Stories of the Journey Home » Blog

Strengthening The Container

Alli Brook — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:42:40 +0000

I’ve just completed the 12 week strength training program that I wrote about in a previous blog. What have I gained? Well, my health and well-being have dramatically improved. For the last few winters (admittedly in draughty houses in two freakishly cold English winters) I’ve had a long succession of bad colds: last year I counted four. [...]

The Clown Who Wasn’t Funny

Alli Brook — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:49:10 +0000

I’ve lived in the Stroud area for over two years now, and while my work, both as a teacher and performer, has taken off overseas, until last Friday I hadn’t yet gotten around to performing my stories for adults in my home town. There’s an additional level of vulnerability to performing in your own community. You [...]

Tami Simon

Alli Brook — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:17:10 +0000

Here’s another of my heroes: Tami Simon. I’ve had the feeling of being in the spiritual wilderness much of my life. At some point in my late teens, probably after reading too many Krishnamurti books, I got it into my head that true spirituality was nigh on impossible to achieve. Only truly extraordinary people had what [...]

The Tailor With Two Masters

Alli Brook — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:07:35 +0000

I was really happy with this performance. About forty people squeezed into the basement at Cafe Gaia in Aarhus, Denmark to hear this story. There are a lot of comic touches; at times I’m almost in the realms of stand up comedy, which I’m very pleased about. And there’s a lot of depth to it [...]

The Crown’s Regret

Alli Brook — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:21:59 +0000

I told this story to a group involved in the Findhorn Nonviolent Communcation Intensive, which I lead with my friends Kit Miller and Dominic Barter. This year we tried something new, which was that unlike any other program at Findhorn (and at most such centres) there was no upfront fee for participation in the week. [...]

Strength Training

Alli Brook — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:56:00 +0000

I’ve surprised quite a few people recently by embarking on a strength training program. About four years ago I was given Ken Wilber’s excellent ten CD set Kosmic Konsciousness. In amongst all kinds of learned and insightful material on a wide range of spiritual topics was something that I wasn’t expecting. Wilber started citing research showing [...]

Piercing the Veil

Alli Brook — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:54:45 +0000

I told this story in a heavy rain storm, in a little summer house near the sea in Denmark. It was warm and we had the windows open and the heavy rain and frequent thunder are clearly audible in the background. I guess most storytellers learn to use unpredictable intrusions from their environment to their stories’ [...]

Hold the Line, Daddy!

Alli Brook — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:35:30 +0000

This is an awesome story. It takes a while to warm up, but once it got going it kind of blew me away. I told this on a Deepening Retreat, for people who had already learned the basics of Intuitive Storytelling and were wanting to keep honing their practice with me. In the group was [...]

The Nurse’s Secret Pleasure

Alli Brook — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:00:18 +0000

The theme that I discussed with my audience before telling this story was “Healing our wounds”. It felt quite a relevant theme to explore with this audience, as we were in Oslo, exactly one month after the massacre that happened there in July 2011. I am very impressed with how the Norwegians dealt with this [...]

The Truth-telling Handkerchief

Alli Brook — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:15:59 +0000

This story has some striking images; I love this scenario of the rich man who asks a seamstress to embroider his wife’s name into a handkerchief, but when she tries, the stitches, seemingly with a life of their own, trace out the name of his former lover! The camel meeting the little man is also [...]