Magical Places Parts Live

Setting Matters

In this advanced class, we will inquire into imaginary inner settings.

When people first start doing IFS, it’s reasonable to simply spend time working on unblending and developing one’s inner sense of parts.

As we move further into our work, we may begin to develop more elaborate imaginative spaces. To create new worlds within. To borrow worlds from other visionaries.

Like birds weaving nests from whatever tinsel and strands of hair and feathers they find, we too can weave a tapestry of inner containment based on EVERYTHING available to our imagination:

• dreams • novels • poems • paintings • food • memories • photographs • objects we own • childhood things and places • movies • YouTube

… and anything in between! My parts recently created some lovely broccoli trees; they’re quite plush. I love to lie in a broccoli tree and look up at the blue, blue sky in the middle of the baobab road in Africa, another of my exile’s excellent interior landscapes.

In the same way that people who use psychedelics to explore their inner worlds pay great attention to the set and setting of their trips, we can also pay attention to the inner settings of our encounters with parts.

This makes IFS more fun, more anchored in space, and more real. It also creates containment, which creates safety.

Spaces are like guides: they can offer extra inner energy to support the work.

As parts get to know their own personal spaces, they can learn new things about themselves. Choosing an inner place to live gives parts agency and a sense of ownership of their surroundings. It gives them power. It helps them develop their magical skills — their “active imagination,” as Jung termed it.

Let’s find out where some of your parts want to live — and where they’d like to ‘be’ inside when they’re talking to Self and doing inner work.

An opportunity to do some inner work in community, while also imaginatively considering WHERE to do that work — in a cathedral? Out in a field? By a lake?

The sky is the limit — in a cloud is fine too!

I invite you to expand your inner world in this workshop and consider the sacred places to talk to Self and be with your parts.

Strengthen your active imagination, and join our little group of women in this intimate inner adventure!