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Welcome & Terms of Service

Our practices involve looking at and being intimate with the structures of one’s personal reality, including how we make sense of experience, individually and collectively. Carrying over assumptions from other practices can lead to misunderstandings. Read over the following statements to determine whether or not our practice will be a good fit for you.

Self-Responsibility
We see you as a free agent capable of honest self-assessment and responsible choice. This is an invitation to take responsibility for yourself and your experience, including a willingness to set and maintain appropriate boundaries. By attending our events you take responsibility for your own safety and comfort, choosing to leave the practice or participate in any given moment. 

Not Psychotherapy
We do not follow a therapeutic model of diagnosis and treatment. Our method is educational. Our emphasis is relating. Our facilitators and coaches are guides. Our practices are practices of connection and meditation whose aim is to reveal more presence. We do not prescribe choices or actions. We are not psychotherapists; we do not see you as being in a therapeutic relationship with our facilitators. Participants are welcome to speak and explore developmental intentions such as “getting somewhere,” growing, and evolving, but we do not presume these are the drivers of experience. We work in the present moment, assuming wholeness moving to greater wholeness. 

The Expectations of Leadership
Our facilitators act in service of better relating through bringing more presence to what’s happening in the here and now. This may not follow typical expectations of a “group leader,” such as telling people the “right way” to act or making sure everyone gets along. We include the internal experiences of the leaders as part of the process. We invite you to listen to your own inner direction for leadership, and consider others’ responses as feedback to you in the context of the moment.

Is this Right for You?
Our workshops can be intense. We explore the unknown, the volatile, the ambiguous, as well as welcome emotions many deem as “negative” or “inappropriate” such as feelings of inadequacy, anger, sexuality, and joy. We often explore multiple sides of seeming opposites at once, and believe this can reveal an underlying unity of the immediacy of experience. We see bringing awareness to intense feelings as distinct from acting upon these feelings—we may ask you to pause or leave if we determine certain expressions risk leaving the practice of relational presence.

If the above description of our workshops sounds potentially overwhelming or destabilizing for you, if you have mental illness or significant emotional challenges that you feel may be exacerbated by this type of transformational environment, or if you are not sure that you can be self-directed in taking care of your needs during the event, then we advise you not to enroll. Finally, you must be at least 18 years old to attend.

By participating you acknowledge that you have read and agree to abide by these Terms of Service.



Poetry and Presence Group

Surrender is a lovely word to sing,

just let it ring. It brings I know not what - 

a special something, yes, what is that thing

which rings and sings and as yet still is not? 

 

This April, you are warmly invited to join a six week exploration of Poetry and Presence. 

We will be listening for the ways that poetry can bless and nourish us in the unfoldings of our lives. 

Each session will combine practices of relational mindfulness (Relatefulness) with adventures in the reading and writing of poetry. We will explore new possibilities for how we relate to language, to ourselves and to each other.  

Perhaps our time together will inspire you to find fresh words for expressing love and appreciation to someone in your life (perhaps even, to yourself). Perhaps too you will be moved to write a poem from the perspective of someone you have been in conflict with. As the course unfolds, you may find writing that you do for work enriched by new streams of imagination and creativity. 

The course will run online, for 6 x 2 hour sessions, taking place on Tuesdays. 

  • The course will start on Tuesday 8 April, and run weekly through to Tuesday 13 May.

  • The sessions will take place at 12-2pm US Central Time (6-8pm UK time, 7-9pm Central European Time)

  • Group size is capped at 10.

 

The group is open to all, regardless of your prior experience with either relational mindfulness (Relatefulness) or with the reading and writing of poetry. If you find writing poetry daunting, you are not alone, and you are especially encouraged to attend. You are welcome to write and share poems in a language other than English. 

 

What people are saying about previous Poetry and Presence groups:

  • “Will's poetry sessions were a cauldron of inspiration, surrender and trust. The other participants were wondrous and every session brought more love and magic out of us. I'm infatuated and I want more!” - Elsa May

  • "I enjoyed Will's Poetry & Presence group immensely. It felt like a luxury and a blessing to have two hours of time devoted to creative exploration each week. Will brings a lot of playfulness and heart which creates an inclusive and powerful container.” - Alex

  • “Poetry came alive in the six weeks I spent with this beautiful group. It became so clear that poetry and refined attention are the same thing. I experienced deep connection with the group, but also with my writing, and with my reading. Will's leadership was perfect. He dove into the deep end with us and revealed his own process while holding and guiding the space.” - Shimanto
     


The typical activities in a session will include: 

  • Pair and group exercises for bringing awareness, acceptance and creativity into your connections with other people.

  • Opportunities to listen to, and explore your responses to, carefully chosen poems.

  • Invitations to play with writing and speaking your own words, phrases and poems, and exploring how your creativity can enhance your relationships.

  • Experiments in spontaneously creating poems together, with an invitation to see all relationships as poetic co-creations. 

 

The content covered in our sessions will be determined in large part by the passions and interests of the group that assembles. Some of the themes that have been covered in the past include: 

  • Poetry as self-discovery. Being surprised by the words that you write and say, even as you are describing your own moment-to-moment experiences. What are the new forms of life unfolding in us? How do they want to speak?

  • Poetry as self-compassion. Using poetry as a doorway to understanding and befriending our inner worlds. How might we love the mysteries that we are.

  • Poetry as connection. Getting to know each other through reflecting on how we are moved and inspired by poetry. What are our favourite poems and lines of poetry? What do they touch in us? 

  • Poetry as perspective-taking: Expanding our orientations by writing poetry from the perspectives of other people (especially people we might be in conflict with). What does the world look like to them? How might they express themselves?

  • Tending to our creativity: Feeling the places where we hold ourselves back creatively, and bringing creativity to those places. What are the poems that our fears and insecurities long to give voice to?

 

About the facilitator - 

Will Jefferson is a philosopher, a facilitator and a lover of poetry. He leads Relational Mindfulness (Relatefulness) with The Relateful Company, and offers 1:1 sessions to individuals to develop their skills in mindfulness, communication and creativity. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Oxford, and wrote his dissertation on the moral significance of empathy. His love for poetry was ignited during a month walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route, in which he spent his evenings reading and memorising the 40 poems that friends had given him for the journey. He has a particular love for writing Shakespearean sonnets, one of which can be found below. 



Surrender is a lovely word to sing,

just let it ring. It brings I know not what - 

a special something, yes, what is that thing

which rings and sings and as yet still is not? 

Is it a river that can heal old pain,

a place to disappear and re-emerge 

with happy news of being born again,

invigorated by the bracing surge?

Perhaps, and yet I find myself unsure,

as I remain upon the shore unfound,

if I am ready for this evermore

to carry me from my familiar ground. 

I want an answer - I am listening. 

Surrender is a lovely word to sing.