Story Medicine
Story Medicine: Ancient Tales and Their Medicine for Modern Life
Ancient fairy tales, myths, and legends contain profound wisdom for modern life.
Psychotherapist Joe Summerfield explores traditional stories from cultures worldwide - Greek myths, Grimm's fairy tales, Norse legends, Indigenous tales, African folklore, and more - revealing the medicine encoded within them.
Each episode offers three parts: a story told in full, an analysis uncovering symbolic meaning and contemporary relevance, and practical integration exercises to help you embody the medicine.
Use it your way:
Let these stories accompany your morning coffee, evening wind-down, or household pottering. These tales make perfect companions for quiet moments.
Or engage more deeply: the weekly integration practices form a structured personal development course. Over time, this consistent work can significantly shift your experience of life... and it's entirely free.
Perfect for:
Adults seeking psychological depth, young people exploring life's questions, parents sharing wisdom with children, therapists and educators, mythology enthusiasts, and anyone curious about the collective unconscious and archetypal patterns shaping our lives.
Topics explored:
Jungian psychology, fairy tale analysis, mythology, depth psychology, personal transformation, archetypal patterns, shadow work, individuation, collective unconscious, traditional wisdom, therapeutic storytelling.
New episodes weekly.
Hosted by Joe Summerfield, psychotherapist, relational therapist, and creator of Connected State Therapy. Drawing on Jungian psychology and over 20 years of therapeutic experience, Joe bridges ancient wisdom and modern application. From shadow work to individuation, from grief to wholeness, each story offers medicine for navigating the human experience.
Story Medicine
S1E12 - Baldur and the Mistletoe: When Protection Creates What We Fear
In this episode of Story Medicine, we explore "Baldur and the Mistletoe" from Norse mythology - a tragedy about how our attempts to control fate often create the very conditions we fear, and what happens when the Warrior archetype remains in shadow.
Baldur, the most beloved of all the gods, begins having prophetic dreams of his own death. His mother Frigg travels through all creation, securing oaths that nothing will harm her son. She overlooks only the mistletoe - too small, too insignificant to matter. The gods celebrate Baldur's invulnerability by throwing weapons at him, until the trickster Loki discovers the overlooked plant and places it in the hands of Baldur's blind brother. One throw, and the light goes out forever.
This story speaks to anyone who has tried to protect against every danger, anyone carrying unintegrated shadow that acts unconsciously, or anyone living with a loss that will not be restored in this lifetime.
The episode includes the complete story told in full, depth psychology analysis revealing the archetypal patterns and symbolic meaning, and three practical integration exercises to help you embody the medicine.
Learn more about Joe's therapeutic work: www.joesummerfield.co.uk
Connect on Instagram: @joe.therapies
