It was so lovely to revisit my London Bridge psychosynthesis training roots and talk to the delightful Allan Frater (author of Waking Dreams and The Act of Imagination) for this episode
He shares some of the ways in which he honours his imagination and integrates self-care, Self care and community care into his whole life.
LINKS
Buy Allan’s latest book here https://amzn.to/4d5XSmk (affiliate link)
Website: https://wildimagination.uk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Allan-Frater/100073610989149/
The Psychosynthesis Trust: https://psychosynthesistrust.org.uk/
Related episodes
If you enjoyed this, check out:
Shake, Cry and Let Go with Emily Rosenkranz: Episode 104 of Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD
Community as Self Care (with Elizabeth Potts): Episode 83 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast
Own Your Privilege, Change the World: Episode 80 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast
Book your free telephone consultation and access 100s of body-mind practices at https://solestosoul.ie/free-downloads
CHAPTERS
(0:00) You are important, valuable and worthy
(1:53) Introduction and welcome to episode 110
(2:02) Meet Allan Frater and their shared training history
(3:46) Allan’s new book and imagination in therapy
(5:48) Waking Dreams and being imaginative
(7:30) Feel: principles of self-care and embodiment
(10:54) Attention and protecting focus in modern life
(13:11) Love: connection through relationships
(17:00) Heal: community, differences and polarisation
(22:13) Responding to world events and collective context
(25:18) Message to a younger self
(28:48) Closing reflection and body scan
HASHTAGS
#allanfrater
#imagination
#psychosynthesis
FULL TRANSCRIPT
If I had a message to my Little Allan, it would be you are important, you are valuable, you are worthy, regardless of what you achieve.
Hi, you’re listening to Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD. Learn to love and care for all your parts from the soles of your feet to your soul.
I’m your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham. This is Mighty Meadbh. I’m a senior accredited supervisor, senior accredited counsellor, a therapeutic coach where I integrate all my offerings, including psychosynthesis counselling, the trauma informed therapies, the neurodivergent affirming therapies, AuDHD coaching, yoga, breath work, meditation, crystals, EFT.
I’m a senior yoga teacher and EFT international advanced EFT practitioner and mentor and an NLP master practitioner. I’m also the author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, a columnist for Platinum Magazine, where I answer readers’ questions every month using the Feel. Love. Heal. framework that I use in these episodes.
The focus is on self-care and connecting with that highest, wisest, truest part of yourself and community care, collective care, the Feel. Love. Heal. framework.
There are new episodes every Tuesday, so you can subscribe wherever you watch or listen. And you can also access older episodes, free resources, more information at solestosoul.ie/podcast. Thank you for listening.
I hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to episode 110 of the Souls to Soul Care for Trauma and ADHD podcast. This week’s guest is the delightful Allan Frater.
He was one of my last lecturers when I did my psychosynthesis counselling training ages ago. It was, I think, his first lecture and my last. And I still remember something that he shared about a client bringing anger to a session and me thinking, oh, I couldn’t handle that.
And of course, anger is an emotion just like everything else. I love Allan’s approach in terms of working with the unconscious, working with the imagination, with dreams. You might want to check out his books, Waking Dreams and The Act of Imagination.
There are links in the shownotes. And I hope you enjoy our interview. So welcome, Allan Frater.
Have I pronounced that right? You got me. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Thank you so much for joining me. I remember you when you, I think, started training at the Psychosynthesis and Education Trust at London Bridge, I think 2011.
Yeah. I was one of your last trainers and you were one of my first students. I think so.
And I still remember you talking about an angry client. I remember that, yeah. And I remember thinking, oh, that would horrify me.
I couldn’t cope with that because at that point I hadn’t yet kind of learned to work with my own and other’s anger. But yeah, it’s a long, long time ago. Welcome.
Welcome. Welcome. Can you say a little bit about what you’re working on now? I know you’ve got a new book coming out, but I also want you to say about your existing book.
