Bayo Akomolafe
Dear human-helper-of-humans,
Many of us in the healing professions have shared a growing sense of needing to go beyond our traditional training to meet the unique challenges of our times.
There’s a feeling of being confined by current therapeutic practices.
You might have even found yourself thinking: “Am I truly addressing the root causes of my clients’ struggles?” Traditional methods sometimes feel like they only scratch the surface.
“Why do I feel limited by the tools and techniques I’ve learned?” The issues we face today are more complex than ever.
“Is there a deeper way to connect with and support my clients?” Current practices can feel restrictive, leaving little room for deeper exploration.
While this is anecdotal, it suggests that we are in a period of significant change and questioning.
During these times, it can be helpful to explore new perspectives and ways of thinking. This is an opportunity to ask a few important questions:
What does healing look like post-pandemic?
How do we address healing when our very understanding of humanity is influenced by racial and environmental factors?
How do we support clients when they are deeply connected to broader ecological and ancestral contexts?
As one-who-cares, it could be that these questions feel irrelevant to you in such a time of crises. But the hospital itself is ill, my friend. Only you can truly assess the real impact of your care on those you help.
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I am here to facilitate a mutual co-inquiry into the factors affecting care and well-being, and what this means for your practice and the traditional therapeutic relationship.
This course explores the concepts of healing and challenges current clinical practices. It’s not about providing new tools or techniques, but about addressing the underlying tensions present in modern healing practices that often go unacknowledged.
This course does not provide specific solutions. Instead, in an era where quick fixes are often inadequate, we focus on the healing process itself. I invite you to join a global exploration of the challenges we face as healers today, so we can collectively redefine our roles and approaches.
(This is not a typical course)
Five Video Training Modules
Five Pre-Recorded Training Calls
Downloadable Course Materials
Private Member Dashboard
What You Get from "Where Do We Go When Healing Becomes Ill?"
Trauma & Whiteness - A Conversation With Resmaa Menakem
The Emergent Role of the Therapist - A Conversation With Thomas Hübl
What Does A Politics of Restoration Miss? A Conversation With Sanah Ahsan
The Client Is An Ecology - A Conversation With Tyson Yunkaporta
The Plantation of Wellbeing - A Conversation With Akilah Riley-Richardson
Leadership as a Modality of Care - A Conversation With Amy Elizabeth Fox
Plus, Bonus Dialogues with Bayo:
The “death” of the client
In this foundational module, Bayo Akomolafe challenges you to radically rethink the traditional therapeutic relationship. By exploring the dynamic and interconnected nature of care, you will gain new perspectives on how to navigate the complexities of well-being in our crisis-ridden world. This module sets the stage for a transformative journey, equipping you with innovative approaches to therapy that respond to the urgent needs of our times.
Key Topics Include:
1 – The Anthropocene and Afroscene: Explore how global crises, from climate change to racial upheavals, are reshaping our understanding of humanity and care. Understand the interconnected nature of these crises and their impact on mental health.
2 – The Loss of White Stability: Examine how traditional notions of selfhood and well-being are being disrupted. Discuss the implications of these disruptions for contemporary therapeutic practices.
3 – Enter the Posthuman: Delve into emerging philosophies that decenter the human, opening new possibilities for conceptualizing health and therapy. Investigate how posthumanist perspectives can transform therapeutic approaches.
4 – The Client is Ecological and Therefore Postponed: Consider how the client is no longer confined to the individual in the room, but extends to broader societal and environmental contexts. Learn about the ecological dimensions of mental health and their therapeutic implications.
5 – Psychology as the Policeman of Capitalism: Critically examine the role of psychology in maintaining or challenging societal structures. Reflect on how psychological practices can either reinforce or resist capitalist dynamics.
When the hospital becomes illÂ
In this provocative second module, Bayo challenges us to critically examine the inherent limitations and potential harm within conventional healing practices. By exploring the intersections of diagnosis, therapy, and societal norms, participants will gain a deeper understanding of how current therapeutic frameworks might perpetuate the very issues they aim to resolve. This module challenges practitioners to rethink and innovate their approaches to care in order to cultivate a more nuanced and effective practice.
Key Topics Include:
- Therapy Today: Stories of Dissent:
Hear the stories of professionals who question the adequacy of conventional therapeutic methods so you can build a new foundation from which to explore how the current frameworks may not meet the evolving needs of society.
Prometheus and Procrustes:
Examine these Greek mythical figures to understand how healing and trauma can become entangled.
- The Iatropolis: When Therapy Becomes Iatrogenic: Understand the concept of the Iatropolis, where healing practices may perpetuate the crises they aim to solve.
- Diagnosis: Normopathy, Safety, and the Quest for Categoricity: Investigate how diagnostic practices can be a means of societal control and capture so you can reflect on the implications of categorizing and stabilizing bodies within clinical settings.Â
- Â The Limitations of Healing and Solidarity: Discuss how efforts in healing and solidarity can sometimes reinforce existing tensions and suffering so you can start to consider the political and cultural dimensions of your practice and its broader impact.
