FiRE:
FiRE is experiential
Discovering FiRE
I am not a serial 'course attendee'. I have degrees in physics and in law. I have a wealth of life and world experience. All that is to say, I have a wealth of life resources and nonetheless, this course changed my life, or better yet, enabled me to change my life in ways I had not otherwise been able to achieve. I am very grateful that I was given and took the opportunity to grow in these ways..
Gay M.
"Terrific!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Especially the follow-up letters with all the resources. It meant that I could relax and not have to write down everything. I'm still working through them now and 1 link leads to another, which is great. Also the invitations were very welcoming and a way of moving into the weekend. I’ve just had another look at the website and I really like it. No need to improve."
Facilitator, Mark Skelding, has been teaching psychosynthesis and leading groups in Aotearoa/New Zealand for over 10 years.
FiRE offers insights and tools to enable greater sense of participation in the new story
Experiential processes, simple reflective exercises, and the power of connection with self, group and place support participants to recognize and direct their personal connection within principles that shape us and our communities, society and planet.
FiRE offers processes which are useful both in terms of personal development, and also as tools for anyone working in governance, healing or social change settings.
For activists, FiRE offers comfort, space and tools to deepen compassion for self and others.
For those feeling like uncertain or powerless bystanders in a confusing global train wreck, FiRE offers energy and clarity.
For helping professionals, FiRE clears the way for fresh approaches to familiar client or organizational issues and concerns.
For those dissatisfied by superficial reductionism or suspicious of the ungrounded claims about individual responsibility, FiRE solidly links personal purpose and interconnected soul-making with the human and "more than human" community.
For the hopeful, FiRE offers an integration of body, spirit, mind, myth, science and action, opening new possibilities for creativity and direction.
Who Does FiRE Serve?
FiRE is thoughtful
FiRE is soulful
FiRE draws on current social ecology research, radical ecopsychological methods, systems thinking, insights from deep ecology, and the long-established tradition of psychosynthesis.
Participants will recieve contextualising material, complete with theoretical overview, possible exercises, and reading/viewing links after the weekend to enable them to further their exploration if they wish.
There will also be opportunities for local and online link ups
FiRE draws from various transpersonal traditions,
significantly psychosynthesis, and invites us to dare to see ourselves as "spiritual activists"
Experiential processes, simple reflective exercises, and the power of connection with self, group and place support participants to recognize and direct their personal connection within principles that shape us and our communities, society and planet.
FiRE combines ecological awareness
- so powerfully emergent; so necessary worldwide -
with psychosynthesis
- a gentle yet profound psycho-spiritual psychology -
to explore what "ecologian" Thomas Berry calls the new story: "the great dream of the Earth". We find this dream at the heart of Canadian experience and expression.
His background, as counsellor, therapist and facilitator is informed by his earlier working life in both arts and environmental communications. He has been a long-time participant in Heart Politics, a social change-maker community. He has a private practice in Auckland, Thames and via Skype. All of this has come together in his developing and facilitating the Self and World ecopsychological programmes.
Mark has recently completed a Masters in Social Ecology & Education with University of Western Sydney. He is active in his local community, participating in aspects of local government, and is convenor of T3-TransitionTownThames, a local resilience group. He was delighted to be invited to participate in a panel as part of Gabriola Island's The Haven 2016 Leadership Summit.