Caldera

Have you ever heard the word ‘caldera’ before? It’s comes from the Spanish and Latin for ‘cooking pot’. The word ‘cauldron’ comes from the same origins. It’s a term used to describe something that happens in a volcano after it erupts. When a volcano erupts and the magma all bursts out, a space is left where the magma was before. A collapse happens in this place, called a caldera – a kind of volcanic sink hole.

I love this word, origins and idea. It makes me think about the space that can emerge after a big shift, an enlightenment, the gap after the storm has broken. That after all that drama there is left this hole. A caldera. The space that is created from the eruption. A cooking pot.

What is going to happen in there?

‘Calidus’, part of the Latin root of ‘caldera’ and ‘cauldron’, means hot. It’s not like its all chill in the caldera. Even though it’s empty, it’s magma all gone, it’s still hot in that place. It’s still a volcano! And with heat comes the chance for transformation, alchemy, melting, movement, warmth, healing, creation. It’s the perfect place for magick.

I’ve been reading cards now for a number of years as part of my own spiritual practice, and as part of group spiritual practice. Over that time, my own gifts in regards to this have had the chance to be more visible, to develop and demonstrate their benefits. My mystical experience and life has increased, and I’ve found that reading for others is a key part of my purpose in life. I find the language for describing this stuff weird and not very accessible, but in trying to describe my ‘way’ in this work… I would say my main experience is as a direct channel for ‘source energy’, with psychic/energetic ability to pick up on and read the experience of others. It draws into the light what might be hidden, what is unrevealed, the missing pieces of the puzzle so to speak. It can lead to the right questions, reassurances, and guidance, to help the readee see their situation and experience in a different light, and move into balance and surer footedness on their path. Ultimately, these two abilities help to bring you into personal and spiritual alignment.

This kind of insight can be extremely helpful in times of confusion or quandary, at a point of transition and change, in times of discomfort where you just can’t put your finger on what is wrong, and also on a basic level to better connect you to, or towards, what alignment even is for you. It can help you to access that information that is just out of reach, that exists on an intangible spiritual/energetic level – an important aspect of all of is. It’s complimentary to other forms of life support, such a as therapy and physical practices. Spiritual clarity is often the piece missing when trying to talk it out, or work it out, hasn’t been enough to make it all make sense and to feel settled and at peace.

After all my experiences with this practice, I’ve been wanting to find a way to share it and make it as accessible as possible to those curious, questioning, seeking. I’ve decided to start a mystic/psychic reading group, where I will be doing readings live. In the session you can watch how this works, as well as potentially have a reading yourself. Being part of the session and not being read directly is extremely powerful in it’s own right – I’m yet to be in a group where someone hasn’t felt as though there was something that came through for them in the readings, even if they themselves didn’t have a direct reading. The tuning in and tuning out at the beginning and end also hold their own mystical messages for the group.

If you would like to join one of these sessions, which I’m calling Caldera, you can find the details for booking here.

New events coming up!

I’ve just updated my events page with two new events that I have coming up. The first one is an open studio that I’m running from the Friday 29th September – Sunday 1st October, where you can visit my studio, as well as have the chance to play with paints yourself too.

The other is a Soul Fire Writing Retreat that I am co-leading with Max Hope from Friday 24th November – Sunday 26th November. It’s a chance to experience consent-based self-directed culture, whilst working on your own project alongside wonderful other activists and change makers. It’s a dream!

Both of these events will stir up your creativity, as well as support and nurture your activism and healing. I am really excited for both of them, and would love you to see you at them!

For more info and to book, click here.

We just started the term at the Cabin and the Lodge and it’s great to be back. We currently have space for young people to join us, so if you are looking for consent-based education for the young people in your life, check us out!

Finally – I have recently got involved with the folk at Together Culture, and if you haven’t checked them out yet, I recommend it, they’ve got lots of interesting stuff going on in Cambridge. I am running a workshop for them this month that was part of their fundraising campaign, and they have loads of great events planned.

Consent-Based Education Connection Day – Wednesday 26th July 2023, Near Buckfastleigh, Devon.

