About our Workshops, Courses & Events

About our Courses2017-06-09T15:25:08+00:00

Our programme consists of two types of events: those that we are invited to run for other organisations, trainings and conferences, and those that we are organising ourselves.

Since we launched INTEGRA CPD in spring 2010, the response to our independently organised events has been fairly overwhelming, and that part of our programme has expanded significantly. There is now a range of CPD groups - especially ongoing ones - in various locations (Oxford, London, Bristol), and in varying formats and frequencies (monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly). Most of those ongoing groups are at capacity and therefore closed, but places do occasionally become available.

There is now a variety of events and groups that we organise and administer ourselves - booking for all of these is via our own admin, and you can reserve your place (though not yet enrol and pay) via our Booking Form. You can find an overview below, giving you an impression of the kinds of groups planned for the coming year(s).

There are some training and CPD organisations who invite us fairly regularly (e.g. CABP, CONFER, Brighton Therapy Partnership, Northern College of Body Psychotherapy and others). For all these events, you typically need to book your place through the organisers - you can find booking, venue and contact details provided with each course that is listed (you can inform us via our Booking Form that you are interested,  but the actual booking (and confirmation of your place) will be through the organisers).

Every year we also get invited by a variety of counselling services, regional therapy associations and conferences for one-off workshops, keynotes and seminars. And we get invited as guest tutors by training organisations - often these events are for closed groups only, and therefore not listed in our calendar.

CALENDAR

The calendar allows you to display the events in four different formats (using the drop-down menu on the far right above the calendar to switch between them - it's usually set to 'Agenda'): Calendar, Agenda, Stream, and Posterboard.

You can use the Categories and Tags drop-down menus to filter the display and restrict it to certain kinds of events. To de-select categories or tags and show all events, click the crossed circle next to the currently displayed category/tab.

Go to Calendar >>

Ongoing CPD Groups with Michael

There are currently several such groups of different group sizes, some closed for a year at a time, some semi-closed, meeting at different frequencies (monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly). All these groups tend to have a supervision element related to practice, but some are framed more widely in terms of personal-professional development, including teaching, group process and skills practice.

One such group - an advanced personal-professional development group - meets in Oxford on bi-monthly Tuesdays (currently 6 participants - one space will become available in September 2017).

A similar group, for very experienced therapists only, is running in London (Archway), also on bi-monthly Tuesdays, for 6 days per year (this has currently 5 participants, and one - or maximum two - spaces are available from autumn 2017).

Two larger groups in London, meeting on weekends, are ongoing, at a frequency about 4 or 5 days per year - one exclusively for experienced therapists (>8 years), another one with a mixture of experience.
These groups are semi-closed, to allow for continuity and group cohesion. That means participants form a ‘pool’ of about 15 to 18 group members, with the aim of attending as many days as they can, though it is not expected that everybody will participate every time. The dates are planned together and set a long time in advance, so in practice we have at least 12 people present at each of the days. When people drop out of the ‘pool’, Michael may invite new group members to join. Currently some places are available in the North London group).

Michael has been running small monthly supervision groups at Fulcrum House in Bristol for more than 5 years (monthly Tuesdays). Each group has  2 hours with 4 participants each, and there are currently no places available, but if you are interested, do get in touch to put your name on the waiting list for next year.

Weekends with Nick Totton & Michael

Over the last few years, Nick & Michael have been running one weekend per year, usually in May, at a venue in North Oxford, called "Working at the Edge of Chaos". These weekends are open to counsellors and psychotherapists from across all therapeutic approaches who are interested  in dancing at the edge between stability and emerging process, and who are also appreciative of the similarities and differences in how both Nick and Michael engage with embodied and relational work.
These groups are open -  without a fixed agenda or curriculum -  and take shape in response to the unfolding group dynamic, and there is usually a significant element of group and individual process alongside CPD teaching and learning. These weekends are an opportunity to directly work with Nick and Michael who are both recognised as significantly influencing and contributing to the cutting edge of embodied therapy.

These workshops, designed for counsellors and psychotherapists from across the approaches, are an opportunity to work with and learn from two of the most experienced trainers at the forefront of bringing embodiment into psychotherapy. Rather than grafting the body onto established practice as one more eclectic technique, Nick and Michael have been working towards a non-dualistic embodied way of being and relating in the therapeutic relationship.
This series of 4 weekends each year provides an ideal container for your continuing professional development, rooted in your own embodied process.
For full details regarding this unique venture in Britain’s Southwest, see the dedicated page: Exeter: Body-oriented CPD Weekend Group 2017.
"I came home feeling nourished and alive from so much immediacy and honest exchange. Thank you to Nick and Michael for holding the space in which I felt safe enough to be challenged into my edges.  I would definitely like to come next year - please reserve me a place."
J.R.

CPD Events for Experienced Therapists

Michael has been offering workshops specifically for experienced therapists since 2012.

Participants appreciate that - unlike many other CPD events - the groups are open only to counsellors and psychotherapists who have been working for at least 5 or 8 years (though the average is probably closer to 10 - 15 years). Although there is usually a diverse and integrative mix of approaches and modalities represented, with potential conflict and polarisation between them, the shared background of years of experience allows for an unusual depth and sophistication of exploration.

One-off CPD Events with Michael

Michael has been leading CPD training events for the Chiron Association of Body Psychotherapists for many years. These workshops - typically one or two days - are usually on circumscribed, specific topics and techniques, bringing a neglected embodied and relational perspective to some of the conundrums which therapists are struggling with in a field where these two perspectives exist separately, but have not yet been integrated.
Bringing embodied and relational perspectives together sheds new light on many difficult areas of practice (e.g. working alliance, enactment, projective identification, transference and countertransference, trauma, therapist self-disclosure, etc).

