SE™ Master Class: Grief, Joy, and the Return to your Authentic Self
w/ Ergos Institute SE™ Faculty Ursula Funke-Kaiser
May 22nd - 25th, 2025
Norway In-Person
Grief, Joy, and the Return to Your Authentic Self will explore our relationship with grief. Which losses happened in my life? What did I learn about how to grieve them – or not to grieve? And what did this mean for the further course of my life? Even “smaller” losses that were not seen or accepted as such by the people around me can become firmly stuck in the soul. So, identifying those different issues or portals of grief will be helpful for our exploration. In looking into this, dealing with experiences of loss and grief with all our SE tools, we will find ways to go deeper into what is unresolved in ourselves and how to let go of patterns and obstacles for further development and living joyfully. In doing this in the context of a course for SE practitioners and students, we will also strengthen our abilities to work with grief in our clients and support them on their way to their authentic selves.
When we learn to be open to emotional pain and sorrow and let ourselves grieve what is lost, we can find the well in our soul from which inner strength, much larger resilience, and joy of living can evolve.
Peter Levine refers to the I Ging, The Chinese Book of Change Sign 48, The Fountain or Well. This sign reminds us that it is not enough to change superficially but to take care of the deepest foundation of life, which is inexhaustible.
Doing this in a way that creates a safe ground first makes it possible to visit the places of pain and sorrow. There, we experience the emotional charge and raw power that has the potential to pull us away from the way we have to go, to free our authentic selves and be alive. Caring for the basic SE principles like titration, pendulation, SIBAM, coupling dynamics, and joining, the immense pain hidden in grief and our concealed sorrow can be touched slowly and with awareness. Moving through it, we can open up for joy again and reunite with our Authentic Self.
This multilayered inner process challenges us to transform our identity. The trauma we experience and the hidden energies of grief, sorrow, and heartache shape how we see ourselves. To change this belief (“That’s the way I am”) and find a new identity in which joy, well-being, and benevolence become central, we need inner and outer guidance, like in every journey through the deep night of the soul.
Grief: The 7 Portals
1 – Loss of someone or also something you dared to love
2 – The places that haven’t felt love and should have so – often connected to immobilizing shame and self-blame – early attachment woundings and developmental stress
3 - What we expected but did not get – which is often difficult to distinguish from 2
4 – Ancestral grief
5 - The sorrows of the world
6 – Pervasive disconnection, lack of social cohesion
7 – Existential grief – the illusion of separateness, a spiritual form of grief, a yearning for belonging and unity.
Very often, those portals are interconnected, and one experience of grief can trigger another one. Naturally, during those four days, we will not be able to look deeply into every one of those gates, but we name them, and we hope you will get an idea of how it might show in you and your clients.
This SE Master Class Includes
Didactic Lecture with Q&A
Supervised practice
Ergos Institute of Somatic Education is not managing this course. Please email the SE Norway host for information.