Leading from the Well:
An Interpersonal Therapy Group for Those Ushering Change
A closed interpersonal group for people working in ‘changemaking' and caretaking spaces.
Explore the patterns of self and relating that keep showing up in your work and life.
Wednesdays 6:30pm - 8:00pm.
Join our ongoing group, recommencing 13th January, 2027
Next intake closes December 18th
CERES Environment Park, Brunswick East, Victoria
Do you work in social impact, community care, or ecological change, and keep ending up in the same place: overextended, isolated, carrying more than your body can hold?
What would it mean (for you, your community, and your work in the world) to be held in your experience, and come to understand what might be
driving your over-functioning, the rescue, the difficulty receiving?
Leading from the Well is…
An interpersonal group for people dedicated to serving a more beautiful world — and who are ready to return to themselves, and deepen the well from which they live, lead, and love.
Not as a strategy for doing more or better work, but because they long to feel a greater wholeness.
With a knowing that wholeness facilitates true cultural change, Margaret Wheatley reminds us, “the world does not need more leaders who know how to manage. It needs leaders who know how to be present — who have not outsourced their inner life in service of their outer mission.”
This is not coaching. It is not a leadership program. It is genuine therapeutic work — interpersonal, embodied, ecological — held in a small, trusted circle of people who have made their work an expression of what they care most deeply about, and are living with the full weight of that choice.
Otto Scharmer writes that leadership, in its essence, is the capacity to shift the inner place from which we operate. Not the outer strategy, but the inner ground. Not the doing, but the source of the doing.
The group itself becomes the well. What is drawn up in the room — the grief in what we witness, the patterns of disconnection in ourselves, the long-held silences, the things we have never said in a professional context — is not a detour from the work; it is the work. The dynamics that arise between people in this circle are the same dynamics that run through the organisations and movements they are pouring themselves into. The group makes the invisible visible, and holds it.
The group in-brief:
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Wednesdays, 6:30-8pm;
Recommencing January 13th, 2027
Next intake now open until December 18th
Express your interest below to explore if joining us for this next Term might be the right fit for you. -
In group psychotherapy, individuals gather in a supportive environment to explore and address their psychological concerns. Drawing from Yalom's existential approach, participants engage in interpersonal interactions, gaining insights into their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in relationships. Through shared experiences and feedback, members develop self-awareness, empathy, and new social skills. Through recognising and validating shared experiences, there is often a profound sense of belonging, reducing isolation. Guided by a skilled therapist, participants challenge maladaptive patterns, cultivate resilience, and deepen their understanding of themselves and others.
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Within this weekly time together, the focus will be on creating the conditions together, for sharing honestly what is happening in the ‘here-and-now,’ within yourself and in response to each other. With an ‘interpersonal’ focus, Al will support in maintaining the conditions for both difference and collaboration to exist. In this way, each session is a rich personal and social learning opportunity to make contact with your history, as it presents in these particular relationships, in a deeply supportive way.
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The group will move through themes most present for each person, and may include:
Body & Nervous System — where the weight of this work actually lives in the body, and how to work with it rather than around it;
Relational Patterns — illuminating, holding, and wholing patterns carried from personal history into relationships across family, friends, organisations, teams, and community at large;
Shadow — the saviour complex, perfectionism, martyrdom, and the parts of self that the mission has been protecting us from seeing;
Grief & Despair — the accumulated emotional weight of caring about what you care about, for as long as you have;
Ecological Connection — connection to place, the seasonal rhythm, the more-than-human world as a genuine source of belonging, renewal, and guidance;
Meaning and mortality — what actually sustains commitment over years and decades.
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At any given time, there will be between 6-10 people in this group, to support both intimacy and diversity. Intimacy supports us in each having sufficient time to explore our own life and minds, and diversity allows there to be a rich representation of life experiences in our space to be in relationship to.
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This is an ongoing group that meets once per week for 90 minutes. Attendance is required at each of the meetings, unless, of course, for agreed-upon circumstances.
As a new member, you will join for an initial 12-week term, after which, you will discuss your experiences in the group with Al, and in turn, may have the opportunity to continue ongoingly into the next terms.Ongoing members will all have a 50-minute individual session with Al every 3 months to track your arc, name what’s shifted, and mark what’s still in motion.
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Apply to join the next intake period for a brief conversation with Al to assess alignment;
Sliding scale pricing: $110-$140 per session (excl GST), billed monthly for ongoing members.
New members: $1,320 - $1,680 for your initial 12-week term.Some alternative payment plans/arrangements are available.
If the group feels like a good fit for you and finances pose a barrier, we can discuss options.
This is also a caring and kind space for our queer, indigenous, and trans community members.
Feeling called to the Well?
"The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong… Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing."
- Joanna Macy
In ancient traditions, the well was the place a community gathered to draw what it needed to live. It was also the threshold — the entrance to the world beneath the world. To go to the well was both practical and sacred.
For those of us leading in community- and impact- sectors or “changemaking” spaces, there is often a well inside we have not visited in a long time.
We have been so busily tending outer-change that we have forgotten how to descend. So busy building what is needed in the world around us that we have lost contact with the ground we are standing on, and the rich textures of our own wholeness as both clarifying and sustaining forces. The work continues — urgent, necessary, beautiful — but something in us is running dry.
Leading from the Well is an invitation to go back down. Not away from the work. Deeper into the source of it.
This program will not help you do more.
It might, over time, help you do less — and have it mean more to you.
It is not for people who want tools and takeaways.
It is not a retreat, a masterclass, or a wellbeing program.
It does not start or end with a framework.
It is for people who are sincerely ready to engage in the heat and revelation of relational change — slowly, in the company of others who understand something about the gravity of this work.
“The act of revealing oneself fully to another and still being accepted may be the major vehicle of therapeutic help.”
- Irvin D. Yalom
Who facilitates this group?
Al Jeffery
PACFA Accredited Clinical Psychotherapist
Al is a co-founder and Director at Turning Ground, an integrative psychotherapist and certified Mindful Leadership trainer from NYU and Naropa University. He has trained in Irvin Yalom’s Interpersonal Group Therapy under the guidance of Dr. Traill Dowie.
Fees & Payments
Places are offered on a sliding-scale fee structure for this group (excl. GST):
Standard: $125 per session
Supported: $110 per session
Pay it Forward: $140 per session
Fees are billed upfront for your initial 12-week term, with a 50% deposit required upon accepting the invitation to join, with the balance required prior to the commencement of the term.
Payment plan options:
We want to make this available to those who feel a strong commitment to participation, so we have allowed for entry at 3 levels depending on your current financial means. If, however, you feel a strong commitment to this group and finances pose a barrier for you, please note this in your expression of interest below, and we can discuss this on our call.
Called to join us by the Well?
1. Apply to join the next Intake (beginning January 13th, 2027)
If something in this has stirred, and you feel called to join us in this group, fill in the Expression of Interest form below.
2. Discovery Call
Once we have received your expression of interest, Al be in touch to book a time for a 1:1 call to explore alignment for the group. On this call, we’ll connect, discuss a bit about the group and how it works, and hear from you about your intentions for participating.
3. Invitation to Join
If we agree that this group might be a good fit for you, we will go ahead and send you an Invitation to Join which will include a Welcome Pack, payment information, and an intake form for a more comprehensive overview of some personal information that will help Al hold you in the group. If we both agree this group might not be best-suited for you, we will aim to offer a referral.
Interested in Joining this Group?
Fill in the expression of interest form below, and we will be in touch
to make a time for an intake call shortly.
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