The Healing That Doesn't Happen Alone

What the Research Actually Shows

Let's take the skeptic's question seriously, because it deserves a real answer rather than either an eye-roll or a sales pitch. When a woman hears “women's circle,” she often pictures the aesthetic — the candles, the crystals, the talk of the moon and the sacred feminine — and concludes, reasonably, that this is not for a grounded, evidence-minded person. But the aesthetic and the mechanism are two different things. The question worth asking is not “do I believe in the packaging” but “does gathering a group of women to be heard and to move together actually change how they feel — and is there evidence for it.” On that question the research is more interesting than either side expects.

Start with the single most direct piece of evidence. In 2019 a team ran what appears to be the first randomised controlled trial of a women's-circle intervention itself — not a therapy group renamed, but circles co-designed with the women who would sit in them. Across eight Guatemalan communities, 84 women were randomly assigned to take part in ten circle sessions led by sixteen trained circle leaders, and 71 were assigned to a comparison group. Measured before and after on standard scales, the women who sat in the circles came out with higher wellbeing and lower psychological distress — fewer symptoms of the depression and anxiety the scales track — than those who did not (Chomat et al., 2019). It is a pilot, in a specific culture and life-stage, so it is a first data point rather than the last word. But it moves the women's circle out of pure faith and into the category of things that have been tested and found to help.

Now widen the lens, because the circle sits inside a much larger and much older body of evidence: the research on healing in a group at all. Here the finding is not tentative — it is one of the most robust results in all of psychotherapy research. Reviewing a quarter-century of studies that put the two formats side by side, researchers found that when the treatment, the patients and the dose are held equal, group formats produce outcomes equivalent to individual ones — group is not the cut-price version of one-on-one help; it is, on the numbers, just as effective (Burlingame et al., 2016). Sitting in a well-run group with other people is not a lesser way to heal. For a great many difficulties it works as well as the private room — and it does something the private room cannot, which is to let you see that you are not the only one.

Finally, the deepest layer: why gathering does anything in the first place. Long before psychology existed, human beings healed and steadied themselves by coming together — and modern research has begun to measure what actually happens in those rooms. Studying collective gatherings, scientists found that when people are physically present together, share their attention on the same thing, and move or sound in rough synchrony, they reach a state of perceived emotional synchrony — a felt sense of being on one wavelength — and that state, measured afterwards, leaves them with stronger social connection, higher self-esteem, more positive mood and renewed confidence in life (Páez et al., 2015). Read that description again and you have described a women's circle almost exactly: bodies in one room, attention on one another, breath and voice moving together. The incense is optional. The synchrony is the medicine — and it is old, and it is real.

What Perukua Says About Gathering

Perukua — the Australian vocalist and women's facilitator whose work has reached women in more than 63 countries — has spent decades inside the very room the research studies from the outside. She is, in the most literal sense, a circle-keeper: even her performances, she says, are “quite literally a huge women's circle.” And she is unromantic about why gathering has force. “There is incredible power in this,” she says of women coming together — “and not because someone suddenly had the idea, ‘oh, let's throw something together.’” The power is not in the theme of the evening or the prettiness of the setup. It is in what happens when women stop being alone with themselves and become present to one another.

She is also clear-eyed that a circle is only as strong as whoever holds it — which is the single most important thing a skeptic needs to hear. Perukua describes her own role not as leading a discussion but as holding a field: “my role as a guide,” she says, “is that I can open my whole feminine field, which is very vast — and when a woman begins to trust the feminine energy born in her body, that inner strength grows, larger and larger.” Her language for it is her own, offered as a teacher rather than as science. But the practical point beneath it is exactly what the group research implies: the facilitator's steadiness is what turns a roomful of strangers into a place where it is safe to be real. A circle with no one truly holding it is not automatically warm. It is just a room.

And here she says the thing that separates an honest circle from woo. Gathering women does not automatically produce sweetness; it surfaces everything — the beautiful and the difficult alike. Speaking of her own years living inside a women's community, Perukua does not describe a gentle sisterhood but a forge: “the first years,” she says, “I literally burned everything that stood in the way of my growth,” a gradual shedding of old patterns that took her eleven years. The ceremonies, she recalls, “brought out both the best and the worst — the energies of jealousy and competition, and at the same time the magnificence of the feminine spirit.” This is not a brochure. It is the truth of any group of human beings: put women in a circle and you get comparison and rivalry as readily as tenderness. What decides which one grows is whether someone in the room has done enough of their own work to hold both.

Which is why Perukua is candid about the inner housekeeping the work required of her. “By the time you came to my seminar,” she says, “I had already cleansed myself of everything that so poisons us women — the sense of not being enough, the feeling of rivalry, self-doubt, the inner critic.” Read as a warning, it is a good one: a circle led by someone still ruled by those things will amplify them rather than heal them. Read as an invitation, it is the whole promise of the form — that in the right company, held by someone steady, the very “not-enoughness” that isolates women can be set down. Her larger claims about feminine energy are hers to make, as a teacher, not findings to cite. But the plain shape of what she offers — women gathered, witnessed, breathing and sounding together, held by a facilitator who has tended her own shadow — is precisely the shape the evidence says works.

