A six-week interactive reflective practise .
the experiment - what happens if we do self-work together? What could we learn from sharing our experiences?
The Shape of Thoughts is a 6-week reflective series. If you join, you’ll receive three envelopes in the post, each containing guided exercises. These are based on academic frameworks, with creative twists designed to make the ideas experienced, not just understood.
Unlike much self-work, this course is designed to be done with someone else. You write, reflect, and connect together, integrating ideas more deeply, holding up mirrors, and carrying insights into everyday life.
Each Sunday there will be an optional write . reflect . connect session with Jess, where you can ask questions and journal online together.
The culmination of the work will be expressed as an exhibition and a digital gallery. Participation is optional, but this aspect of the program is a unique opportunity to be part of something collective and meaningful — a human-centred, connected conversation exploring what it feels like to be human.
Through the process, you will practise skills such as:
building metacognition, thinking about your thinking
using curiosity as a support tool
interpreting and interrupting automatic behavioural patterns
holding space through deep listening
understanding cognitive diversity and different kinds of minds
rewriting narratives and shaping internal conversations
This work is explorative and experiential. Insight comes through application. Rather than just learning about ideas, you will apply them in real time and take them into conversations with people around you.
What you get out of it can only be revealed in retrospect.
The pillars you’ll explore.
Self
The biology of cognitive difference
Personality in academics
How emotions are made
Your emotional signatures
Choice points
Repatterning behaviours
Story
Humans as meaning-makers
Narrative and identity
Patterns across time
Context, memory, and meaning
Processing the past
Authoring guiding principles
Future
Sacred originality
Why change is difficult
Protection and resistance
The texture of tension
Experimenting with expansion
Integration and closure
more info
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The Shape of Thought is not a self-help program promising to cure you.
It is not about quick fixes or instant gains.
It is a process of better understanding how your mind works, so you can give it better guidance.
Rather than telling you what to do, this work focuses on the tools that underpin behavioural change. You learn those tools, experiment with them, and decide how they apply to you. The aim is not to follow a system, but to pave your own way with more clarity and nuance. -
Make Your Mind runs over six weeks and is structured across three pillars.
Each pillar takes approximately two to three hours to work through. The time spent completing the exercises is not the point of the process. The point is how the ideas show up in your life between sessions.
There are prompts designed to spark different kinds of conversations, so you can explore the ideas not only with the person you have chosen to do the program with, but also in everyday interactions.
The first cohort begins on 1 March. Optional support sessions will be available on Sundays if you need guidance along the way.
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At the heart of Shape of Thoughts is the idea of relational containers.
Self-work is often done alone, or within a professional context. Both can be helpful. What is often missing is the relational layer.
Doing this work with someone you care about creates an opportunity to think and speak more deeply. It allows for shared vulnerability, curiosity, and synthesis. When you talk about ideas, you are forced to reflect and integrate your understanding. This improves learning and memory retention.
You are not only applying ideas to yourself, but also learning how they apply to others. Over time, you build a shared language that supports deeper understanding and connection.
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This program was designed with academics, with academic rigour as its backbone and skin of creativity.
The frameworks you work with come from psychology and behavioural science. They are concepts that have been tried and tested over time, and are designed to support behavioural change.Many of these ideas are foundational. They are not things you memorise and discard. They are ideas you carry around in your mind. Within the container of this program, you test them with yourself and with the people around you.
Understanding these concepts adds depth.
Practise adds meaning.
FAQ
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You can but the experience will be expanded if you can find someone to join with you.
Alternatively, you can use the conversation prompts with different people around you.
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Yes we will, we’re just asking for a $10aud fee. This will likely only cover half of the postage but we are happy to do this for our international guests as we would love to see diversity in our cohort and we’d love you to be a part of our first cohort.
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Jess Leondiou will be available each Sunday of the 6 weeks to answer any questions that you have. If you can’t make the sessions, they will be recorded so you can submit a question to us via email for her to answer.
1-1 Coaching calls can be arranged at an additional cost.
Join the first cohort
This first cohort has been priced to cover the cost of running the program and the exhibition, as a thank you for being part of something new. Your words and work, if you choose to contribute, will become part of a much larger collective conversation.
This is an invitation into more creative and expansive ways of thinking about mental health, and how we relate to ourselves and each other.
Ticket includes
3 bundles of printed activities, one for each pillar, delivered to your door
(international guests + $10 shipping)
Extra optional learning materials and interviews
Access to the Sunday journaling sessions and Q&A with Jess
Early bird $88 pp
Standard $110 pp
the shape of thoughts –
the art and exhibition
At the end of the program, the work culminates in an art exhibition.
Participation is optional. If you choose to share your responses, they will be completely anonymous.
The exhibition is a celebration of the work done and of the diversity that exists within us. Sharing thoughts and feelings anonymously can be liberating. It allows for expression, release, and collective meaning-making. Rather than private insight, the aim is to tell a broader, shared story.
