True human nature is where an authentic state of harmonic unity with all and everything presides. Our ancient Human Ways and Spiritual Paths all invite us to meet true being and a life of purpose, fulfilment and lasting happiness. Serving humanity is the single most powerful force for helping oneself live a fulfilling life.

According to non-duality and enaction theory, life is a continuum and knowledge emerges, phenomenologically and heuristically, through both inner and outer interactions. Since childhood, life has been a journey of self-enquiry. I understand the general human condition as essentially traumatic and ridden with existential angst. 

After many untethered experiences exploring meaning in live and socially engaged art, therapeutic modalities and spiritual disciplines, I gradually moved towards the helping professions and in 2017 began working with autistic people, a massively oppressed group, and their allies in the community using a special form of group process conversation developed from the work of David Bohm.

I called it the Autism Dialogue Approach®, which provides some recovery and empowerment for autistic people and increases cohesion across communities and organisations.

In 2020 a group of us formed Dialogic Action CIC, to provide more facilitation, coaching, mentoring and training to therapists and coaches, organisations and directly to the human community.

Autism is from a Greek word literally meaning ‘self’. Supported by set of easily learned skills, facilitated Dia-logue (Greek roots; ‘through’ and ‘relational’) can bring deep, collective communication to any individual or group. It is a form of intentional, conscious enquiry that addresses fragmentation and helps restore wholeness and sense of self to individuals and their organisational, community and family systems. In this new type of psycho-social coaching, we are sensitive to the complexities of the oppressed minority stuck in fragmented systems.

ADA has been shown to aid mental recovery, reduce anxiety, improve personal wellbeing. It thereby restores harmony to the whole, to instil a sense of deeper potential and cohesion.

Autism acts as a catalyst for profound concerns in all fields of communication and ADA provides a sustained, collective enquiry that ultimately aims to address the human crisis of communication and loss of selfhood.

Organisational and group dialogic coaching, training and change consultancy see  company website here.

—

Writing

Published

‘Autism Dialogue’. Chapter (2018) in: The World Needs Dialogue!: One: Gathering the Field. Editor: Cliff Penwell. Dialogue Publications Ltd (2018). London.

‘Autism Dialogue in Derby City & Derbyshire’. Chapter – Drury, J. Elliott.J, Salinsky.K (2021) in The World Needs Dialogue! Four: Putting Dialogue to Work. Editors: Helena Wagener & Cliff Penwell. Dialogue Publications Ltd (2021). London.

This Being Human. Poems & Photographs. J Drury (2016). Self-published. Sheffield.

Self-published articles on Medium – Problematising and Celebrating Notions of Autism, Neurodiversity, Self and Other.

Forthcoming

Implications for coaching education and the emerging neurodivergent landscape. (2023) – to accompany a major release on Coaching Ethics.

Dialogue’s Return – commissioned article in Beshara magazine (2023).

The Principles of Freedom (autobiography – 2023)

Resumé

Co-founder and senior consultant at Dialogic Action CIC Associate tutor at the University of Strathclyde. 

Trainer at National Autism Trainer Programme, Anna Freud Centre / AT-Autism.

Member of a team awarded a UBC grant to host a Dialogue in Vancouver, June 2023 called ‘Reframing dialogue through embodied approaches: surpassing barriers to health in a verbal world.’  
https://health.ubc.ca/interdisciplinary-health-research/health-after-2020/participants

Pg Cert, Coaching & Mentoring
Pg Cert, Autism Spectrum
BA (Hons) Contemporary Fine Art
Member of Academy of Professional Dialogue

—

Photos © J Drury 2022-23