Why a Circle Can Do What Solitude Cannot — and When It Can’t

So what is actually happening when a circle helps — in plain, non-mystical terms? Three things, each of them ordinary and each of them powerful. The first is the simple end of isolation. Most of the difficulties women carry into midlife — the anxiety, the flatness, the sense of being invisible or not enough — are made worse by a private conviction that you are the only one. A circle quietly dismantles that. When you hear another woman name the exact thing you thought was your secret failing, the shame around it loosens; being witnessed, without being fixed, is its own relief. This is the least glamorous and most reliable ingredient, and it is why sitting with others can work as well as sitting alone with a professional (Burlingame et al., 2016).

The second is synchrony — the part that feels like magic but is really biology. When bodies share a room, turn their attention to the same thing, and breathe or sound together, something measurable happens: nervous systems begin to settle in company, and a felt sense of being “on one wavelength” builds, which the research links to stronger connection, steadier self-esteem and lifted mood afterwards (Páez et al., 2015). A circle that includes shared breath, humming or song is not adding a spiritual decoration; it is using the oldest known tool for tuning a group of separate people into one — the same reason a room of strangers who sing together leaves feeling bonded. The third ingredient is structure and repetition: a circle that meets on the same rhythm, with the same faces, becomes a place the nervous system can trust — and trust, built slowly, is what lets the deeper things be spoken at all.

Now the honest limits, because they are exactly what separate a real recommendation from a sales pitch. A women's circle is a form of peer and community support — not a clinical treatment. It is not group therapy, which is run by a licensed professional to treat a diagnosed condition, and it is not a substitute for either therapy or medication. A circle will not, on its own, lift clinical depression, resolve an anxiety disorder, or heal trauma — and a circle is only as safe as its keeper. The same gathering that can hold a woman can, in the wrong hands, curdle into a guru dynamic, financial pressure, shaming, or a leader who needs to be adored. If you are carrying a flat low mood most days for two weeks or more, panic, or the aftermath of trauma, a circle is at best a companion to professional care, never a replacement for it. Perukua is an artist and facilitator, not a therapist or a doctor, and nothing here is medical advice. The point is not that a circle can do everything. It is that, kept well and used for what it is, it does something real that solitude cannot.

A Practice: How to Tell a Real Circle From Woo — and Find or Make One

You do not have to believe anything spiritual for a circle to help you. You need the ingredients that actually do the work — and you need to be able to spot the difference between a real circle and a pretty performance. Here is how to tell, and how to find or build one.

First, look for the real ingredients, not the aesthetic. A circle worth your evening has: a regular rhythm with mostly the same women (trust is built by repetition, not by candles); clear confidentiality, so what is said in the room stays there; a facilitator who holds structure and time rather than performing wisdom; the experience of being heard without being fixed or advised at; and usually some shared body practice — breath, humming, movement or song — because that is the part that tunes the group together. If those are present, the decor is irrelevant. If they are absent, no amount of ritual will supply them.

Second, watch for the red flags. Walk away from any circle built around a leader who must be adored, that pressures you to pay large sums or to recruit others, that shames you for doubt or for leaving, that breaks confidentiality, or that claims to cure illness or replace your medical care. A healthy circle makes you more yourself and more able to leave; an unhealthy one makes you more dependent on the room and its leader. Trust that instinct — the same discernment that made you skeptical in the first place is exactly what keeps a circle safe.

Third, keep it in its lane. A circle is a complement, not a replacement. If you are in therapy or on medication, stay in it; if you are struggling clinically, a circle is something you add alongside professional care, not instead of it. Used this way — as community, not treatment — it takes the pressure off the circle to be something it is not, and lets it give you the thing it genuinely can: company, synchrony, and the relief of not being alone with your inner life.

Fourth, if you cannot find one, make a small one. You do not need a venue or a certificate. Invite two or three women you trust to meet once a month. Keep one simple structure: each woman speaks, uninterrupted, for a few minutes while the others simply listen — no advice, no fixing — then close with a few minutes of shared breath or a low hum together. That last part is not a flourish; letting the body sound in company is the quiet engine of the whole thing, and it is the ground of Perukua's Vocal Yoga, where the voice becomes the channel that turns a room of separate women into one.

Fifth, give it time, and judge it by the month, not the night. No single evening will transform you, and a circle that promises to is selling something. What works is the slow accumulation — the same women, the same rhythm, trust deepening meeting by meeting until the real things can be said. Come three or four times before you decide. The medicine here is not intensity. It is regularity, synchrony, and being reliably witnessed — and those reveal themselves only over a little time.

In Closing

If you have dismissed women's circles as woo, your skepticism was pointed at the right target — just at the wrong layer. The candles and the moon language deserve the eye-roll. But underneath the packaging sits something a grounded, evidence-minded woman can take seriously: the plainest medicine there is, which is not being alone with what you carry. The first trials say it lifts wellbeing; a quarter-century of research says healing in a good group works as well as healing one-on-one; and the oldest human instinct — to gather, to share attention, to breathe and sing together — turns out to leave people measurably more connected and more themselves. A circle will not cure an illness, and it is only as good as whoever holds it. But kept well and used for what it is, it does the one thing solitude never can. As Perukua, who has held these rooms for decades, knows better than anyone: the room can hold both the rivalry and the magnificence — and in the right company, it is the magnificence that grows.

This piece is general information about wellbeing, not medical or psychological advice, and Perukua is an artist and facilitator, not a doctor or therapist. A women's circle is community support, not treatment — if you are living with clinical depression, an anxiety disorder, the aftermath of trauma, or any thought of not wanting to be alive, please reach out to a doctor, a therapist or a crisis line now. A circle is a companion to that care, never a replacement for it.

References & Quote Sources

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