Dismantling Aloneness: Practices to enrich the online group experience

Those of us who care about the future of our planet can often end up feeling anxious, depressed, hopeless– sometimes to the point of alienation. These are all symptoms of deep aloneness.

Community practices, workshops and group coaching can help us find the connection and community we are longing for. But today many of these experiences are online, and participants can often feel distant from each other, like disembodied heads in a Zoom rectangle, and that they don’t really know each other.

It is crucial, since so much of our connecting and activism happens online now, that we think about how to make these online experiences feel truly nourishing, so that we don’t feel isolated and alone. 

Imagine how satisfying it would feel to come away from an online workshop or group:

• having engaged not just your head and heart (the parts others can see on Zoom) but your whole body and nervous system
• feeling deeply known, seen and heard
• knowing without a doubt that your presence mattered– that YOU mattered– to the other participants

This experiential workshop is just that. We will demonstrate and give you an opportunity to try out simple, deeply connecting practices with the other participants that, we hope, will enhance how you work and connect with others. We will use as a basis an Active Hope exercise, but these practices can be used in any group, workshop or coaching. 

You’ll be invited to experience the Active Hope spiral, amplified with our reflective practice and feedback method, based on our experience as therapists, coaches, creatives and facilitators. This methodology was developed organically in our group based on the needs and feelings we each were experiencing during the Active Hope practices. We would like to share our experience with the group, and also, how to enable your programme participants to outlive the programme, continue the process and co-create radical pods of practice that continue the Active Hope work in their lives and communities.

We are four people who met in an online Active Hope workshop a year ago and continued to meet after it ended, experimenting with different relational practices together. Over time, we developed a joyful, loving bond that lies somewhere between friends and colleagues, as we encourage and inspire each other in our different spheres of work. We are excited to share.