2nd and 3rd of September 2024
Earlybird price of £160 if you register and pay before 15th July. BOOK NOW.
Zelda and Arielle Warner will give this workshop in New College, Oxford. It is a pre-conference workshop which is also open to those not attending the whole Eurotas conference.
Arielle and Zelda invite you to this workshop for a journey with heart.
For more than a year now my friend and colleague Arielle Warner and I have been developing our work together. It is our wish to support a world which we perceive to be in turmoil and also on the brink of great transformation.
Doing the work
In order to be truly present in our lives we must be free from the programming that is running in the background and is based on often outdated conclusions about ourselves or the world, acquired in the early years of our childhood.
These programmes had their function at the time. Sometimes serving to keep us alive! But besides having brought us certain tools, now they can get in the way and keep us caught, going round in circles, in reactions to ‘there and then’ instead of ‘here and now’.
This reactivity turns up in our daily lives- relationships, work, and of course in our experience of the larger world around us. We can experience mounting stress, feel powerless and overwhelmed. Or have outbursts of anger and rage.
None of which makes us happy and affects our connections with our loved ones and sense of having a place in the world.
Arielle and I will help in exploring these patterns and embracing all of ourselves, even the parts that we have rejected in the past and which hover on the edge of our awareness. We will work with learning to regulate our fears.
This helps free our attention so that we can make more choices and participate more fully in the world. We can be more creative instead of being absorbed by fearful narratives and sucked into the polarisations that are so omnipresent right now.
We can connect beyond the roles and stories about our identity that can limit us and bring our gifts to a world that is waiting for us.
Everything you do makes a difference. Join us!
More about the gold in the shadows
It is our perception that the common mechanism underlying the painful global crisis that we are facing, is the phenomenon of psycho-spiritual polarising between light and shadow.
Especially in times of crisis, we are more susceptible to ‘othering’. The aspects of ourselves, negative or positive, which we struggle with acknowledging, are projected onto the ‘other’. In extreme cases the ‘other’ is seen as a separate, threatening entity that needs to be eliminated.
Expanding our sense of ourselves with compassion and staying present to the parts that are less familiar to us releases us from the compulsion of othering. This helps us strengthen the ability to tolerate uncertainty which is needed in order not to fall back into familiar narratives about ourselves or the other.
As we do this, we make it possible to increase the connection with and from the heart and therefore strengthen our tie to our common humanity, while cherishing diversity and opposites.
What to expect?
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We will begin with an experiential introduction and mapping of the different kinds of splitting/polarizing mechanisms and the way they manifest and impact our personal lives as well as our external professional and social cultural environment. |
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We will familiarise ourselves with the signs of spiritual by-passing and splitting as they show up in our narratives, dreams, relationships and in our bodies. |
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We will become aware of the conditions that trigger these coping strategies and how to avoid getting entangled in them. |
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We will explore the ways to access the resources needed to take care of ourselves while tolerating ambiguity, holding space for apparent opposites, and staying connected to those who we perceive as ‘other’. |
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Uncovering the ‘Gold in the Shadow’ – with mindful compassionate embodied Presence and Self-regulation We will look at re-owning the suppressed, vulnerable parts of ourselves which are projected onto the other’.
We will be developing our moral compass while listening to the voice of our heart with compassionate presence to our joint personal and collective distress. |
HOW
Both Arielle and Zelda have wide ranging training and experience with different approaches and methods. The programme in the workshop will draw upon these, creating a blend which aims to adapt to the process arising in the group and individual needs. Among techniques and approaches used will be:
Dream work. Our dreams provide access to that which has not yet reached consciousness. Working with our dreams enables us to track our shadow which will often turn up as that which is most enigmatic, or even scary, in our dreams, so that we can integrate it into our lives and embrace ourselves more fully.
Body work. Our body is the perfect guide to that which the mind cannot contain. The information in our body is of vital importance in our wholeness and being fully human. With gentle exercises we will invite increased somatic awareness and creative expression.
Yoga and Mindfulness-Based breath work, Meditation and Guided imagery.
Psycho-Spiritual Integration of Trauma Informed practices inspired by Compassionate Inquiry, Somatic Experiencing, Psychosynthesis, Systems work and Family Constellations exercises.
Participants
We welcome all who are willing and curious about exploring our own polarising patterns and embracing our full personal and transpersonal humanity.
This workshop may be particularly helpful, but not limited to, those in helping professions.
As we want to ensure that there is enough time, space and attention for each participant, the number of places is limited to 24.
Please reserve your space asap with this booking link
For any enquiries regarding this workshop please contact goldinshadows@gmail.com
You are welcome to join us.
book now with Eurotas.