Ana Rhodes – Working with Groups Masterclass I
From Conflict to Development and Transformation
17 April – 21 April 2020 , London
A 4-day intensive dedicated to a ProcessWork approach to understanding groups, teams, organisations, communities and change management.
This Masterclass with Ana Rhodes brings together many disciplines in an inter-active, experiential way.
Ana will support you in finding a philosophy and framework rooted in experience rather than theoretical orthodoxy..
You will review ‘roles’ and ‘ghost roles’, work with edges, ranking, double signals, essence, dreamland and consensus reality. Ana will contribute her own distinctive style of working with individuals, couples, small groups, large organisations and the world at large.
She will explore the following together with you:
- How to introduce leadership skills and evolutionary approaches in organisations and corporate systems
- How to support group facilitators in helping groups to embraces diversity and conflict and build sustainable relationships
- How to explore the dynamics of Social Ecology in organisations and the cultural diversity in teams
- How to address Climate Change not only related to our external environment but also in relation to the organisational environment
- How to introduce and use the methodology of ProcessWork in corporate organisations and in systems whose primary identity is different from the Process Oriented Facilitation Style
- How to direct and facilitate transformation in the ecosystems in which we operate
- How to adopt leadership models that value all voices and experiences, including those that disturb us
- How to sit in the “Fire of Transformation” when working with groups without getting burned by the external and internal intensity
- How to use your deep talents, magical abilities and your mystical being to transform your relationship with groups, communities and organisations
For those who worked with Ana before it will lead to a deepening of understanding of Mindell’s ProcessWork approach coupled with more recent developments in the field.
Jaap Westerbos – Working with Groups Masterclass II:
Working with Presence
3 July – 6 July 2020, London
An exploration of a Meta Perspective on Group Facilitation, including a 5 realm model.
For many years I have been involved in training psychotherapists, executive coaches, organisational consultants and group facilitators. What I did learn from this is that knowing myself is the best enabler to working with others.
My overarching philosophy is that, whichever profession in which you may wish to express yourself, it is necessary to draw on the awareness, the inner life, the readiness of the facilitator, the self-support of the therapist. I emphasize presence over techniques. And the ability to relate is much more important than theoretical orthodoxy.
Presence can be described as being centred, open and highly alert for all data, both directional and open focus, including subtle information in the field. It also requires a stance of radical acceptance. We cannot implement change before we fully accept what is and suspend any form of judgement or criticism.
Full presence enables you to work directly from the heart and to listen to others in a profound new way
The outcome of this masterclass will enable you to centre yourself in every situation and connect from this centre with awareness to outgoing circles of complexity without getting lost, always finding your anchor point in a part that is more reliable and secure than your ego, integrating new insights and skills. Ultimately it leads to a strong sense of self at the core of your being.
To this end I aim to support you identify and include your own unresolved inner conflicts and traumas, your subtle energies and to extend your awareness into realms that are identified with depth work. We will explore how a group can mirror your own inner states and the best way to work with that.
We shall draw on:
- Judith Hemming’s Five Realm model
- Malcolm Parletts’s Future Sense
- Otto Scharmer’s Presencing
- Thomas Hübl’s Global Witnessing
We will also explore together the concept of collective intelligence (sometimes called co-intelligence, MWE, or whole intelligence) and how to use this as a resource for working with groups.
The masterclass will be augmented with constellation work, selective reading from philosophical traditions, poetry, combining theoretical discussion with group process, drawing, movement, music and periods of deep reflective silence.
Zia Ali – Working with Groups Masterclass III:
Working with Storytelling: timeless tools for building the new archetypes
25 September– 28 September 2020, London
‘It matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with… It matters what stories make worlds, and what worlds make stories.’ (Donna J. Haraway,‘Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene’)
For the last 3-4 decades, the paradigm of ‘storytelling’ in leadership and change-making has been dominated by heroic and/or Promethean tropes, stories of individual valour characterised by reckless daring, sacrifice, or the opposite, stories that foreshadow a destructive hubris for humankind. Our daily news media is likewise dominated by these kinds of stories, to the extent that reality now seems stranger than fiction. In this masterclass we will directly challenge the assumption that these kinds of stories portray the inevitable nature and fate of who we are as humans – and we will attempt to find tools for making a new paradigm together.
