Residential - Dartmoor - UK
1800 / 7th to 1600 / 10th - October 2021
Registration closes 01/10/21 - Places limited.
The Hero & Heroine’s Journey is the archetypal human quest for meaning and purpose. Encoded within the deep structures of mythology, and woven into our psychological DNA this ancient journey toward wholeness is acted out eight billion times each day.
Answering the call to adventure, the hero and heroine embark on a unique journey, often facing an unexpected ordeal along the way. In the struggle across this uncertain and confusing territory they learn something vital, precisely because they were forced to face adversity.
After a period of time they return home. Somehow changed by their experience they need to find a way to integrate and make sense of their new awareness, incorporating their hard won wisdom into everyday life.
It's the archetypal story of overcoming adversity - the story of Bilbo Baggins, of Skywalker, of Alice, Neo and Dorothy - it’s the story of ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore’ now what?
It's the story of finding courage, of vulnerability, of seeking the truth, of learning what or who is worth fighting for, and how to conjure light in the dark cave. It's the crucible of standing for something we believe in and then walking our talk despite the risks…
However, without a meaningful return that consciously honours the journey we have taken, and makes use of our learning the quest across the threshold passage of growth decays to become a wasteland.
We fall asleep at the wheel, become addicted, depressed, we lose our way, our motivation, we cease to learn and grow. We fail to appreciate the invitations life offers us, we get caught up in other peoples adventures and ideas, remaining adolescent in our awareness. Like Peter Pan, flying boys and girls instead of adults truly able to steward the necessary changes for ourselves and the world into being. It’s these changes that lead us beyond our ‘performance’ identity, and into expressions of our authentic nature, which give the world its vibrancy, its vitality and vision.
This training brings together over 20 years experience of incorporation practices, the essential integration skills necessary for us to realise our potential.
Drawing from psychotherapy, generative coaching, mythology, & working creatively with the deep imagination, you'll learn the principles & practices; the deep skills, necessary to access & harness the power of your somatic wisdom - the key ingredients in creating & sustaining an embodied life.
In approaching & exploring these themes, we’ll enhance & upgrade our filters of perception, learn what it’s like for us to attune to our felt-sense, whilst clarifying and embodying our goals & outcomes.
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy”
Creating and sustaining a meaningful life, sincerely aligned with our deeper values and living from our authentic centre, asks much of us. But, that is the call we must strive to discern from the ‘noise’ and answer, regardless the nature of external demands.
The increasingly complex and pressured world generates many demands and distractions that pull on our psyche, our time and energy. The time we have to regroup and gather ourselves is scarce and therefore precious.
If we do not know how to cultivate a deep sense of presence within ourselves, we are unlikely to find it ‘out there’ or in others. When we forget we are the authors of our own lives, instead of feeling at purpose, we tend toward superficiality. Swimming in an ocean of information, disembodied facts, and entertainment, we misconstrue wisdom, loose connection and our sense of belonging. We become fragmented, an assemblage of incoherent ideas. We can’t relax, or be still and appreciate the abundance of simple things that provide the depth and texture to our lives.
Instead of making true progress aligned with our deeper values, we redecorate, go on an ‘escape’, change the furniture, buy more ‘stuff’, get lost in screens.
These symptoms tell us, we are missing in action - passive, busy doing everything, though nothing truly meaningful. To be fully human we each must decide how we wish to live, not just what we want to achieve.
It is the quality of our presence that brings meaning to our experience. If we are not truly present, no experience can be meaningful to us, and any deeper purpose it might have served risks being diminished or lost entirely. We are often physically present, but emotionally and somatically absent; the lights are on, but no one’s home.
This experiential training will teach you the principles and practices necessary to become and remain fully present, to yourself, to those around you, and the world at large. You’ll learn the art of connection, attunement and resonance, transforming the quality of your baseline awareness, and the deep-structure relational capacities that flow from there,
I’ll be sharing the subtle but powerful core skills I rely on to discern and make crucial decisions, often in extremely delicate, charged situations, where on occasion the consequences of a misstep would have proved fatal.
These skills are deeply relational, highly focused, and profoundly creative, rooted in the capacity to listen wholeheartedly, with my whole body. I consider them a kind of super-power evolution of intuition - which enables an extra-ordinary depth of perception, foresight and understanding.
Over two decades, they have enable me to facilitate healing, growth and development in the deep end in situations where people and organisations have tried and failed to create and sustain the desired change in their personal and professional lives.
Much more than a way to remain present under stress, these skills enable and enhance our sustained healing, growth and development, supporting us as we awaken, harness and trust the resources of our unique embodied wisdom, not reactively, but proactively.
They allow us to fully inhabit the skin we’re in, moment by moment, staying true to who we are, and who we desire to become.
When the next challenge comes, they enable us to meet it with an embodied, generative mindset and utilise what once would have become a challenge or an issue, now becomes the gateway to our learning and growth.
Bessel van der Kolk in his brilliant book on PTSD ‘The Body Keeps The Score’ reminds us of how this thing below our necks really does play the larger part in defining our experience. I would assert that not only does the body keep the score, it can also, with a little training and practice, write it!
