WELCOME TO GROUP SYNC
Your nervous system was never meant to carry it all alone.Â
Group Sync is a simple practice where 5-7 people meet regularly to share the load, the way humans are naturally designed to do.
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The Load
You’re managing work, family, finances, relationships, and everyone else’s emotions. You’ve tried taking a deep breath, thinking positively, distracting yourself. They help — for a while. But the tension comes back.
That’s because individual techniques can only take you so far.
Your nervous system is a social organ. It evolved to sync with others in a small group — to share the weight of survival across 5-7 other people.
When it doesn’t have that group, it does the only thing it can: it braces, contracts, and tries to hold everything by itself.
The problem isn’t you. The problem is that you’re missing the group your system was designed for.
The Practice
Group Sync is a structured practice where 5-7 people meet for 25 minutes, sit in a circle, and use a simple card deck and ball to synchronize their nervous systems.
Here’s what a session looks like:
Breathe. The group opens with 3 shared breaths. This is the foundation — the signal that tells every body in the room: we’re in this together.
Ask. Someone reads a question from a card. A one-word check-in. A gratitude. Something you’re carrying. A one-word check-out.
Toss. The ball gets tossed to decide who answers. No one has to choose or be chosen. You just catch the ball and share.
Breathe. The group closes with 3 more breaths. 25 minutes. Done.
No therapy. No oversharing. No advice-giving. No leader or facilitator. Just a small group of people showing up consistently for each other.
The Science
Over millions of years our human ancestors evolved to thrive in small groups. They breathed together, moved together, and their nervous systems literally synchronized. That synchronization told each person’s body: you’re safe. You can put down the weight.
Modern neuroscience confirms what our ancestors knew intuitively. When nervous systems synchronize — through shared breathing, eye contact, and rhythmic interaction — stress hormones drop, heart rate variability improves, and the body shifts from solo threat mode into shared mode.
A group of 6 people creates 15 lines of mutual support. That’s the math of group sync. Fifteen connections, holding what your single nervous system has been trying to hold alone.
The Journey
Group Sync is designed as a three-phase journey. Each phase builds on the last, and each unlocks new capacities that emerge naturally when a group of nervous systems learn to trust each other.
Phase 1: The Check-In
Duration: 8 weeks • 25 minutes, twice a week
Intention: Establish baseline group sync.
In Phase 1, your group practices showing up, breathing together, and sharing what’s real. Over 16 sessions, your autonomic nervous system learns to shift from solo mode into shared mode. The load you’ve been carrying alone starts to be held by the group.
What emerges: Relief. Calmer mind. Deeper breath. The beginning of trust.
Phase 2: The Deep Dive
Duration: 6 months • 60 minutes weekly, plus continued check-ins
Intention: Create the conditions for deeper release.
In Phase 2, the group goes deeper. With trust established, the nervous system begins to release what it’s been holding — not through analysis, but through the felt safety of being truly held by a group. The group practices staying connected through challenge, learning to pause, repair, and return to each other.
What emerges: Spontaneous release. Old patterns start to shift. The body begins to update what it learned before it had words.
Phase 3: The Projects
Duration: Ongoing
Intention: Take group sync into the world.
In Phase 3, the synced group turns its energy outward. The capacities that emerged — trust, flow, collective intelligence — get applied to shared projects, community engagement, and creative collaboration.
What emerges: Group flow. Collective intelligence. The group becomes more than the sum of its parts.
Your Next Step
You can start with Group Sync in three ways:
1. Draw your Group Gap Map
A free 5-minute exercise that shows you the gap between the support your nervous system has now and what it’s designed for.
Get the Group Gap Map2. Get the Group Sync Launch Kit
Everything you need to form your group and start: card deck, invitation scripts, first-session walkthrough, and more.
Get the Launch Kit3. Stay Connected with Us
Sign up for updates on new tools, workshops, research, and the growing community of people building sync groups.
Get updatesAbout Cliff
Group Sync was developed by Cliff Atkinson, a trial consultant who spent 20 years helping elite attorneys perform under extreme pressure, and 15 years studying why some people thrive under pressure while others break down.
The answer was always the same: the people who thrived had a nervous system that shared the load with a group. The people who struggled were carrying the load alone.
Group Sync is the system that builds that group.
Your nervous system has been waiting for this.
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