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A series of three CPD Zoom workshops, for therapeutic practitioners from across all modalities, with Michael Soth
Each session includes some theory, a supervision demonstration and discussion
Sunday afternoons Feb 9, Mar 9, April 6, 13:00 - 16:00 UK time
Integrative CPD learning for practising therapists from across all approaches, developing principles of relational groundedness when confronted with severe psychopathology, without succumbing to objectifying and pathologising therapeutic manoeuvers
In this brief series of three online workshops, we will work together towards establishing a frame, an overview and some fundamental principles for engaging with clients whom you find disturbing, and whose way of relating, attachment style, trauma or extreme states make it hard for you to establish a working alliance.
Most likely you are wondering whether there's anything beneficial you have to offer, and whether you, your therapy, or therapy in general are a suitable match for the client. You question your competence and whether what you can and are doing is helpful, or potentially damaging, to the client or to both of you. This is typically the moment when your therapeutically-trained mind will start to make sense of the vicissitudes of the relational field, which you find yourself in, via the medical notions and labels we have acquired from psychiatry.
Beyond the limited usefulness of dubious psychopathological and diagnostic categories, what are your options for relating both on a human and professional level, in a way that does justice to the person in front of you, both their suffering and their potential, as well as protecting you from overreach, damaging entanglements and ultimately complaints?
In these few short hours, we will not attempt to establish theoretical clarity in what is historically a conceptual minefield across the profession. Rather, we will try to find relational ground in our own embodied sense of disturbance, whether that manifests as, for example, mental confusion, professional inadequacy, traumatising imagery, strong emotion or somatic countertransference. We will experientially encounter - through supervision demonstrations that involve the whole group - a few typical examples of client-therapist situations, volunteered by participants. These will serve as illustrations and reference points for our learning, exploring how the perennial dilemmas and paradoxes of the therapeutic position can be inhabited and navigated, when we get pushed beyond our comfort zone.
However, we will not ignore the thinking and the theories of the therapeutic traditions altogether, but use them as imaginative material for associations that deepen our understanding of our internal process within the therapeutic position. Your commitment to the course will include a few selected readings and other background materials that you need to study in preparation, and which will give us a foundation for some shared language among participants. This should make our work together more precise and efficient, and more helpful in you applying your learning to your everyday practice afterwards.
Format of the workshops
Group composition and configuration
These workshops have been initiated and requested by Michael's colleagues in Oxford, UK, through the professional referral network and community he helped to found in 2015, OTS (Oxford Therapy and Self-Development). Therefore, the group will include a significant number of participants who know each other and have worked with each other before. But all therapists, from across the approaches and modalities, and from all kinds of geographical locations, are invited to join in this rich learning opportunity. Through Michael's previous teaching connections, it is likely that the group will include therapists from Pakistan, Greece and other countries. We can expect that participants will bring quite different levels of previous experience to these workshops as well as familiarity with a wide and diverse range of therapeutic approaches - we will try to do justice to this and attempt to try and turn that problem into a productive feature of our work together.
How to get the best out of working online
Michael has experimented for quite a few years now with the online format of Zoom for shared group experience, in a way that maximises spontaneous and embodied engagement. Although there may be a significant theoretical element through slides and hand-outs, even in the online workshops Michael's emphasis is on experiential work, often in the middle of the group, sometimes in smaller breakout groups, often through role-plays of client-therapist situations. Michael has been running similar CPD workshops since 2012, both in person in different locations as well as online, with different frequencies and formats. Like all other groups that Michael facilitates, this proposed group will be cross-modality, aiming to stretch across humanistic and psychodynamic traditions, and embracing - what he calls a broad-spectrum - integrative perspective. That means he aims to draw fluidly from all the disciplines and approaches of the psychological therapies, and their accumulated gifts, knowledge and wisdoms, and that your particular approach and style will be welcome.
Proposed format of this workshop series
Although Michael's workshops usually include significant degree of unstructured space and emergent process within the group, for the purpose of these workshops and the topic we need to be focused and structured.
Each session will include an initial discussion of theory and basic principles which we will then use as a foundation for observational tasks during the supervision demonstration that is to follow in the second part. Participants are invited to volunteer a particular case during the week preceding the session via email, setting out the issues, headlines and complications of the work. From the variety of client-therapist situations offered, Michael will have selected one that seems most promising both for their clinical richness as well as for the learning opportunities they appear to offer for the group. Michael will aim to facilitate the supervision demonstration in a way that allows for stops and starts, i.e. timeouts during which the group is invited to help reflect on the process of the supervision, before we go back and continue. This should offer significant opportunities for all participants to become involved as well as giving us a chance for paying attention to parallel processes.
The third part of each session will allow for questions and answers, integration and discussion and further shared learning, through reflecting together on the demonstration.
Respect and confidentiality
We want to be mindful of the delicacy of the proposed format, in terms of the volunteer's direct exposure to the group, and the client's indirect exposure as well. It is important that we all observe confidentiality, and commit to a shared undertaking that nothing from the workshop will be indiscreetly shared with others, other than your very own personal-professional responses to the material.