Yeah. So the new book is called The Act of Imagination: Psychosynthesis, Psychotherapy in Experiential Context. That’s the subtitle. And that’s what I’ve been busy doing for the last three years. Three years. Every morning I get up and walk the dog and then I do that for a few hours.
So the strapline for that book, like on the back page, it says, therapy is a time between stories, a slow re-imagining of self and world. So basically I take the emphasis that psychosynthesis has on image work, but I go beyond the sort of normal approach, which is a scripted visualisations and set piece techniques, guided imagery, that kind of thing. I expand on that and present an image-based approach to all of therapy and all of your life.
So it’s kind of like you’re living in a story world and you are a character in that story. But sometimes the story doesn’t work anymore. Sometimes it breaks down.
Sometimes it doesn’t have the script to help you understand the new thing or person that’s turned up in your life. So it’s like therapy as a time between stories where you get to let go or to recognise and let go of the old story and then to re-imagine yourself into a new story. And along the way, we talk about what psychosynthesis is and what it maybe isn’t and the techniques.
And there’s lots of sort of practical descriptions of how to do it and transcripts of therapy sessions as little stories. So it’s got the ideas, it’s got the stories, it’s got the examples. Yeah, I’m really happy with it.
So that’s exciting to see what happens. And then the first book that I wrote back in 2021, it came out September 21, is called Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life.
So you can see my wheelhouse. All things imagination. So Waking Dreams is a lovely little book which presents a new approach to what people might call guided imagery or active imagination.
So it’s a very experiential book, but also thinking through what is imagination and how to be more imaginative. A lot of books on imagination take that for granted and they use imagination. But I’m much more interested in being imaginative.
It’s kind of like you don’t want to use your dog or use your partner. That’s a weird language for me. Imagination is not a machine to be used.
It’s a way of being in the world. It’s part of who we are. It’s the heart of our creativity and potential.
So those are my two books, my two little babies.
Wonderful. And there’ll be links to both in the show notes as well as where can people find you online? I’ve got a website called wildimagination.uk or just google Allan Frater and you’ll find me.
I’ll pop up.
OK. So I mentioned the Feel. Love. Heal. framework I developed.
So I ask everyone about their ideal self-care, like if time, energy, money weren’t any kind of limits and then the actual essentials. So with the feel part, it’s the kind of when you’ve got the bandwidth to do the things that help you feel better, the regulatory self-care. What would be your ideal practices and what is your essential?
For me, it’s about principles. So I would say there’s three underlying principles to any kind of self-care practice that I do anyway. And then you can find self-care wherever you are. So it’s not about doing a particular thing.
I think the first one is embodiment. So some kind of body work, some kind of like waking up the senses, coming into presence in not just like your inner body, but how your body connects you into the environment. So not drifting off and being dissociated.
Second one would be looking after your attention span, your ability to focus, your ability to stay with something. So rather than being fragmented and distracted all the time. And then the third one of the three principles would be coming into relationship through embodiment and through attention and having some kind of interest or curiosity towards whatever it is you’re in a relationship with.
So that allows self-care to be because I think that allows me to understand what self-care is. I mean, all those three things are what underpin an imaginative life. But in terms of self-care, for example, I swim in Hampstead Heath all year round.
I go swimming in the pond. And that’s a wonderful practice that wakes up the body, especially in the morning time. And certainly puts you in the moment.
You’re paying attention. You’re not distracted when you’re swimming around in two degrees. And you’re in a relationship to the environment, to the little ducks that swim by, or the wind and the sunshine, water.
But also novels, I think, is a really important thing for me. And I try most mornings I’m successful. That’s pretty much the first thing I do.
Well, I walk the dog and then I get a coffee and then I read a novel for like half an hour or an hour, depending on how early I get up. And a novel brings you to, certainly that helps your attention span. You come into a relationship with the place and the characters.
But I think also it wakes up your imaginal senses. So you’re like living the, because that’s what a novel is, it describes people experiencing the world. And then when you walk down the street later, you’re more interested in the bin man or something, because the character.
