Week 1: Waking up and regaining access to our full selves
Our modern lifestyle has most of us in a chronic state of stress which inhibits our self-awareness. This session will focus on identifying tools and practices to create a safe inner sanctuary where we can land, rest, replenish and connect with what is alive inside. We will explore the following questions:
What conditions support you having access to your inner world? What is it that your heart longs for? What is it like to be with that yearning?
What gets in the way of being fully in the moment? How can we cultivate awareness, clarity, and presence?
What does it feel like to connect deeply with all aspects of yourself, no withholding of any parts?
Week 2: Establishing a reliable compass
We start this journey by dispelling the myth that we always need to know where we are going. Instead, we will experiment with attuning to what is alive in us in the moment, to determine our next step.This session will focus on listening to and understanding the somatic and emotional biofeedback that the body offers as guidance. We will explore the following questions:
How do you relate to your emotions? What do your feelings and emotions tell you?
What do yeses and nos feel like in the body? What would it be like to use these yeses and nos as a compass to orient towards meeting your desires?
What does resonance feel like? What aspects of your life resonate with the yearnings of your heart and which ones don’t?
Week 3: Finding our path, using pleasure as a guide
Many of us have been socialized to follow pathways that are prescribed by society, whether or not it feels right for us. In this session, we will examine the maps that we have been following, to reconsider which ones are worth keeping and which ones no longer serve us. We will also begin designing new maps that better orient us towards the life we want. We will ask:
What does it feel like in the body to be with what we long for?
What are the conditions that allow you to feel pleasure and flow? What kinds of pleasure truly bring satiation? Where in your life do you naturally experience this?
How do you experience your unmet needs? What does it feel like to make space and feel the difficult feelings that might arise? What happens if we approach our unmet needs with permissiveness, acceptance and self-compassion?
Week 4: Staying on our path
Life is messy. Obstacles might arise that make it hard to stay on track. We might meet travelers that challenge the validity of our map. How do we get our bearings and discern which way is reliable? This session will focus on remembering and honoring what we want, and communicating our boundaries effectively to others.
How do you know that you have become lost and how do you get back on track?
What does it feel like when a boundary is crossed? How do you usually react? Is this strategy effective? How can we let people know of our limits with care?
When we say no to someone or something, what are we saying yes to? What if we were to redirect our attention to the yes behind the no? How would that affect our ability to say no?
Is there anything that you would like to let go of or reduce the time and energy spent in relation to it? What makes it hard to let go?
Week 5: Letting go of needing a map
Many of us have an inherent distrust of the unknown because it feels unsafe. To contend with this, we often use control as a protective strategy to remove uncertainty from our lives. This session will examine the cost of micromanaging our experiences and invite participants to gently experiment with letting go of control to see if a different kind of safety is accessible.
Which aspects of your life do you control and which aspects are more fluid and free?
What does it feel like to let go of control? What do you need to have in place to feel safe to explore the unknown?
How would your life change if you were to choose to be with the unfolding instead of being in control? What could emerge that hadn’t been possible before?