WHAT’S IN THE WORKSHOP

At the beginning of the workshop we’ll travel across time, exploring the theories and practices of character and temperament types, from ancient to present times. We’ll use one ancient and one modern model to explore your own experience through these models (yes, we’ll do some tests:)).

Then we’ll go deeper, exploring the actual and practical meaning of drivers and forces that shape your character, behaviours, feelings, relationships and work.

You’ll uncover some of the less obvious motives that push you or hold you back in important areas of your life, and we’ll bring focus to places where you feel particularly ‘stuck’ or are repeating the same outcomes involuntarily. You’ll learn new ways in which you are unique and what special abilities you can bring to these situations.

Is there someone in your life that just irritates you?

They don’t cause real damage, but they are just frustrating, annoying or irritating in some way.

You may be lucky. They may be your Little Petty Tyrant.

Working with the figure of your Little Petty Tyrant (a term from the works of Carlos Castenada) you can unshackle yourself from unhelpful self-importance, and find more congruence within yourself and your actions in the world.

Using the shamanic approach woven through processwork, we’ll explore the irritation of the Little Petty Tyrant and how it presents you with the gift of learning detachment and congruence.

Process Oriented Psychology (sometimes called Processwork or POP) distinguishes three levels of reality / three kinds of awareness of how we perceive ourselves and our surroundings. These three levels are:

• Consensus Reality Level – “…an implicit general agreement as to what is real and what is not” (Goodbread, 2011)
• Dreamland Level – “subjective, dreamlike experiences that are not generally consented upon as “real”, such as dreams, feelings, fantasies, projections and other experiences that make up our inner world”(Diamond and Jones, 2004)
• Sentient Level – “…a unified sense of self…In this nondualistic and nonpolarised level of consciousness, people have an experience of “sentience”, a transpersonal awareness that is a subtle yet meaningful experience.” (Richardson, 2015)

Our experiences are never only in one level or another, they always span all three levels, but our awareness pins our focus to one of these levels and makes us more consensus, dreamland or sentient level oriented.

People who are more consensus reality oriented are at ease in the world and effective at getting stuff done. Those who are more Dreamland oriented tend to be more fluid in their opinions, more focused on feelings and fantasies, and easier with changing directions in their personal and professional life. People who are more sentient level oriented tend to have more detachment from everyday issues,  are more neutral in their opinions and are often drawn to spiritual contemplation.

Our tendency towards different levels changes across time and circumstance, but we need access and awareness of all levels to connect with our full selves and our potential.

When you have this connection to all levels, you not only feel our life to be meaningful, but you’re more effective at setting and reaching satisfying goals. You are also more congruent in the way you relate and communicate with others, making you more trustworthy and relaxing to be around.

In this workshop we will explore ways of connecting with these three levels, to find greater congruence in our projects and life goals.

Do you facilitate groups?

Do you sometimes struggle to diagnose the issues they are facing?

Want a framework and toolkit for working with the #1 cause of all group issues?

Unowned power is at the heart of almost all interpersonal conflicts, between individuals and within groups. Conflict, stagnation, sabotage and disenchantment in groups can all stem from misused power that no one can talk about.

Power informs all human interactions and all group dynamics.

An understanding of power dynamics isn’t just essential when you work with groups in conflict, but also in team building, community building, change management, etc. It’s an issue in groups with formal hierarchies and those with flat hierarchies.

As a facilitator your job is to ‘make easy’ for a group, but if you can’t diagnose the roots of the issues they are struggling with, then it’s not easy to make easy.

Being able to see the subtle signals of power issues and help a group become more aware of how power is being used is relieving to the group, and helps clear the way for them to get back on track with their goals. Becoming more power literate helps groups become more congruent with their goals, their behaviours and their internal relationships.

This workshop is designed to develop sophisticated power literacy, give you a range of tools for helping groups become more aware of and work through power issues, and highlight the importance of your own inner work as a foundation for facilitation.

Facilitating Power will be a mix of theory, inner work and practice, covering the following topics:

• This different kinds of power, where they come from and the pros and cons of each

• Why and how people misuse power

• The unintended and subtle signals of power issues in the group field and the individuals within it

• The role of the facilitators own personal work on their own power issues and tools to develop this further

• Specific interventions to work with the deeper field in the background of group power issues, and to help groups become more aware of power issues

• Ways to help group members become more aware of their misuse of power without shaming them

• The challenges of working in formal hierarchies versus flat hierarchies within groups

This workshop is for people who already have some experience facilitating, whether you do it on a volunteer or paid basis, in the community, government or commercial sector.

It’s for facilitators who would like to be less confused, more confident, and more effective in their work.

September’s topic is Coaching or Psychotherapy?

This month’s mini workshop is all about the differences between process-oriented psychotherapy and coaching and how they work.

