Chapter 29 · Canonical English edition

29. The Year-Long "Assemblage Point" Program

Functional Systems Facilitation · Dmitry Shamenkov

Section 38 of 53version 1.1 · July 2026Source: Book_OD
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29. The Year-Long “Assemblage Point” Program

What it is

The Assemblage Point as a long-term program is a year-long space of regular practice within a community, including:

  • Regular group sessions with certified facilitators;

  • Weekly live case discussions with me for the whole shared group;

  • Access to new Intensives on various themes throughout the year;

  • A supportive chat of all participants;

  • Educational materials — reviews of scientific research, new practices, recordings of case discussions, methodological materials;

  • Regular events — meetings with invited experts, thematic groups;

  • The opportunity to run group meetings yourselves in a peer-to-peer format, for those who are ready.

Why a year-long format

The main argument is the stability of change. In chapter 18 and Part IV, I set out in detail how a living system changes: not through “acquiring techniques” but through a prolonged stay in an environment with the right conditions. The Intensive provides an acute immersion; the year-long program provides a background of daily practice in a supportive environment.

Research on habit formation (Lally et al., 2010) found that simple habits took a median of 66 days to become automatic, with individuals ranging up to 254 days. Deeper changes plausibly take longer still, though that lies beyond what the study measured. The implication is straightforward: for a new way of being to become natural, roughly two months to a year of stable practice tends to be needed. The year-long program is built around this span.

In addition, over the course of a year, life itself creates new challenges: new crises appear, new opportunities, new relationships. In the year-long program, each of these moments becomes material for work — not in isolation, but in the space of a community where you are not alone.

Typical trajectories within the year

Evgenia (continued). After the trial week, she stayed at the Assemblage Point. The first three months — stabilization, a daily Practice of Silence, a weekly group. By the fourth month — a first Intensive on relationships. After it — a period when “everything broke to the surface,” a hard few weeks with her partner. By the sixth month — a new quality of conversation with him, and several times the real closeness that had been absent for years. By the end of the year — “I don’t recognize either of us; it’s as if we met anew; and for the first time in a long while I know what I want.”

Lidia (continued). After the trial week she goes to an Intensive on self-worth and money. The first two months afterward — a period of pivoting her business strategy, of fundamentally new decisions about the structure of her debts. By the fourth month — her first stable financial result in a year and a half. By the sixth — the recognition that “the crisis was not a problem but the assemblage point of a new version of me.” By the end of the year — a different, far more stable business model, and above all a different relationship with herself, out of which that model was built.

These trajectories are neither exceptions nor promises. They are typical lines that I see in people who practice regularly in the community over the course of a year.

The rhythm within the year

A year at the Assemblage Point usually includes:

  • 4–6 Intensives on various themes — the participant chooses the ones that resonate;

  • 50+ weekly group case discussions — constant access to my work with requests;

  • 50+ live practices with different facilitators — mastering the full arsenal of the Practice of Silence;

  • A daily independent practice with the support of the community;

  • Periodic “strategic points” — moments of reassessing and reformulating goals.

What the participant gains over a year

To summarize the observations of thousands of participants in the year-long program:

  • A stable daily Practice of Silence as a natural part of life;

  • A significantly more precise contact with oneself — the ability to distinguish one’s genuine states from mere reactions;

  • Renewed key relationships — where this is possible; an accepted ending — where this is what’s needed;

  • A changed configuration of goals — not “a different version of the old ones,” but qualitatively other;

  • A community in which one can remain — and, should life demand new work, to which one can return for support;

  • Confidence in one’s own capacity to come out of difficult states — what psychologists call self-efficacy.

These are not guaranteed effects. They are the range of what happens in people who work seriously in this environment. Some get all of them; some a part; for some the results are other than expected. A living system is not a conveyor belt.