So novels, and then just, you know, all my, you can see that in everything I do really. Self-care isn’t a separate thing. You’re trying to, you can have self-care if you notice those things in whatever it is you’re doing.
Yeah. And I’m aware you said the second stage, the second principle, and my AuDHD late diagnosed brain was like, oh, that sounds amazing. But I didn’t fully grasp it.
Would you mind repeating that or saying a bit more about that?
Well, I think, yeah, attention deficit. We’ve all got attention deficit devices, I say, and we carry them around in our pockets now. So I think it’s an antidote to the fragmentation that is kind of built in, in many ways, to modern life, certainly the technology that a lot of us use and bombards us with an overwhelming sort of plethora of content and notifications and so many platforms.
Yeah. That this designed to make you an addict. Absolutely.
And it steals your attention. It diminishes your attention. Like your attention is a finite resource that you’ve only got so much of it.
And so we need to look after it. So, I mean, I’ve got an internet blocker on my phone and on my laptop that restricts my access for huge chunks of the day to the internet, to social media. And that means I can just get on with living my life.
Yeah. And that really helps me take out the, because then I, because it’s even if you’re not doing it, you might have to be putting energy into not doing it. Yes.
Because I like, I’m X generation. Yeah. So I grew up without the internet.
And when I was a teenager, I didn’t have to not go online. Absolutely. Yeah.
Because there wasn’t an online world. I’m really aware of like my nephew and niece, they’re growing up. And they’re kind of triggered all the time in the background.
Even if they’re not doing it, they’re wondering what’s there. And so I think fighting back with software that blocks that is a part of my self-care as well. Yeah.
Yeah. A few weeks ago, I interviewed Emily Rosenkranz, who’s one of my favourite yoga teachers. And she was talking about leaving her phone out the bedroom at night.
And I challenged myself to do it. And the first night I was standing scrolling in the hallway, for half an hour before leaving it out the bedroom. But just in a few weeks, I really noticed the difference.
Yeah. So what about moving on to the love part, that kind of, you’re part of the divine, you’re part of nature, that kind of connection with self, what helps you in an ideal world and as actual essential practices? Um, well, I see myself as connected through a web of relationships to a greater whole. And it’s a bit abstract, but let’s break it down.
So like, I think my wellbeing is, is, is well, yeah, which is what we’re talking about, is well, to the extent that I notice those relationships and look after them and cultivate those relationships. And so it’s kind of like the third point that I mentioned earlier. So like my relationship to my lovely, my lovely dog, sleeping away, Milly.
So, and so relationships to people, pets, and places, and activities, communities. And I teach at the Psychosynthesis Trust, that’s a big part of my life. That’s like a community for me.
Yeah. And there’s a culture there that I’m part of. And so feeling sort of woven into the fabric of those relationships is what connects me into what you might call love.
I think, I think in COVID, I really like recognised that on a whole new level, because it all got taken away from me. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, my inner introvert was very happy for a few weeks.
But then I came to realise just how much I was, I’m not just sustained by those relationships, or nourished by those relationships. I think I am those relationships. It’s kind of like they create who I am.
Obviously, your parents form you, but I think relationships, yeah, like food, you know, media, culture, the arts and the immediate environment and your friends, all the, all these things are shaping your very sense of self, you know? Absolutely. And you can engage with it and at least be conscious of that and then start to make some choices and maybe put energy into some of those relationships. And then that, that reaps rewards big time.
Yeah. I mean, relationships are a funny thing, because you can’t point to them. No.
They’re not a thing. And it’s, it’s an elusive sort of liminal in between that happens, not in Jack, not in Jill, but between Jack and Jill. And I think learning to recognise what a relationship is and the fragility of that and how it’s different to just, I’m angry, Jack, and you Jill are scared.
It’s like something happens between us. Yeah. When Jack is angry and Jill is scared and that can help or hinder the relationship.