Date: Wednesday 26th July, 2023

Time: 12-3.30pm

Location: Near Buckfastleigh, Devon, UK

Join me for a simple home-cooked lunch, to network, chat and catch up about how things are going in your consent-based ed inspired life and work. Lunch will be vegan, nut and wheat free. Please ask regarding any other dietary requirements. 

After lunch, there will be a 1 hour Group Consultancy session, in the format of Q&A, to address questions relating to consent-based learning communities and practice. 

This will be followed by a 1 hour Alignment session, which will also take the format of a Q&A, this time focussing on what knocks you ‘off track’ and out of your own alignment and sense of consent-based self-direction, with a view to provide support for staying aligned and connected. There will be the opportunity to participate in some physical/embodied practices during the hour, to further support this. 

Cost: £36

There are a limited number of places available for this day, to book please email: hello@sophiechristophy.com

It was never just about us.

When Sarah and I first started working together on an education setting, it wasn’t specifically The Cabin and the Lodge. Where we started, was answering the question: What would the education system look like, if it had been originally designed through a lens of children’s rights?

What we knew was that the education system that exists, was not designed through that lens. We knew that schooling had been designed through a different lens, that did not include an awareness of children as people, not property. Then, many years into its functioning, children’s rights emerged as a clearer concept.

But it was never designed or built with that in mind. The idea that children are people, with the right to a voice, and other human rights, came later. Any attempts to try to catch the current system up with that, is massively limited by it’s underlying building blocks and the beliefs and expectations that underpin its interpretation of what ‘education’ looks like, that has nothing at all to do with children being seen as full people with human rights.

So we wanted to know: what would an education system look like, if you started from scratch, and designed it through a lens of children’s rights, right at the start.

We worked on this for a number of years, and it led us to the theory, principles and practices, that you can now see in part at the Cabin and the Lodge.

Before the Cabin opened in January 2018, we had spent over a year working on another plan that would see our theory and ‘new system’ in place.

Originally, we had thought the way to get the practice up and running as a model, was to register as a private school. We knew we couldn’t register as a state funded school due in part to the level of restriction that exists in that route, that would mean we couldn’t create the practice we wanted.

So we thought maybe, we could create the space we needed by going the private route, where there is more flexibility and freedom to ‘do differently’. Accepting this was the first compromise we made, as of course our hopes always had been to be able to create a free to access setting, and this is still something we believe in being crucially important as part of the process of change.

In 2017, we happened upon an extraordinary site, that could have been perfect for what we were hoping to achieve. It just so happened, that this site was owned by a very special person, who fully understood and supported our aims. She was in the process of selling this property, and agreed to take it off the market for us, so that we could use the site to run a pilot of the setting for an agreed length of time, so that we could have the model up and running, to test it, and then be in a position to seek investment.

However, in the summer of that year, we realised that this wasn’t going to be a workable solution. There were many reasons for this realisation, that made proceeding with the pilot phase in this way unethical – the small scale pilot itself would have been great, but we knew we wouldn’t then be able to evolve it into the bigger scale project that the pilot was meant to achieve, the outcome on which the pilot agreement had been made. We very sadly had to end this project moving forwards, which, at the time was a massive disappointment and blow.

We knew our plan and theory was good – there was never a problem with the theory or the plan of the actual setting. The block was in being able to arrange everything else around it to help make it happen in the way we had hoped to. The physical space and infrastructure to bring the theory and practice to life.

At this point we got connected again to what mattered the most: getting the practice of this new model up and running, as soon as possible. We knew that ideas on paper are no where near as good as something being up and running, when it comes to affecting change. Not least because we could then explore the practice and develop it way more deeply and meaningfully than you can in concept stage.

So, we did a massive pivot. In the Autumn of 2017, we focused on ‘get it up’, and found a new solution and way to do this, with way less barriers, where rather than being stressed on a big project and lifting the massive weights that would have come with our original plan of the ‘independent school’, we could do what mattered – getting the practice going – in an easier, and more accessible way, within months.

That January, the Cabin opened it’s doors for the first time.

