07 Apr EMBRACING GRIEF – MEDICINE FESTIVAL
Wednesday 12th – Monday 17th August 2024 – Friday 14th 15:45 – 17:45 in The Haven & Saturday 15th in The Sacred Glade, 10.00 – 12.00 In Person with Bilal Nasim, Sophy Banks, Sarah and Tony Pletts, & Aama Sade Plus Support ~
We are delighted to be back at the Medicine festival where we will be offering two ceremonies, one in The Haven for around 120 participants and one outdoors in The Sacred Glade for an unlimited number of people (both much as we did in 2024). Being in a conscious festival space allows us to work quickly and safely around creating community with expanded numbers so we can offer a unique opportunity to experience mass communal grieving.
The Medicine Festival is held in beautiful countryside near Aldermaston, just outside the M25. Medicine is about interweaving communities and bridging cultures – wisdom keepers, indigenous communities visionaries, artists, and solutionaries of all traditions to inspire and ignite a deeper understanding of how we can tread lightly, and live harmoniously as we support each other in the creation of the world we want to see – an equitable and thriving world. https://medicinefestival.com/
Our event in The Haven is inside a structure that comfortably holds 120 participants, while The Sacred Glade, Medicine’s beating heart, allows us the possibility to expand into the wild. Grieving in nature is a special experience. Little else can provide the beauty, the mystery, and the holding that nature can offer, when connected to with reciprocity and intention. For many traditional cultures, grief work is nature connection, and Medicine represents another stream of our Embracing Grief events. We will grieve as a community, with the support of the land. We offer permission to open our hearts and express what’s true, held by each other and the nature around us. It’s a chance for our grief to be welcomed, to connect authentically to ourselves and each other, and to remember our closeness to the more-than-human world.
Both events free to festival ticket holders.
“There are two things that can receive our grief – shrines and nature” – Malidoma Somé
~ Why Grief? ~
We live in a world that is soaked in grief and yet when it comes knocking on our door we are usually expected to deal with it on our own. ‘Keep calm and carry on’, we are told. Shut it out – close it down – keep it to yourself.
With this work we build on a very different foundation, one that values grief as a great teacher. Each person’s grief process is unique, a response to a wide range of life experiences, not just bereavement. Sadness, rage, anxiety, hopelessness, betrayal, shame and numbness, and gratitude are just a few of its manifestations.
Giving space to connect with our grief, both through personal expression and in witnessing others, can be a healing and life affirming experience, often provoking relief, laughter and tears.
Step gently with us into the wild waters of emotion, and welcome-in life.
The facilitation team will offer a step-by-step series of guided exercises and rituals to build trust, connect with grief, and return to stillness. We will invite the land to be a resource, exploring our relationship with nature as a way to both connect with and integrate our grief.
Grief tending offers grief support without trying to fix anything.
Grief is a natural response to difficult things happening, and we welcome grief related to any experience and theme. This may include a whole spectrum of feelings such as sadness, anxiety, depression, anger, numbness and overwhelm. You may be dealing with something that happened in the past, a current situation, or something that you fear happening in the future.
We offer a guided journey through this landscape, whether your experiences of grief are personal, collective or ancestral. We offer tools to discover and express our own unique responses, together in a group. People are free to bring challenging themes and strong expressions of emotion.
This workshop is for you if you want to feel more alive.
Working skilfully with our grief can often create space in our hearts for something else, and widen our range of feeling, including our capacity for joy, pleasure and aliveness. Developing a grief practice based on what you’ll learn here can be a beautiful way to stay connected to your inner source of guidance. We give thanks to our teachers before us, Sophy Banks and Jeremy Thres, and their teachers before them.
To see more about what happens in a Grief Tending workshop, and the practice of Grief Tending for grief support, there are a series of short animated videos HERE.
If you have any questions, please email bilal.nasim@myceliumgroup.co
~ Is this for me? ~
All sources of grief are welcome, none prioritised or excluded. Some might find grief right there on the surface, ready to be expressed, while others may take the time to connect with grief that feels stuck and difficult to access.
Whether you are recovering from change, loss or separation, trying to process past experiences, or you experience disconnection from feeling, you are welcome. People may bring challenging themes and strong expressions of emotion.
The workshop may not be suitable for those with severe depression or mental health problems, or those feeling particularly fragile, alone or unsupported. We’re available to discuss this with you if you are unsure whether this workshop is right for you at the moment, so please don’t hesitate to contact Bilal ( bilal.nasim@myceliumgroup.co).
Short videos that show what happens in a Grief Tending workshop and other questions here.
ABOUT YOUR FACILITATORS
Bilal Nasim (www.bilalnasim.com) is a facilitator, trainer and artist exploring what it means to be alive and our relationship with death. Having apprenticed to grief under the tutelage of Sophy Banks and Jeremy Thres, he has been holding grief-spaces since 2018. Bilal hosts workshops on confronting death, Death Cafe’s, is training as a death doula with Red Tent End Of Life Doulas, and is a mental resilience specialist with Mycelium Group.
Sophy Banks
Sarah Pletts. Inspired by my own journey with loss, I discovered Grief Tending. Now an experienced facilitator, I have had the honour of hundreds of hours sitting with people finding their way with grief. Through this practice I have been able to use my own experience of chronic illness in working with the body. I bring many years in deep relationship, using embodied consent practices to explore open-hearted connection. As a care-giver over many years, I have learned the importance of kindness and boundaries. And as an artist-maker I design experiences and create beauty through ritual. I regularly co-facilitate with partner Tony Pletts, as well as Bilal Nasim, Sophy Banks and others. I live in Hackney with chosen family and friendly squirrels. (www.loveandloss.co.uk).
Tony Pletts founded his art direction and construction company Einstein’s Octopus in 1987, a flexible business that’s allowed him to pursue other creative paths. Tony’s made radio programmes for BBC Radio 4 (his North Korean mini series was nominated for a SONY) and has just finished his first book, Love To The Power Of Three. Tony is also a trustee of the charity WAYout arts that works with disadvantaged street youth in Sierra Leone where has taught both in person and online. A rich and varied life has frequently exposed Tony to the teachings of grief and he started facilitating grief workshops with Sarah in 2019 (https://www.loveandloss.co.uk).
AamaSade a gifted celebrant and facilitator will be part of the team. See more about her work here https://treecircleceremonies.co.uk/
Embracing Grief Ethics Statement:
FEEDBACK
“It was such a heart soothing and soul-enriching experience to participate in the space you created. I felt so utterly welcomed, free to bring whatever was alive in me, and never pressured to be anywhere I wasn’t. I had moments of feeling a huge resistance in myself, and was allowed to dance with that and invite what was hiding underneath. The threads that you wove to create our container felt so gently, lovingly and intentionally woven, held with both sincerity and lightness.” – Anon
“Thanks so much for creating a space of support and love. I felt safe at all times and the suggestions to move off screen or turn off the camera meant that I felt I wasn’t stuck to a box on screen. All the facilitators held space for each person and guided it when needed.” – Liselott