And international training course ´Stories for Life: Deep Listening Skills for Embracing Cultural Diversity´ took place at the ASHA Centre, Forest of Dean, Flaxley in UK between 6th - 15th December 2022.
The ASHA Center stands on three pillars: interfaith dialogue, sustainability, and the arts. We touched a lot on folk art here and how we can carry it forward and draw from it today. This is all based on community coexistence and in three phases: separation, transition and return.
The whole program dealt with storytelling as a tool of personal power. The possibility of seeing and being seen. The possibility of hearing and being heard. As a tool of public or private performance, which aims not only to make a show, but above all to convince and transmit values and to develop. Storytelling was seen as a return to a sense of belonging, to its purposeful use, to its application in the reality of today. As a way to let the story flow through the mouth and body of the storyteller in its own way, as a source of inspiration and knowledge in every situation. Emphasizing its effect of connecting people and motivating them to meet, an opportunity for intimate sharing of the moment and mutual understanding between the storyteller and the listener. As a source of medicine that the old myths contain.
In order to tell great stories, I have to stop thinking of myself as insignificant.
The human body connects and works with stories on several levels. For example, neuroscience, which helps us remember a story better through emotions. We release cortisol, which activates fear or unpleasant feelings in us. Dopamine, which is associated with feelings of belonging and pleasurable experiences. And oxytocin, which helps us better perceive beauty and love. They allow us to perceive the story better in our bodies and leave a deep impression on us as listeners. Another way neuroscience helps storytellers is by building a relationship of empathy and sympathy between the storyteller and the listener, or the characters in the story. It allows us to mirror emotions, mimic facial expressions, and even connect some of our brain activity that aids deep listening. So a story is not just something that touches us fleetingly, but creates a deep sense of inner response.
On a psychological level, our minds connect with stories through archetypes. From Jungmann's theory we know twelve characters that commonly appear in ancient myths, religious books and other texts. But they are only shadows of our souls, like maps. They never correspond to reality one hundred percent. But they allow us to relate to the character in the story and see him or her as a part of us. The second thing that stories work with is the so-called collective unconscious. Something that we all share in the world, even if we live hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Whether it's symbols, icons or metaphors that have the same or very similar meaning for us. It is a kind of unspoken wisdom, images that we hold in our minds.
Storytelling, or storytelling, can be done almost anytime and anywhere. But to be truly powerful and have healing and connecting effects, you need to create a kind of sacred space for it. This will not only help to set the right atmosphere, but also help our brains and other processes (emotions, hormones, etc.) to prepare for the fact that it is not just a simple story over tea. The sacred space consists of appropriately set physical boundaries of the place, prepared seating for both the audience and the storyteller, small treats and snacks for the storyteller, appropriate lighting, flowers and other decorative elements including, for example, a small altar following the old tradition of telling instructive life stories that have transformed their audiences, with the addition of sensations for the other senses such as music, verbal introduction or accompaniment during the storytelling, and scents. This is not a definitive list of how a storytelling night should unfold just as not everything highlighted here is mandatory to follow and have in place. However, it does help the body and soul prepare for a unique experience and to perceive the story on multiple levels, to be a part of it and be carried away by it into the depths of ourselves.
You can't change if you don't acknowledge that you can also enjoy it.
Living in me...
Living in me is complicated.
Tough, hard, painful,
light, easy, joyful.
Without any meaning,
filled with sense.
Feeling lost.
Finding my strength and my purpose again!
Living in me is a pleasure and a great gift.
Living in me is first scream of a newborn,
is the last breath of an elder.
Living in me is repetitive circle of unseen events,
is a prewritten destiny to fulfill.
Dying in me..
Dying in me is a black hole of a Universe sacking everything I like, sucking everybody I loved.
Putting an end to a process, that do not serve me any more,
situations, that make me smaller,
minds that see me weaker and want to overrule me.
Dying in me is a never ending story of a being born again
and again in my parents eyes to be innocent and beautiful.
Dying in me is the whole Universe flowing through my body for everything, I like,
for everybody, I love, for my parents.
My bones know…
My bones know there is no growth without pain,
there is no joy without grief, no life without getting old.
My bones know that trying to stop time is as meaningless as stopping the water in a river.
Is as meaningless as trying to hold on to death from coming, is the same as dying painless.
My bones know when my time will come.
And I will put them into the soil and leave quietly.
If my blood was ink
If my blood was ink I would write my whole life story by a tip of my finger.
I would sense the paper under my skin sucking the ink and keeping it as a treasured item for next generations.
If my blood was ink I would pierce my palm so that others could use it to write their stories.
To make a note about all the happy and sad moments of their lives.
If my blood was ink I would drain myself to death to be able to transform everybody around into books, into stories.
Only then my life would have a meaning, only then lifes of my beloved would matter.
By being passed through me, by being felt by a little blood stream on my skin.
Stories have magical potential. Magical potential for transformation.
Using the epic story of the Mahabharata as an example, we have seen how one text can influence the course of history and many people. It is the longest piece of literature in the world and contains eighteen books. Some of them are very small, others are very large. But they give us a mirror of our own behaviour, despite the fact that they were written more than two thousand years ago. What is your divine gift? Have you ever done something that everyone else thought was wrong? Who would you be if all of your talents manifested in peace, who are you really? Live like every day of your life is an epic story!
Sometimes people don't understand that we are trying to do the right thing. But that should in no way stop us.
Listening is not just sitting. It is not just sitting and nodding next to some other person. It is not just making any sound, that the other would know I am not sleeping. Sometimes, just sometimes, it means to stay completely silent. It means to open a portal to my heart and live through the story of the other person. Feel the same pain, feel the same joy. Befriending the characters in others' stories and meeting them together with my own archetypes. meeting them as always wondering child, reasonable adult and all-knowing sage, at the same time.
It means to listen with every cell of my body, with every hair only my head, with every taste cup in my mouth. It means to lean forward when there is something wonderful about to happen, take cover when a monster appears, or sneak around like a robber in a tale. It sometimes means to become the teller, it means to dive into the other person's story that much that we become one. Invisible silver lines will connect us and bind us until there will be the end. Will it have a happy ending, or will it bring tears and a life lesson? Who knows. But we will not be in it alone. The teller will have its listener, and the listener will have its teller.
The most powerful stories come from within. Come from our heart, from our unconsciousness, from our soul. The most powerful stories are those we lived. Every story has its own time, has its own moment and place, when and where it needs to become to this world. It has the same power as magic, it has the same power as medicine. When used correctly it can save somebody's life.
It needs to contain at least a grain of truth. A grain of unspoken and unseen beauty, a grain of gratitude. And it needs to flow like a river. From its soul and spirit. It should not be a story to impress, to convince, to manipulate masses. It should not be a story of somebody else. Of people the teller has never met, of place, the teller has never seen, thighs, he has never done.
Being a listener means to create a deep connection with the teller as well as a deep connection with myself. Being a listener means to tune myself to the note of the story, and to keep listening till the end. It means to be silent, patient, resistant and strong in holding the space for the teller. It means to be able to bear everything that the story contains. It means to die and be reborn, if it is what it needs to be to hear the story from the bottom of my bones.
In order to move forward, we have to go back sometime.
Fear, fear, go away,
make the space for light.
Fear, fear, go away,
clear my day and night.
Fear, fear, thank you for
being there for me.
Fear, fear, you can go,
return back to sleep.
The project was supported by an Erasmus+ grant.
