From the opening meditation and visualization, gently reminding and inviting us how to simply be present in the moment and allow life to flow towards us, Kim Barta and Terri O’Fallon created a powerful container. With a deep understanding of the developmental cycle, their morning and afternoon workshops were designed to help information arrive fully and rapidly begin to integrate into the participants.
Honoring the action cycles of receptive, active, reciprocal, and interpenetrative, participants were invited to listen from a place of receptivity, actively speak into the space, reciprocally experiment with the information in group games, and collectively build a field where words and concepts really seemed to penetrate into and reprogram habitual ways of being.
The morning workshop was titled Exploring Shadow Developing Soul. We were invited to listen from a place of non-judgment and non-efforting, simply allowing the sea of information to flow towards us. We gained powerful insights into relieving tensions (shadows) that allow us to step more fully into our open expression of soul being.
One of the most intriguing questions we reflected upon, after an exercise in which we were asked to stroke the hand of a fellow participant and experience what parts of ourselves were hardest to open, “What is the positive intent of the part of our self that was limiting our experience of receptivity?” By honoring the good in our limitations, we were penetrated by the sense that all of us is here to serve and we can consciously design how that happens.
One participant gave us the gift of witnessing what we were learning in real-time when they complained that the cameras were bothering them. Kim invited us to recognize the choice and power we have in our experience of environments that may be triggering or even feel hostile. “One option is to try to control the environment,” he said. “The other option is to change how we respond.”
The afternoon workshop was titled Developmental Parenting: Raising a Child Raises You, however, the powerful content delivered informed well beyond parent-child relationship into how to consciously develop and enhance just about any relationship. The relevancy of information shared had an easily felt impact upon all individuals in the room. Together we journeyed from Achiever to Strategist, learning how to move from striving to witnessing and learning to have large impacts on complex systems with little effort. We all walked away feeling lighter and more empowered as persons and systems-influencers.
Find out more about the work of Terri & Kim at: www.developmentallifedesign.com
