar, B., & Jacobs, M. (2017). The role of wilderness experiences in leaders’ development toward authentic leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 38(8), 1144-1156.
Scharmer, O. & Kaufer, K. (2025). Precensing. Berret-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler..
Scharmer, O., & Kaufer, K. (2013). Leading from the emerging future: From ego-system to eco- system economies. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
De dag stond in het teken van Rituelen. Als manier om je te verbinden met jezelf, met anderen en met het ritme van het seizoen. Verschillende rituelen die we tijdens onze trails en programma’s inzetten kregen een plek in het programma.
