Starting out as a teacher of Process Work

30 November 2011

by Kim Ward

This time I did it alone with a small group who were mostly new to process work, so I really wanted to do a good job. ‘Life Narratives’ looked at ways of reflecting and tracking our journeys through life using process work skills and ideas. Story-telling in this sense is like finding a strand of wool, in one big ball we call our life, and pulling gently in one direction and then another strand in another direction will ask to be pulled!

Our venue came with sturdy well framed upright chairs and the neatly crocheted, brightly coloured blankets which kept one participant very warm. For the strands make a new tapestry as we consider our lives.

We were both friends and strangers as we came together to set the scene for exploration. Simple process work structures offer a (knitting) pattern and the exercises a guiding line to unfold our stories. Transitions and changes are important times in our lives, where we wrestle with new and strange circumstances, that stretch our identities and pull on the very fibre of our lives. Yet such moments, though they come in many guises, are also an opportunity to grow.

This weekend journey took us into our lives through tracing such transitions in our memories, through our body experiences and relationships. People jumped into the exercises re-membering events which may well have formed who they are today. I felt the immense privilege of listening to such stories.

The second day we used vector work as our guiding tool, which offered a sense of spaciousness as indeed we move through our stories, weaving 2 strands to make a third, new story-line. As I shared these tools my own sense of sharing and co-creating our lives became very real indeed.

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