Conscious Ageing at the Integral European Conference
HEIDI´S INTRO
Four years ago, after Mark’s talk at the Integral European conference 2016, we have created together the series “Conscious Ageing” at the Wisdom Factory.We have hosted around 60 guests who shared their perspective on Ageing and how to do it consciously.
Ageing and dying is still such a taboo topic, the more I was pleased to see quite a lot of people early in the morning to attend my Conscious Ageing Contribution at the conference which had to be online this year because of Corona.
When I talked about the history of the series and then showed the picture of Mark’s grave stone with the spiral engraved in white marble, the tears came up again. It is 2 years ago that he had to leave his body, but the grief is still there. I believed it had passed now, but the connection had continued and obviously also the grief that it is no more in a tangible way.
Jane Rogers acknowledged the grief. She has developed the “before I go” solutions after her husband died and she realised how important it is to leave directions for those who have to deal with our funeral and the stuff we leave behind. Despite the serious topic she managed to talk about it lightly and with humour and was well received by the audience.
Bettina Wichers gave a short overview on how Dementia can be seen through the integral lens. Today it is mainly seen as an illness which needs fixing – or remains unfixable. But there are many more dimensions to it, especially how to handle people in the different stages of theor spiraling down to beige, in ways that it is best for them and for the people around.
Ann Roberts talks about “Adulthood II”, the new emerging stage in peoples’ lives between retirement and old age, when they are full of energy and willing and able to create something new in their lives, often less oriented to achieve something, but more understood as a service to a cause or other people.
Monia cancelled her participation. She was invited to an 80-year birthday party lunch of a friend who she fears to not have around any more for long. Being almost 80 herself she felt she couldn’t do bothe, one after the other, and she decided to care for herself by freducing the stress which would have come up doing everything in the same morning. – A practice of conscious ageing!
Several people in the audience spoke up, talked about their own attitude towards their ageing or the processes they went through when being with a parent until death. A very intimate atmosphere arose in these 90 minutes we were together online on video.
This event was an encouragement for me to continue the work which was so dear to Mark’s heart: Conscious Ageing, Conscious Dying. He himself certainly was an example of both.
Heidi Hörnlein
Born in Germany, MA in Berlin, in Italy for 30 years, Voice teacher and
therapist. Licensed Counselor and Coach and Host of audio and video
podcasts since 2013.
University studies in Mathematics, Physics, MA in Linguistics. Parallel
studies in singing. Employment in a professional choir RIAS Berlin. 5
years of study of voice and music in Rome. Self-study and meeting Integral
theory led to developing “Integral voice training”. License in Gestalt
Counseling and different Coaching approaches. Live broadcasts and
video recordings with Mark Davenport in The Wisdom Factory on
Conscious Ageing and other topics.
Ann Roberts
Ann’s exploration of Conscious Ageing began in 2015 when after a 35 years career in organisational, team, and personal development, she retired from Police Scotland as a Leadership Development Consultant. She is now exploring Conscious Agers via an initiative called Active Wisdom: An Inquiry into our Elderhood. Ann is particularly interested in adult development opportunities within the life cycle stage of Elderhood that arises from the possibility of more freedom, more time, and more potential for exploration. In 1996 Ann first encountered an indigenous Mayan body of Teachings that, over the years, she has woven its tools and protocols with her love of Integral Theory. Ann lives in a village just south of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Jane Duncan Rogers
Jane Duncan Rogers is an award-winning Life and Death coach who
helps people prepare well for the best ending of life possible.
Having been in the field of psychotherapy and personal growth for more
than 25 years, she is also the author of Gifted By Grief: A True Story of
Cancer, Loss and Rebirth, and Before I Go: Practical Questions to Ask
and Answer Before You Die. She founded Before I Go Solutions in 2016.
Read her full biography on her other website: www.giftedbygrief.com
Monia Frühwirth
Born in Vienna, November 1941. Trained as a translator at the University of Vienna. Married since 1965, two daughters,
three grandchildren. Lived in New York City for 9 years, studied, and practiced Kundalini Yoga and comparative religions
after experiencing cosmic consciousness in 1973. Further training in Buddhism for the West, Gestalt therapy according to
Rebillot, shadow work. Since 2001 actively involved in the German-speaking integral scene, chief editor of the integrale
Perspektiven, the founder of the Integrale Frauenfeld, organizing integral activities in Vienna.
Bettina Wichers
Bettina has a scientific degree in gerontology (M.Sc.) and adult education (Dipl.) and works as an integral coach for consciousness development and as a freelance consultant in the field of health, ageing and dementia.
She refers in her work to the Integral Methodological Pluralism (Ken Wilber) as metatheoretical framework and to Spiral Dynamics, the Stages model of Terri O’Fallon, the developmental research of Susanne Cook-Greuter, Roman Angerer and John Kesler. For many years, based on an intensive phenomenological practice, she has been doing research on the causes of what is described as regression in dementia and has been looking for the involutionary impulse for it. With Terri O’Fallon, she is currently working on a study of how dementia is constructed and experienced at the different stages of Terri’s Stages model. Together with Roman Angerer, she is developing different experimental formats in the German-speaking integral community to open the transition from the autonomous-integral stage to the stage of construct awareness.
In May 2018 she presented her work at the Integral European Conference in Hungary. She is leading an Integral Salon in Göttingen, Germany, and is a member of the HeilOrt community, an integral health project in Bad Belzig, Germany.
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