Why The Sanctuary Is Radical

#thereisanotherway

For some time at The Sanctuary we’ve been saying that there is another way.  There is another way to approach mental health, another way to be with ourselves and each other. Some hear this and think it’s soft, sentimental and even naïve. But we believe that what we are doing is, in the truest sense, radical.

What “radical” really means

When I hear the word radical, I picture a swaggering declaration.  I see someone determined to smash the status quo and shouting loud with heat and political slogans. But if we dig deeper we find the older meaning. Radical comes from radix which is Latin for roots. First this was just a botanical term referring to literally the roots in the soil. Then it became a term used for the essential, the fundamental, the thing without which life withers. It was only later that the word climbed up into politics, reform and agitation.

Yes, to be radical, originally, was to go to the root.  It was to nourish what truly keeps something alive and that fuller meaning matters . Moreover, how you react to “radical” probably says something about how you were trained to move in the world. Do you thrill at the word? Do you flinch? Do you feel… tired? In my circles I see both.  I see the born rebels , the radicals, with a sparkle in their eye, and the peacemakers who keep their heads down and the rules tidy. But there is another kind of radical and it is one that suits both temperament.  It is the radical who tends the roots.  And that is the spirit of The Sanctuary.

Why we call our work radical

So... our work is radical because we go to the roots of suffering and not just look at the symptoms. We refuse to treat human beings as puzzles to be solved or pathologies to be subdued. We start where life starts.  We begin in the inner world, in that intricate ecology of body, breath, feeling, thought, memory and meaning. For generations this landscape felt like fog: a mind-field to tiptoe through and even chaos. But we are finally learning to steer our internal worlds, not to suppress them but to be with it skilfully.

This is slow work in a fast world. And that, too, is radical.

“In an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow.

In an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention.”

Pico Iyer

Carl Honoré calls our default the “roadrunner mentality.” We have engineered a thousand time-savers and, in the process we have actually forgotten how to be in time. Slowing down, on purpose and together, is certainly not laziness.  It could even be considered a well-needed, almost sacred counter-culture. It is choosing presence over performance, sufficiency over scarcity, humane pace over hyper-productivity. When we slow down, we don’t fall behind,  we fall back into ourselves.

Listening as resistance

One of the most radical moves we make at The Sanctuary is deceptively simple. We listen. We don’t fix. We don’t rush to diagnose. We sit in solidarity with another’s truth and we offer spacious attention.  This is the kind of deep presence and connection that heals shame and dissolves aloneness.

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force.”

-Brenda Ueland

In a world trained to interrupt, to debate, to harvest content from human pain, our practice is refusal. We do not dominate, persuade, or solve. We witness, reflect, and accompany. This is not passivity.  This is active, disciplined presence. It interrupts the commodification of suffering. It restores dignity. It returns people to their roots.

A key skill we teach in our training, again seems simple.  It is Noticing and this has also been called radical Anthropologist Anna Tsing suggests that ‘Noticing is trying to take those blinders off to look at the world……there we start to recognise that soils are alive’.  At The sanctuary our radical noticing involves talking the blinders off in our internal worlds and the impact is nothing less than radically beautiful. It is no less than a return.

Our quiet inner revolution 

You don’t have to swing left or right to feel what’s happening: speed, scarcity, and status anxiety have colonised our nervous systems. “Do more, be more, post more,” the world chants, and our bodies whisper back, “I’m so tired.” Many are quietly rebelling, many are embracing slow living, experimenting with four-day weeks, refusing the grind as an identity. They’re not lazy we see that this as this radically beautiful return as they’re reclaiming their humanity.

This is not opting out of the world. It is opting out of the fever that makes us cruel, to ourselves and to each other. Slowing down is not retreat, it is preparation. When we are less frayed, we are more courageous, more imaginative and more capable of solidarity.

“In our hedonistic age, the Slow movement has a marketing ace up its sleeve:

it peddles pleasure.”

Carl Honoré

Pleasure here doesn’t mean excess, it means the deep, ordinary satisfactions of being alive.  It is a regulated breath, a clear mind, a conversation that lands and a walk that doesn’t hurry you past your own life.

It is radical to take responsibility (and to stop fixing people)

It is  radical to say, my nervous system is my work and my attention is my craft. My relationships are where culture gets made. And it’s radical and possibly even scandalous, to not be setting out to fix people. As fixing often hides a subtle superiority i.e. Let me make you acceptable. We decline that role. At The Sanctuary we choose companionship over correction.

This doesn’t mean anything goes. It means we meet what is real with enough steadiness that change can emerge unforced. We prune, we don’t slash. We compost, we don’t incinerate. Significantly, we tend the roots.

The skills are learnable

What was once fringe such as mindfulness, contemplation, breath, yoga, has already moved toward the centre. Elite athletes, CEOs, and exhausted parents alike are discovering that inner hygiene matters. You wouldn’t work at a desk piled so high that everything topples, why then live with a chaotic mind? I believe that soon internal practice will be as ordinary as brushing your teeth. Not because it’s fashionable, but because it’s obvious.

So what do we do now?

Radical doesn’t have to be loud. It can be steady, rooted, and joyful. Here’s how we practice it:

1. Build inner skills. Learn to listen within and slow down on purpose. (Our Listening Course is designed to give you these self-skills.)

2. Practice in relationships. Replace reactivity with presence. Let space and attention transform how you love and lead. (Our Listening Course is designed to give you these self-skills.)

3. Get philosophical (and practical) about Self. Explore the edges of who you are and who you can be. (Try the Wheel of Me to map your inner landscape – piloting with our Listening Course .)

4. Choose community. Sit in a circle. Be heard and hear. Practice Slow + Listening together. (Join our Community (included in the Listening Course) and Listening Circle - coming soon.)

5. Stay connected. Follow along on Substack and our socials; visit the website for upcoming trainings and gatherings.

What makes this radical?

Because it goes to the root, to the patterns of attention and pace that shape everything else. Because it resists the economies that convert human beings into output. Because it restores belonging, which is the opposite of humiliation and the antidote to shame. Because it is both intimate and systemic, it changes your nervous system, and in turn you change how power moves through your home, your team and your neighbourhood.

Slowing down is courageous. Listening is insurgent. Tending the roots is revolutionary.

If radical once meant tearing down, let it now also mean growing up, into what we already are when we are not hurried, not afraid and not trying to win the wrong race.

There is another way. Come to the roots with us.  Be radical.

by Dr Jeannine Goh

#ThereIsAnotherWay