Introducing the Living Library of Relational Technology
A living map for those learning to relate in a new way—to self, to others, and to the world we’re remaking together.
In an era of unraveling systems and deepening social fragmentation, many of us are searching for something more grounded, more connected, more humane. The field of Relational Technology offers a way forward: not through escape or abstraction, but by transforming how we relate—to ourselves, to one another, and to the world we live in.
Relational Technology is not about digital tools or software. It refers to the growing ecosystem of frameworks, methods, and practices that help us cultivate healthier, more connected ways of being by building relational intelligence. These are not simply tools or communication strategies; they are part of a new operating system for human relating—one grounded in interdependence, responsiveness, and shared meaning.
We created the 🌱 Living Library of Relational Technologies to offer a dynamic, integrative resource for those seeking to build deeper connection, relational intelligence, and systems of care—within themselves, their communities, and the world.
📕 What Is a Living Library?
Unlike a static database, a Living Library is designed as a dynamic ecosystem—a place where users can explore how diverse tools, theories, and practices interconnect and inform one another.
This Living Library is a structured, evolving archive of Relational Technologies. It is designed to help people discover, learn, and apply transformative tools for building relational intelligence in personal, interpersonal, and collective contexts. It aims to function as:
A curated repository of wisdom and practice across disciplines
A relational map guiding users from worldview to action
A bridge between academic theory, embodied practice, and everyday life
Unlike a traditional encyclopedia, the Living Library evolves. It maps not just individual tools, but the relationships between them, and it helps users to navigate from theory to action—connecting big-picture worldviews to embodied, day-to-day practice.
The Library is “living” not just because it will continue to grow, but because the materials within it are meant to be lived: practiced, embodied, adapted, and shared in community. It’s a tool for self-guided learners, a reference for practitioners, and a scaffold for culture-shifters.
As a resource, it is meant for facilitators, coaches, therapists, educators, and curious humans alike. It offers:
A map for self-guided explorers
A toolkit for practitioners
A scaffold for institutions and communities
A philosophy for anyone seeking a more relational world
Whether you’re navigating personal growth, designing group experiences, or shaping institutional change, the Living Library can support your journey.
🌲 A Multi-Layered Structure
To make sense of the many approaches within this field, we’ve organized the Living Library into four (4) distinct layers. Each layer offers a distinct value, yet intricately connects to the others—from foundational worldviews to moment-by-moment actions. This layered structure allows users to locate themselves in the broader landscape and to understand how seemingly disparate tools and frameworks interrelate.
All entries in the Library fit into one or more of these layers:
🫚 Root Paradigms — why we relate
🪟 Frameworks — how we make sense of or understand relating
🔄 Methods — how we practice
🛠️ Practices + Tools — what we do, moment to moment
1. 🫚 Root Paradigms
Why We Relate
These are foundational worldviews—cosmologies that shape our understanding of what relationships are for and how they should function.
Examples include:
Attachment Theory
Systems Thinking
Indigenous Epistemologies
Adult Development Theory
Feminist Theory
Abolitionist Thought
Function: They define what is “normal,” “healthy,” or “possible” in a relationship. These foundational paradigms influence our assumptions, values, and the very questions we ask about human connection. They influence how individuals and communities orient toward relationship, responsibility, and repair.
2. 🪟 Frameworks
How We Make Sense Of or Understand Relationship
Frameworks help us conceptualize the components of relating and give us a shared language and structure for discussing and understanding relational dynamics. They help us make meaning of complex interpersonal experiences and offer lenses through which we can analyze patterns of connection, conflict, and change.
Examples include:
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Relational Life Therapy
Transformative Justice
Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
Circle Practice
Function: Frameworks define the components of relational life (e.g. parts, boundaries, rupture/repair). Frameworks are like maps—they don’t tell us what to do, but they show us what to look for and shape what we notice and what we believe needs tending.
3. 🔄 Methods
How We Practice
Methods are structured, learnable processes that can be taught, facilitated, practiced, and embodied. They allow individuals and groups to apply relational frameworks in concrete ways, whether through dialogue, ritual, or skill-building exercises. Some are interpersonal, others communal.
Examples include:
Circling
Conflict Mediation
Restorative Justice Circles
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Interpersonal Skills
Radical Honesty
Function: Methods are skill-building practices. They help us intervene in real time, offering a pathway for building the skills required to navigate complexity, repair rupture, and deepen in connection.
4. 🛠️ Practices + Tools
What We Do, Moment to Moment
These are the smallest, most accessible units of relational technology. They are often simple exercises or habits that accumulate into transformation. These micro-interventions shape how we show up—in conversation, in conflict, in care.
Examples include:
“Name and notice” exercises
Co-regulation breathwork
Boundary scripts
Empathy maps
Integration journaling
Function: Practices build embodied relational competence and create change from the inside out. Over time, they recalibrate our nervous systems, shift our habits, cultivate new relational reflexes—which accumulates to transformation of our daily relational behavior.
🪢 How It All Fits Together
Relational Technology is best understood not as a static database, but as a living system. Each paradigm, framework, method or practice is a node in the web, and their value emerges through interconnection and relationship—it’s actually pretty meta.
Using the four layers of the Living Library as directional guides, someone can traverse the web to find whatever is necessary to support their relational needs. For example, someone navigating a conflict might ask:
What Root Paradigm is shaping my expectations of connection?
Which Framework can help me make sense of the breakdown?
What Method can help me practice a different way of relating?
What Practice can I use right now to shift this pattern in this moment?
The Living Library provides an integrated structure to support this kind of inquiry—offering not just answers, but pathways. The multi-layered approach allows users to zoom in and out between theory and action, structure and nuance.
🙌 Who This Is For
The Living Library is designed to support a wide range of users:
Individuals exploring their own relational development
Therapists, facilitators, and coaches seeking structured tools
Educators, activists, and organizers building relational culture
Institutions and communities looking to shift collective norms
Whether you are deepening your personal relationships, guiding others through transformation, or shaping new systems of care, this resource offers a way to orient, contextualize, and act.
🧐 Why It Matters in the Age of AI
In an era where AI can summarize and surface nearly any information, what makes this project unique?
Curation. Context. Connection.
The value of the Living Library is not in presenting isolated facts, but in offering an integrative lens—one that weaves together theory, practice, and application across disciplines.
Artificial intelligence can provide information. The Living Library project offers meaning.
🔜 Building the Future of Relational Intelligence
This work is just beginning. Here are a few ways we imagine it evolving:
Interactive Website: A dynamic map guiding users across paradigms, frameworks, methods, and practices.
AI Companion: A conversational guide to help users navigate the Library based on real-life questions or challenges.
Learning Programs: A structured curriculum or certification for facilitators and practitioners of Relational Technology.
Open Knowledge Commons: A crowd-sourced, evolving repository—part scholarly, part practical, always relational.
💖 Why It Matters
Moving Toward a More Relational World
In a time of crisis and complexity, we need more than quick fixes—we need a new foundation. A new way of understanding what it means to be in relationship. A relational paradigm that is grounded, adaptable, and deeply human.
The Living Library is one way of building that foundation. It is a contribution to the larger movement of people learning to relate better—not just in their personal lives, but in their workplaces, communities, and movements.
Relational Technology offers an invitation:
To move from isolation to connection.
To shift from reactivity to responsibility.
To build systems of care that are capable of holding complexity.
This is not just a resource. It’s a system for transformation.