December 17, 2023 Collab Salon: On Inspiration

 Inspiration may bring pleasure and delight, lead to new possibilities and creativity, be expressed in commitments to action, and take our relational selves in novel directions. There are many pathways to inspiration. It can arrive via therapeutic conversations, spending time in nature, reading books, listening to podcasts, joining communities to address injustices, attending a spiritual retreat and more. We may seek it through actively creating conditions that make it more likely to happen. Unintentional inspiration may arise through an unfamiliar encounter, sometimes when it’s least expected. Inspiration can enliven the heart/mind moment-to-moment. It can accompany us through hard times, good times, all times.

As our final Collab, Ian Percy will invite us to reflect on the experience, the effects, and the practice of inspiration. He will guide us to focus on:  Recalling and honouring an experience of inspiration during the past year and Imagining possible experiences of inspiration during the year to come.

Please join us during these challenging times as together we mark the end of nine years of Collab Salons, and link our lives around inspiration.

The program supported me to:

1. Name several ways in which inspiration can be enlivening and sustaining of our commitments
2. Become clearer about practices we could consciously adopt to create an inspired self
3. Appreciate the importance of being poised for the possibility of inspiration in everyday life

Ian Percy (Perth, Western Australia) is a family therapist, supervisor, trainer and published author in narrative and mindfulness approaches. Inspired by the writings of Michael White, David Epston and Alan Jenkins, he took a social constructionist and narrative turn in his practice some 30 years ago, intrigued by the power of cultural discourses and language to shape our lives and relationships. Ian has also studied and practiced various forms of meditation for four decades. The intersection of these influences led him to pursue an integration of mindfulness and Narrative Therapy, which includes attending to gestures and postures as expressions of distress, as statements of position, and as openings to preferred storylines. He is interested in notions of attentional capture and attentional choice, and the politics and ethics of mindful attention in therapy.  Ian co-presented with David Paré the May, 2016 Collab Salon on Narrative & Mindfulness Practice  and the June 2017 workshop, Creating Spaces for Emerging Practices. He is a contributor to the course: Extending the Histories of Narrative Therapy: Rich Story Development, Trauma & The Affective Turn.