Wild shamanic theatre and becoming embodied: with Jessica Buckler of the ALEF Trust
May 29, 2024
auto_awesome
Jessica Buckler, a transpersonal psychologist, explores the intersection of shamanic practices and modern science in social prescribing. She discusses embodying nature in a shamanic journey, navigating governance challenges, and the importance of embodied practices for community connection and conscious living.
Integrating spiritual perspectives in activism and social change is crucial for holistic transformation.
ALF Trust emphasizes the blending of inner growth and community development to foster holistic human evolution.
Social prescribing promotes holistic mental health approaches through art, mindfulness, and community engagement.
Deep dives
Jessica Bockler: Bridging Consciousness, Spirituality, and Psychology
Jessica Bockler, a leader in applied theatre and transpersonal psychology, co-founded the ALF Trust, a non-profit dedicated to consciousness studies and social change. She emphasizes the importance of integrating spiritual perspectives into activism and social transformation. Bockler's work focuses on bridging neuropsychology and shamanic practices, exploring the vast intelligence of the interconnected universe.
ALF Trust: Global Learning Provider and Community Developer
The ALF Trust is a global learning provider focusing on consciousness studies, psychology, and personal growth. Their programs blend cross-disciplinary explorations in various fields like ecology, psychology, and spirituality. ALF Trust emphasizes weaving together inner transformation and community development to nurture holistic human transformation.
Social Prescribing: Fostering Well-Being Beyond Medication
Social prescribing advocates for holistic approaches to mental health, beyond medication. Programs like arts on prescription use art, mindfulness, and community engagement to address mental health challenges. By tapping into diverse determinants of mental well-being, social prescribing aims to promote holistic healing and positive states of being.
Creative Practices for Inner Transformation and Social Change
Creative practices like Para Theatre offer a transformative journey towards inner exploration and collective dreaming, transcending the boundaries of conventional theatre. Integrating arts, nature-based practices, and community engagement, these practices help individuals awaken to deeper realities and connect with the wisdom of nature and the collective unconscious.
Building Ecosystems for Transformation and Collective Engagement
Jessica advocates for creating ecosystems for transformation, where individuals can be supported in their inner and collective journeys. These spaces encourage active receptivity, combining self-awareness with action. Through projects like permaculture and inner work, and initiatives like nurturing the fields of change, individuals can anchor themselves in transformative practices and contribute to positive change in the world.
This week's guest, Jessica Bockler is one of those people who sparks every fire in my being - and i hope in yours, too.
Jessica is an applied theatre practitioner and transpersonal psychologist who co-founded the Alef Trust a globally-conscious non-profit organisation offering online graduate education programmes, and open learning courses for people who want really to step into what Indy Johar so beautifully calls the emergent edge of Inter-Becoming. Jessica is integral to the Nurturing the Fields of Change Programme that brings people together from diverse walks of life to create an emerging community of practice around change - and she's Programme Director for the Trust's academic programmes in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology.
She teaches on a range of topics, bringing spiritual perspectives to activism and social change - so you can begin to see why I find her work so enthralling. She stands at that nexus where transpersonal psychology meets shamanic practice, where being and becoming are an art and a practice in themselves, grounded in modern science - not the reductive, Head Mind science of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but twenty-first century science where complexity and systems thinking lie at the heart of all we do, where we recognise that only by becoming fully present in the moment, can we access the whole, vast intelligence of the All That Is and find what is ours to do.
Jessica brings all this into being in social prescribing programmes, in theatre, in change facilitation, in the MSc at Liverpool John Moores University and in her daily life and she shares it in the conversation you're about to hear - including a clip of one of her own practices, that is solid podcasting gold. If you're interested in finding out how we can access our own inner intelligence and build with others to co-create the foundations of that more flourishing future we'd be proud to leave behind, then this is the podcast for you.