INHALL: Rob Porteous - Sensing the body’s wisdom in an ensouled world

What is the role of therapy in a world where we face significant political, social and environmental challenges? How can we learn to live more sustainably on earth? What does it mean to bring mind, heart and body into alignment? And how can we be with these questions rather than rushing to find answers that seek in part to avoid them?

Stories and symbols that once held meaning have for many people lost their capacity to set our everyday lives in a deeper context. We need a new narrative of our relationship to each other, and to the world around us, if we are to deal effectively with the problems we create. We need to change the nature of our conversation with Earth.

Instead of setting ourselves apart from nature, we could imagine being a part of it. Instead of a world of inanimate resources that we can exploit for our own ends, we could imagine a living earth, filled with interdependent beings with whom our lives are intertwined. Such a story has its roots in mystical traditions that describe the relationship between body and spirit.

A central symbol of this story is the tree of life. Its Judaic version, the kabalah, describes both the vertical and the horizontal axes of our lives; our experience of life’s passage through time, and our relationship to the eternal. Holding such an image in mind can help us find meaning in the ordinary physicality of our lives. It can re-frame the conversation between mind and body, and help us re-imagine trauma, bringing us home to ourselves in a more grounded way.

Rob Porteous worked for 30 years as a secondary school teacher, of English and slow learners, with whom he sometimes felt an affinity. At the age of 50 he retrained as a therapist, and has been in private practice in south Bristol since graduating in 1999. During the same period, he has studied the shamanic dance, 'Movement Medicine’ which has greatly deepened his awareness of his embodied response to life.