The two-stranded spiral shown in Figure 1 represents two aspects of the authors' journey in becoming critical. The journey, conveyed through discussion, reflexive accounts and illustrations of particular and summary achievements, shows how Carr and Kemmis's work has influenced the authors as action researchers, both individually and together, in nursing, over 16 years. The first strand unfurls their journey as they learned to develop their philosophical and theoretical understandings of action research as collaborative, emancipatory and transformational. They show how they now use innovative and creative methodologies to transform practice and, simultaneously, develop critical practice theory that draw on assumptions from different worldviews in the same study. Their second strand is concerned with the creation of critical communities of healthcare practitioners who undertake action research to transform themselves, practices and organisations. This strand shares the practicalities of an action research team genuinely involving stakeholders in the collaborative, democratic design of projects, their implementation and evaluation. Both strands are concerned with preparing practitioners as researchers of their own practice and with human flourishing as both the end and means of action research. Seven insights are presented. (Contains 2 figures.)