This 4-day intensive engages on the philosophical, social and psycho-physical levels to explore practices of making the myths and stories that we need for these current times. To re-think the stories that we have invested in, is the opposite of narcissism or grandiosity; it is in fact to admit defeat, allow our vulnerability and to start all over again. Embracing this truth together offers rich learning and resources for change.
In these seminars, we will participate in, and even at times co-create, a new mythology. In all mythologies, a constellation of characters (known as ‘archetypes’) play out. These both mirror and inform our behaviours in real-time, and so it will be the task of this masterclass to explore an array of theories and practices that both examine and potentially re-fashion the traditional concepts of archetypes and archetypal storytelling.
Each of the 4 days will mark thresholds of exploration, in which we ‘test out’ the emerging archetypes within us that activate awareness and behaviours that will give us new ways of:
- Thinking (Inventing)
- Learning (Training)
- Connecting (Collaborating)
- Visioning (Voicing)
Themes and topics will include:
- Metaphor, embodiment and cognition: a theory-informed session with experiential learning, on how ‘magical’ images, symbols and narratives relate to our own embodied experience and our patterns of thought and reason
- What’ kind of story are you telling, and believing?: an examination of the different forms of story (fable, parable, myth, fairy-tale, epic), and how and why we gravitate towards investing in certain types of stories at certain life moments
- ‘Archetypes’ – Do we make them, or do they make us? – Discourse on archetypes has become sharply politicised and polarised in the last five years. We will explore the subject of ‘archetypes’ as a group, devising our shared mythology by exploring any emerging archetypes from the spaces ‘in-between’ or ‘beyond’ the traditionally constructed ones.
We will work across different learning styles, switching between reflective and personal spaces of learning to active group-sessions.
Participants will explore the enquiry through a rich array of media, including ritualised theatre, creative writing, movement and bodywork, tools of dramatherapy, art, and a more ‘embodied’ analytical practice of cultural artefacts, such as text, visual art, cinema and symbols. The purpose of this seminar is to re-examine the ways in which we can engage with stories and myths, not just as individual leaders but as active community-makers, endeavouring to rediscover our humanity – not alone but together.
Ade Adeniji – Working with Groups Masterclass IV:
Wholehearted Leadership – Transforming the way you lead and live
4 December – 7 December 2020, London
“If we want people to fully show up, to bring their whole selves including their unarmoured, whole hearts—so that we can innovate, solve problems, and serve people—we have to be vigilant about creating a culture in which people feel safe, seen, heard, and respected.” – Brené Brown, Dare to Lead
This interactive and experiential masterclass focuses on bringing our whole self to how we lead and live – head (our mind), heart (our emotions), hands (our actions) and spirit (our essence). The exploration delves into what gets in the way – personally and collectively, and creates a space to assist with the cultivation of habits to navigate the challenges that arise.
The masterclass includes discussions in pairs/triads, small and large groups, storytelling, psycho-exploration and education, guided meditation and mindfulness practices, phototherapy, creativity and expressive writing, along with self-reflection and inquiry.
Our sessions, will be informed by
And many more….
Themes and topics include:
- Mapping and navigating our Inner landscape – Its important to be conscious of the inner world that we bring to our external reality. What does your landscape look and feel like? What territories are you familiar with and which terrains would you like to know more? Which areas need more light, what needs to be rediscovered?
- Vulnerability – Challenge old definitions and dispel the myths surrounding the concept of vulnerability. Examine the challenges associated with feeling vulnerable or with engaging in behaviours that lead to uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.
- Shame – Exploring shame from a personal and collective perspective and learn to recognise the physiological sensations that accompany experiences of shame. Recognising how shame, scarcity, and comparison show up in the leadership and how they affect engagement, trust, and connection.
- Ideal and unwanted identities – Unpacking how you would like to be perceived and how you don’t, and what happens when you are perceived either way.
- Empathy – Understand the components of empathy and recognise common barriers that interfere with meaningful connection. Exploring the relationship between empathy and trust.
- Self-Compassion – Identify and explore the three attributes of Dr Kristin Neff’s model of self-compassion.
- Values – Explore how values operate in our personal and professional lives and the role they play in integrity and wholehearted leadership.
- Resilience – Exploring how leaders get back up when they miss the mark or ‘fail’ to be wholehearted. Learn the critical role that curiosity and recognition of emotion play in developing resilience skills.
