Every new idea is a blasphemy”
Bertrand Russell
For many years I had to learn to evolve my conversations with others to really meet them in the indefinable places they were finding themselves. I couldn’t insist on clinging to one identity and say to people “you must talk with someone else for that aspect of your experience” It was my job to open up and keep opening up to evolve myself so that I was able to participate in the conversations my clients were longing to have.
Every era creates a conversation to match the times we are facing. In the 80s it was coaching, before that it was mentoring, and for a hundred years before that it was models of individual psychology or therapy.
Each of these wonderful conversations was developed to meet the challenges of our times and continues to be of great benefit.
Each time we develop a new form of conversation, we train individuals to be able to offer that form in the best way we can. It is a form of curating. In doing so we are saying if this is what ails you, here is a solution.
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Slowly, therapeutic conversations added elements of coaching which in turn welcomed a selection of ideas from supervision. The existential and the spiritual walked right into the room and demanded a seat at the table, conscious that talk about past family relationships were still tripping people up in the present.
The whole person wanted quality attention and the most difficult moment for many of these people was capturing a sense of disease within themselves that never seemed to go away for long.I have called these dialogues “conversations at the edge of the ineffable” We created a home where anything could be talked about and most importantly, there was freedom of expression for the spiritual. People used to apologise for their lack of ability to be descriptive or eloquent. It turns out that it is easier in our age to speak about future goals than about what is in our heart mind . We get more listening for conversations about leadership than we do for our understanding of what we are here for as beings.
What is on offer here is the result of thousands of conversations with people from all walks of life and at any stage on that walk.
Claire Genkai Breeze 2025
The work of a contemplative companion is the work of serving humanity. It’s a conversation that says, “This conversation is untethered from corporate interests, is not trying to prove our worth. It is not cut off from the big and compelling issues of our age. This conversation acknowledges that in the world right now at any moment we are in dialogue. People and other species are suffering in all forms. Resources are not evenly distributed, and trust in our institutions: religious, corporate and political, is fragmenting.”
Spirit says “ when I find peace everything falls into place”.
We offer a form of dialogue to any individual who is seeking meaning or depth.
Companions themselves have been through a rigorous three year journey that began with their own sense of being on the edge of something.
Trained and qualified in some of the conversations I previously spoke about, the existential journey that have undertaken, allows them to humbly offer a companionship to anyone else that feels a calling they cannot easily name.
Losing its name
A river
Enters the sea
By john Sandbach