Grief Group: The Wild Edge of Sorrow

Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

 

Usually in our culture we only touch grief when we lose a loved one,
however now more than ever much is being lost and there is much to grieve.


You are invited to learn and work with your grief in this group. Whether your loss is a loved one, a job, environmental destruction, racial trauma and systemic oppression, ancestral lineage or anything that stirs sorrow or grief for you. Together we will share and grow our relationship with grief as we read The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller.  Anchored by the book, we will heal with our grief through writing, sharing, listening, and both individual and group ritual.

Everything we love we will lose.  Most of us have lost someone or something valuable already.  Grief unfelt, unattended to, or stuffed down interferes with life.  Life is renewed and fed by the cycles and passage of time, but time alone does not heal.  We can re-align back into the flow of life gain vibrancy by harvesting the meaning and purpose from our experiences, especially those that stir grief by tending to these processes intentionally.

Join us for a 6 week experiential group to deepen in relationship to grief, form community, be in ritual, support others, and connect more fully to your human experience including life, death, and more renewed vibrant life.

In this group you will explore, deepen, and strengthen your connection and relationships to:

  • Yourself
  • Grief and Loss
  • Healthy Adult Life Development
  • The World’s Challenges and Sorrows
  • Our Relationship with and Impact on Nature
  • People that have lived before you
  • Your ancestry
  • Cycles of life and death
  • Shared human experience

You will leave renewed and re-committed to living fully, nourished and enlivened by the depths of your soul.

Group will meet for 5 weeks of educational and prep work culminating with a final ritual to move through the energies of grief in a supportive community container.

Thursdays 6:00-8:00PM, September 29-November 3, 2022. (Ritual will be 6:00-9:00).

$300 for series. $60 for ritual alone.  (Stand alone ritual is only an option if you have previously attended a grief ritual. Otherwise, you need to attend at least 4 sessions of the group.)

Facilitator: Chuck Hancock, M.Ed., LPC has been apprenticing with grief since childhood and has been focusing on healthier expressions of grief through ritualized community shared practices over the past decade.  Drawing on conventional western approaches as well as his study with mentors of indigenous practices of America and West Africa Chuck creates a group container creating a supportive healing relationship with all forms of grief we experience in life.

 

SAFE – Working with our Emotions with Compassion for Ourselves and Others

April 6, 2020
anger, anxiety, change, depression, embodied, exercise, feelings, loneliness, stress

‘‘When we don’t feel safe, our brains fall into a fear mindset and don’t allow for our natural states of joy, calm and happiness to arise.’’

SAFE is a simple acronym for a practice you can use to ignite the natural anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medicine of self-compassion. In this time of uncertainty, there are lots of things being felt. To make it through, we have to be able to work with our emotions in a healthy way, not ignore them or “just think positively.”  It might work for a short time, but eventually you’ll run out of energy to keep supressing other feelings and welcoming only positive ones. When you are feeling something you don’t want to be feeling, try this practice.

S – Soften into the feeling. This implies a type of gentle recognition of the feeling or sensation in your body. Focus your awareness toward it softly.  If you can, maybe even naming it. “Breathing in, opening to the sadness/fear/vulnerability that is there, breathing out, softening into it.”  But if you can’t name it easily, don’t get hung up on it.  Sometimes it is even better to not, as words and labels may make us jump to assumptions about it.  But do make sure it is a feeling or sensation in your body, not a belief or narrative about something.

A – Allow it to be as it is, without resisting, trying to change it, or clinging to it.  For as long as needed, but aim for at least a few minutes.  Most likely not more than a few days.  If it lasts more than a few days or weeks, some outside help or support may be needed.

F – Feel into the emotion that is there even more with a kind attention and compassion for it. In doing this we can also drop in questions to connect our mind with our feelings:  “What is it trying to tell me?”  “What is it’s message for me right now?“ “What does this feeling believe?”” or “What do I need right now?” When we discover this we might give that to ourselves. For example, if we sense that we need to feel loved and to feel safe, we might say, “May I feel loved, May I feel safe, etc…”  We may need rest, connection, care, food, movement, etc.  I’d encourage you to keep your gift related to your inner process, rather than feeling like you need to take external action, especially to change or avoid the feeling.

E – Expand awareness of all people who also experience this feeling.  Remind yourself that while your situation may feel unique to you, the feeling you are experiencing is also experienced by virtually every human on this planet.  This feeling, this vulnerability of sadness, fear, anger, guilt, shame, depression, anxiety, resistance, or any difficult experience is a universal human experience. This is a core component of self-compassion. Here is where we understand that we are not alone and that in this very moment there are thousands if not millions of people who are experiencing this very same feeling. The “E” of SAFE is where we inspire connection with the rest of humanity. In this practice we can also take what we learned from the “F” of SAFE and send it outward to specific people you know that also experience this or to humanity in general saying, “May we all feel loved, May we all feel safe, etc… Some people find it helpful to do this with a hand on their heart, stomach or both.

If you have trouble focusing on your inner experience in this way, it may be helpful to first ground yourself with input from your 5 senses.  Paying attention to information first from the outside world of what you can hear, see, smell, touch/feel, and taste.  Ask yourself, am I really SAFE in this moment?  Is there an immediate threat?  Most likely, there is not anything that has to happen this exact moment.  Then allow yourself to come back to the SAFE exercise.

SAFE Acronym by Elisha Goldstein, PhD, explanations and expansion provided by Chuck Hancock, LPC, EMDR II of Inner Life Adventures 

Connected, but alone?

January 14, 2014
anxiety, community, depression, human, humanness, loneliness, relationship, stress, technology

Authentic, attuned relationship is a huge focus of mine both personally and in my therapy practice.  There is a lot of research supporting the importance of relationship as a healing factor.  In this video, psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle who has been studying how technology changes not only what we do but who we are discusses the impact of technology on our lives.  Some highlight quotes to tempt your curiosity:

“We expect more from technology and less from each other.”

“Technology appeals to us most where we are most vulnerable.”

“We are lonely, but we are afraid of intimacy.”

“From social networks to sociable robots we are designing technologies that give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. We turn to technology to help us feel connected in ways we can comfortably control.”

Relationships are hard, and messy, and we often don’t know what to say.  Communicating only through technology gives us time to present our best self, craft the perfect message, but we miss each other in our authenticity.  Despite being more connected than ever, I talk to more people than ever reporting feeling alone.

Watch this for a few reasons why:

click to play

Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone?

 

And then let’s talk about how to get more authentically connected to yourself and others.

What do you think? Better yet, what do you feel? What do you experience? Let’s continue the conversation! You can find me at www.innerlifeadventures.com or email [email protected].  Want to meet?  Here’s how.

Chuck Hancock, M.Ed, LPC is a National Certified Counselor, Licensed Professional Counselor, and a Registered Psychotherapist in the state of CO. He has completed comprehensive training in the Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy, a mindfulness mind-body centered approach. Chuck guides individuals and groups in self-exploration providing them with insight and tools for change. He also incorporates nature as a therapy tool to help shift perspective and inspire new patterns.