STOCKHOLM SWEDEN
A foundation for the study of median groups and their application in Sweden.
Our next scheduled meetings for 2023 are on 17 to 18 February, 19 to 20 May, 8 to 9 September and 13 to 15 October.
We meet from 17.30 to 21.00 on Friday and from 09:00-12:30 on Saturday.
Please feel free to arrive a little early for a cuppa.
What is Let the Culture Speak?
Culture refers to the ‘play’ that occurs between people in relationships, families, working groups, companies, institutions, geographical areas, within ethnic groups or nations. Most of us are immersed in this play without ever wondering what it is we do or why we do it.
You may wonder about the state of your life and the world. Perhaps you question what you see. Perhaps you ask yourself, “Would I behave like that?” or ”Would I react like that in that situation?” You may want to find a way of making sense of your experience. It isn’t easy when surrounded by people who interpret the world on our behalf. The media often constrains our thinking and expectations.
Comprehending all this isn’t easy on our own. It can be painful and overwhelming but if we don’t try, we risk living an increasingly shallow and passive life eventually becoming nothing more than a thin, brittle gear in the wheels of democracy.
If you long for a better society, if you long to participate in a process that goes beyond the everyday play in the pond, you may want to develop your capacity to see how market forces play with you. You may want to go beyond all those everyday games about salary, food, and a roof above your head. You may want to look at your own perspective on all those things that are so deeply enmeshed in your every day existence. You may want to understand more about the hidden forces that lurk in the culture you are a part of! Then join ‘Let The Culture Speak’: an ongoing workshop where we share an interest in being curious about revealing more about ourselves, about the lives we live and how others around us live. Looking superficially is not good enough to us. We want to be serious and venture more deeply.
In the workshop we create new personal knowledge about ourselves that assists us in becoming more active as individual, living, human beings. Since we began meeting over 16 years ago we have discovered that the presence of the group helps us to walk away from the safe ground of what we already know about ourselves into the uncertainties of ‘not knowing’. This first step into ‘not knowing’ helps us to take the next faltering step into a new kind of knowing that it is extremely difficult to discover on our own. We have learned that the intelligence and heart of the group surpasses that of any individual and supports us by acting as a counter to our individual strategies. It helps us to stop sneaking away into the brittle mental castles of our own thinking and interpreting and release us from our deepest cores that have so often been held hostage there.
Our Approach
Our way of working is close to that of the ancient Greeks. We involve ourselves in a dialogue that goes beyond just talking to each other but helps us to experience scenes, contexts and episodes in our lives that we didn’t have a clue about to start with. Our focus flows between what happens out there, what happens in the group just now and what happens in me. It is a ‘median group’, which stands for a way of working that seeks to provide a space between the personal with the sociopolitical enabling new links to be made. It is not connected with the number of individuals in the group so our size will vary with time and the number of people who decide to join us.
By working in this way we are able to feel safe enough to take steps beyond the ‘familiar’ person we know very well, beyond the constrictions we learnt in our family and stretch ourselves out into society and the mechanisms that seem to exist beyond our control ‘out there’. It is a subjective experience where improved, previously unimagined competence is possible for each of us. We avoid being unconsciously passive by someone telling us something in a lecture or reading, ”do so and so, the guru says, and you will be happy”. It is an experiential process that enables the unexpected and original to emerge.
In the group we encounter ‘a room of possibilities’. To some this might be frightening, at least in the beginning, but usually the encounter gives us a deeper understanding of ourselves and others. Everybody is responsible for where our work leads us. There is no quick learning of issues at the levels of depth we meet with. Our group is unique in forming its own path.
Applying Learning
Mediation or conciliation in situations of conflict, managing ourselves and others more effectively in the current rough seas of organisational change and developing our ability to manage ourselves and others in a more relational way.
Frequency of meeting
Each year we plan two meetings in the Autumn and two in the Spring.
Our next scheduled meetings are on Friday and Saturday as above.
Commitment
This process takes time. It is the only way we know of and it demands a commitment of at least a year. It is not a quick fix but it may well assist you in building the integrated competence you need to actually live your life.
We are offering newcomers the opportunity to join us for our meetings to get a personal hands-on experience about what our work could mean. It is not possible for us to describe what it ‘is’ as this is different for all of us and from one meeting to the next but many of us feel that these meetings result in a sense of increased meaning in life and that there is no better platform. We then invite you to apply for participation in the group for four sessions beginning in autumn and continuing in spring.
Where
We meet in Gamla Stan. The atmosphere is quiet and supportive to our practice of reflection with the luxury of efficient municipal transportation nearby.
Cost per Session
800 SKr for newcomers for the first year, students and unwaged people, 1600 SKr for committed members.
Visit our Website
Welcome to LET the CULTURE SPEAK
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