Death of the People Pleaser

The five weeks

Each live session opens with a welcome and orientation — a time to land in the space as you are — and closes with integration.

1. 01

   Week 1

   Noticing our patterns of survival

   We will take some time with gentle inquiries to notice how the people pleaser may have formed certain patterns of behaviour, quite possibly to keep others happy, or to not rock or challenge the status quo in any way.

   We will explore the practice of

   • Breath attention and breath awareness, to start building a caring relationship with our body/mind/spirit
   • VIMBAS exploration (created by Resmaa Menakem), to connect with our felt sense and body communication
   • Expressive movement and voice practice, to encourage our being to tap into play
   • Time for creative free writing and art — allow what is coming through to emerge on paper
2. 02

   Week 2

   Anchoring safety

   We will be exploring safety in the body and energy field this session. I will give a short talk on boundaries and how they can serve us in a non hyper-individualistic way.

   Boundaries are absolutely needed in some life cases and situations; every person’s and people’s experience and context is unique. But white supremacy culture and western psychology heavily promote and breed individualism, and in a lot of places this leaves people disconnected and isolated from a caring community. The knock-on effect of this plays out through perfectionism, control, and having to go along with competition instead of cooperation.

   Building safety from the inside, we are able to stay in connection with one another, and our sensitivity becomes power instead of a hindrance. Here is where we get to build our capacity to feel a deeper connection with one another and with life. From the independent one to inter-dependent.

   We will then explore

   • A somatic practice of what safety and unsafety feel like in the body. This builds a more resilient and flexible nervous system, which in turn helps us move back into our centre more swiftly during and after meeting unsafety in the world
   • Expressive movement and voice to reclaim our trust in ourselves as we connect to our innate essence. When we open the body to our inner instruments, our unique vibrations, we start piecing together our inner orchestra for a richer inner world
   • A short Conscious Connected Breathwork (15 mins) — a visceral exploration
3. 03

   Week 3

   Permission slip

   This session is all about giving ourselves the permission to feel our anger, healthy aggression, frustration and resentment.

   The systems at play like to keep us disconnected from our power, our intuition, our creative life force; for this to happen we dampen down, swallow down, push aside or numb ourselves. We accept that these fiery aspects need to be accessible to enable our fierce strength — a strength to lean into throughout our lives. Encouraging the awakening of the fires within, we get to unlock what may have been repressed.

   We will inquire through

   • Breath of your rhythm, to practise agency in the body
   • Expressive movement and voice, to enliven what is wanting and needing to be felt, to be heard, to be witnessed
   • A Conscious Connected Breathwork for the body and inner insight to work its magic
4. 04

   Week 4

   Alchemise

   This week we alchemise any shame we might be carrying for feeling our very human anger, healthy aggression, frustration and resentment.

   For People Pleasers who have started to question and are on their way to a metaphorical death: when we start standing and speaking up for ourselves — asserting our needs, voicing our values, opinions and ideas — some people will not be used to that dynamic. But it is a shift we courageously need to take.

   We alchemise Shame into Strength! A footing on the earth we get to feel part of, without leaving any parts of ourselves behind or shut away.

   We will bring in and practise loving care with

   • A guided visual somatic inquiry to give space for the alchemisation to happen
   • Expressive movement and voice to support what is moving, dissolving, transforming
   • A Conscious Connected Breathwork to breathe with compassion for our humanness. When we are tender and gentle with ourselves, that’s when the embodiment of the inner work reaches a deeper level

   Stay gentle, stay strong!

5. 05

   Week 5

   The Funeral

   We will gather in ceremony to celebrate the death of the People Pleaser. Feel free to dress up in your celebration attire! Come as wacky, quirky, flamboyant or as simple as you want.

   Marking this moment in time with ritual, we will adventure into

   • Some moments of reflection
   • A playful expressive movement underneath the disco ball, and some voice vibration exercises
   • The Conscious Connected Breath as a send-off — a gift to the earth and sky, to bury our people pleasers together

   Into a sealing practice to close the course.