Exeter: Body-oriented CPD Weekend Group 2016 with Nick Totton & Michael

This weekend CPD group, organised by experienced TA therapist Judy Shaw in Devon around Exeter, will run over 4 weekends during 2016, with 2 weekends led by Nick Totton and 2 by Michael Soth. There will be two venues: the East Down Centre in Dunsford and Judy's place in Offwell near Honiton. There will be 2 separate intro days in Bristol, at Fulcrum House.

Dates for 2016

2015

• October 3/4: Nick - East Down weekend
• December 5: Michael - Bristol 1-day intro

2016

• February 14: Michael - Bristol 1-day intro
• May 7/8: Nick - Offwell
• June 25/26: Michael - Offwell
• September 3/4: Nick - Offwell
• December 10/11: Michael - East Down

Towards an integrative embodied-relational therapy

For about 100 years after Freud first developed the ‘talking cure’, modern psychology, counselling and psychotherapy has remained focused on verbal communication and the cognitive, reflective mind (insight, understanding, rational choices, mental meaning-making). The talking therapies – for all their profound models and gifts accumulated over the decades – are limited in their perspective and effect, for example, in terms of relation to raw distress and deep feelings, developmental and engrained character patterns, psychosomatic issues and trauma as well as creative personal development.

Beyond the talking therapies

For the last 20 years, however, we are beginning to understand that therapy is not mainly a left- brain activity: right-brain-to-right-brain attunement (A. Schore), ‘implicit relational knowing’, the ‘feeling of what happens’ (D. Stern), mirror neurons and non-verbal communication, and the non-dualistic re-visioning of the body-mind relationship (e.g. A. Damasio, D. Siegel) have put embodiment at the heart of the therapeutic endeavour. As implied in the title of Nick’s new book “Embodied Relating” (October 2015), embodiment is the ground of psychotherapy. The challenge now is how to (re-)integrate embodiment into the ‘talking therapies’, to the benefit of both traditions.

Embodiment - the ground of psychotherapy

Attending to embodiment in the consulting room – the client’s and the therapist’s, and the embodied field created between them – has far-reaching implications for everything we experience, think, feel and do in everyday practice, allowing us to re-conceptualise transference and countertransference as embodied experiences. The whole spectrum of the bodymind (sensation-emotion-imagination-cognition-intuition) becomes available as communication channels, allowing creative and spontaneous ways of working that are experience-near, deeply felt and therefore more engaging and potentially transformative. However, with the body now ‘in fashion’, the undifferentiated inclusion of new ‘body techniques’ can also create new and deeper problems for therapists. Rather than grafting embodiment onto established practice as one more eclectic tool, Nick and Michael have been working towards a non-dualistic embodied way of being and relating in the therapeutic relationship for many years.

Experiential process-oriented learning

These workshops are an opportunity to work with two of the most experienced trainers at the forefront of bringing embodiment into psychotherapy in the UK. The learning process in the groups will be based on the same embodied-relational principles, working experientially with emerging process individually and collectively, modelling the therapeutic approach itself.
This training is being initiated with a view to forming an ongoing group (beyond 2016), thus providing an ideal container for your continuing professional development, rooted in your own embodied process. The residential weekend format allows for a safer, more cohesive group experience than ordinary CPD workshops and is designed to facilitate deeper personal- professional learning.

References

Soth, M. (2010) The Return of the Repressed Body – Not a Smooth Affair. UKCP Journal 'The Psychotherapist', Autumn 2010
Totton, N. (2014) Embodied Relating. International Body Psychotherapy Journal, 13(2)
Totton, N. (Karnac, October 2015) Embodied Relating: The Ground of Psychotherapy

For full booking information, including venues and costs, download the leaflet (including booking form)