I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my upcoming workshops with Tanya which are three-part series focused on getting to know different parts of who we are to help us understand how we think differently, why we think differently or feel and behave in certain way. This is essentially because of the Archetypes you are – Which is what these upcoming workshops help you learn and understand.

An Archetype is a very typical example of a certain person or thing, a general set of characteristics that combine to suggest something.  Rather like the symptoms of an illness that are given a generic label e.g. stuffy head, runny eyes and nose, sore throat, general feeling of malaise might be classified as a typical cold.  It’s not the only thing it can be but these characteristics combined are typical of what we expect from something labelled as a cold.

In psychology, archetypes are used to suggest people types that we have embedded within our psyche e.g. the hero, the villain, all of which we can see when watching films.  Archetypes have been around for as long as we can recall with earlier examples possible embedded in things such as tarot cards and zodiac signs.

The three archetypes we will be exploring during these workshops come from the premis that we are the genetic sum of our ancestors so by looking back to these earlier civilisation we can see more clearly a few generic types of individuals, the archetypes.  We will have all three within us although we can expect one to be the most dominant or the way of being that we most naturally find ourselves in.

What archetypes provide us with is a way of better understanding ourselves and the complex world we live in.  We have a means of interpreting what we experience within ourselves e.g. “there’s a part of me that wants to buy a new car but this other part would prefer to go on holiday” as well as a resource that we can tap into when faced with situations where our own more dominant way of being is not effective.

In our first Mindful Matters Three-Part Series Workshop we will be inviting you to bring out the first of your Archetypes, a strong and focused character, whom you get to know and understand in a powerful way through the guided visualisation and yoga practice.