17/04/2026
I would love to take part in this week-long storytelling course! 😍
Once upon a time, there was an old and wise sage who was walking through a dark forest, together with a younger man who was apprenticing the sage.
As they walked they came to a clearing where there was a very heavy bundle lying in the dust.
The elder said, “Carry this.”
The young man hesitated. It’s not mine, he thought. Why should I carry it?
But he said nothing, and lifted the load onto his back.
As they walked, the weight pressed into his shoulders. He grew tired, then resentful and bitter.
This isn’t my responsibility,! This is not what I came here for! he told himself again and again.
Still, he kept walking.
After a long while, they reached their destination.
The elder turned to him and said, “You can put it down now. Open it! It was meant for you.”
The apprentice lowered the bundle. Inside he found something of great value.
Something he would not have found otherwise.
If you are a facilitator, teacher or space holder for others you may have encountered situations when you ask yourself if you should take on something that didn’t feel like your remit? Wondering is this “my role” or “not my role”
What factors influence whether you step in or step back?
When does stepping outside your role feel like leadership and when does it feel like you are heaving ‘boundaries issues’?
Who or what defines remit in your context of work? Is it you, your organisation, or the situation itself?
And most importantly? Are you ready to deal with the consequences of your decision making?
Stories don’t always hand us answers but they change the way we look for them.
Hearing a story we may ask questions that might feel harder, or riskier, to ask about ourselves directly.
For facilitators, this is where stories become especially powerful. They shift the role from providing answers to hosting exploration. Instead of telling a group how to think about responsibility or boundaries, you offer a story that holds the question.
The group does the rest by a conversation - testing ideas, disagreeing, reflecting, connecting it back to their own context so people can find their own way to the answers they can stand behind.
Do you want to use more stories in your facilitation?
Join me and Hannah Moore on ‘Tongues for Change’ a week-long intensive for practitioners who wish to develop their skills in applied storytelling - a space for enquiry, listening, reflecting, inspiration and renewal.
The week will include time for:
Exploring how applied storytelling can support you in creating and holding transformative, regenerative and visionary spaces.
Discover how storytelling can support us to safely explore difference, deepen connection, and set in motion the futures our imagination and our stories know are possible.
Practices for navigating through these challenging times of collapse, composting decaying stories, and growing in your own capacity to sit with the trouble in safe containers with others.
Supervision circles in which participants will be invited to share cases related to space-holding and storytelling practice, and receive collective listening, witnessing, and reflective support for professional development, integration and insight.
This course is for storytellers and story lovers - those who already tell and share stories as well as those who are excited to do so. The focus will be on ways of working with applied storytelling in interpersonal contexts, rather than how to tell stories.
Bring your questions about working with story in the context of facilitation, coaching, group processes, training programmes, creative workshops, community building, education, activism, social justice, conflict resolution, and peace building.
Discover more here: https://www.roigalor.com/tonguesofchange