Since then, we have been able to work through and refine this new way of holding learning community, of supporting young people in a way that affirms their own agency, autonomy, personhood and human rights. We have been able to experience what it feels like to be in this ‘new way’, have seen what skills, tools and systems you need for it to run healthily, and have worked to develop these things.

We are now at a point, 5 years since the Cabin first opened, where we are able to share this more with other people outside of our own setting – which was always the aim. To build on the influence that the work has already had over the years on people and places – both new settings, and settings changing their culture and practices to be more consent-based. To help people in finding the language and nuance to better describe and create the culture and environment for consent-based education.

This has never been about just our own setting. We have, from the start, been in it for systems change. We have always known that we need to get our practice and principles right, test it, get it great and in a fit start to be shared and adopted by others – both in and outside of the mainstream system – in order to be part of the process of change. We’ve worked hard to do that, and it’s paying off.

It was never just about our setting or one setting. Change is coming, and for some, it’s already here.

Creating Guiding Principles for Consent-Based, Self-Directed Learning Communities

Because these kinds of communities are relationship centred, and are values rather than rules based, it’s really important as a founder or person who has responsibility for culture creation, to have a really sound set of Guiding Principles.

Here is a five step guide to creating these principles:

1. Describe the relationship we intend to have with our selves
2. Describe the relationship we intend to have with others, including the environment.
3. Describe the kind of relationship we intend to have with the way, what, and how we learn about ourselves, each other and the world.
4. Describe what we will do to prevent, or when something goes wrong.
5. Describe the bigger picture – what the above is working towards creating, our ethical vision. This is your ‘Why’.

At the Cabin and the Lodge our Guiding Principles read like this:

1. Self-directed: Listening to your self, and exploring the world in the way that is meaningful to you and your own sense of curiosity and purpose. Being able to choose what, when and how you want to learn and do things, based on what feels right to you. 
2. Consent-based: Understanding your own agency and autonomy, and the freedom and boundaries that come with that. Being able to say an authentic yes, no or maybe, and respecting the boundaries and consent of others.
3. Ed(ucation) Positive: Anything can be potentially interesting and meaningful . Curiosity, problem solving and learning doesn’t have to be limited to subject silos or traditional value judgments about what is important to learn about and what isn’t.  
4. Shared Decision Making, Risk Management and Conflict Navigation: Young people should have the chance to influence and co-create decisions and solutions that affect them. We can understand and manage risk together, and conflict can be navigated in an open and honest way. 
5. Children as rights holders, social and environmental justice: People under 18 have human rights. Experiencing that all starts in the way that we are treated in childhood, and the way we learn to be with and treat others and our environment. ​

You can read fuller descriptions of these principles here.

The key thing is that these principles can act as a compass for you, in helping you navigate decisions, your own behaviour and actions in the community. They help you make sense of boundaries, when to take actions, and when to stand back. They are like a recipe for the culture and experience that you are together trying to create, and if you follow them, that experience will become manifest as best as is possible given the context in which you are working. Leave one thing out of the recipe, and it doesn’t work. They must be interdependent parts of a whole.

Once you are fluent in your own Guiding Principles, theoretically and in your own lived experience/practice, you will also be able to notice the tools and systems you might need as a community to support them, and work on finding or designing those things.

Final thought: Please don’t use this guide, or have Guiding Principles if you don’t believe them and/or aren’t willing to engage with them yourself. This is a no bullshit approach, so if you aren’t going to get on board yourself, please don’t create a set of principles that expects others to do what you won’t do yourself. Certainly, don’t expect the young people you are working with do be influenced by them if you aren’t going to be. Integrity is key for a values/principles based approach, and it’s key for consent-based self-direction too.

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Introducing… Crew

Crew is a monthly meeting space for change making activists working on the issue of institutionally and relationally embedded childism and adult supremacy, and it’s associated problems. 

It is a networking and organising space, for problem sharing, strategic thinking, and creative planning. It is also a solidarity space, where we can share our stresses and disappointments, ways of coping with the challenges of doing this work, and seek support and reenergising. 

Crew may be for you if you are activated in the areas of: children’s rights, unschooling, consent-based self-directed education, feminism/anti-patriarchy work, family and education transformation, other social and environmental justice and healing work.

