“I’m coming more from a position of surrender, just allowing what needs to happen to happen. Not trying to control it. …before all of this I would have been, you know, planning, planning. …What I’ve learnt over the past six months is that it doesn’t need to be content-rich. It needs to be connection-rich.”
In the May session of Nurturing the Fields of Change, we will explore the archetypal dimension of holistic change agency. This involves engaging the archetypal dimensions of our being. We listen to the mycelium below ground, we follow the song lines and murmurations of our groups and communities. We sense that where the deeper levels are not consciously engaged, processes and people tend to stagnate and/or certain prevailing and dominant archetypes find unconscious expression.
For example, we find that the martyr archetype is dominant amongst many change facilitators, invoking a drive to self-sacrifice and to neglect self-care, and eventually causing burnout. We believe that archetypal levels are always engaged – unconsciously or consciously – and it is our responsibility to notice what is active, for good or bad, and what has been marginalised and needs to come to the fore in the service of our projects.
In this session we explore how practices tapping archetypal content and dynamics can enable change, for example through enlivening new social imaginaries. We ask: What archetypes are active in our work? What dominant myths play out in our communities of work?
We welcome Ayesha Iftikhar from Pakistan who will share more about her project, Caring for the Caregivers. Ayesha is an integrative therapist who works with other therapists, social workers and educators in Lahore, supporting them on their journeys of creativity and wellbeing. She shares powerful reflections about how archetypal energies drive our motivations and inform group dynamics, with embodied exercises and group dialogue.
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