This year Insight for Community Impact will once again hold the Exploring Difference Conference within the Group Relations tradition. Although Group Relations models clearly work with and draw attention to emotional and relational experiencing, the fact that emotions are felt in the body, as physical sensations, is largely ignored. You are invited as a Group Relations consultant/practitioner to join with the co-leadership group organizing this conference which will explore the ways in which colonialist relations are, Consciously and Unconsciously, inscribed on the body.

We will explore the ways in which ‘the body’ is a site of colonialism as evidenced by the historical legacies of trans-generational lived experiences and social traumas. We anticipate learning that will be challenging in both ‘being in the body’ and developing a language for what that experience entails, specifically in learning how structures of injustices (racism, gender, ability, class, etc.) are embedded in the body and the implications of this for our responsibilities and capacities to tune to and accommodate one another personally and geographically.

Some key intentions of this conference are:

• to increase our understanding of how colonialism as a historical process that varies over time and place, is experienced and reproduced in the body; 
• to explore non-verbal (as well as verbal) emotional attunement and discord; 
• To understand more about the channel of Conscious and Unconscious experience through embodiment;
• to  explore how to consult in these processes to enhance self-group knowledge. 

This conference will utilize key group relations concepts such as:

• Attending to both the Unconscious and Conscious levels of what is happening in the group
• The surfacing of Unconscious dynamics through parallel process, symbolisation (dreams, fantasies)
• Remembering the operation of Group-as-a-whole: that what is happening may reflect the entire group not the behavior of single individuals
• Using psychoanalytic concepts to support understanding about group functioning (e.g. anxiety, denial, splitting, projection/projective identification, as well as containment)
• Considering how Bion’s concepts of basic assumptions and work group functioning are at play
• Considering and disrupting the ways Boundaries, Authority, Roles and Tasks are thought about and taken up.  Provoking curiosity about roles – assigned and assumed; unpicking social assumptions about the dynamics of authority, leadership structures, use and abuse of power
• Considering how power is operating within the group as a companion to authority and leadership. Noticing how power is manifest and has roots in hierarchy, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and all the other things against which we struggle. When power is considered in this way then social justice becomes an overarching theme.
  

Description of Events Within Exploring Difference 2022: Bodies Live Stories of Colonialism

Some of our thoughts on key elements of Group Relations:

• Attending to both the Unconscious and Conscious levels
• Group-as-a-whole
• Use of psychoanalytic concepts (anxiety, denial, splitting, projections, social defenses, holding environment, etc.)
• Some use of basic assumptions
• Work task and work group versus survival task and survival group
• The use of BART in terms of processes for exploration

• Power as a companion to notions of authority and leadership
• The usefulness of Group Relations in struggling with adaptive challenges (rather than just technical ones)

Group Relations is at its best when social justice overarches the work. 

Model of work and Description of Events:

Following on from learning and experience in previous Group Relations Conferences, this conference specifically provides an opportunity to explore Conscious and Unconscious dynamics in group processes, using different lenses. The hierarchical nature of authority often examined in group relations work is questioned through the lens of colonialism and a model of co-leadership that allows for more fluid role taking. In addition, the idea of learning through static-seated models is understood as being linked to a Global North colonial pedagogical tradition (which often included rote learning and subordinated kinaesthetic learning).

Movement has previously been introduced in Insight for Community Impact (ICI), Exploring Difference Conferences (EDC). The movement exploration will be extended to include other approaches to embodied practice through events designed to:

• allow participants to make links between the impacts of colonization and colonialism and the body both historically and in the present, and
• generate knowledge through transmission of, and reflection on, embodied experience both individually and socially. 

It has been suggested that Group Relations work fosters learning through regression and the interpretation of anxiety. We take the position that regressive processes happen in human encounters without the need for them to be created in a quasi-iatrogenic manner, and that providing spaces that are more generous and inclusive, centered on body-care and body-awareness, will allow ample learning about experiences of regression. 

In relation to this, we would understand anxiety as an adaptive force (like stress) and as a way of directing and focusing a voice for some of the social injustices that underpin the challenges in society.

Co-Leadership Group

Jo-anne Carlyle, PhD.  Clinical and Forensic Psychologist; Organizational Consultant, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist. Having worked as a clinician, researcher, teacher and consultant for over 30 years, she is transitioning to work with greater social impact for the final phase of her career.

Tanya Lewis. Tanya Lewis PhD is the program director for leadership development at Bureau Kensington. Her work experience includes post secondary education, and non profit community based organizations working with people with disabilities. She is coordinator of ICI which offers group relations training in Toronto and is the secretary of the CSGSS Board of Directors.

mak wemuk  JD (he/him) is Coahuiltecan and Latine (Chicanx). He consults on racial equity and social justice (Luna Consulting & Coaching). He formerly led Equal Voice Action, a membership organization of working poor families. Affiliations: WBC, GRI, AKRI, National Lawyers Guild.

Kristine Stege, Kristine is a dynamic HR professional with legal background and experience working for various public and private sector organizations in Canada, France and Latvia. Kristine has an MBA with a focus on Organization Studies and LL.M in International and European Law. Kristine is particularly interested in exploring the nature and emergence of difference, leadership and authority in groups.

Barbara Williams, EdD  Director of Bureau Kensington (BKI), a consulting practice working with movement building and feminist networks and organizations internationally. She is a guest of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society and founder of Impact for Community Insight (www.ici-ici.ca) a group relations network offering GR conferences and consulting training in Toronto.

Leadership in Embodied Movement

Janelle Joseph, Lead, Movement Session. Dr. Janelle Joseph is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. Dr Joseph’s research focuses on leadership related to race, gender, equity, and de-colonization.

Yamikuni Msosa:  Yami is committed to a practice of anti-racism & anti-oppression, using popular culture, creative facilitation, emergent strategy and digital engagement. They completed hir Master’s degree in Women and Gender Studies at Carleton University, and a Certificate from Michigan State University in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and Organizational Change.  Yami is the founder of SEEDS, Yoga for Survivors of Sexual Violence & The Yoga for Black Grief program that they started in 2020.