It is called Crew because the origin of the word is ‘to arise, to grow’, and draws on one simple definition: a group of people working together on a task. 

Crew meets online on the 3rd Tuesday of the month, from 7-9pm, via Zoom.

Here are the upcoming dates:

Tuesday 18th April 2023

Tuesday 16th May 2023

Tuesday 20th June 2023

Tuesday 18th July 2023

If you would like to be on the mailing list for Crew, drop a line to hello@sophiechristophy.com 

Exploring our own liberation

I’ve been thinking lately about what work is helpful towards the movement out of patriarchy to consent-based, self-direction. In listening to the thoughts of other activists and changemakers, and observing life including my own, it’s brought me to thoughts about the freedoms and liberation that we have, and how we use or don’t use that space.

There is one type of activism in this work, that looks like ‘shifting the goal posts’ in a way. It’s about making structural changes to systems and institutions, that creates more space for freedom of choice and broader rang of experience. So for example, in the education system, if you change the assessment process at the end by opening it up to things other than just exam results, you create the possibility and opportunity for different experiences in the lead up to that point. If you expand what is available on a curriculum, ie give people more choice about what and how they study, then you increase the possibility that people can make different choices or choices that are better for them and more aligned with their interests.

This is of course really important in making it possible for something different to occur than what is possible with greater restriction. You need to move these things to create space for difference.

However, just moving these things isn’t enough. When people have been conditioned in a certain way, within certain limits, expectations, beliefs, within a certain story of success and failure, just moving the goalposts isn’t enough to create the change that we want to see. Even with more space and options, it’s likely that people will still act and behave within what is ‘known’ and within the culture in which they have been immersed to that point.

Therefore, even once you have opened up more space, there is a need for new cultural experience, stories and learning, to help people make use of that space, that freedom, that increase in choice that is available. You would think that a basic human drive and need for agency, autonomy and freedom would just rush into that new space and be happy and make the most of it, and in some cases that might be what does occur, but for the majority I would say it does not.

Many people need to see things being modelled to develop their own confidence to explore the previously unknown. They need to see someone ‘jump’ before they are willing to jump themselves. So just opening up the space for the jumping isn’t enough without the support to enable folks to take that opportunity. For more info on this, check out this video.

This is true in personal life as well as in changing institutions. Having more freedom theoretically, doesn’t necessarily translate to a greater use of that freedom in personal choices and actions, or awareness of that liberated space in felt and embodied sense. For some it does – but for many it doesn’t. For many people, a lot of fear and uncertainty remains, residual from past oppression and limitations, fear that feels very real and current, that there is a threat looming over their exploration of their own freedom, that keeps people in their cages long after they have been given a key to open the door.

That fear may well be justified – in exploring our freedom and liberation there is of course risk. Risk of failures, dead ends, risk of change. There is a sense of safety in sticking with what is known, even if that is a cage. A sense of self-protection that comes with never picking up our own potential freedom, instead staying limited but feeling more in control. The reaction of others can be diminishing to our confidence and will to thrive in our liberation and spaces of freedom.

I once heard a story about seals that were living in an aquarium in Scotland. Their pen was on the edge of the North Sea, so there was a wall in the sea that they stayed within, but just on the other side was the full North Sea. One time there was a big storm, and the waves were so high, that they went over this wall, and the seals were able to swim out into the sea, off and away. Only they didn’t swim away. Later on, the aquarium keepers found the seals, back at the wall, wanting to come back into their enclosure. I imagine they were hungry. They didn’t know what to do with the sea in any case. They wanted to come ‘home’ to their pen. Wild animals raised in captivity or who experience captivity for a while usually need a reintegration process, and careful handling to successfully be able to survive in the wild lives they were born to live.

To get the most of the freedom and liberation we already have, and the freedom and liberation we want, to be able to explore that fully and make the most of it in this life that we have – to live in integrity and express our full selves, we may need to skill up. Take it on as an active challenge to be in that space, challenge ourselves, push ourselves a bit, understand that it might be a discipline to persist in exploring the liberation we already have, let alone what might be to come when goal posts move. What might we need to learn to make the most of that space and opportunity? To be more free, self-directed, to be more in our own experience of consent? What might we need to know? Is there more space for this in your life already than you think, that is yet to be fully explored? In your pocket do you have a key to the lock, maybe the door is already wide open…

Thoughts on the moment/movement.

