The first challenging step in the healing journey begins by asking for help
Illness can be a devastating initiatory journey. Our bodies, the seeming the agent of betrayal, demands we now change or be changed. Our illness leads us deep into a labyrinth of unknown and often frightening challenges. Initially, many people descend into an underworld of confusion and fear, darkness and depression. Like the hero/heroine’s of your own life’s journey, risking life and limb, you must gather your tools and resources to confront the monster known as Disease. Finding the thread that can be your life line back to the life you want is the key to resiliency and health.
Program Description
Through storytelling, gentle activities and interactive tools this life enhancing workshop series explores living with illness from the perspective of a rite of passage, the Journey. Whether over the course of a weekend or as one day per month over the span of five months this program offers tremendous support for you, your loved ones and health practitioners alike.
Healing Illness as a Rite of Passage reframes the deeply personal dilemma of illness out of a medical model of disease that casts people into the very limiting roles of victim and patient. Running in tandem to your allopathic medical regime, your healing process is an active vision quest, an intimate journey that requires individual attention, gentle caring, curiosity and profound nourishment.
The goal of this life-promoting program is to help you regain your personal power and learn to apply it to your specific health needs and over-all well-being. Consider that every rite of passage involves three primary stages:
Separation, Ordeal and Return
1. How does diagnosis initially sever us from the life we once knew?
2. What challenges do we face in our attempt to meet the changes incurred by illness?
3. What and how do we share the hard-won lessons of successfully facing many of our challenges of living with a disease with our wider communities?
Become the change you seek…
Whether as the host of an illness, care-giver or health practitioner Healing Illness as a Rite of Passage supports you to:
· Discover how to navigate the changes illness demands of you and the people in your life
· Learn how to self-advocate
· Claim your personal authority as you heal
· Step into new roles that serve both you and others
· Become a participant researcher in your own healing process
Ultimately, transform your relationship to illness into that of the teacher, the one who guides you to redefine your core values, beliefs and goals -and potentially, help you discover the essence of your life purpose.
Program Objectives
Healing Illness as a Rite of Passage helps you to:
· Practice empathy for yourself and others by honouring the unlived (pre-diagnosed) life, those dreams and goals that now seemed lost as a result of diagnosis
· Refocus and reframe the challenges you face as an on-going process of healing, skill building and wisdom teaching
· Build confidence and develop personal leadership by identifying the skills you learn while facing illness
· Learn how to model the journey of illness and step into a world of life-giving potential. In time, you may become health-promoting guides and leaders, potentially enhancing our culture and society through your own hard-won example.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
For more information contact (250) 653-0036 or email: farmboys@saltspring.com
