‘I treat myself like a machine, which means I also treat my clients like machines. If I don’t take nourishing myself seriously, I will have to stop working.’ - these words come from a workshop participant. I offer an antidote in the word ‘softening’, though I could equally use ‘stilling’, ‘simplicity’, ‘solidity’, ‘vitality’, ‘substance’, ‘responsiveness’. Whatever the language, the common theme is of resistance to the mechanisms of everyday life and work. In getting caught up and burnt out, we lose connections with ourselves, with other and the situation. Our creative, imaginal life becomes impoverished and overwhelm threatens our capacity to carry on. Moving from the binary position of mechanics to the more subtle and complex state of integration sometimes needs support.

The Well Grounded Therapist residentials seek to restore deep connections to yourself, using the natural environment and relationship to place as the starting point. We choose the location for these workshops carefully, with a view to creating safe holding and spaciousness in which to explore, reflect and drop into embodied presence. Each place offers different qualities and opportunities. Groups are small and express their vitality in small consistent ways. Strong connections come easily.

This October we are going to the beautiful island of Lindisfarne, steeped in natural quietness and for centuries a destination of pilgrims. In the planning we have already had to listen to the boundary created by the tides as they invite and prevent access in equal measure. How will our bodies respond to the natural and social history of this place, to being cut off by tides for part of the day, to the inescapable quiet? Vienna Duff and Miriam Taylor will facilitate a series of new explorations and connections together and alone which can support a change of perspective. Relationships between figure and ground will likely shift. Learning is through the body rather than by engaging with theory; it is really an experience of coming home to ourselves. That is not to say that there isn’t a strong theoretical foundation for this work.  It emerged from Miriam’s writing on the Well Resourced Therapist, which draws in turn on resource theory in trauma work. The opening quote above captures the effect on the relational field of being under resourced, and illustrates how change can begin with us. Expect to take away something enduring, and to leave something behind, like overwhelm, like responsibility, like over-focus. ‘There’s something about feeling truly grounded in the earth that’s highly congruent and nourishing for me in work with death and grief’ – another past participant.