And I mean, that’s what therapy is all about. They talk about the therapeutic relationship all the time, you know, working as a psychotherapist, but yeah, but I think people sort of take it for granted, or they don’t actually, it’s like imagination. It’s another one of these words, people don’t define what they mean, what is the relationship? How do you notice a relationship? It’s just like a sort of given.
But I think it’s important to begin to touch in on the mysteriousness of how we are a relationship. Yeah. And that brings us then to the heal part, which is all about community and collective care co-regulation.
And you’ve already mentioned the Trust. Where else, like kind of what is your ideal kind of community in terms of holding and being held? And what is your essential? And I’ve met Milly, which I’m guessing is part of, but as in, I’ve just met Milly now waving on the screen. But what would you say about ideal and actual self-care, their collective care? Collective care? Well, yeah, they’re sort of woven all together.
I’m sort of bridging between these three questions. I don’t know about ideal. It kind of throws me a little bit, because like, I’m more interested in what’s the next best thing, or what surrounds me.
So I mean, I could paint a picture of a utopia, possibly. I’d probably struggle to do that, given the world that we live in now. I mean, I’ve just been asked to do an interview with someone, and they were going to ask me about what I think is going to happen in 15 years time for X, Y and Z. And I emailed back and said, I don’t know if I can do that.
It’s just so far ahead, I’d just be coming up with a sort of fantasy. So let’s maybe emphasise that the actual, or give me the question again. So when I say ideal, like, I mean, I dream of a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome and loved and able to thrive.
But I don’t actually mean that on its own. I mean, more like, when you have the time, like, what communities do you connect with? Like, where do you find that in your life? And then the actual, essential, like, if you were travelling, or if you were ill, what would be your essential, your actual? One thing that comes to mind listening to you is that I think an ideal for me would be that we always recognise that there’s a shadow in any kind of organisation or community. And we want to be on the lookout for that.
Yeah. Another ideal, similar one would be to find a place in your community, in your life, for those people that maybe annoy you a little bit. And you maybe would rather they weren’t there in your life.
And maybe they’re messing with your head a little bit. But I think finding a way to not polarise with people who are different and who even might be annoying, it leaves the door open, I think, to learning from those people. I mean, it might not be, I mean, you might just learn to be more patient or something, but that’s important.
But also, they might have something to offer you. But I think the world as it’s constituted, going back to the technology thing, I think there’s a lot of polarisation and it’s getting harder and harder to have conversations with people who think differently. And it’s so, I think, in my ideal world, again, going back to being the next generation, I’m talking about being old now, that’s not good.
But like, I think, when I was growing up and I was like, politically idealistic, cancel culture hadn’t been invented yet. And we would argue with people that disagreed with us. And we’d want to have those discussions slash arguments.
And that was important. And so that would be part of my ideal, having a place where there’s a medium, because again, that comes back to relationship, rather than separation. There’s some kind of relationship across differences.
I mean, we’re all connected, like we’ve only got the one side. Exactly. And I think that’s why, you know, when you think badly of another, you’re sort of thinking badly of yourself, really.
So that’s the rationale, if you need a sort of person-centred rationale for doing that, where we are all connected. That’s a good point. Yeah.
And then, you know, I’m very much tapped into world events, you know, I’m a little bit of a news junkie. I can’t, I do like to keep in touch. And so world issues, let’s talk about that.
I think, there’s sort of two ways to go. And I certainly have avoided world issues in the past, because it’s kind of triggering and scary. But I learned that ultimately, that led me to being more triggered and nervous and neurotic than otherwise.
Because I think it’s nice to think that, I suppose that the panacea or the sort of, it would be a benign world where everyone gets their needs met and whatnot. But we’re not living in that world. And most of us live in a somewhat toxic world, where not everybody’s got our best intentions.
