Group Spirituality

A Workshop Approach

Roger Grainger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781135479657
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Group spirituality is an increasingly popular area of focus, and working in groups raises some very different and valuable consequences which wouldn't necessarily arise in a one-to-one encounter. In Group Spirituality, Roger Grainger, an author already established as an authority on Drama therapy, provides a functional guide to group spirituality and workshops. Derived from the authors' experiences of working with groups of people interested in exploring their own and other people's spirituality, Group Spirituality turns an abstract idea into a practical and recognizable experience. The nature of group work, the embodiment of ideas and feelings, and circumstances aiding personal encounter are discussed. Workshop examples aimed at establishing group identity and the introduction of the idea of the 'safe place' are explained. The symbolism of spiritual awareness is approached, and a firm distinction between spirituality and religion is made.

Group Spirituality's approach to spirituality from a workshop focus, successfully attempts to embody spirituality and provide a framework for consciously examining and integrating spirituality within the rest of our life.

Chapter 1

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The spirituality of groups

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1Sit or stand somewhere in the room. (Talk if you want!) When the leader calls you, come and stand in a circle with the others.

2Say who you are to the person on each side of you. Now say why you have come to the workshop (just one of the reasons, please).

3Listen to the leader as she/he reads Mary Coleridge's poem Soul-Gibberish (1908).

Many a flower have I seen blossom,

Many a bird for me will sing.

Never heard I so sweet a singer,

Never saw I so fair a thing.

She is a bird, a bird that blossoms,

She is a flower, a flower that sings;

And I a flower when I behold her,

And when I hear her, I have wings.

4Explore the room by yourself. See what you can find that takes your eye. As you go, try to remember the poem. What do you think it means? Does it mean anything to you?

5Come back to the circle again. Now follow the leader's instructions. They will start some simple group exercises to help you relax and ‘settle in’ to the workshop.

Leader

First of all, let's stand (or sit) in as relaxed a way as we can. Now imagine that it's a lovely warm day. The sun is shining, and there's just a faint breath of a breeze, so relax as much as you can and enjoy it. Drink the air, drink it in as deep as you can…. Begin to feel the first drops of rain – warm rain falling gently on your forehead. Lift your face to meet it. As it gets heavier, open yourself out to it. … Now you are drenched, soaked to the skin. Take an imaginary towel and dry somebody with it. Rub them down. Now let them do the same to you.

6When you feel warm and dry, sit in the circle and listen to the music. Someone reads whilst you are listening

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections

And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill.

I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self –

and the wounds to the soul take a long time,

only time can help, and patience

and a certain difficult repentance, a long difficult repentance,

realisation of life's mistakes, and the freeing oneself

from the endless repetition of the mistake

which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.

‘Healing’, D.H. Lawrence by permission

7Find yourself a partner; explore with them to discover a space where you can sit or stand so you are facing each other. Make yourselves comfortable in the space you have found. If you like you can sit on cushions. Spend some time listening to the music. When you are ready

a	say what it is like to be here, now go a bit deeper
b	say what it is like to be a woman or a man (whichever you are)
c	now say what it is like to be a person.

8Light one of the small candles and place it on the floor between you.

9Hold hands round your candle.

10Rejoin the main group in a circle and hold hands. Gently squeeze the hand of the person on your right. Do this in turn, so that the squeeze is passed round the circle until it comes back to you.

11Divide into two groups. If somebody asked you what ‘spirituality’ was, how would you answer? Make a living picture of what ‘spirituality’ might be, using everybody in your group. This can involve movement if you wish, or it can be a kind of stillness – or it can be both. Here are some examples

a	a rose (or another kind of flower)
b	a river
c	a pathway
d	a mountain
e	a forest, etc.

12Show what you have made to the other group.

13Sit in the circle again. After being quiet for a few moments, share some of your thoughts with the group.

14Say goodbye to everybody, spending a little time with your partner. Who's going to take the candle? (Who's going to give it?)

The above was a workshop that took place at the AGM Conference of the British Association for Dramatherapists, York University, 1993. Participants were drama and arts therapists from several parts of the world.

I, thou, we

Reflexivity and inter-relatedness as fundamental human experience.

Who am I? Who do you think I am?

As human beings we are characteristically unable to contemplate ourselves without taking some account of other people – either their presence or absence. At a basic level, to be human is to be in some way related. Human relationship involves three dimensions of awareness

• I and my experience of everything (including myself)

•you and your experience of everything (including yourself)

•a dimension involving me-as-you (when I put myself in your shoes, as it were) and you-as-me (when you do the same with regard to me), the two processes being alternative aspects of the same shared experience of personhood.

This latter dimension has been described in several ways, as ‘inter-subjective reflexivity’, empathy, ‘shared imagination’ and ‘projective identification’, each of which is a way of describing the experience of psychological sharing of personhood. There are thus three complementary realms – mine, yours, ours – in which the third aspect of humanness can be seen as binding the other two together, while at the same time liberating them from captivity to themselves and turning them outward towards otherness and one another.