I’ve been in a weird and reflective time lately. There has been a lot of change in my personal life over the last five years, huge shifts and pivots, and now I find myself in what feels like an entirely new situation. It’s fair to say that my life today is somewhat unrecognisable compared to how it was back then – or it least it feels like that, and yet, there are some things that remain the same. Isn’t that the strange thing of a growing and changing life – everything can change and yet somehow not everything? Even when all is different, some things just aren’t.

You could say that when change happens, it’s like everything gets dumped out on the table, and then over time, comes to form some kind of order again. If life were a big box full of things, there are these seismic times where it feels like everything in the box gets dumped out on the table. Then you sit with an empty box for a while. Then you find you need to go through everything on the table. And then, in Marie Kondo style, you can pick up each thing, see how it makes you feel, and decide whether it goes back in the box again or not. Maybe some things got a bit damaged in the tipping out stage, maybe there is the need for repair. Maybe some things got smashed. Other’s look the same, and can go back in. Others, you don’t want back.

For me the constants have been the love and regard I have for my children. My grounded commitment to the work of consent-based education and life. My love of and need for nature. Love for myself and others – although there has been plenty of wounding, sense-making, feeling, healing and grieving regarding the complexity and nuance of this. My love of life and hopefulness has stayed. Even in the darkest of times, even if it’s just a bare thread, there has been some access to this sense of light and connection.

What has come into the box in greater measure than before – magic and spiritual practice is one thing. I realised a few years ago, once we had the Cabin up and running, that I/we/the work needed more ‘protection’ than just the everyday. Systems seek to preserve themselves, the dominant paradigm does, patriarchy does. It’s not a level or equal playing field, you need more help than that in creating the new. I knew we/I needed more help. And I knew that for me that meant something magical and ‘other’. From that realisation came the development of a personal and group spiritual practice, a magical practice, and a more magical way of being in the world, in work, in my life. This new thing came along with all the change in my life and has acted as a life saving and tethering force.

And what now for the movement? When a lot of change is happening, it can feel like you just have to keep your head down until you get to the other side. Then, once things have settled out, you can look up and out more, get a sense again of the wider and bigger picture. What is happening out there? Where do things stand?

Things are different now, I think they are. Covid has had its impact on that, political, economical stuff of course too. Things are not the same as ‘back in the day’. Organising doesn’t feel the same, the movement doesn’t feel the same, people don’t feel the same. Or maybe, I am wondering as I write, is it because I don’t feel the same that everything else looks different? I don’t think so. The conditions have changed, and things have changed and are changing? I don’t think I know where everything stands right now in the same way that I felt that I did before. I feel like home ed is different – perhaps its because my children are getting older so I’m not in the same stage, not being in and seeing other folk in the early stages of parenthood, that it feels now kind of separate? What is happening now with people who are just becoming parents – what’s going on for them? Is there the same discussion and discourse as there was for me 12 years ago? Is there the same rage and upset and emergent activism around the experience of babies and young children, the pain at the absence of healthy culture, relationships, systems, belonging, community? For baby humans and their parents? Especially their mothers?

And for folk in more of my circumstances who have opted out of the mainstream system, who want different for their children, the cycle breakers, those who have been drawn to and believe in a consent-based, self-directed way, and who’s children are now coming up to or in the early teen years. What is going on there? I have this feeling that folk are losing their track, and/or that there is a fearfulness emerging? New and different pressures to contend with? I feel like, there is something with the age of the children, the distance from the early years and or perhaps fatigue, that is causing people to lose some connection to their previous ways, and instead be drawn to something that is more in keeping with ‘normal’ or something? Like they are looking at their older children and thinking: now it’s time for you to do proper things and it’s the end of play. Now it’s time for the ‘real world’ and getting serious, or something. Maybe some kind of letting go is happening? Perhaps there is conflict, new and/or different needs expressed by young people themselves in all of this?

