Change your story, change your mind
Fundraising event to support Haitham Juma and his family survive the genocide in Gaza
90 minute class including movement, meditation and writing. Live on Zoom. Wednesday 18th December 2024
5pm UK / 12pm Eastern / 6pm Europe / 11am Central
A story can save or change, frame or dam your life or the lives of others – unless it is questioned and checked from the multiple perspectives through which things unfold. It’s all in the telling. The words we use, the emphasis we lay on certain details, the omissions and the exaggerations, the half-truths and the protective lies.
We can suffer because of the stories we tell ourselves. We can see the world through murky lenses. And/or we can tell different stories, ones that expand our view and open our minds. The way we describe our experiences can shape the way we see - and help us realise that beyond the clouds and beneath the surface misreads, there is a deeper, wider and brighter side to life. With our imagination and insight, we can conjure different worlds, different views, more expansive understandings of the truth of our full potential.
As the historic Buddha is said to have said, with our thoughts we make the world. It follows that by changing our stories, we can change our minds and set ourselves free to explore the whole spectrum of life’s perfectly imperfect offerings.
This workshop is an invitation to get curious, to question and play with your own ways of telling, seeing and understanding your experience. And because it’s not all cerebral, because so many of our stories live in the subtle energy body of our flesh and bones, we’ll use movement practices alongside meditation and journaling to sense and feel into who, what and how we are.
The practices I’ll share with you draw on my personal and ongoing experience as someone who has spent a lifetime telling, retelling, examining and questioning the impact of my own and other people’s stories. I’ll guide you through gentle movement to help you tend to any areas of tension or sensitivity, meditation to help you settle and explore what’s on your mind, and writing prompts and techniques to help you dive deeper into what you find.
As relational beings, we learn just as much by listening to and connecting with each other as we do from listening to and connecting with ourselves. So, there will also be the option to share what emerges for you. Speaking out loud can help us to break through limiting perceptions, doubts and fears. Being heard can restore our sense of spirit and connection. However, there is no obligation or expectation to share unless you wish to. Ultimately, these practices are about expanding our view and feeling more free.
All the proceeds of this workshop will be donated to Haitham Juma and his family, who have been forced to endure the ongoing cruelty and relentless inhumanity of the genocide in Gaza. As another winter forces too many people who have been displaced from their homes to live in tents and struggle to survive in almost impossible conditions – near starvation, freezing temperatures, escalating and inescapable violence – anything and everything we can do to show we care is a pledge of hope that Haitham, like millions of others, wishes they didn’t need but have been left with very little other option to ask for.
You can read about Haitham’s story in his own words on his Instagram page and the GoFundMe page to which the proceeds from this event will be directed. At a time of year when many of us in the privileged world of plenty are drawn to spend our time, money and attention on more stuff than we probably really need, this is an invitation to resist all that disconnects us, and to reclaim your own precious time and energy, to do something good for your own wellbeing, for the sake of our common humanity.
Suggested donation £45. You are welcome to pay more or less depending on your means. Register your place by completing this Google form.