- Belonging – Exploring what Belonging looks and feels like, along with identifying the barriers to belonging. How does our need for belonging show up in leadership? What can leaders do to ensure a culture of belonging?
- Trust and Psychological safety – Understand what these look like and the role leaders play in co-creating spaces that embody them.
The intention of the sessions is to create a space where participants can fully show up and bring their whole selves including their unarmored, whole hearts, and cultivate the insights and practices to take forward into their lives.
Bernd Leygraf – Working with Groups Masterclass V:
Third Eye Seeing
19 February– 22 February 2021, London
“I see you”
This training module is on a radical formation process rooted in the Hindu philosophy of Advaita-Vedanta, as expounded by Ramakrishna. Its unavoidable implication is that the world of division in which we live is ultimately an illusion of the mind.
By dispelling that illusion, we discover that we have never been separated from the divine. From this perspective we neither come from somewhere nor go towards something but already are one with God.
This perspective is often referred to as Third Eye Seeing, or luminous seeing – the way in which the Mystics see.
That is not to say that the first eye (the senses) is disregarded or that the second eye (knowledge) is unimportant. It mainly means that we go further and can experience that our heart, mind and our bodily senses are simultaneously open and non-resistant and we are fully ‘present’. A moment of deep connection in which we are brother and sister to all things, heralds the arrival in an undefended now, sometimes profoundly joyful, sometimes deeply sad, but always here.
Richard of Saint Victor (1123-1173) wrote that humanity was given three different sets of eyes, each building on the previous one. The first eye was the eye of the flesh (thought orsight), the second was the eye of reason (meditation orreflection), and the third eye was the eye of true understanding (contemplation).
In the Orthodox traditions we talk about putting the mind in the heart. The use of Zen koans in Zen-Buddhism also aims to prepare practitioners, through the use of paradox, to a different way of seeing, as does A course in Miracles.
Tibetan Buddhist recognise the seeing of the third eye as ‘objectless awareness’.
Neurologically speaking we can perceive reality based on a new way of organising the perceptual field. We do not aim to change the object of our perception but focus on the mechanics of perception. Rather than seeing through differentiation (“you are separate to me”) we begin to perceive through holographic resonance, a capacity to sense the whole pattern as a single unified field.
We see from oneness and are no longer separate from it.
We believe that the loss of Richard of Saint Victor’s three necessary eyes is the basis of much of the short-sight-edness and religious crises of the Western world.
Lacking such wisdom, it is very difficult for churches, governments, and leaders to move beyond the desire for control and public posturing or simpler said: beyond the ego. Everything divides into oppositions such as liberal versus conservative or me versus the other, with vested interests pulling against one another. Truth is no longer possible at this level of conversation.
We believe that spiritual and political leaders can only genuinely lead by developing mystical seeing and action. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that “us-and-them” seeing, and the dualistic thinking that results, is the foundation of almost all discontent and violence in the world. It allows religious leaders to avoid their own founding principles, their own national ideals, and their own better instincts.
The third-eye person has always been the saint, the seer, the poet, the metaphysician, or the authentic mystic who grasped the whole picture. There is more to the mystical gaze, however, than having “ecstatic visions.” If people have ignored the first and the second eyes, their hold on the third eye is often temporary, shallow, and incapable of being shared with anybody else. Here we talk about spiritual bypassing and that Third eye seeing must always be relational.
We train true modern day mystics who see with all three sets of eyes, not eccentrics, fanatics, or rebels. The true mystic is always both humble and compassionate and in relationship for she knows that she does not know. After ecstasy, we still have to do the laundry.
Practical
Each day will include an interactive inspirational talk followed by exercises and skills training in pairs, triads or small groups intended to deepen and gradually increase participants awareness of Third Eye Seeing.
We shall gently and appreciatively enquire into our individual and collective perceptual field facilitated by deep meditation, guided imagery, breath work, movement and ritual.
By the end of this training course participants will have
- Acquired a deeper understanding of the concept of Third Eye Seeing, its history and current developments
- Increased their sensitivity to changes in the perceptual field and how to respond to those
- Developed their own philosophy of living and working with Third Eye Seeing
- Investigate the application of Third Eye Seeing to facilitating individuals and groups
- Integrate this work of working with their spiritual worldview