The things that mattered before… where are they now? And who are the new folk coming up?

I wonder what you think about it? Do you know what’s going on?

Alongside all of this wondering about the bigger and broader picture is wondering about the smaller more intimate picture of my own work, my use of time and energy. The Cabin and the Lodge, the team and community making that happen, including me – I’m part of a team, and that’s a wonderful thing, it’s a staple not to be taken for granted. I’m loving doing 1:1 work and small group consultancy, and the learning/training events, retreats, it’s deep work that feels great. Creating spaces of realisation, creating spaces where consent-based self-directed culture is normal and experienced by people of different ages. It’s healing and exciting. It’s peaceful and high energy. It’s creative and real. And at the same time I’ve been asking myself questions about how and where I work, who I work with – am I in the right places, doing the right thing, with the right folk? Am I lined up right for my purpose and what I’m meant to do here? I think the answer might be ‘yes and’ rather than ‘either or’. Yes I am, and I’m going to be doing more/different. As I line up right, I know my dance partners can and will find me.

Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is probably the most crucial aspect of a consent-based, self-directed life. It is also the thing that is most attacked by the receding dominant culture in which we live.

It’s hard to be self-loving in a meaningful way, if you don’t have solid self-esteem. It’s hard to make hard choices for yourself in your best interests, if your self-esteem is wobbly.

It’s easier to compromise yourself, betray yourself, become distanced from yourself, underestimate yourself, if your self-esteem is undermined and weak.

Self-esteem is the place to engage, to get a consent-based, self-directed life on track. To be connected to our self, to express in authentic ways, to care about ourselves enough to walk the tough but extraordinary path of a consent-based and self-directed life – we must engage with our experience of and current status of self-esteem. Solid self-esteem is also what enables us to face accountability, personal responsibility, to own our part of things, to meaningfully be accountable in our lives and relationships. To take personal responsibility for what we are responsible for and our own personal power.

Self-esteem is how much you take yourself seriously, how much you honour and respect yourself.

How’s your self-esteem at the moment?…

Self-Esteem Repair

If your answer is that your self-esteem needs some help, what next?

The steps towards healthy, strong, grounded self-esteem, are the same that you would take in repairing other kinds of relationships.

You have to rebuild trust through care and action.

You need to show your self-esteem, through your words and actions, that you are sorry and are going to build a different type of relationship with it. And you need to build this relationship through how you are, and what you say and do.

Over time, this will result in your self-esteem becoming stronger, more resilient, and more able to be the solid core you need it to be for your experience of self-direction and consensuality.

This can look like:

– being more honest

– being kinder (not necessarily ‘nicer’) to yourself, and others

– exploring and expressing your boundaries in a more explicit and forthcoming way

– engaging with your intuition (different to your triggered or stress reactions) and acting more from that place

– taking more risks by showing more of your self to the outside world

– noticing things in your environment that are directly either damaging to your self esteem or at least obstructing you from meeting your needs, and addressing these things in a direct way

Repairing and rebuilding relationship and trust takes time, persistence, and consistency.

Consent-Based Education 101, September – October 2022

I am excited to run the Consent-Based Education course again this year, starting in September. The course will have two parts: 6 online sessions via Zoom over 6 weeks, and a weekend in-person workshop at the end. It is an introduction and launch pad for those seeking to better understand, integrate and practice in consent-based ways.

You can book either just the online part, or the online and weekend workshop. The course will be assisted by Sarah Stollery and Max Hope.

What is the course about?

As family culture and education seeks to evolve beyond the traditional patriarchal, authoritarian model, and people make the choice to live together in more respectful, authentic and socially just ways that acknowledge the personhood and agency of children, essential questions come up as to what this means for our relationship with ourselves and others, and our outlook and interaction with the world around us. How can we be with ourselves and the children in our lives in a new way?

Consent-Based Education is a response to this tension. What happens when authoritarianism/patriarchy, the basis of all our existing systems, is stripped away, and we become more curious and individually empowered in our own lives, and desire this space for the children in our lives too? What does it look like to move beyond patriarchy, power-over and coercion, to embrace our own personal power, agency and autonomy, and question the education and social norms and values that we’ve experienced until now? What does consent mean to us, and how does it relate to experiencing authenticity, integrity, self-actualisation and healthy, honest relationships?