So for me, in my work as a therapist, it’s important for me to stay abreast of some of those issues. So whether that’s environmental degradation, or economic issues, or political polarisations and to look out for them in my clients’ lives and give them a space to talk about them so that we don’t just end up assuming that it’s all about them subjectively feeling anxious and that’s somehow a psychological failing. You should learn to feel calm and confident all the time, despite the fact that your rent’s just gone up by 20%.
And your job’s not secure. And politics has gone down the pan. And there’s all this hatred and stuff online.
And there’s wars everywhere. So like, contextualizing individual suffering within that is scary, but I think ultimately the way to go. And then it’s like to look at my relationship, how I respond to those events, is where there’s room for creativity and hope, maybe.
Hope, creativity, so that you can do something with how you respond. So the fact that X is happening in the world, I can’t change that for me or other people often, it’s empowering. But I can look at how I respond.
And often that response is shaped by how I respond to other things and how I’ve responded to growing up and there is a sort of historical element. That doesn’t mean that’s why I’m struggling with these things. But I think looking at those connections and trying to find a new response, which, yeah, I think as I get older, it’s just about acknowledging that there are these difficult things.
You know, there is death, there is suffering, there is sickness, there is limitation. And there are these nefarious characters in the world. Yeah, something like that.
And if you could go back in time to send any younger version of yourself some love, some wisdom, some compassion, what might that be? Gosh, that’s a really moving question. I would say hello. Yeah, that’s the first thing.
And I would say, how are you doing, Little Allan? What’s going on? And then I just want to listen for a while before I gave any advice, I think, to begin with. And I think in that, that would be my advice. I’d be modelling something.
I’d want somebody to just listen to him. You know, people listen to me when I was growing up. It’s not like that didn’t happen.
But when you’re scared and frightened and alone. But looking back from the future, what would I say? Oh, gosh, there’s no silver bullet. There’s no one thing you can tell anyone.
Yeah, that’s going to make it all better. And yeah, no, there’s something coming down. See, my problem is that I’m, you know, it’s a strength as well as a problem, but you know, I’m busy.
I get a lot done. And to some extent, my sense of self’s wrapped up in that. Yeah.
So I want to sort of prove myself and all that kind of stuff. You know, and I’ve worked on it over the years, but I think if I had a message to my little little island, it would be, you are important, you are valuable, you are worthy, regardless of what you achieve and how successful you are. You are beautiful and amazing in and of yourself and follow your heart, mate.
Yeah. You’re interested in history and novels. Why don’t you go and do that instead of training to be an engineer? So there’s a very specific piece of advice.
Because despite the conversation that we have had, I did spend my early education training up to be a scientist and then an engineer and then a maths teacher. None of which was a complete waste of time, but I might have had more fun if I’d followed my heart and got into a more sort of literary, artistic avenue, which I kind of landed in eventually. I love it.
Thank you so, so much for joining me. Really appreciate your time. Can you say again where people can find you? wildimagination.uk, one word.
Or just Google Allan Frater. And you’re on social media as well. I’m on Facebook.
I do have an X account, but I’ve kind of, I’ve not been on there for a while. So you could come and find me on Facebook and we could be friends. Well, thank you so, so much.
Really appreciate it. It’s good to talk.
Before you get on with something else, I’m going to encourage you to pause for a moment and scan your whole being from the soles of your feet to your soul and the crown of your head.
And notice what you’re aware of. Notice any physical sensations, pleasant, unpleasant, warmth, tingly, whatever it may be. Just being curious about what you’re feeling as you’ve listened to this episode.
Making a note, asking what those sensations might be trying to help you with, what you might benefit from doing for your body right now. Being aware of your thoughts, noticing any feelings that feel more prominent as a result of listening to today. And any intuitions, any insights, anything that you can actually schedule in to ground and improve your life in some way.
So let me know how you get on. Make a note, doodle, journal, whatever feels good for you. And thank you for listening.
This episode, like all of them, was produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham and I look forward to sharing more next week. You can find out more, access old episodes and free resources and more information at solestosoul.ie/podcast. See you next week.