Francis Weller | Grieving in Community | Point of Relation Podcast
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- čas přidán 29. 04. 2024
- On Point of Relation this week, Thomas is joined by Francis Weller, MFT - a psychotherapist, soul activist, and author of the bestselling, The Wild Edge of Sorrow. They discuss the need to return to a communal, ritual model of witnessing and processing grief.
Francis explains that grief requires two things: containment, and release, and he shares how a structured grief ritual creates a supportive space where grief can be honored, held, and digested. Francis calls this the “village mind” - a communal field that invites us to let go of our individualistic notions about healing. In this context, we can be reminded of our interconnectedness, opened to transmissions from our ancestors, and more receptive to intuition and creativity.
Francis invites us to see our collective crises as an initiation and grief as a reminder of the depth of our love. By understanding generational trauma, and slowing down to engage in communal practices, we can face these dark times with the courage and creativity needed to step into a radically new world.
✨ Enrollment is open for Thomas’ upcoming live, online course: Navigating the Levels of Trauma Healing.
👉 www.navigatingthelevelsoftrau...
Explore how to work with the impacts of collective crises and challenges, and learn tools to manage anxiety, overwhelm, and nervous system dysregulation during times of accelerated change and disruption. In this all-new curriculum, Thomas and expert guest speakers will engage in ecosystemic practices to collectively explore our resilience, agency, and capacity to stay present and find deeper meaning. Visit the link above for more details.
✨ Order Thomas’ new book, “Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma-And Our World” here:
👉 www.attunedbook.com/
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Francis Weller is a psychotherapist, writer, and soul activist. He is the author of the bestselling, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief; The Threshold Between Loss and Revelation, (with Rashani Réa) and In the Absence of the Ordinary: Essays in a Time of Uncertainty. For forty-one years Francis has worked as a psychotherapist and developed a style he calls soul-centered psychotherapy. His writings have appeared in anthologies and journals exploring the confluence between psyche, nature, and culture.
✨ Connect with Francis here:
👉 www.francisweller.net
Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change, integrating the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since the early 2000s, he has led large-scale events and courses on the healing of collective trauma.
In addition to Attuned, he is the author of Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. He has served as an advisor and guest faculty for universities and organizations, as a coach for CEOs and organizational leaders, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University.
✨ Connect with Thomas here:
Website: thomashuebl.com/
Facebook: / thomas.huebl.sangha
Instagram: / thomashuebl
Twitter: / thomashuebl
CZcams: / @thomashuebl
Thank-you for sharing.
Such an enlivening, "ensouling" teaching/ conversation. Thank you both. 🙏❤️
"This is what I've been longing for." Danke.
Thank you for opening this space.
Such a powerful and beautiful conversation thank you so much the two of you for sharing your wisdom, love and compassionate hearts.
What a deeply beautiful, nourishing and illuminated session. Thankyou both ! There is so much Healing and Wisdom and Poetry in this.
thank you for this fresh fruit full sharing .... an truly deep blessing
This is a wonderful validation of my own trajectory and life purpose. I've begun co-hosting gatherings to explore wailing together. Using our voices to express the love/grief as wailing feels so healing. And whether it's with people or with trees or water or animals, or God, it feels like having company is so necessary for it to flow.
My wailing gatherings are inspired greatly by reading and listening to Malidoma Somé, from Burkina Faso, and what he describes about grief rituals is very similar to how Francis describes his rituals. I kept waiting for him to say Malidoma's name. Maybe Francis was inspired by someone else or some other lineage, but the similarities to what Malidoma describes are so striking.
"The Healing Wisdom of Africa" is one of Malidoma's books where he writes about grief rituals. And he did grief rituals with Robert Bly at Robert's Men's Conferences, along with other indigenous men like Martín Prechtel, who also talks and writes a lot about indigenous ways of grieving, and whose language is also echoed in Francis's poetic descriptions.
I especially love Francis's description of the soul. It landed in me deeply.
Francis spent months living and studying with Malidoma Somé in his village, so yes, you picked that up correctly. Wonderful work you are doing! ❤
This was so touching 🙏🏼💚 thanks to both of you!
A true gift to listen to two beings who have dedicated so many decades to accompanying, ritualizing and integrating pain. May your lives, work and networks continue to expand. Please accept my gratitude and admiration.
Touched! Brilliant wisdom by Weller.
Fellows ThankU whoa enigmatic. I'm 70, never expected to get this old. At 26 i had the stunning experience of a mentor/lover dying suddenly from alcoholism. First encounter with death. I can vouch for the importance of ritual. A funeral: a group of friends meet to agree to accept the unacceptable. Most agemates could not deal with me. I became comfortable with solitude rather than remedy their discomfort. Strange to say, her spirit, her ghost, visited me. I grew up atheist, scientific, no way i could accept this other worldly presence. But i grew to, now believing that what some call the supernatural actually is all natural. Not that i'm particularly talented in that area. Although such encounters occur often. We all have the capacity. I feel my soul was torn open to experience that, what Francis called rough initiation. I loved what he said soul vs spirit. Reminded me of my acupuncturist explaining traditional Chinese medicine distinguishes 5 souls. I only remember 2: "shen", and "po". I was a dancer, and believe in the Arts, especially song, music. Grieve creatively!!! Re amnesia,... ahem. At age 48, i began the process of amnesia lifting, buried memories emerging, only possible after 5 years abstinent from booze. The language does not communicate how shocking that is. Apart from the horror of trauma, there's the secondary trauma of realizing i could not trust my perceptions. And that's just idiopathic amnesia. The collective amnesia Francis describes is frankly terrifying, the process of coming out of that may well be too too unacceptable for the masses. Clinicians know to gently bring a hypnotized person out of a trance. For the masses? How's that gonna work
I don't know how it's going to work "for the masses." Perhaps it's not going to "work." Perhaps that's what Francis is referring to by calling our trajectory "the long dark." Regardless, all I can do is my own part that shows up in me to be done, and I wail a lot. Regularly, about all sorts of things. Now I've begun co-hosting gatherings to explore wailing with other people. Lots of people coming out of the woodwork wanting to do this. Like Francis says, the desire/urge seems to be growing in our society.
The more I deepen into my own body's grief, and let it become liquid, the more I connect to my "dead" parents and the rest of my ancestors, and feel them feeling along with me, the things they didn't/couldn't feel while they were here in a body. It feels like such an honor and such a useful thing to be doing.
Connecting with others, wherever I find them, like here, helps me feel like we are a force to be reckoned with.
Beautiful, soulful conversation that I needed to listen to, thank you both! 🙏
Thank you for addressing this, when my Mama passed, I had to be strong for my family. I missed the grieving. Not sure how to go forward.
Sounds like you are in the thick of it. Grieve creatively. Try everything. Your Mama would not want you to pine, or feel guilty, or whatever have you.
Thank you so much for this.
Grief is so hard
The descent is the way of the dying Patriarchal culture; it is not the same for the emerging culture.