Shelley Holland has been organising a highly successful CPD programme in Brighton for some years now, and Michael has been running his introductory workshop 'How To Work When Therapy Isn't Working?' several times. In July 2015 he led a new workshop on 'How to Make a Sustainable Living as a Therapist', based not on marketing skills and techniques, but on how we regulate the emotional cost and 'load' of working in an 'impossible profession'.

As every year, Michael will be teaching one of the 4 weekends per year which comprise this long-standing CPD training group - applications are now invited for next year. This is a vibrant community of practitioners in the North of England, many of whom have trained in Transactional Analysis, but other humanistic approaches are also represented.

Several other events are currently being negotiated and prepared, but not included in the calendar yet. Check back or follow INTEGRA_CPD on Twitter where most of these kinds of news are announced first.

Monthly Supervision Groups with Morit Heitzler

for Complementary Therapy Practitioners

These groups for bodyworkers and other complementary therapists (osteopaths, acupuncturists, etc) have been running for several years now (monthly Saturdays in Oxford). Through the ongoing supervision of patients, Morit is making the basic principles of the therapeutic relationship - as understood and used in psychotherapy - accessible to therapists whose training rarely includes the basics of psychology and psychotherapy.

However, as most complementary therapists know, their actual day-to-day practice depends significantly on these therapeutic skills (and not only their competence in their chosen approach and discipline). From a complementary, holistic perspective the emotional, psychological and relational dimensions of the patient are obviously considered relevant in theory and in principle, but are rarely attended to as factors which impinge on how patient and therapist actually manage their work together - or not!
If you want to develop your understanding of the practitioner-patient dynamic, but don’t want to pursue a course in counselling or psychotherapy, then these groups are for you!

“Learning with Morit has had an enormous influence on my practice. Her insight reaches directly into the fundamental issues, which underpin my relationship with my patients. I leave each session feeling challenged yet wiser and more capable.”
H. Bacchus , (massage/bodyworker)

Sun. 26 Apr. 2015 - London: One-day Conference with Shaun Gallagher

Embodied Intersubjectivity

This cutting-edge dialogue between the philosophy of embodied intersubjectivity (one of the most promising developments to come out of modern neuroscience and its cross-fertilisation with philosophy) and the everyday reality of embodied therapeutic practice took place in Spring 2015. You can find here all the preparatory materials and presentations -  almost as good as having been there.

Proposed Events for 2017/2018

Body-oriented CPD Weekend Group in Exeter/Devon continues ...

4 more weekends in 2017 - see course details

This  ongoing CPD group (meeting for four weekends per year) was initiated a couple of years ago by Judy Shaw, a senior Transactional Analysis therapist and trainer, who practises in Exeter. This is a cross-modality integrative group, with the aim of shared learning towards a more embodied practice and personal-professional development. The cost is around £220 per weekend (without accommodation). The group takes place near Honiton, a few miles from Exeter. If you are interested, please get in touch with Judy.

2 Ongoing CPD Groups forming in Athens

At the EABP conference in Athens in autumn 2016, Michael presented a pre-Congress workshop that generated a lot of interest. Following this he has run two weekends in the spring of 2017, organised by Dimitris Tzachanis (a Reichian and Gestalt-trained integrative therapist in Athens). Dimitris is planning to generate enough interest for two ongoing groups from 2018 - one more for beginners and one for experienced therapists. For now we have scheduled another weekend for the autumn 2017, on November 18 and 19th.  Although most participants understand English well, for those who are not fluent everything is translated simultaneously into and from Greek.

Advanced Level V Integrative Counselling Module planned for Pakistan in 2018

Michael has been teaching in Pakistan since 2010, contributing to the TherapyWorks counselling training, which runs courses in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. He has been focused mainly on helping the advanced students and tutors develop further, by running tutor and supervision training sessions as well as facilitating large workshops for the students. For next year he's preparing a curriculum for a CPCAB-accredited module on psychotherapy integration, helping students integrate humanistic and psychodynamic traditions, find their own place within a broad-spectrum integration of approaches, deal with some of the conundrums of integration by introducing the 'diamond model' of relational modalities, and - generally speaking - create an atmosphere conducive to therapists developing their own style and authority.

Group Facilitation Course (Groupleader's Training)

In conjunction with the project Oxfordshire Therapy and Self-development (OTS) initiated by Justin Smith, there is a good possibility that a group facilitation training will finally come together. One of the central aims of OTS  from the beginning was to raise the profile of group therapy as an effective therapeutic format, and there is now a significant number of members of that vibrant and developing community of practitioners who are likely to form a core group of trainees for such a training.

For some years Michael has been pursuing the idea of on an integrative approach to groupwork, drawing specifically from psychoanalytic as well as humanistic traditions of group work, including also systemic work with constellations as well as Arnie Mindell's large group work. In terms of the format of the learning, Michael is envisaging something more innovative: participants would learn and practice by leading the group itself, based on joint prior reflection and preparation and detailed feedback after each groupleading experience.

If this kind of course is going to happen, it would probably start in 2018,  and it would probably be opened up to people working in all kinds of group reading context and organisation. I will need some feedback as to what would be a realistic frame and commitment for you if you were to take part. How many weekends and at what frequency? What is a manageable cost?