This workshop will be useful for anyone considering coaching or therapy and not sure what one is right for them.
Also for therapists and coaches who want to learn more about the process-oriented approach to change

We’ll be covering:

• Therapist or Coach – who does what?
• The process-oriented approach to change and how this manifests in therapy differently to coaching
• When coaches should refer clients to therapy, and when therapists should refer clients to coaches
• Why therapists should be in therapy and coaches should be in coaching (especially in their training years)
• The ethics of professional competence and how it influences the work of therapists and coaches

“Discovering what orders one’s life is your “task of tasks”.

Carl Jung

Myth holds the potential to label, if not explain, a realm of experience that would otherwise be almost impossible to articulate.

Our personal myth holds an inherent dreaming element that seeks to explain our occasional brief encounters with a profound realm beyond everyday language.  Our lives are patterned with symbols and energies that emerge from this realm.

We bear within us the potential for a deep dreaming level of experience, and this level can come to us in a moment. Exploring our individual myths is a way to bring dreaming into our everyday.

What are you here to do, to learn, to contribute?

It’s often easy to answer this question if we think about what we are here to do, to learn, to contribute, THIS WEEK. But when we ask this question of our whole lives, the answers are harder to find.

The concept of Life Myth attempts to answer the question, how is our life is meaningful, purposeful and contributing to something greater than ourselves? It shows us the threads that connect our experiences, the bigger story being told over our lives.

The aim of this Life Myth workshop is to help you uncover the deeper patterns that flow through your life and to give you insights and tools to live a more congruent, meaningful and connected life.

If you want your life to mean something, find out the meaning of your life.

Uncovering your personal myth gives meaning and makes sense of your experiences, especially the tough ones. When you have contact with the underlying patterns woven throughout your life, your biggest challenges are transformed from experiences of difficulty and suffering to experiences that also teach, guide and explicate your journey.

Knowledge of your personal myth:

• Supports you when times are tough by guiding you to not take events too personally, giving you the distance needed to bring awareness and curiosity to difficult experiences.
• Helps make sense of difficult times from the past, to find meaning in painful, hopeless and otherwise confusing experiences.
• Makes navigating crossroads in life much easier. By exploring our choices through the lens of our life myth we can discover how we arrived at these crossroads and be guided through them.
• Helps you make decisions from your deepest self so they are congruent, sustainable and deeply satisfying.
• Heightens your capacity for discernment, to know what your authentic direction is, and what is not.
• Grounds you in meaning and purpose, the best defence against the demoralising nature of consumerist culture that leads us to self-loathing, existential boredom and social isolation.

“You are a dance looking like a person. You are moving back and forth between these various energies though you identify as a person. . . We are a process, but our everyday mind denies that. It denies that we are a dance.”

Arnold Mindell

Life Myth is the underlying pattern, or the order in the background, of our whole lives. It’s the theme or flavour of our personal development journey and is present throughout our lives; in our childhood dreams, our body illness and our peak life experiences.

These patterns are deep and mythical in nature. They are archetypal energies trying to be known by directing our lives and our development. When you know what you are working with (and what is working with you), life is just easier.

But myth is not easy to grasp. The aim of this workshop is to get curious and creative about life myth and our deeper dreaming energies, the things that take us beyond ourselves;

• Activate your imagination and find the things in yourself that call you and truly move you
• Discover mythic energies and how they manifest in your life and pursuits
• How does are life myth inform your work and professional identity
• Is there something trying to be expressed in your life that you can’t quite welcome in?
• Our lives are patterned with symbols and energies and by discovering and living closely with those energies, the patterns are sensitive to transformation through awareness.

Join us for this one-day intensive exploring the mythical and meaningful nature of our lives.

Most people in the helping professions hate marketing.

Marketing is a bit of dirty word, it feels uncomfortable, we don’t like it, and therefore we tend not to do it well.

But that’s mostly because a lot of the advice about how to market is not directly applicable to helping professions. Plus, we don’t just need marketing strategies, we need to feel deeply congruent with how we market ourselves AND adhere to ethical guidelines not encountered in most professions.

Help for Sale is a two-day program (split over a fortnight) to make marketing more comfortable for helping professionals. Over the two days, we’ll work through a variety of processes that help you identify and align your deepest calling as a helping professional with your business goals, to create a comfortable and congruent brand identity from which all your marketing strategies can emerge.

Help for Sale is a combination of deep personal work and solid strategic development so you’ll leave with not only deep guiding principles for future marketing activities, but actionable items to get you started straight away. Giving you more confidence and comfort in promoting your work.

WHO IS IT FOR

The workshop is for helping professionals* who:

• Are already in private practice but don’t feel comfortable with marketing and branding
• Want to rebrand their private practice
• Want to start a private practice, either after graduation or shifting from being employed by someone else or in a group practice

Helping professionals include counsellors, psychotherapists, massage therapists, psychologists, coaches, kinesiologists, hands on healers, etc. Essentially anyone who offers services that helps other to grow or heal, or has a therapeutic or quasi-therapeutic relationship with their clients. If you’re not sure that’s you but really want to come to this workshop, get in touch and tell us about your line of work and we’ll see if it fits.

We humans are in a nearly constant state of change.

