Welcome to this course on Formative Embodiment (FE) with Jim Feil. Jim invites us to explore a very practical, powerful and unique approach to story-telling and story-listening that is both somatic and formative.

As facilitators of any kind – therapists, coaches, educators and artists – we are asked to be present and participate in other people’s stories, whether they are about challenges, crises, traumas and conflicts or about opportunities, hopes and dreams. Stories of this kind are by their nature multi-layered and often complex. As listeners, we normally pay attention to one or more of these layers, such as the actual events and “content” of these stories, the emotional implications, lifelong dysfunctional patterns and the attempts at problem-solving the person brings.

In FE, we open up other doorways to a person’s deeper narrative, elements of their experience that they may not have recognized, yet may be available to someone listening, observing and resonating in specialized ways. We attend particularly to the person’s actions and gestures as they tell their story. These communicate to the person and to the facilitator what they are trying to form, incorporate and embody in their lives. What established forms and attitudes block their way forward, what their deeper organismic intention is for how they want to live, and exactly how to go about enacting this intention in concrete steps.

In this course we introduce somatic and formative markers that, when recognized as signals from our deeper intelligence, can lead the person in surprising and unexpected new directions. They can provide a foundation for possibilities that always seemed there yet have not been realized. The rhythm, intensity, excitation and vitality, and boundary conditions revealed in the story-telling are all part of this formative conversation.

We hope you will join us in this introductory course that can make us capable of new levels of service and satisfaction in our chosen personal and professional paths.

There are 4 two-hour sessions in this introductory course:

• January 4, 2021: The Deep Pulse-The Archetypal Wisdom of Nature
• January 11, 2021: Triune Relationships-Polarity as a Primary Organizing Principle
• January 18. 2021: Archetypal Gestures
• January 25, 2021: Somatic and Formative Story-Telling and Story Listening

All sessions are held in Zoom. You can download the software from zoom.us.

Time of the course:

• 9 am Pacific US time
• 10 am Mountain
• 11 am Central
• Noon Eastern
• 5 pm UK time
• 6 pm Spanish time

Thank you and see you soon,

Jim Feil and Kate White