If you want to hear more about why trauma plays such a huge and unacknowledged place in our culture and society, please watch the youtube video below.
If you ‘knew’ you had the internal resources necessary to transform challenges into resources and step forward remaining connected, creative, truly present and aligned, what would be different for you?
Over three full days we will explore the foundations of our human experience, respectfully approaching the confluence of psyche and soma and our embodied sense of self, from which all else flows.
This is the realm of ‘the resonant felt-sense’, the layer of consciousness beneath and before the reach of words. It’s the landscape from which emotion rises, and only then is ascribed meaning. It’s the deep structure of our awareness, the genesis of our being, and also our becoming.
“Lose your mind, and come to your senses”
Zuni Medicine Bear
Donovan Laiwakete
The turquoise Heart Line signifies the breath of life, being ‘taken into the body’ - Incorporated.
You can read more about how ancient cultures embodied their mythologies: their meaning making stories and inherent values, whilst remaining present to the immense challenges of their lives here:
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, the rational mind its faithful servant.”
This is for you if…
Profoundly change your baseline state of awareness to incorporate your embodied resonant felt-sense, and harness the generative resources therein.
You want to learn or enhance your own extra-ordinary ways of knowing, in service to a deeper intimacy, understanding and resourcefulness within yourself.
You want clarify your values and align with what matters most to you.
You wish to gracefully move into a deeper connection with others be they intimates, or colleagues.
You wish to sharpen your creative acuity, clean and refresh your filters of perception, renew your sense of connection to what may have become stale or too familiar after years of the same routine.
You want to feel more relaxed, grounded, centred and present in your life.
You are struggling to integrate the experiences and learnings from a previous vision quest / courses / programme.
You want to reconnect with your deeper intentions whilst undergoing psychotherapy, or coaching in a way that allows you to feel they are authentic and alive and increasingly becoming part of your everyday awareness.
With the resources available in the somatic level of communication, what appeared doomed to failure often finds resolution in ways we least expected.
You are looking for a space in which to gather powerful resources to support yourself whilst healing from trauma (PTSD / C-PTSD), and looking to build a solid-inner foundation,
You want to create or enhance an existing daily practice / ritual.
You want to move beyond bargaining and managing symptoms, into an embodied enduring sense of wholeness.
You’re a coach, facilitator or psychotherapist looking for meaningful ways to further support yourself and your clients.
You want to participate in a dynamic, creative and supportive community operating with the utmost integrity and respect for the unique journey each participant is on.
You are a current or potential future delegate / member of The Helios Fellowship.
How we proceed…
My facilitation style is informal, and though open and inviting, I bring focus where it’s necessary in order to create a deep, intimate and secure space in which we can each honour our vulnerability in order we might explore the deeper invitations we might encounter along the way.
By approaching each other with the utmost respect and care, we will explore what embodiment is, and what is possible when we bring our best attention to the sensate world, and visa versa.
We shall explore what happens when we honour both the intelligence of the rational mind, and the wisdom of the body, respecting their unique gifts, whilst also extending that combined awareness out into the world, in service to whatever we might wish to create more of in our personal or professional lives.
Learning first to connect to ourselves, attune to the d.eeper intention that resonates with our own embodied wisdom, before extending that to others, we’ll then take this awareness onto the beauty of Dartmoor. We’ll explore what remembering this innate realm of embodied somatic experience might mean for us as individuals, and a species.
NB - Whilst this event is not specifically focused on trauma resolution, it will offer a secure space in which to practice reconnecting where connection may previously have been problematic.
If trauma, or other dissociative phenomena are present in our biography, it’s likely we will struggle to incorporate our direct experience in any context. Exposing ourselves to intense experiences, without adequate awareness and skilful guidance only serves to recapitulate trauma. If you are looking for big emotional release with lots of noise and drama, this isn’t for you. Deep healing and integration do not happen in that way.
When the pre-verbal layer of trust we each need intact in order to thrive is violated, we know something is amis. We know that overwhelming experience of trauma fragments the relational field, and the web of connection becomes dis-regulated and disordered. It’s as if the internal compass, the needle and the magnetic field are not registering they are part of the ship.
This can leave us feeling disconnected from our fundamental sense that the world is safe, that life is on our side and is for the most part good. Instead of healing and growth, we end up managing a complex array of symptoms, unable to feel or trust the deeper sense of our wholeness a body with a regulated nervous system can offer.
This training explores what deep regulation means, and how we can extend that into sincere connection and relationship. It’s about true intimacy.
“In every human being there is a special heaven, whole and unbroken.”
This long weekend invites you to explore and create a deep experience for yourself, in your own way, in service to your own intentions. Including for those interested, creating simple generative rituals to incorporate into your daily practice.
Returning to our somatic centre, attuning to the indestructible tender soft spot we carry within us, cultivating our inner sacred-space, coming home to ourselves; to our embodied sense of Self, to walk our path, knowing we are truly here, awake and inhabiting our lives.
“To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance.”