What does a Journey To Authenticity Workshop look like?

This is the second part of our recent post ‘What happens at a Journey To Authenticity workshop?’

Day 2 of the Journey To Authenticity workshop last June commenced with another Mandala. It was amazing to see how the mandala activity helped the participants to describe what their biggest obstacles to being authentic are. I was equally impressed to see how much they were able to identify their own unique way of overcoming those obstacles. When it comes to living our life from a place of authenticity, we often prefer to seek answers and validation from outside of ourselves, which in most cases doesn’t provide us with a favourable outcome. We have developed the habit of valuing other people’s opinions and the opinions of perceived authorities over our own intuition and inner guidance. The main reason this doesn’t work, is because we are not relying on our own intuition and inner guidance system to find the answers. Another common reason is that we are afraid of what our intuition is telling us, we fear that it might be right and we also fear the vulnerability that comes with challenging our own comfortable beliefs and habits.

Your intuition is like a muscle, it gets stronger the more you use it. Doing Mandalas is one way to strengthen your connection with your intuition and inner guidance.

The Emotional Message Chart

Next, we journeyed into the mine field of our emotions with the emotional message chart. Talking about our emotions can be uncomfortable at the best of times, but without sharing our personal truths, our emotions will continue to give us uncomfortable feedback until we can honour what they are trying to point out to us. The emotional message chart gives us a four step process to release our emotions and experience emotional freedom.

Part of the process is for the participants to feel the emotion in its purest form. In my discussion with the participants we talked about how crucial this part is, as it is often more common for us to supress, deny or avoid our emotions all together. When we supress emotions they build pressure like blocked flowing water. You can temporarily supress the emotion by holding it in, but like water it will continue to build pressure and seek expression until it eventually does. Supressing emotions causes the emotions to intensify and when they intensify they are much more debilitating to our wellbeing. Another by-product of suppressing our emotions is, that we become numb to them. The biggest problem with becoming numb to our negative emotions is, that we also become numb to all the positive emotions that we feel like joy and gratitude. By feeling the emotion in its purest form, we are honouring it and the important information it holds for us.

Each emotion contained within it an important message about why it is there. Here are some of the emotions we addressed and the messages they can often hold for us:

Anger

When we feel anger the message is often related to someone who has violated our mental, emotional or physical boundaries. Often times, they can do this unconsciously by getting you to bend to their will.

Fear

When we feel fear the message is often an intuitive focused awareness of an external threat. Fear is natures warning system and it is there to keep us safe.

Vulnerability

When we feel vulnerability, the message is usually related to someone or something threatening out treasured belief systems and comfortable habits.

Once the participants consciously registered the message behind their emotion it often diminished as it had served its purpose. This allowed the participants to change something in response to the information that their emotions were providing. Which was the action step that involved the participants having the courage to feel and the willingness to act on those feelings. I took the time to explain to the participants that taking action can be the part that holds us back from reaping the rewards of our emotional courage.

Here is one simple example that I like to use in workshops to explain the importance of this part of the process:

You might be feeling anger over the way someone is treating you and the message around that anger might be that this person is violating your boundaries. The action that is necessary is setting boundaries with this person, but you may fear the emotional consequences of this action so you hesitate, avoid or put off taking action. By not taking action you are ignoring the wisdom of your anger in favour of keeping the other person happy. You might keep the other person happy, but you have compromised your own authenticity to do so. Acting on the wisdom of your emotions is the highest form of emotional courage and it leads to true emotional freedom and authenticity. 

Last but not least is to go back to grazing, which means that once you have dissolved the issue you can release it, restore balance and rest. When a horse goes back to grazing they are emotionally safe and at ease within themselves.

Reflective Round Pen

After lunch, the participants experienced a reflective round pen session, which was all about experiencing their hearts desire with one of the horses. Reflective round pen sessions direct the participants to access the wisdom of the heart and allow their hearts agenda to direct their actions and decisions.

It was amazing to see the powerful guidance that each participant received from their reflective session with the horses. It once again proved to me the significance of allowing the wisdom of your heart to guide your life. So often, it is when we ignore this innate inner guidance that we move away from our authenticity and personal truths. Our heart holds the truth about who we are and how we feel and when we embrace this truth and live from this place magical things happen. The horses did an amazing job of nurturing the participants in their process of experiencing their hearts desire.

Embodying the Goal 

As a fun last activity, the participants got to experience embodying the goal as a group. Embodying the goal is a fun leadership based activity where the participants have to achieve a set goal involving the horse. The goal of the activity was to get the participants to demonstrate their communication skills and use of motivational energy to have the horse perform the desired goal. They were able to work very well as team and they managed to embody the goal they set with the horse. Everyone had fun and it was a great way to finish the day.

As the workshop came to an end, we were all very grateful for the whole experience and excited about the possibilities of what this experience represents for the future. For me, the greatest realisation was that although our journeys are all unique, on a deeper level, we are all seeking to be loved for our own uniqueness. When we have courage to step into our authenticity we unconsciously give permission to other people to do the same. I would like to thank the participants for having the courage to step into their authenticity, I feel grateful to have shared this experience with them.

Our next Journey To Authenticity workshop is coming up in September. There are only a few spaces left. To book in click here.