Developing new ways to use our body-mind
Learning old ways.
Combining them. Transmuting.
You can engage by reading some activities/spells and playing with them, or if you’re in the Edinburgh area, come join a workshop, no big commitment or cost.
My first contribution is:
Fae and the Possessed,
a Participatory Theatre-Ritual Workshop.
Its games of imagination and embodiment, its harnessing your attention, cultivating energy, and directing your willpower. Its playing like kids do, its wordless communication and free association. Spontaneity and structure.
Taking inspiration from theatre practice, cognitive science, Buddhist, Taoist, Hermetic, Shamanic, therapeutic methods of consciousness raising, and unconsciousness hacking through the language of symbols.
Using participatory theatre workshops as a vehicle to access scientific and esoteric practices through practical exercises, in a welcoming space that meets you at whatever point of life you find yourself.
I’ve struggled a lot with low energy and executive dysfunction, causing negative thinking patterns and horrible procrastination, but when I’m creating, instead of consuming, it gets better. So I’ve been working on this idea, a workshop making instant creative action accessible, active culture, for anyone who’s interested in growing through imaginative play. Especially if you don’t see yourself as imaginative or confident. It’s called participatory theatre, but there’s no audience, just a group in a room, and it’s not about doing improv, in fact through most of the workshop we don’t talk.
So what makes it theatre? Well, we get the benefit of rehearsing actions, exploring different ways of being, and having moments of alive connection with ourselves and each other, and the structure is all to serve you, the doer. The stage in participatory theatre is the inner world. the ritual part, to me means the workshop flows as one whole experience, rather than separate exercises, it can be played as a game or treated like a journey.
I’m inspired by shamans and spiritual practice, as well as cognitive science and arts based therapies, and so this workshop exists to hold some ancient wisdom within practical activities and bridge the gap between academic or religious dogma, and actual people’s lives.
A central aim of my practice, and a way to categorise the benefit of engagement, is the facilitation of two types of behaviour –
Fae
which involves embodied open reactive and playful presence.
Possessed
which involves sustained attention and directed energetic flow.
Beyond this, there’s a whole world to be explored. Paratheatrical events are coming. Relating to nature ourselves and eachother as one. Its a trip.