Working in groups serves as a powerful reminder both of our corporality – the things we share, both as bodies and as a body – and also our individuality, or what we think of as being unique to ourselves. Logically speaking, of course, this is a paradox, because we usually think of these things as opposites. In practice, however, it turns out to be quite straightforward: when we are aware of the presence of others we are also most conscious of ourselves as distinct from the rest. Crowds tend to prevent people from speaking up for themselves. Groups, on the other hand, encourage them to do so.

At a higher level of abstraction, groups can be seen as structures for extending the kind of sharing which constitutes the primary condition of personal relationship, so that its nature and effects can be explored and enjoyed by the people taking part. To put this another way, the threefold experience of sharing – mine, yours, ours – is the primary human group. This notion that fundamental personal reality is threefold, and that in personal terms threeness is an ultimate category of being, is established within the doctrinal structure of important world religions, notably Christianity and Hinduism (Pannikar 1973), a fact which has important implications with regard to the spiritual nature of group experience.

The fact that, by definition, groups contain more than two people does not necessarily make them less personal. The group is essentially a context for sharing a structure for relationship. Just as actors require an audience of other persons (and will actually imagine they have one if necessary) so human persons of all kinds require the presence of others – or at least of another – to reflect their reality and give depth to their experience of themselves and each other. Relationship and reflexivity go together; personal reality cannot exist out of context.

The spirituality of a group can best be described as what it is that makes a group able to communicate with itself in ways that defy analysis. Group spirituality is the unseen presence within the group that makes it into a healing context for relationship.

2 + 2 = ?

Group holisms.

Trust the group process, let it go on … in the group we're wiser than we know.

(Carl Rogers, video training seminar with counsellors,
Illinois University, 1973)

There's something that rises up in me, and I've learned to trust it; my behaviour is quite different when I'm in a group from the way it is in individual therapy, and this is because of what I've learned on groups.

(ibid.)

We are wiser than we know. Talking spontaneously on a training video, Carl Rogers reveals what is perhaps a basic truth about the experience of human groups. It is part of his understanding of what he describes as ‘group process’. In some way or other, the group is able to know things as a group. This group wisdom is distinct from that of any single member. In fact, as Rogers implies, it is a different kind of knowing. When we are in a group we both feel and act differently from the way we do on other occasions and in other places. At least, this is how it seems to us. Our experience of ourselves and of other people is different within the group. It is not merely some kind of subtle difference, a slight variation in atmosphere, calling for the simple adjustment of one's state of mind. Or at least, it may have subtle reasons, but its effects are certainly quite definite, or even powerfully distinct.

Sometimes they are uncomfortably powerful, so that one's psychological repose is violently shattered, and with it one's view of oneself as an experienced person, well trained to deal with interpersonal events, even unexpected ones. Nothing very much seems to have happened to interfere with the normal course of events in the exterior world – you are accustomed to sitting in an ordinary room, with a group of people you've already met, some of whom you may actually know quite well; indeed, the circumstances have a familiar air about them, carrying vague memories of various kinds of social groups, relaxed occasions when you have exchanged stories and swapped reminiscences. You know this is going to be different, of course. What you don't know is how different.

The following are extracts from a journal kept by a male member of a group set up to explore its own members' experience. A psychologist – the Process Observer – was also present.

Week I Why isn't anyone saying anything? Is this woman (i.e. the Process Observer) a group member or not? … There's a feeling of all being in the same boat, of having similar feelings. It seems to be an ‘us-against-her’ feeling (referring to the PO). Being on the defensive seems to stop people saying anything. She has drawn us together, I think. But I must do something to contribute more.

Week II I began to enjoy the feeling of sharing the group's discomfort.

Week IV During this session I was reminded of the very painful experience I had had in a training group a year previously. Like the present group, that one had also consisted entirely of women. This fact suddenly came to me with great force – and I found myself telling the group about it. No-one seemed to object. If somebody admits to being upset, the others will be supportive.

Week V I was conscious of an anger I shared with the group. Nobody seemed able to say anything. How much longer is this going on?

Week VI A group member said she felt we were all tied up in a game we didn't know the rules for. There was a lot of agreement, mainly unspoken. The Process Observer said we were behaving like adolescents – immediate outbursts of silent anger in the group. Suddenly it felt much easier to talk. Even the Process Observer seemed more human.

Week VII I felt the group helped me face some things about the way I relate to others. The group felt more fragmented this week.

Week IX A feeling of security, all in it together. PO drew attention to dialogue between X (another group member) and me; perhaps the others had felt left out? They said they hadn't felt this. A member said she felt ‘maternal’ towards the group, and the Process Observer commented that she thought the group was ‘inclusive, perhaps’.

Week X Self-pity, anger, frustration. I fell asleep halfway through -an event later described by PO as expressing ‘a feeling of weariness in the group’, of being ‘drained of energy’. She said I was acting this out on behalf of everyone else. When I wakened up I felt something which I experienced as portraying the feelings of the entire...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgement
• Preface
• Prologue
• Introduction
• 1 The spirituality of groups
• 2 The space between
• 3 Story into archetype
• 4 Dreaming
• 5 Down to earth
• Four creation myths
• Appendix
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Afterword
• Index