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METAGEUM '07
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Workshop
Book now for whole or part of the Metageum event. |
About Dr Katie Birch, PhD
Katie has a strong commitment to the oral tradition and has been a story teller most of her life. It began by listening to her grandmother’s stories about nature and animals during long walks in the Northumbrian countryside and whilst helping with the cooking.
During her nursing career, on night duty, she would listen to the stories of the patient’s lives that they felt safe disclosing in the dimly lit ward with other patients asleep. Patients that were very ill and dying would sometimes ask for stories to help them manage their pain or to leave this life.
Then the most precious of all -- telling bedtime stories to her children and stories to her grandchildren. How delightful when they said "I want to tell you a story now".
This relatively informal experience led to curiosity about story telling in general and how it could be used in a more aware and structured way at work.
Katie has worked in the fields of health, education, counselling and psychotherapy and business. In each of these areas she has found storytelling an invaluable aspect of her work. Her research for her PhD was the exploration of beliefs and values in various aspects of people’s lives resulting in a theoretical model about ageism and learning. This furthered her learning about the stories that people express about their lives, how they manage their environments through these stories, and the courage that they so often needed to share the stories.
Her exploration led her to see the links with shamanism in the magical stories, the stories about shape shifting and travel to other worlds. To explore this further she spent time with an Elder of the Sioux tribe who was also a Shaman, learning about shamanistic practices. He also worked with Katie in organisations using storytelling to build empowerment through the understanding of myth and metaphor. Katie invented, with colleagues, the Lifeforce Process which is an integrated audit based on metaphor which measures motivation and energy levels in organisations. It enables the release of individual and collective stories showing how people feel about being in the organisation and how they are managed. It is the only one of its kind and considers physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects.
Katie is a social psychologist and currently works both with individuals and organisations as a story teller, mentor, counsellor and developmental consultant. Since coming to live in Malta eleven years ago she has become deeply interested in the megalithic temples and the relationship that they could have to our lives today.
About Ray Taylor
Ray Taylor B.A. (Hons), M.A. Management Learning, is a Director of Changing Landscapes: Mind and Body in Business.
Focus of Interest and Experience:
- Interpersonal and Intrapersonal communication
- Leadership and Team development
- Executive Development: one-on-one and team coaching
- Cultural awareness and how it impacts on individual performance using Energy Profiling®
- Organizational change programmes
- Developing Trainers and Facilitators - programme design and delivery
- Working with Hawaiian Shamanisim - HUNA - learned during several visits to the state
Background:
- Twenty years international experience in people and business development in a range of industry sectors - particularly in retail, leisure and professional services
- Fifteen years studying and working in complementary health - as a teacher and practitioner
- Master NLP Practitioner
- Reiki and Tera-Mai Seichem Master
- Bilingual French speaker
Ray combines his knowledge and experience of Western and Eastern approaches to people development to offer stimulating, challenging and enjoyable approaches to personal and professional development. He has a zest for life and a curiosity to learn - keen to share his knowledge and experience and help people to discover their own talents and potential to change
At Metageum '07: Outline of the workshop
Stories have always been a powerful way of communicating, and whenever people come together stories are told and have been since time immemorial. A key aspect of storytelling is the metaphor, as this is how we engage the subconscious and how the ‘aha’ can take place. We learn through our ability to make connections with the metaphors and the importance of this is that when the subconscious is activated, material enters the mind with no resistance. A story is a metaphor when the listeners can relate to it and draw a parallel between the action in it and their own lives.
The purpose of this workshop is to draw on the experiences of your week, especially the visit to the temples, and elicit the hidden stories that you perceive from them. In this way you can explore how you can influence your own future lives as a result of your experiences in the temples. The workshop will begin with a story telling circle to enable you to make connections with the story, open up your imagination and make connections with what the story evokes. There will then be activities to allow you to reflect on what stories you felt were around the temples and what that means for the stories of your own life. This will include using a relaxation technique to help access intuitive information, and sensory techniques.
Questions you may be asking could include
- What have I gained that alters my story now and in the future?
- How do I want to tell my story?
- Who do I want to tell it to?
- How does it look, sound and feel?
In this way your inner world becomes reflected in the outer story and the collective energy of the group becomes raised by the tellers and the listeners. With this raised energy you will be offered techniques to help you clarify and build your story and then share as much of that as you want with the group. There are many different ways that you may want to include in the way that you tell your stories by sound, by drawing, by using symbols, with dance and the use of drums. This will be a harvest of stories from the week visiting the temples in Malta and you will take these new stories in your heart to Gigantija , and so the story telling journey continues.
Dr Katie Birch and Ray Taylor
13th June 2007