“Taking one deep conscious breath is the ultimate prayer. When you’re breathing in, you’re borrowing from the earth, and when you’re breathing out, you’re giving back.”

With Alison Braithwaite, author & academic

In this discussion we touch on our relationship to the workplace (specifically corporations) and how work can act to disintegrate us, and often disconnect us from our true selves.

Once disintegrated, we go on a journey to find ourselves, to put our pieces back together. It is like a sacred pilgrimage or a rite of passage and yet we are set adrift in our western culture to find our own way through those rites rather than being guided by an elder, a medicine person, a shaman, a guru.

This discussion is from 2021, when Alison Braithwaite and I spoke of her early doctorate findings in a corporatised workplace as a place that we can be broken apart.

Although Alison is now ready for her defence, at the time of recording this podcast, Alison’s research was still in the process of revealing itself to her.

I am hoping to have another discussion with Alison very soon, as this is such an important topic for so many of us who feel alienated from our work & are seeking a level of authenticity in our working lives.

In this episode

00:00 Welcome and Intro
00:20 Meet Alison
01:54 Burnout and Pilgrimage
02:57 Triangle vs Circle Power
06:22 Power With Stories
09:20 Values Gender and Listening
16:07 Disconnection and Nature
20:45 Anger as a Compass
26:27 Leaving and Rebuilding
36:09 Healing Trauma and Closing

References & resources

Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice explores women’s psychological development, relationships, care and the importance of retaining one’s voice.
Carol Gilligan, The Birth of Pleasure considers how patriarchal structures influence boys’ relationships with emotion and girls’ relationships with voice.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants explores reciprocity, relationship with the natural world and the “grammar of animacy.”
Mary Parker Follett’s work on “power with” rather than “power over” offers a useful framework for collaborative leadership and shared power.

About Alison

Alison is a student of life, a seeker, a truth-teller, a story collector and a storyteller. She is a pilgrim who dives deeply into life and experiences to understand, reconnect and grow. She embraces shadow-work, as a container or transformation. By doing the work to unravel the threads of my own life, I am able to weave a path for others.

Alison was born on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Squamish, Tsleil-Wauthuth and Musquem Nations. She am from mountains and mudpies, eagles soaring and rivers flowing.

In her own words

I am from salmon spawning and rain falling. I am from cedars and pine needles. I am from the smell of a mountain breeze, the sound of the ocean waves and the feel of the sand between my toes. I am from streams, tadpoles and orca whales. I am of gentle rains and thunderstorms.

I see the world as interconnected, interdependent and interrelated. Being part of that web of relationship we have a responsibility to care and live in reciprocity with all that we are in relationship with. To move forward to live sustainably there is a need to shift from the triangular power structure (power over) to a circular power structure (power with or care). In a circular system, everyone has an equal voice, every voice is valued and as a member of the circle, our role is to see each other and to help one another see ourselves clearly. We each have a little piece of magic to bring into the world and we need community to nurture that piece so that everyone can manifest it into the world to create a world of balance, abundance and I guess love would best describe it. A world that is on an upward trajectory.