Trauma and the citizen
In this module, Bayo Akomolafe invites you to deeply examine and challenge the conventional understandings of trauma. Through rich historical context, cross-cultural insights, and philosophical interrogations, this module aims to expand your toolkit by including broader, relational perspectives on trauma and harm. This journey will equip you with a nuanced comprehension of trauma’s political, cultural, and ecological dimensions, encouraging innovative therapeutic approaches.
Key Topics Include:
1 – Where is the Body? The Local and the Virtual: Explore the complex nature of the body beyond its physical form, considering its virtual and diasporic aspects so you can understand how technologies, environments, and legislation impact our embodied experiences and therapeutic practices.
2 – A Strange History of Trauma: Dive into the historical evolution of trauma, from “railway spine” to modern interpretations so you can see how trauma has become a dominant framework in understanding harm and development, and what this means for contemporary therapy.
3 – A Transversal, Transjective Theory of Trauma: Learn about Bayo’s innovative theory that views trauma through a political and cross-cultural lens so you can treat trauma as a relational phenomenon that transcends individual experiences, affecting communities and environments.
4 – Interrogating the Notion of Harm: Critically analyze the concept of harm, exploring how it delineates proper and improper bodies and behaviors in order to discover the political implications of trauma and harm, including how these concepts support or challenge existing power structures.
5 – Yoruba Indigenous Explorations of Trauma: Gain insights from Yoruba traditions that view trauma and healing through ecological and communal lenses so you can see some alternative therapeutic practices that emphasize relationality and the broader moral fields influencing individual well-being.
Schizoanalysis and the history of desire
In this module, Bayo takes you on an enlightening journey through schizoanalysis and the complex landscape of human desire. This exploration will challenge conventional frameworks and open new avenues for understanding therapy and well-being. By delving into the works of notable philosophers and examining critical historical and cultural contexts, you will gain fresh perspectives on the interplay between individual and collective psyches.
Key Topics Include:
1 – The Problem with the Individual: Unpack the Cartesian notion of the individual and its limitations in modern therapeutic practices so you can explore alternative perspectives that emphasize relationality and interconnectedness over isolated selfhood.
2 – Institutional Psychotherapy: Learn about the French movement that challenged traditional psychotherapeutic practices by integrating patients into the governance of their own care, in order to understand the implications of these historical experiments for contemporary therapy.
3 – Desire as Lack, Desire as Flow: Examine contrasting theories of desire from Lacan to Deleuze and Guattari so you can see how viewing desire as a dynamic flow rather than a lack can transform therapeutic approaches and societal structures.
4 – Schizoanalysis: Dive into the philosophy of schizoanalysis, which critiques both psychoanalysis and capitalism, so you can reveal deeper insights into societal and individual behaviors.
5 – Fernand Deligny: A Departure: Explore the pioneering work of Fernand Deligny with autistic children and his innovative, non-verbal approach to therapy so you can gain inspiration from Deligny’s experimental methods that emphasize play, silence, and the intelligence of the more-than-human world.
Abtherapy and becoming-black
In this final module, Bayo encourages you to explore innovative and transformative approaches to care. By engaging with new materialities and practices, you will learn to embrace uncertainty and foster sanctuary in therapeutic spaces. This module invites a deep reconsideration of how care is structured and delivered, offering fresh perspectives that challenge conventional frameworks.
Key Topics Include:
- Deligny: The Slightest Gesture: Learn from the work of Fernand Deligny, who saw potential in the smallest gestures and maladaptive behaviors of autistic children so you understand how these gestures can be seen as creative ruptures that invite new ways of thinking about therapy and care.
- Autistic Lines of Flight:Â Explore the concept of “lines of flight” and how autistic behaviors challenge and expand traditional notions of normalcy and therapy so you can investigate the potential of neurodivergent experiences to offer new insights into therapeutic practices.
- Abtherapy: A Politics within Cracks:Â Discover abtherapy, which emphasizes moving away from traditional therapy and embracing the cracks and ruptures within established systems, so you can discover how these cracks can become sites of experimentation and new possibilities for care.
- What Might New Materialities of Care Look Like?:Â Engage with the question of how care can evolve in response to technological, ecological, and societal changes so you can consider how new practices and understandings might emerge in times of uncertainty and disruption.
- Making Sanctuary and Embracing Uncertainty:Â Delve into the concept of making sanctuary as a space for radical hospitality and experimentation so you can learn how to hold space for new and emerging forms of care by embracing uncertainty and fostering communal practices.
Themes for our co-inquiry
Meet Your Presenter
Báyò Akómoláfé, Ph.D.
Báyò Akómoláfé is a widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home, and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak.
Báyò is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California, and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Local Futures (Australia).
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