Upkido operates across four natural scales, each requiring different skills and offering different impacts:
Micro: Moments & Interactions
Seconds to minutes
The foundation of all practice. A genuine smile, picking up litter, offering your full attention, letting someone merge in traffic. These moments require no permission and almost no risk, but build your sensitivity and create immediate positive ripples.
Practice focus: Presence, authentic kindness, reading micro-cues Start here: Notice three small opportunities each day
Meso: Relationships & Local Systems
Days to months
Improving workflows with colleagues, enhancing family dynamics, organizing community projects. This scale requires dialog skills and understanding of social patterns.
Practice focus: Patient listening, collaborative problem-solving, sustainable solutions Key skill: Knowing when you're the right person to help vs. when to step back
Macro: Communities & Institutions
Months to years
Neighborhood initiatives, organizational culture change, policy advocacy. Requires coalition building, systems thinking, and long-term perspective.
Practice focus: Building alliances, understanding power dynamics, strategic patience Watch for: Burnout, unintended consequences, ego inflation
Meta: Cultural & Philosophical
Years to generations
Shifting cultural narratives, modeling new ways of being, creating art or ideas that change consciousness. This is about being the change so clearly that others can't help but notice.
Practice focus: Living your values consistently, planting seeds you may never see bloom Ultimate skill: Faith in slow change, comfort with invisible impact
Start where you can feel the energy clearly - work at scales where you can sense what's needed and respond appropriately
Each scale requires different permissions - micro needs none, macro needs explicit invitation
The scales feed each other - micro-kindness builds trust for meso-work, which creates platform for macro-change
Your gifts suggest your optimal scales - some people are natural micro-practitioners, others are systems changers