A Ritual for Grief
Adam will be a guest facilitator on this event led by Kathryn Edwards and John Scaife, who were given this ritual directly by Malidoma Somé.
In their words:
Thanks to the generous loan of a beautiful, ancient Sussex barn, nestled in the forests of the South Downs, we are offering a more spacious opportunity to shed burdens of grief and reconnect with joy!
This weekend event is an extended version of our established one-day grief ritual. This spacious version allows more ‘breathing space’ for existing elements, including the chance to explore and deepen our ancestral relationships. Working with ancestors is a crucial dimension of the teachings we received from Malidoma Somé, who gave us this ritual.
We will also explore ways to expand our repertoires of movement and physical expression, discovering how to release deeply-buried grief that may have become frozen into stuckness. In working with embodied expression we are joined in this pioneering joint-venture by Adam Barley (see bio below).
Most of all we will have more opportunity to be with our grief in ritual space, in the village and at the shrines, allowing us to move in and out of the moods and phases of grieving that arise naturally in these encounters.
WHAT IS A GRIEF RITUAL?
Too often we carry our griefs alone. This Grief Ritual offers a sacred, communal space to honour loss, release sorrow, and reconnect with joy. We gather as a community to witness and support one another.
Grief is a natural response to loss. The more we love and value someone or something, the deeper we feel the loss. Most of us these days have not experienced the power of being supported in ritual, rather than just weeping alone.
“People need to grieve but have no culture in which to really do it.” Martín Prechtel
We struggle with all sorts of griefs, big and small – bereavements, broken relationships, lost dreams and hopes, loss of land and place, climate grief, health crises, and ancestral grief we’re carrying for our forebears, sometimes unbeknownst to us. Life can be hard in all sorts of ways, and often it is our unaddressed grief that sits on top of everything, making us low, numb, and even angry, or just taking the shine off things.
It’s astonishing how much can change very quickly; all you need is a willingness to step in. Here’s a comment from a participant ………
……I came away feeling that I had just done something that was very healthy, for me as an individual and for the group that took part, and in some way that I don’t understand for the wider world, too. An individual and a social healing at the same time…….
The active expression of grief can soften it and move it along. This perspective can feel counterintuitive to us if we have been brought up to view the suppression of emotion as ‘being strong’. Scientific studies are now showing that in shedding tears we excrete stress hormones, release mood-boosting hormones, and even relieve emotional and physical pain, all of which serves to restore us to improved physical and mental health.
It’s likely that all cultures have had functional grief practices – and some still retain them. One such are the Dagara people of West Africa, whose elders sent the remarkable teacher, Dr Malidoma Somé, to share their indigenous knowledge as a healing gift for us modern folk.
This profound Grief Ritual works not only on the level of psychological and emotional need, but also engages deeply with the world of Spirit – the flow of natural energies of which we are a part. This gives it profound healing power beyond the mundane. The effects can flow beyond us as individuals, as we honour our ancestors and help to put old ghosts to rest. By bringing us into greater harmony and balance, and restoring connection and flow within our ancestral lines, it brings healing to our whole world.
For more information see www.ritualsforgrief.org
