DesignShift Practice Session: Liminal Spaces
In Sepember 2026, we hosted a DesignShifts event exploring the space in-between.
This event was a collaboration between
Design Dialogues and it’s founder Mireia Lopez.
About the sesssion
In-between the losses of the past and the longings for a different future, we find the liminal — an ambiguous, disorienting middle phase of change, where previous identities or structures dissolve, but a new state has not yet been established.
In this space, we hosted a DesignShifts gathering together with Design Dialogues to explore what we’re willing to leave behind, the futures we long form, and was to shift together.
Session recap
It was an (un)structured conversation with a curated group of people who want to shift how we think, and who we are as humans across a career, a season, a life. Through dialogue, pauses, and practice, we shared and reflect on the current moment we find ourselves in.
Uncertainty is within us and around us. Many of us are feeling this uncertainty strongly. Some are in personal life transitions, while others feel the shifts playing out in the political and ecological landscape. These feelings are hard to carry alone, and there's a real desire to connect with others, to be witnessed, and to know we're not alone in feeling this way.
We're told to regulate ourselves, even when the external conditions are inhumane. There's a tension in being asked to manage our own nervous systems when the systems around us are the ones causing harm. The session highlighted how reacting to harm isn't dysregulation, it's actually a very human response. This makes me wonder..
Instead of trying to regular our nervous systems, how can allow ourselves to respond when bad things happen around us?
Forcing or flowing. A recurring question was what it means to force change versus letting it flow. Forcing takes energy and leaves us exhausted; flowing asks something different of us: patience, trust, maybe even a kind of surrender. If we let go our our need for control, what could be accomplish? Someone raised the point that asking us to consistent during times of change is actually holds us back from changing.
When we teach, we have to live our teachings, but we also can't be perfect. There's a pressure that comes with holding space or guiding others: the sense that we should embody what we're asking of others. For me, this is an important part of my work but I also recognize that integrity isn't the same as perfection. Living our teachings means practicing them imperfectly, in public, and being honest about that gap rather than hiding it. Maybe the teaching itself includes the struggle to live up to it.
