Being Together: Embodied Skills for Collaboration
This year-long program is for people who work with groups - facilitators, consultants, coaches, and culture-shapers of all kinds - who want to understand group systems through an embodied lens, and to incorporate an embodied relational skillset into the heart of their practice. In particular, this program is for those who seek to enable complexity, and to support groups to be the living, breathing, thriving ecological systems that they inherently are. The course is anchored by the questions: How does our embodied life shape the group cultures we create? How do our group cultures influence our embodiment and hence, the way we experience and express our humanity? How can a group culture become a force that nurtures and includes the best of our embodied human capacities?
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
What you’ll learn
Being Together anchors itself in the sensory intelligences of the body. The first module is focused on making contact with embodied experience and expression, and provides a language and a skillset to enable participants to understand and inhabit the landscape of embodiment; draw out the threads of their own inner life; and self-and-co regulate with greater skill, awareness, and intention.
The course then looks to our relationships, the mind, and finally our organisations as places where embodied dynamics are both expressed and organised. Participants will encounter key patterns of organising which can be potentiated within our groups, and will consider the role somatics play in creating resonantly peaceful, adaptive, and empowered cultures.
There are many programs out there on embodiment; however, Being Together is unique in that it situates embodiment within the context of the group, and our patterns of social organising. It moves progressively between four layers of our human being - the body, relationships, the mind, and our organisations - linking them together and finding somatic intervention points that are both individual and collective at the same time.
The course is for you if:
You are curious about somatics and its role in shaping culture;
You have experience working with or within groups; whether as a facilitator, a consultant, a leader, or an engaged community member;
You want to become more collaborative, and to develop embodied skills to navigate diversity, uncertainty, complexity and emergence;
You want to learn body-based tools to responsibly navigate trauma in yourself and your communities, and to better understand the ways trauma lives and grows within our organising systems;
You want to enable the groups you are a part of to relate more wholeheartedly with complexity, to be more relational, and to celebrate and embody interconnection with all of life.
Course themes: interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB); cultivating a more conscious relationship to the Nervous System and building pathways to self- and co-regulation; trauma; intergenerational trauma; attachment theory; communicative musicality; power and the body; dynamics of privilege/oppression vs. dynamics of liberation; reflections on personal lineage and intersectional experience; connection; application of somatic practice within individual professional contexts.
*Please note that the class size is limited to 12 people.
COURSE PARTICIPATION INCLUDES
Monthly Online Sessions for group inquiry, reflections on readings, and co-mentorship
4 in-person experiential residential sessions of 3 days each
Ongoing connection on the course’s dedicated MightyNetworks forum
3 1-1 sessions with Madelanne to integrate learnings with your personal journey
Carefully selected readings, videos, and other resources that immerse participants in key theories and best practice
Embodied practices to integrate learning
Support and co-mentoring from a course buddy
COURSE DATES & TIMES
Online course orientation session Sept. 2024, exact date tbd
Online session October 2024, exact date tbd
Residential Retreat November 8-10, 2024
Arrival in the evening of the 7th, departure afternoon of the 10th
All meals & accommodation included in the cost of the workshop
Venue: The Ammerdown Centre, Ammerdown Park, Radstock, Somerset
BA3 5SW
Online session December 2024, exact date tbd
Online session January 2025, exact date tbd
Residential Retreat February 21 - 23, 2025
Arrival in the evening of the 20th, departure afternoon of the 23rd
All meals & accommodation included in the cost of the workshop
Venue: The Ammerdown Centre, Ammerdown Park, Radstock, Somerset
BA3 5SW
Online session March 2025, exact date tbd
Online session April 2025, exact date tbd
Residential Retreat May 9 - 11, 2025
Arrival in the evening of the 9th, departure afternoon of the 11th
All meals & accommodation included in the cost of the workshop
Venue: The Ammerdown Centre, Ammerdown Park, Radstock, Somerset
BA3 5SW
Online session June 2025, exact date tbd
Residential Retreat July 18 - 20, 2025
Arrival in the evening of the 18th, departure afternoon of the 20th
All meals & accommodation included in the cost of the workshop
Venue: The Ammerdown Centre, Ammerdown Park, Radstock, Somerset
BA3 5SW
COST
The cost of the program is £3,500. This includes meals and accommodation for each of the 3-day residential sessions.
*Payments can be made in one lump sum, or in 10 monthly payments of £350.
*Please note that participants will need to buy a number of books and other resources for the programme. Most of these can be purchased second-hand; however, it will be an additional expense.
*Participants are responsible for their own travel to and from residential sessions.
*Because this course is largely residential, we cannot be as flexible as we’d like to be with cost. Depending on how the economy of the program develops, we may be able to offer a limited number of places at a slightly reduced cost. Please contact Madelanne to discuss.
Payments may be sent to: Ms. Rust-D’Eye
Triodos Bank, Sort Code: 16-58-10, Acct: 21632421
Please notify me via email when your payment has been sent.
I also ask that you fill out a registration form (see below for details).
REGISTRATION
To register for this program, please:
Pay one month’s payment (non-refundable, goes towards your course tuition) or the full course fee.
Fill out the registration form.
Please note that your application is not finalised until both the registration form and deposit have been completed.
If you have any questions or concerns about your participation in the program, please contact Madelanne to discuss.
INCLUSION
This course welcomes people of all genders, identities, and experiences of racialisation. All material will be held with an intersectional awareness and an active invitation for multiple perspectives to be expressed.
SAFETY
Because the course is experiential and embodied, and because it touches on potentially challenging subject matter, it could stir up uncomfortable emotions, sensations, and interactions. In the interests of holding the safest space I can for all participants, I may ask someone to end their participation in the course (with a refund of 50%) if it seems the course is not appropriate for their needs, and/or if they repeatedly behave in ways that cause harm to the group.
CANCELLATION
It can have an impact on the group’s experience, as well as on the facilitator, when a participant cancels at the last minute. I do my best to take into account the unique circumstances of each participant; however, my general guidelines for cancellation are as follows: If you cancel up to three weeks before a programme starts you may receive a full refund (minus deposit). If you cancel within three weeks of a programme’s start date, or after a programme has started, I reserve the right to retain 50% of the total cost of the course. If the full course fee has not yet been paid, 50% is payable at the time of cancellation, or in agreed instalments.