I run two workshops - "Working from Stillness, Working with Health and Wholeness", and "Shamanic Perspectives and Processes in Therapeutic Work". Please read on for details.

Working from Stillness, Working with Health and Wholeness

This is a two-day exploration in a small group (usually 6 or 8 people) of what it means to be able to sit in stillness with ourselves and with others, and particularly how we can notice, allow and engage with the health and wholeness that is always available to us, while equally honouring the stories that we carry. It is open to cranio-sacral therapists (for whom it counts as 2 days primary CPD for the CSTA), and also by arrangement with me, to body workers and others interested in an embodied experience of wholeness. In our everyday life most of us don't have much time to really sit with ourselves. So these two days also offer a small retreat from our worldly commitments, to give ourselves permission to discover less obvious aspects of ourselves.

We use table work in pairs, guided and non-guided meditations to help access stillness within ourselves, co-enquiry between us and usually a demo or group session. Most importantly the time is experiential - we are not getting into concepts around stillness or health but seeing what we actually experience when we let go into this. There isn't a totally fixed agenda as the nature of the work is that it is interactive and organic, and I encourage people to ask for what they need within the time, as this is a joint process that we engage in together. However some of the themes we will inevitably look at are

Where is stillness and where and what are wholeness and health

How can we really access this, and what is the practical relevance

What this might bring up for us

Agendas, attachment and aversion, acceptance

Trust, control and letting go - who is doing the work?

Different 'levels' of being, and levels of work

Joint practice and what this really means - coming into relationship, with ourselves, each other, life

Emptiness, receptivity and deepening presence

Working from non-separation, silence - who is the witness?

Embodiment

What is our wholeness, felt within the body and yet beyond any stories or ideas we carry around about who we think we are? How can this wholeness bring comfort and integration to the story, to our traumas? How can we allow different 'levels' or aspects of ourselves to co-exist without contradiction? What does it mean to sit in non-judgment, of ourselves and of each other? In a way these are historically the topics of spirituality, but I prefer to think of wholeness – spirituality albeit unwittingly can sometimes imply something 'other' than the body, other than our daily life, a better place somewhere else, while wholeness is relevant to all aspects of our lives and work. When we relax into stillness we discover that wholeness is always already here, just we rarely recognise it, and rarely allow ourselves to drop into the trust and quietness that can notice it. So during these two days this is what we work with, in a way that is relevant to ourselves as well as to our practice.

This involves a letting go, of our ideas about who and what we are and who we or others 'should' be, what should happen etc, and just dropping into what is. Letting go of the idea we ever could know everything about ourselves or another with the mind, which has a tendency to limit, and allowing space for the unknown. Letting go of intervention, or at least exploring where this may be coming from, and dropping into trust. We will be looking to receive a level of ourselves that is not ultimately definable, and in pair work to also receive that level of another person, to let go into this, and to trust and experience that within that letting go the story will be heard, perhaps less by us than by the wholeness itself. We may find that as we let go we discover a layer of being that is less defined by our experiences so far, in fact less defined altogether, less separate.

To touch this level in ourselves needs a kind of gentle surrender, listening and openness. As we access this wholeness in ourselves this also creates a space in which some of our reactive habits come into question and even begin to change, as we are reminded that we are not just our collection of stories but also something more than this. Presence is inherently unconditional. My experience is that for both us and our clients, accessing this level of being helps the stories, the traumas and conditioning of life to find a different reference point or perspective, which starts to create a gap before our habitual reactions and a deeper ease in our lives, as we are more 'resourced' and less caught up.

I've been running these small groups for a couple of years now, and have done a lot of work with Mike Boxhall, including assisting on his courses. My groups have partly grown out of this, and also from other work I have done over the last 15 years, and are a reflection of the process I have discovered in myself and others including in a therapeutic setting, as well as my meditation practice.

This will be a two-day workshop that explores the shamanistic elements of therapeutic work as they tend to arise in treatment. During these two days we will work in a small group (maximum 8 people) to look at and experience the typically shamanic processes that can naturally occur during cranio-sacral therapy and other therapeutic work, and discover how to be with these in a way that facilitates them, as well as embracing the non-rational and working with opening our perception to different or less common layers of experience. The course is open to cranio-sacral therapists (for whom it counts as 2 days' primary CPD for the CSTA) and, by arrangement with me, to others working in a therapeutic field who wish to explore these perspectives and processes.

In particular we will look to work with acknowledging and facilitating the 'epic' or mythic layer of someone's journey, meeting the path to healing and growth that is needed or available, and the inherent wisdom in any situation, however 'damaged' it may look. Related to this, we will also talk about 'soul retrieval' as it can naturally occur in cranial and therapy work - this is a term that describes how dissociated parts of the self and energy can find their way home. These may be from major or very subtle traumas or difficulties of any kind.

In order to appreciate this process and layer of work we will use various exercises, alone and in pairs including basic shamanic journeying, to help make this more accessible to us in our perception. We will also recognise how our perception can be very subtly and arbitrarily limited and limiting, from conscious judgments or assumptions about the person or the processes that can happen, as well as from more unconscious aspects of our 'shadow', and we will use awareness exercises to work with this in an embodied way.

To ground all of this in a shamanistic perspective and create a kind of 'map' which will help our awareness to explore these possibilities in a meaningful way, we will work with a medicine wheel, especially as it relates to perception, our process and the way we naturally move through issues. We will also work with the shamanic perspective and experience of being part of a whole, and part of the Earth, and notice how this may affect both us and our client work.

Over the two days we will integrate these exercises and perspectives to become an extra layer of work and awareness that is available in ourselves as well as in a client's process within the context of table work in pairs.

Some of the themes we will explore include –

Shamanic perspective on 'reality' - investigating our perception and how a shift in perception can change what we and our clients experience.

Awareness of shadow work, both individually and culturally, and how this can affect our perception.

Opening to different types of perceptions.

Exploring how any situation contains deep wisdom and learning to trust this.

Tracking the healing for a client as well as the story of how they have got to where they are.

Working on the level of the 'epic journey'. How soul retrieval occurs in cranial sessions, and how to work with it.

Shamanistic perspectives on inclusivity and wholeness, internally and in relationship with the world. Being part of the web of life and implications for clinical work.

Potential to be 'dreamed up' by the client – relationship to transference.

I have been involved with shamanic work for 15 years, and became interested in how these processes can seem to arise in cranial and other therapeutic work too. For me shamanic work is definitely not just a set of 'perceptual skills' or techniques. It is a heartfelt and experience-based approach to life and work, which asks us to be willing to look at ourselves, and really bring all of ourselves to the table and honour what is here – it is this willingness and approach that allow the perceptions and processes to arise. This is not a course in shamanic healing (there are plenty of good ones around) but rather I hope is a kind of 'bridge', a reflection of these shamanistic processes as I have found they naturally tend to occur in therapeutic work, as well as aspects of the shamanic perspective and personal work that I feel are especially useful for practitioners.

At least 15% of my income from this course (after room hire) is given to Survival International, who support the rights of indigenous people.