Gaia U Re-evaluation Counseling Community Grows

Gaia University expanded its community of re-evaluation counselors in March by running another Re-evaluation Counseling Fundamentals workshop, this time at Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage in Tepozlan, Morelos, Mexico. Associates gathered to share documentation strategies, learn about ecovillage design, and practice effective ways of supporting each other through Re-evaluation counseling (RC).

Re-evaluation counseling is based on a set of skills and insights that enable one to discharge emotional distress and come to vital realizations. In re-evaluation counseling, people exchange the roles of counseling and being counseled. For this reason it is especially appropriate for egalitarian groups and people who want to take a direct role in their own healing.

Re-evaluation counseling theory holds out a picture of people as essentially intelligent, compassionate and creative. Any perception to the contrary is seen as a coping mechanism, a temporary response to unhealed hurt. In the absence of fully present, non-judgmental attention from another person, we don’t come into contact with our original pain and, as a result, build elaborate avoidance patterns that cloud our thinking and play out in negative emotions and behaviors. Our deep-seated hurt can be surfaced and healed through work with a re-evaluation counseling partner.

Using techniques that can be learned in a relatively brief introductory workshop, adults will quickly begin to reap the benefits of emotional discharge. Although it can seem strange and somewhat awkward at first, with the guidance of an experienced teacher, RC can become a potent tool for regaining clarity and ease.

Andrew Langford, co-founder of Gaia University, is a veteran RC teacher and has been offering GU associates an RC Fundamentals workshop at every GU orientation. “I realized that if I want to work on challenging world scale problems, I need to construct a field of support around me consisting of other people who are willing to get into good emotional shape.”

Recovering our natural states of exuberance and understanding leads to several key advantages. Our personal relationships can be based on the true need humans have for attentive social exchange. Also, it becomes easier to recognize the patterns of oppression that hold our culture captive in distress. Any freedom from internalized oppression leads to greater clarity and understanding about the cultural forces that keep oppression in place in society.

As one exercise in the most recent RC workshop, two panels were formed, one of the men and one of the women. First, each group worked on their own to identify some key changes that the other could make in their attitudes and behaviors. The goal was to become better allies for each other. When the groups came back together to speak their ideas aloud, the results were enlightening for both sides.

Andrew explains, “This work is a liberation thread that Gaia U makes a strong effort towards, because in the wider US and European culture, our own sense that this work – the deconstruction of sexism – is mistakenly thought to have been ‘done’ in the 70's and 80's, while it clearly persists and remains a truly global issue. The Gaia U RC community is a numerically balanced between women and men, thus this aspect of liberation work is one that we can truly take on as a live issue.”

To find out when the next Re-evaluation Counseling Fundamentals workshop is being offered, check our Dates and Venues page. All RC workshops are open to the public given space limitations.