Power and Presence
In this retreat, Ken McLeod and Jeff Bickford offer a deep, embodied exploration of how power functions in our lives and practices, especially in relation to presence, intention, and internal conditioning. Through guided exercises, evocative storytelling, and group dialogue, participants learn to recognize power not as dominance, but as the ability to stay present and act clearly in the midst of complexity and challenge.
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1. The Subtle Dynamics of Power
Ken opens the retreat by examining why power is so rarely discussed and how it often pulls us out of presence. “You’re intending to push gently, and there’s this acceleration that starts to happen.” Topics covered include how power relates to presence and peace, the subtle dynamics of resistance and effort, and how these same forces arise in both meditation and daily life.
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2. Staying Present in Intensity: Power, Force, and Feedback
Ken and Jeff continue their investigation into power by looking at the role of feedback in staying present while acting with intention. “Power is the ability to stay present in all of that experience and work with your intention at the same time.” Topics covered include the difference between power and force, how presence can be lost through acceleration, and how bodily awareness anchors intention in both meditation and action.
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3. The Sword That Cuts Both Ways
Ken leads participants into a visceral, embodied exploration of power using a physical sword as a symbol and tool. “When you hold an implement or an instrument such as this, your body knows what it’s for.” Topics covered include the distinction between a warrior and a predator, how power is never given but taken, and five mysteries associated with power: presence, balance, truth, freedom, and awareness.
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4. The Illusion of Powerlessness
Ken challenges the idea that powerlessness is a fact rather than a learned response, highlighting how we often avoid certain actions due to past conditioning. “There isn’t any enemy out there. There’s the unwillingness to experience that feeling in here.” Topics covered include learned helplessness, the inner cost of conflict, how to reclaim agency through presence, and an embodied exercise called 'running the gauntlet' to experience freedom in action.
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5. Knowing Without Controlling
Ken and Jeff guide participants in learning to trust natural knowing through an exploration of visual attention, posture, and somatic feedback. “If you open to the totality of your experience, the totality of your being begins to engage and things happen completely naturally.” Topics covered include intention and balance in meditation, opening the heart, integrating difficult emotions, and how to experience attention as a full-body presence rather than a mental act.
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6. When Intention Touches the Wound
Ken explores how moving toward balance often activates the very patterns that have kept us out of it, patterns rooted in emotional wounds and sub-personalities. “You have that intention, you start exerting a little force, and suddenly everything’s just running like crazy—and you aren’t in the experience.” Topics covered include how agendas interfere with intention, somatic awareness as a key to presence, and an embodied exercise in power and cooperation using spoons of water.
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7. The Language of Movement
Jeff introduces a movement vocabulary that brings greater awareness to how we communicate through posture and gesture, both with ourselves and others. “A lot of the information we get is by observing how another person is moving or how they hold themselves.” Topics covered include movement mirroring, how body habits shape interaction, and how subtle shifts in posture can change the emotional tone of communication.
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8. Serving What Is True
Ken and Jeff explore what it means to serve what is true, especially when it contradicts personal agendas or habitual emotional responses. “If you’ve brought all your attention and things do blow up, what you get to see is what you couldn’t see before.” Topics covered include the metaphor of cutting with attention, the inner dynamics of fairytale symbols, and an embodied group exercise that brings the principles of leadership, trust, and fluid responsiveness into lived experience.
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9. The Artist and the Critic
Ken guides participants through an experiential exercise pairing artists and critics to highlight the tension between creativity and control. “We just want to relieve you of that inner burden. So we’re going to put it on the outside.” Topics covered include the limits of creative freedom, the intrusive nature of internalized criticism, and how bringing unconscious dynamics into the open can reveal patterns that shape how we relate to ourselves and others.
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10. The Ethics of Power
Ken wraps up the retreat with a reflection on how power arises from presence, balance, and the willingness to receive results as they are, not as we wish them to be. “The only boundary worth defending is balance, because that’s what creates the conditions for presence.” Topics covered include the four stages of conflict, the ethical use of power, the danger of cleverness without integrity, and the conclusion to the White Bird story, inviting each person to reflect on what the white bird symbolizes in their own life.