Monthly Archives: December 2017
The Well Grounded Therapist – Taster Day
Gardens, Presence and the Body
A Taster day with Miriam Taylor and Vienna Duff
Saturday 7th April 2018
As therapists we tend to pay attention to challenging aspects of the field. This taster day offers an alternative focus; to attend to the ground and so support our presence to the difficult and often negative figures of our working environment. Miriam and Vienna invite you to explore your relationship with different elements of the natural environment in different spaces and different seasons.
For full details, please see the flyer.
View post >The Well Grounded Therapist
Further Explorations of Landscape, Stillness and the Body
A Residential with Miriam Taylor and Vienna Duff
Thursday 31st May – Sunday 3rd June 2018
As therapists we tend to pay attention to challenging aspects of the field. This residential offers an alternative focus to attend to the ground and support our presence to the difficult and often negative figures of our working environment. Miriam and Vienna will invite you to attend to your own ground by exploring your relationship with different elements of the natural environment.
For full details, please see the flyer.
View post >Working with Children: Oaklander-based Arts Intensive
9th – 13th April 2018
with Jon Blend
The Gestalt Centre, London
This ‘hands on’ experiential Gestalt workshop caters for counsellors, psychotherapists, and health and education professionals undertaking therapeutic work with children. It may also interest those wishing to explore their own relationship with creativity and play. The course draws inspiration from the pioneering work of Dr. Violet Oaklander whose approach puts the relationship between therapist and child at the heart of the therapeutic process. Participants will explore the following arts modalities: drawing/painting, clay, sand- tray, creative writing and improvised music making.
For details / application, please see here.
Jon Blend is an adult and child psychotherapist, international trainer and supervisor with thirty years experience of working with children and families He is guest tutor with the Oaklander foundation www.vsof.org and recently helped co-found the UK branch of the European Interdisciplinary Association for Therapeutic Services for Children and Young People.His publications include a chapter in Relational Child, Relational Brain. Jon performs with Playback South Theatre Company, is a teaching member of the Guild of Lifemusicians and hosts AAGT’s Child and Adolescent Interest Group (CAIG).
View post >Personal Development Group in Canterbury
Saturday Monthly Group
February 2018 – July 2018
10am – 5pm
This experiential group will meet monthly on Saturdays commencing February to July 2018 and consists of 8-12 participants all of whom will have had some experience of personal therapy / personal development work. The group is founded on a Humanistic, Integrative approach to personal development and focuses on the lived experience of the moment, drawing on the felt experience of the body, senses and emotions as well as creativity, dreams, imaginings and projections. The group is open to qualified counsellors/psychotherapists who have an interest in wanting to explore and enhance their own self-awareness and co-creation of relationship within a group setting.
Within the safety and holding of the group therapy space, the participants will have an opportunity to:
- Explore your sense of self in relationship to others, raising personal awareness and experimentation with new ways of relating intersubjective.
- Encourage and support a more open dialogic way of relating within the group and attune ourselves to our non-verbal and bodily sense of self and how this impacts on relationship.
- Focus on habitual patterns of relating and how these protect or hinder us.
- Personal development groups are a good way of rediscovering ourselves in the safety and support of others away from our habitual constraints and demands.
Cost: £70 a day: Total for all six group sessions: £420.
Non-refundable deposit of £140 payable in advance. Participants will be asked to commit individually and financially to all six groups.
Course dates: Saturday 24th February, 17th May, 28th April, 19th May, 16th June, 14th July 2018.
About us
Christine Dukes. I am an experienced UKCP Registered Gestalt Psychotherapist, Supervisor and Trainer. I highly value the group experience and the awareness, expression and support that can be gained from participation in a group. Awareness is an ever-changing process and Gestalt therapy encourages us to pay attention to our moment to moment experiencing of ourselves and relationships in our world. Ongoing personal development is essential for our personal and professional wellbeing and vitality. I believe our combined skills as humanistic therapists, Gestalt and Integrative will provide for an exciting and lively awareness where you can explore and experiment with new ways of relating.
Michelle Bearman. I am an experienced UKCP Registered Integrative psychotherapist. I see a personal development group as an opportunity to enquire further in being true to self while being in relationship with others. If we can risk the unfolding of ourselves in the presence of others, I believe we can increase our self-awareness, express our creativity, spontaneity, passion and experience our shared humanity.
Please Contact by 8th January 2018:
Christine: Tel. 07930959122: e-mail: [email protected]
Michelle: Tel. 07939160343: e-mail: [email protected]
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Certificate / Diploma in Contemporary Trauma Practice
Mind, Body and Relationship
Developing Competence in Applying Neuroscience to Therapy
September 2018 – May 2019
Led by Miriam Taylor
with guest trainers Sally Denham-Vaughan, Ed Fellows and Margaret Landale
This programme of six two-day workshops will build your confidence, skills and understanding in working with trauma, especially complex trauma.
Grounded in a relational perspective, the programme will offer a safe, non-pathologising and accessible approach to working with trauma. It will offer a combination of relational, embodied and experiential perspectives on trauma, including pragmatic ideas on psycho-education and experimental interventions.
For full details, please see the flyer.
Field Based Gestalt Practice with Malcolm Parlett & Anne Pettit
April 19th-24th 2018, 5 day residential (Malcolm 3 days)
Poulstone Court, Herefordshire
July 6th – 8th 2018
Gestalt Centre Wales
November 30th – 2nd Dec 2018
Gestalt Centre Wales
For full details, please see the flyer.
In this course of three modules, we shall explore the skilfulness and experience of the Gestalt approach – the heart, mind, body, and spirit of the discipline, and how we practise it. There are many different Gestalt applications: in particular, in psychotherapy, coaching, consultation, counselling, management, and education. Although each of these has specialised features, there are also fundamentals which apply across the whole range of Gestalt practice.
This course will give special attention to one of the fundamental perspectives, namely Gestalt ‘field theory’. We shall explore in depth what ‘the field’ (or ‘situation) refers to; and how important it is to come to know the ‘client’s life (or work) situation’ as the client experiences it themselves. The fact of a practitioner and a client meeting together in the same space means that a new ‘relational field’ comes into being. What are its qualities? What supports dialogue and inquiry, and what degrades them? As practitioners we discover qualities of the immediate field through becoming more fully embodied – attending to the wealth of sensory and feeling knowledge that’s available if we become more aware of it. In addition, both practitioner and client discover more about themselves (their ‘self’ or ‘selves’) through discovering what in the immediate field triggers them, or commands their interest or attention. And the practitioner also supports experiments – by changing the field deliberately to widen clients’ experiences.
The approach will involve discovery of the ideas and areas of competence that underlie skilfulness in ‘field-based practice’. We shall engage with practical examples and personal experiences. Moving beyond standard educational models that are mostly ‘book-led’ and pre- structured, the emphasis here will be on learning through ‘trying out’ ideas practically in a safe and informal forum, allowing for individual variation in participants’ learning needs. Intentionally, the ‘field of the course’ will be supportive, allowing, and flexible in its structure: it will also be constantly looked at in a holistic fashion, as a highly relevant, changing situation in which we can inquire, grow, and challenge ourselves continuously.
AGM Summary and Minutes 2017
The 2017 UKAGP Annual General Meeting took place at UKAGP National Conference 2017, De Vere Wokefield Estate Executive Centre, Executive Meeting Room, Sunday 2nd July 2017, 1130-1230.
The Minutes and Actions of the 2017 AGM are available here.
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