Eldership & Holding Space For Transformation

Our role as Elders in Communities, is to 'Hold Space' for Transformation. 

This could be holding space for People, Groups, Teams, Communities or for the bigger life systems.  

This responsibilty involves holding a place of POWER in the 'field' of awareness and creating space for what needs to emerge. 

This POWER can often feel too big, as we're opening up to the unknown and something much bigger than us. This field of awareness includes the Conscious, Sub-conscious and the Quantum and Super Conscious realms. 

For most humans in the Western world, the word 'Power' is associated with a 'position' (of authority) that someone has. This could be as a Manager or Leader or a Parent or Teacher and it can also include other factors including ethnicity, race, sex, education and class. 

Our current social and cultural systems are currently based on hierarchies and this brings a certain amount of control and of course, privileges and entitlement too. It can often mean that if we hold a position of power, we can feel that we are 'bigger than' and if we don't 'smaller / lesser than.'

Yet when we hold POWER as an Elder, we're embodying it with Systemic Intelligence and this brings with it a different kind of 'Response Ability'. 

The transition from Leader and Adult to Elder involves learning and embodying this Systemic Intelligence and developing the ability to hold a transformational space for others. It leads to a transformation of your personal and professional boundaries and it creates in you a much greater Presence. It also means developing different and much deeper skills and abilities and will include great personal sacrifice, of which you won't know until you really commit to the journey. 

Eldership, therefore, is not for everyone.

In this workshop we will be exploring what it entails to 'Hold Space'in Community. By the end of the workshop you will: 

1. Greater awareness of the role of the Elder in holding Systemic Power
2. Have more knowledge of the importance of your role as an Elder in clarifying and holding Boundaries for the Community 
3. Have a map of the different levels of consciousness and which level you are currently operating from
4. Feel more at ease with how to powerfully work with conflict in the transformation space     

A beautiful philospohy that fits with the essence of how we hold space is 'UBUNTU'... 

"Ubuntu was a central philosophy in Mandela's life and work. He believed it was the key to building a more just and equitable society. In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, he wrote: “Ubuntu is the essence of being human". https://medium.com/@ubuntusoul/ubuntu-philosophy-and-nelson-mandela-a-connection-3483acb57a17#:~:text=Ubuntu%20was%20a%20central%20philosophy,the%20essence%20of%20being%20human.