Who is this course for: This course is designed for parents and people who live and/or work together with children, who want to explore and go deeper into their understanding and practice of Consent-Based Education, for their own personal development and practice, to support their own and others life-long learning and growing in a consent-based way.

This might include: Unschoolers, feminist/social/environmental justice/decolonising oriented parents and educators, founders and facilitators of self-directed and consent-based education settings, home educators interested in children’s rights.

The online component of the course is made up of the following six sessions:

Session 1: What is Patriarchy, its impact and effect?

Session 2: Breaking Cycles – the Process of Change 

Session 3: What is Consent-Based Education?

Session 4: Love and Relationships, Boundaries and Freedom

Session 5: Living and Learning, Creativity and Flow 

Session 6: The Bigger Picture

Each session will last for two hours, and include the following:

Agreement making (how we are going to work and play together), 

Check-ins, 

Me sharing on the theme of the session,

Chance for reflection, questions and deepening the inquiry, 

Exploring putting the theory into practice,

Check out. 

The time and dates for the online sessions are as follows:

Time: 7-9pm (GMT)

Dates:

Tuesday 6th September

Tuesday 13th September 

Tuesday 20th September

Tuesday 27th September

Tuesday 4th October

Tuesday 11th October

Weekend Workshop:

Following the Zoom calls is an in person weekend, which will be a chance to meet, consolidate what has been covered on the Zoom calls, and go further in helping you to experience and learn practices key to consent-based education. The weekend will be held in Furneux Pelham, East Hertfordshire.

The two days will include:

Day 1: Stepping into Your Power: This work is activism, and it requires activism spirit and energy to have a chance to come to life. In order to do this, and to hold a new shape of consent-based education, we need to become aware of our own energy and power to do this work. This ability is also crucial to our experience of consent-based education and self-direction. We need to learn how to care for ourselves, as activists, and how to support our own healing journeys. This day will be focused on the physical and emotional experience of this, and will be a deep breath of oxygen to the embers of your own power and activist nature.

Day 2: Practical Tools: On day two we will explore and practice together practical tools that support the creation of a consent-based education. This will include: how to hold a meeting (can be adapted for a meeting of 2 people up to a meeting of a group), conflict navigation, setting up a consent-based ‘frame’, how to share and make risk management agreements, boundaries and identity work.

The in person workshop days will be held in a consent-based and self-directed way, similar to how we hold the day at the Cabin and the Lodge.

Dates for the Weekend Workshop:

Saturday 29th October and Sunday 30th

Communication during the course:

Once booked on to the course and before we begin, I will add you to a private Facebook group, which we will use for the duration of the course, to share the resources that lead in to each session, to use as a community space, and to post links for the Zoom calls. Before each session, a set of resources are shared for you to explore in whatever way you want to.

An important note about the transformational nature of the course:

This course has a transformational quality to it. It is designed through the lens and path of my own journey, practice and experience, which has been profoundly transformative and impactful to every part of my life. Every time I have run this course cycle so far, it has been a positive disruptor, has had a deep impact on my life, and been catalystic of change. This has included the ending of important relationships, changes in family relationships, personal growth, loss, grief, the emergence of new things, experience of self-actualisation and deep personal and spiritual alignment. I have witnessed this also happen in the lives of those that have taken part. You will be encouraged to manage your participation in the course in the way that you feel ready for and is right for you, however it is important that in booking on to the course you do so knowingly of the impact it may have, and that change may be catalysed as a result. 

To book:

There are two options for booking this course. You can book just the online part, or the online part and the in person weekend.

For online: £288

For online and the weekend: £468

Please note: Breakfast and lunch is included on Saturday and Sunday for the in-person weekend, and there will be an option to join for dinner on the Saturday night. Overnight accommodation is not included, please ask if you need advice on local options.

This is a small group course, with a maximum of 20 spaces available.

If you would like to book or have any questions about the course (including around payment plans or access needs regarding the course cost), please contact me at: hello@sophiechristophy.com