“Here we have our present age... Man today, stripped of myth, stands famished among all his pasts and must dig frantically for roots, be it among the most remote antiquities."
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music
What is Stories for Life about?
Stories for Life workshops explore the powerful role that story, myth and metaphor plays in shaping and changing our lives.
Are you aware of how the deeper patterns in stories and myths serve as a blueprint that can shape your whole life? Stories for Life facilitator, Gavin Roberts, knows this only too well and on the workshops tells of how his life was shaped by a story his mother told him as a boy; it was many years later before he realised the significance of the story. Only then did he decide to change the story, which resulted in real and positive changes happening in his life.
The fact is that metaphorical language we hear in stories, whether it be from fairytales we heard as children, books we read or films we watch all influence us unconsciously, setting up inner templates that our brains try to complete in the real world. Language shapes our beliefs which, in time, become our personal narrative that we carry with us through our lives. And the story we tell ourselves further reinforces the unconscious blueprint, shaping our model of reality. We end up living the myth we have been told or what we have heard.
For this reason one of the benefits of attending our workshops is in deepening your understanding of myths and metaphor and then finding ways to change or reframe stories that are no longer serving you; by changing your personal narrative, along with the blueprint, real life changes can be made.
In our workshops we will help you...
We believe that stories also needs witnessing, so the workshops are as much about listening to the stories of other people, and understanding how they inter-connect with our own, as tending/attending to our individual tales and the myths we live our lives by.
What you get from Stories for Life workshops
- If you love the enchanting nature of stories our workshops are for you. You'll have the chance to tell your own favourite stories and hear others tell theirs.
- You will be helped to identify the stories (and the deeper meanings contained within them) that might have shaped your life and whether these stories are still appropriate or need updating.
- You will learn how metaphors and patterns within a story act as a template that the brain tries to complete in the real world. We'll explain exactly how this happens.
- If you have repeating themes and problems in your life our workshop will help you identify the stories that may be contributing to or even causing them. Many peoples' problems are held in place because of an old, out-dated pattern in the unconscious mind.
- If you are going through changes in your life our workshops will help you come to a better understanding of what those changes might mean and how you can deal with those changes in a healthy way by writing a new 'story for life', in effect, setting up a new 'pattern' to follow.
- If you are a psychotherapist, counsellor, hypnotherapist, social worker, teacher or anyone working in the helping professions or the field of education and are interested in finding (new) ways to use stories and metaphor to help your clients or students, our workshops will equip you with new, creative skills, especially 'The Power of Story for Therapists Workshop', which is tailored specifically for professionals who want to know more about myth, metaphor and the use of story-work in therapy and education.
Thus, if you have a professional interest in stories and the use of metaphor or if you want to investigate what stories mean to you on a more personal level, perhaps just as a form of ‘serious play’, then find out about our next workshops here or contact us with any questions you might have. You can also connect with us on our facebook page.
© Copyright Powis and Roberts 2011
