The Institute is offering a series of one and two day CPDs during 2015/16 . We are delighted that psychosynthesis colleagues and other friends from both the UK and other countries will be offering and facilitating these leading edge programmes.
We summarize below forthcoming events. To register your interest for any of these courses, please use the form at the bottom of the page.
CPD Courses
CPD151. Social Entrepreneurship
From Spiritual Values to Effective Action
Facilitators: John Marks and Susan Collin Marks
Dates: Autumn, 2015
Fees: £200
Special rates for APP members, faculty & students
Many of us long to do something that will have a positive impact on the world. We hold a vision of infusing our spiritual values into the life of our planet. We want to be social entrepreneurs.
The workshop offers the accumulated experience of Search for Common Ground, which was founded in 1982 and has grown into the world’s largest non-profit peacebuilding organization with offices in 35 countries. The keys to Search’s growth have been creativity, nimbleness and an unswerving vision of a transformed world – all reflected in the range of their work which includes TV and radio soap operas reaching tens of millions of people worldwide, peace-building computer games in Lebanon, multiethnic kindergartens in the Balkans, peace songs in Africa, and personal coaching for political leaders worldwide.
During this two-day workshop, Search founder John Marks and Peace Ambassador Susan Collin Marks will take you deep within to unfold and define your own vision. They will share the Principles of Social Entrepreneurship and offer individual coaching through a clinic that draws on their experience as well as the wisdom of the group. They will lead you through the possibilities that abound when you grasp your inner potential to make the difference you long to make, and the world needs, right now.
CPD152. Peacebuilding Workshop
Facilitators: Susan Collin Marks
A one-day peace-building workshop which gives participants insights into how they can take the tools of societal conflict resolution into their own lives, and showing the connection between peace in the world and peace in our hearts.
CPD153. Introduction to CBT+ / Soulmaking at Work
Facilitators: Reinhard Kowalski
This two-day workshop is designed for psychosynthesis students and graduates who want to develop a therapy practice based on some of the principles of brief therapy.
- Introduction to the core CBT+ model and how to use it within a context of Bifocal vision
- Soulmaking: presence and being in the Now, introduction to meditation, evoking the Superconscious, Mindfulness in service of freeing the will, the Mind-Balancing meditation programme
- The psychological greenhouse model: based on Assagioli’s egg diagram this model shows how desires can be captured in relation to a false set of values. The model also shows how our neurotic responses are often misheard soul-calls
- Diagnostics: we will learn and practice the 3-LT technique to understand the depth of symptoms and to explore one of the client’s core value sets. We will also explore mindsets and maintaining cycles
- Disidentification: becoming more ‘I’ – aware, creating a new ground for meaning, techniques for dis-identification, homework in CBT+, the evening review
- The session structure: developing the structure and content for 6 to 12 sessions of CBT+
CPD154. Mindfulness
Facilitators: Reinhard Kowalski
Mindfulness meditation in the form of MBCT (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy) and MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) has made meditation acceptable as a form of therapy, even within the NHS. There is now a ‘Mindfulness in Schools Project’ and a ‘Mindfulness All Party Parliamentary Group’, all aiming at spreading Mindfulness meditation as a tool for health and wellbeing into wide areas of society.
The research evidence for the benefits of Mindfulness is compelling, ranging from improved concentration, reduction in anxiety and depression to strengthening of the immune system and changes in the functioning of the brain.
This one-day workshop will introduce you to the main Mindfulness practices as they are used in MBCT and MBSR, and to the stance of ‘inquiry’ which is the central teaching tool. We will also explore how you can integrate elements of Mindfulness in your psychotherapy, counselling and coaching practice.
CPD155. The Art of Mediation for Professionals
Facilitators: Zanne Findlay
Mediation is a term that is widely used and widely misunderstood. We are using it to mean, a process which brings people together in the presence of an impartial third party. The mediator assists the parties to work through the issues and craft their own resolutions. The mediator does not offer advice or solutions’.
It is a complex role which draws on many of the skills that counsellors and other professionals already have; the ability to listen, to ask open questions, to reframe, to show empathy and curiosity. But, it also requires the mediator to be able to adapt to and understand the wider context and to work with the dynamics of the situation confidently and impartially and without being attached to any outcome at all.
In this two-day workshop we will explore
- The principles of mediation
- Practice the skills of mediation in a safe environment
- Understand the limitations and opportunities within mediation
- The differences and similarities between mediation, counselling and advocacy
Workshop Leaders
John Marks
John recently stepped down as President of Search for Common Ground, a peacebuilding NGO he founded in 1982 that has grown to 600 staff with offices in 35 countries. He also founded and headed Common Ground Productions, and from his new base in London, he remains a Senior Advisor to both organizations. He has produced or executive-produced a wide variety of TV and film productions. He also is a best-selling, award-winning author. He was a US Foreign Service Officer and Executive Assistant for Foreign Policy to US Senator Clifford Case. A graduate of Cornell University, he was a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School. He is a Skoll Awardee in Social Entrepreneurship and an Ashoka Senior Fellow, and he holds an honorary doctorate from the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica.
Susan Collin Marks
Susan recently stepped down after 20 years as Senior Vice President of Search for Common Ground. She worked side-by-side with John Marks to build the organization to its present depth and scope worldwide, including establishing peacebuilding programs, facilitating dialogues, mediating conflicts, coaching political leaders, and building capacity for all of the above. She is now based in London and serves as Search’s Peace Ambassador. A native South African, she was deeply engaged in her country’s transition from apartheid to democracy, captured in her book Watching the Wind: Conflict Resolution during South Africa’s Transition to Democracy (US Institute of Peace, 2000) (Arabic, Dar Al Ahliah, Amman, Jordan, 2004.) Honors include a Jennings Randolph Peace Fellowship at the United States Institute of Peace, a Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and an Honorary Doctorate from the UN University for Peace. She was featured in the PBS documentary Peace X Peace: Women on the Frontlines. Susan believes that our common humanity binds us together more than our differences divide us. She works to make it so. For more information, visit www.sfcg.org.
Reinhard Kowalski
Reinhard is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Psychosynthesis Psychotherapist in the NHS and in private practice. He is also a Mindfulness teacher with the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, and he has been running MBCT courses in the NHS for over six years. He has recently published the Mindfulness and Mindbalancing Handbook (Speechmark, 2011), which is available on Amazon.
Zanne Findlay
Zanne trained as a Community and Youth Worker and has a MA in Organisational Behaviour. She has worked at the Institute of Psychosynthesis and in Local Government where she realised that formal investigations and disciplinary procedures did not lead to change, but to defensiveness, or departure. She has worked full time as a mediator for nineteen years, mainly in Education, Health and Social care and has advised the Government on mediation in SEN. She is co-author of Guided Mediation a DIY Kit for parents who are separating and of the Workplace Mediation Manual.
