THE PATH OF THE KING: Integrating the wounded child
UPCOMING DATES - FEBRUARY 6th-9th 2025
DORSET, UK. THURSDAY - SUNDAY
LEVEL 2 - The Path of the King - Integrating the wounded child
Brothers, welcome to The Path of the King retreat. This is a four day journey to understand the deeper parts of your own masculine psyche and delve further into the work. On this next step of the journey from the Unmasked Man we will explore the importance of maintaining kingship and living a life that fully nourishes us and the people around us. It is time for us to walk as the open-hearted and powerful men we were born to be.
The men coming to our retreats discover their King energy and realise how powerful they are. They also find a deep and profound connection to other men; however maintaining this newly found awareness can be challenging in every day life. Therefore one needs a greater understanding of how their wounded inner child may be consciously or unconsciously steering the ship. Is there a part of you that still feels ‘not good enough’, unmotivated or reacts in a destructive way to situations? This may be your wounded inner boy that has been put into shadow and not been guided, supported and fully integrated into your adult self. On this retreat we integrate the wounded boy and uncover what it means to truly walk the path of the King.
How do we begin to integrate the wounded boy?
By exploring four powerful topics that have caused many men a great deal of pain and suffering. The Mother Wound, The Father Wound, The Good/Nice Guy and Sexuality/Addiction. The retreat is intricately designed to help men come into right relation with these four areas by gaining clarity, knowledge and deep emotional and physical healing.
Creating a healthy relationship with our mother is very important, even if she is no longer present in our lives.
Your mother may have been, or still, is emotionally and physically distant. Perhaps she left you as child and went back to work or perhaps her focus was on other things, such as running the home or looking after siblings. Other mothers can be possessive and care too much for the little child, being overbearing and controlling. Mothers with their own unmet needs might use the child to make themselves happy or feel loved.
Depending on our attachment and relationship with our mother, we may grow up creating power games with partners in a desperate attempt for our inner boy to gain some degree of control or safety. Or we may remain distant from our partners, fearful of deeper connection.
Robert Bly suggests that to be liberated from an unhealthy attachment with our mother we must “steal the key from under our mother’s pillow” thus severing the umbilical cord and unlocking our own unique power. We can then let the wild man out of his cage!
The father wound is equally complex. As David Deida describes,
“A man must love his father and yet be free of his father's expectations and criticisms in order to be a free man”.Healing the relationship with our father is essential in our own masculine growth.
“Getting hit by the axe” describes the first time a man feels his father’s anger and how this can shape the rest of his life.
Perhaps your father was unable to show you the affection, love and emotional understanding that your younger self needed in times of difficulty. Perhaps your father rejected or abandoned you. These wounds can still affect our lives today unless they are healed.
Many men have the Good/Nice Guy complex - also known as the ‘people pleaser’. This is the man that creates covert contracts and needs to be liked. This stems from a wound of not feeling good enough as a child and results in overcompensating as an adult. This however comes at the expense of their own well-being. By putting others first they have neglected themselves. The nice guy quickly turns angry and leaks his anger onto his partner, children and other relationships in his life. He has weak boundaries and is not aware it is okay to have needs of his own. Perhaps this man lacks hobbies, his main priority is his work. He will not speak up in times of need when it comes to himself. He may become a doormat to be walked over by friends, family, colleagues and is continually ‘friend-zoned’ by potential partners. We look at how developing the archetype of the Warrior can create healthy boundaries and the ability to speak one’s truth, remedying the grip of the Good/Nice Guy.
One very important topic that will be covered on the retreat is our relationship to our own sexuality/addiction. Childhood beliefs, cultural conditioning and sexual trauma at a young age are just a few of the ways in which our relationship to our bodies and sexuality can be damaged. This can lead to issues such as sexual shame, embarrassment, body dysmorphia, impotence, premature ejaculation, performance anxiety, PTSD and more. Workshops, sharing circles and discussions allow us to open up freely and develop a new relationship to these areas that may have been put in shadow. It is incredibly healing to know there are other men that have experienced the same.
The program will also weave in the four great masculine archetypes throughout - King, Warrior, Lover and Magician and their opposing inflated and deflated shadows. This is explored in much more depth in our Level 1 - Boy to King - Embodying the Masculine Archetypes retreat.
When we have understood and integrated parts of ourselves that have been placed into shadow we can more fully walk the path of the King. We know that by blessing others and maintaining a healthy kingdom for our friends, family and fellow humans we can all live a happier healthier life.
Alexander, Mitchell and the team are dear friends and love nothing more in life than to share their hearts, wisdom, creativity and passion for this work with other men.
