Power & The Group Body

Join Madelanne Rust-D’Eye to explore what it means to transform power at the deepest level in our group cultures. Learn practical, embodied tools to engage with power, not as something ‘out there,’ but as a flow of aliveness we can organise and channel intentionally in our minds, bodies, and relationships.

Understand why it is essential, as we shift towards a power-with paradigm in our organisations and groups, that we also attend to this unspoken, intimate domain of power — to release dynamics of inequality we carry within us, to heal the wounds of the past, and to potentiate a more just, joyful, and interconnected world. 

Who is this workshop for?

* People interested in enhancing their understanding, literacy and fluency in navigating power in groups
* People who want to work in an embodied way and practice with others committed to expanding body intelligence
* People who work in/with groups, facilitators and trainers
* People who see the value in authentic communication and group learning
* People seeking opportunities to self-reflect and increase self awareness

What experience is necessary?

* Some prior somatic experience is helpful but not required
* A willingness to listen deeply and receive new perspectives
* A willingness to move your body and use your voice

Timings:
7pm - 9.30pm Friday, 23rd Oct (Open Talk included with this ticket)

10am - 5pm Saturday, 24th Oct (Workshop)

10am - 1pm Sunday, 25th Oct (Workshop)

ABOUT MADELANNE (BIO):

Madelanne Rust-D’Eye is a somatic psychotherapist, educator and facilitator who lives by the volcanic hills, grassy meadows and rocky coastline of Edinburgh, Scotland. Madelanne’s work comes to life at the intersection of leadership, somatics, and regenerative culture.

Originally trained as a trauma-informed somatic psychotherapist (MA Naropa University 2013), for the past 10+ years, she has been growing the community and practice of Body-Informed Leadership to amplify and restore the capacity for connection in the bodies of Western people and cultures. This, she believes, is an essential ingredient to transforming our practice of power.

Madelanne has been designated a Master Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist (MSME/T) by the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA). She is an active Trustee for ISMETA and is grateful to be part of global conversations about somatics and social change. She has worked as a leadership and team development consultant with third sector organisations (including long-term engagements with Transition Network and Mustardseed Trust) as well as leading major accounts with corporate organisations seeking to create more collaborative leadership environments.

Her inquiry into power is rooted in and arises from these diverse bodies of experience: somatic perspectives on trauma, culture, and embodied change; psychological understandings of human development and the psyche; real-world grappling with organisational systems, dynamics, opportunities and constraints; and woven through it all, a deep appreciation for the poetry and magic of our human experience. 

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT EACH DAY:

On Friday

* An evening Conversation introducing an embodied, relational way of understanding power — one that differs from how power is typically framed in Western culture
* Madelanne sharing the life experiences and personal journey that have shaped her perspective on power
* Experiential activities that open a deeper, embodied engagement with power as an embodied and relational flow 
* An introduction to integration and inequality as two key organising patterns power moves through in groups
* Open space for questions, conversation, and debate

On Saturday/Sunday

Core somatic practices 

The workshop centers on experiential engagement with a few key practices, and on observing their impact on group process:

* Grounding
* Witnessing sensation
* Staying with sensation
* Speaking from sensation

Working with the group field

* Experiential engagement with the nervous system as the ground from which group dynamics arise (some prior understanding is helpful, though not required)
* Exploring the somatic roots of the Drama Triangle, and how it anchors inequality in our embodied group process
* Practicing attunement as the basis for relationship — to self, to other, and to what's emergent between us
* New metaphors and concepts for power-with, to anchor patterns of integration in our embodied group process

Shared inquiry

* Space for participants to speak from their own life experience — personal and/or professional — to enrich our collective understanding of power as an embodied and relational flow

PARTICIPANTS WILL COME AWAY WITH:

* A practical understanding of how to bring embodied experience into group processes more actively, safely, and respectfully
* A new understanding of power — and how to work with it more consciously in the embodied, relational domain
* A real-time encounter with the non-verbal, connective reality we carry within and between ourselves
* Greater self-awareness of the wounds of connection we carry individually and collectively, along with strategies for addressing them
* A renewed sense of possibility — and new leverage points for change — in your own group systems

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

Openness

* Some previous experience with somatic practice is helpful, but not required
* A willingness to listen deeply and receive new perspectives
* A willingness to move your body and use your voice

To Bring

* Loose, comfortable clothing you can move in
* A notebook, water bottle, and snacks
* A packed lunch on Saturday