Dialogue is often desperately trying to happen between groups of people. In the absence of safe and available forums, this dialogue often winds up as conflict, or simply misunderstandings and missed opportunities for community and connection.

An element that is missing is a (relatively) safe and appropriate framework or forum that allows for social dialogue. You are invited to experience a deeply democratic approach to solving this problem.

Process Oriented Psychology has been developing ways of working with the challenges of being human, for fifty years. One stream of this modality is called ‘World Work’, and involves the facilitation of all of those conversations that are wanting to happen between (and within) diverse groups of people.

World Work is remarkably effective in various contexts including business meetings, cultural clashes, political issues, and especially in situations where power differences between groups of people are inherent. World Work is a live, dynamic model; issues are framed and worked on in real-time, rather than taking an intellectual or analytical approach. Differing perspectives are valued and are seen as roles in the field rather than only individual voices, creating room for exploration and freedom not generally felt in conflictual situations.

At this event, some theory will be introduced to outline the structure being used. Working within the broad topic area of “Exploring and Understanding Gender” the group will ‘sort’ related ideas looking for a specific topic where the most interest lies, and gain consensus on a beginning point. The group will then process the issue, filling out different roles, perspectives, and possible outcomes.

Every community and every topic is unique – sometimes a gentle, soft, celebratory mood is evoked, and at other times a loud and dynamic expression of passion is called on. And / or everything in between. A World Work forum offers a space most appreciated by people interested in social justice issues and their own self-development. While guarantees are not realistic, participants often gain a sense of calm fulfilment and hope from experiencing conflict beyond antagonism.

In September’s mini monthly workshop, let’s hang out at the Edge of Identity.

So many of our challenges in life come from a clash of who we think we are, and who we are trying or needing to become.

At the limits of our own identity we experience a range of ‘symptoms’, some long-term, some momentary, all of them usually confusing, uncomfortable and hard to notice.

In this mini workshop we’ll look through the Processwork lens of Edge Theory to explore what happens when you get stuck between old and new stories about self, capacity and worth, and what you can do about it.

In May’s mini monthly workshop we’re exploring the fascinating concept of High and Low Dreams; how we cycle and flip between our highest hopes, and darkest despairs, and what can be learned from this rollercoaster.

High and low dreams are behind addictions, patterned conflict, emotional overloading and moods. But yet both are a way of expressing our highest potential and most important needs. Unfolded and understood they can enrich our projects, relationships and life.

PROCRASTINATION IS FRUSTRATING, DEFEATING AND EXHAUSTING.

It impacts almost everyone, and we pretty much all hate it!

It stops us achieving our goals, which then eats away at our confidence. Then we beat ourselves up about it because we think procrastination is some kind of personal failing; that we’re lazy, lacking discipline, acting like a kid.

But what if wasn’t any of those things?

What if procrastination was actually trying to tell you something? Would you want to know what it was?

In the Procrastination Lab we dig deep. We use curiosity and awareness to unfold the deeper processes beneath procrastination to find out why it’s happening.

We explore the subconscious experience to find the underlying pattern so we can find resolutions that match the deeper process and are therefore more effective over the long term.

Instead of asking our conscious mind why we are procrastinating (and coming up with the predictable answers you can find in a Google search), we go within the embodied experience of procrastination to discover how it is uniquely meaningful for you, and what unique strategies will help you transform it.

The Procrastination Lab is perfect if you want insight into why you procrastinate, and awareness of your deeper psychological processes. If you just want quick fixes and a hacking style approach, you won’t find it here.

Failures and successes are modern moments of initiation.

Stepping points into the next stage of life; a new idea, project or relationship. Being too ‘failure averse’ means we miss these moments of transformation, leaving us stuck, stagnant, and blocking our own path to success.

Getting good at failing is helpful for success, but being able to transcend the construct of failure and success is crucial.

You experience success and failure, but do you know how to grow from them? Do you know how to hold on to your deepest self as you experience them?

WELCOME TO THE DOJO

This intensive is perfect if you:

• want to reduce your bounce back time from failure
• find yourself over-analysing experiences of failure
• want to be empowered by failure, rather than disempowered
• need to take more risks (big or small) to achieve your goals and dreams
• notice your drive to succeed makes you compromise your health, your relationships or your personal integrity

Success and failure are altered states of consciousness, sometimes mild, sometimes extreme. They can be blinding and cramp our awareness, restricting access to our wholeness.

This intensive is designed to give you the skills to facilitate yourself through experiences of failure and success so you can learn, grow, and progress, all without losing touch with your own personal integrity.

In this one-day intensive you will:

• become more failure-resilient
• discover how to learn and grow from both experiences
• find the “failure triggers” and “success wounds” that hold you back
• learn the difference between failing a task and failing yourself
• build the skills to transform failure into personal power
• find you independent path underlying failure and success

We will be exploring our experiences of success and failure with intention and awareness. We will find the inner dynamics that are ruling our relationship to success and failure and explore ways to transcend them to experience life as transformation, not judgement.