‘The Hero’s Journey’
A Seven-Day Residential Workshop Presented by The Fool’s Dance Gestalt Company – Paul Rebillot School in Ireland.
The ‘Slí an Chroí’ Centre, Kiltegan, Co. Wicklow, July 7th to July 13th, 2013.
THE HERO’S JOURNEY: How do you react when life – or your own imagination – presents you with the possibility (or even the necessity) of living in a very different way? Paul Rebillot’s ‘Hero’s Journey’ workshop could help you to face such a dilemma. The workshop – an exciting group structure combining Gestalt process and groupwork with elements of myth, theatre, ritual, music, art and movement – is, at its core, all about our openness to change and to adventure.
How we respond to change can strongly influence the totality of our lives. Significant change challenges us to move from one level of being to another and such a step into the unknown can call up a strong, painful resistance within us. If our instinctive response is to yield to the resistance – and this becomes habitual – we may end up resisting even those changes which don’t really threaten us at all. As a result our lives can become narrow and restricted – and firmly closed to even the merest possibility of adventure.
Traditional societies used Rites of Passage – overseen by a shaman or ritual master – to ceremonialise, celebrate and guide members of the community on their journey through important life stages such as birth, adulthood, marriage, eldership and death. Importantly, these rituals also taught the initiates that change was part of the normal order of things and showed them ways of dealing with it.
Responding to our society’s need for help in facing change Paul Rebillot drew on his professional skills as actor, director, musician and therapist – and on his personal experience of spiritual and psychological crisis – to develop a rite of passage for our own times, a blueprint for dealing with change and transformation based on the universal monomyth of the Hero’s Journey.
Entering the Hero’s Journey process we come to discover the Hero within us and – having heard a Call to Adventure – we set off with her or him on a journey of personal exploration. Leaving the Home Ground of our every-day life our Heroic self encounters his or her opposite, our inner Demon of Resistance. We experience a confrontation between these two aspects of ourselves, a resolution, and an integration. Returning to everyday reality, we take stock of how this inner transformation has changed our feelings about ourselves, our home, our work, and our beloved – and then explore how the transformation can continue to work in our lives beyond the workshop.
PAUL REBILLOT was born in 1931 in Detroit, Michigan. Following a successful academic and professional career in the performing arts as musician, writer, actor, director and teacher he trained as a Gestalt psychotherapist with Dick Price (an influential early pupil of Fritz Perls) at the Esalen Institute where he also came into contact with the mythologist Joseph Campbell. From these two influences – together with his own uniquely creative insights – Paul developed the ‘Hero’s Journey’, the first of a unique series of therapeutic structures which drew on both his training in Gestalt and on his background in the world of music and theatre. Annually from 1991 to 2008 Paul presented a series of very successful workshops in Ireland, among them ‘The Hero’s Journey’, ‘The Lover’s Journey’, ‘Owning the Shadow’ and ‘Death and Resurrection’. In March 2008, he retired from work in Europe and he died in February 2010.
THE FOOL’S DANCE GESTALT COMPANY – PAUL REBILLOT SCHOOL IN IRELAND is comprised of a group of people in Ireland who have worked for many years with Paul Rebillot, are graduates of his Advanced Training and who came together after Paul’s retirement with the aim of continuing his transformative work in Ireland.
COST: The workshop fee is 630 euros which includes accommodation, full board and all workshop materials. Some bursaries may be available for those whose circumstances would make payment of the full fee impossible.
FURTHER INFORMATION: This workshop is suitable for anyone with an interest in self-exploration or personal development. Although based on the Gestalt approach to psychotherapy no previous experience of Gestalt is required or assumed.
To request a more detailed printed brochure with booking form or for other queries telephone Fergus Lalor 021-4505711 (answering machine) or e-mail to fergus.lalor@nullupcmail.ie
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