Fees - UK
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: £140
OTS Members: £90
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: £140
£175 full price
Fees - Europe
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: €160
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: €150
€200 full price
Fees - Greece/Pakistan
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: €100
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: €100
€150 full price
Fees - US
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: $180
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: $180
$250 full price
Online Zoom Workshop for everybody interested in psychological change
Sat & Sun, 22 & 23 February 2025, 15.00 – 21.00 EET
in English (with expert simultaneous Greek translation)
More Info & Booking: website: https://upliftingevent.com/
More info for participants from Greece: Dimitris Tzachanis - info@gestaltsynthesis.gr
More info for participants from UK, US and elsewhere: Michael Soth
About therapy in the 'here & now'
50 years ago, when Fritz Perls demonstrated Gestalt therapy for the first time on television, many people were gripped and inspired by the immediacy, vibrancy and powerful impact of working in the 'here & now'. The idea of attending to the 'phenomenology of the present moment' - rather than focusing on the past, the history of the biography, the roots of adult experience in childhood development - profoundly changed the way we thought about what was possible in therapy, and how long it had to take.
But now, 50 years later, for many people interested in self-development and therapy, 'being here and now' has become an 'old' idea, no longer fashionable - apparently over the last few decades the idea has lost its revolutionary and revelatory appeal. Of course, to the eternal now, our silly fashions and disenchantments are of no concern - the present moment just continues, undisturbed by our lack of appreciation of it. Of course it's an 'old' idea, thousands of years old. But apparently, humanity still hasn't got the point, after all this time - how much continuous present has to pass before we wake up and get the message?
Humanity - and much of the therapeutic field - seems to be as busy as ever repeating and regurgitating the past, or hankering after a future that is supposed to be more fulfilling than the present. All the while, the potential of the present moment is being aborted by our frantic and misguided efforts and our refusal or incapacity to let go into the 'here and now'.
Our busy minds are lost and forgetful, clinging onto the past and grasping towards the future, missing the only moment in which life can be found. With virtual reality and artificial intelligence threatening to take over, connecting with the vitality of flesh-and-blood bodymind intelligence in the 'here and now' seems more important than ever, doesn't it?
So maybe we have to revisit and re-appreciate the old idea of 'being here and now'?
For the purpose of self-development, the 'here and now' is the alpha and omega. No change has ever happened in the past, and no transformation will ever occur in the future, however desperately we are seeking. But how can our awareness milk the present moment for its sweet nectar, how can we fully surrender and extract from it everything it offers and has always offered? How can we attend to the full potential of the emergent process in the 'here and now'?
Outside of Buddhist teaching and mindfulness where attention to the present moment is one of the foundational pillars of practice, in the field of psychotherapy the significance of working in the 'here and now' has been declared and demonstrated most strongly and explicitly by Gestalt therapy. But as a therapeutic approach that is now more than 70 years old, Gestalt has its limitations. The more we understand what these limitations are, and by complementing these with models, ideas and techniques drawn from other therapeutic approaches, the more we are able to reinvigorate the practice of Gestalt therapy with its original promise. Many people saw that promise manifested in Fritz Perls' famous TV presentations, where he demonstrated his work in the 'here and now' with volunteers from the audience. Many modern Gestalt therapists are very critical of Perls, arguing that he set a bad example for what they consider the essence of Gestalt.
The paradoxical principle of change
Like few other therapeutic approaches, Gestalt is known for its focus on vibrancy, immediacy and experiential engagement. This is what many people are looking for in effective therapy - a method they can experience as having immediate, 'here and now' impact, that can be verified tangibly, subjectively. It does not require speculation or discipline or belief. As the client, you do not have to sign up to anything, you are not required to believe or take on board anything that's not immediately obvious from your own experience. That doesn't mean it's easy - on the contrary: the more that Gestalt invites us into the 'here and now', the more we discover a fundamental - and to some extent disturbing and frustrating - paradox, discovered and formulated by Gestalt therapists 50 years ago: change happens when we accept what is. This apparently simple and innocuous phrase is a rabbit hole, or maybe a wormhole, into the mysteries of the 'here and now'.
This online weekend workshop is an attempt to approach some of these existential mysteries through active, experiential exploration, by drawing on the wisdom and creativity of Gestalt as demonstrated by Fritz Perls, whilst maintaining also an awareness of the criticisms and dangers that have been brought against it. It is an opportunity for you to access the best that Gestalt has to offer in terms of making your 'here and now' experience the centrepoint of everything, and entering its transformative paradoxes. Will it make a profound difference to your life and change you? Yes, if you can accept what is, in the here and now!
Format of the weekend
This will be an online Zoom weekend, organised in Greece for Greek participants, but taking place in English with simultaneous Greek translation, so English-speaking participants from across the planet are invited. We can expect that participants will bring quite different levels of previous experience to this workshop as well as familiarity with different kinds of therapy - we will try to do justice to this and attempt to try and turn that problem into a productive feature of our work together.
Michael has experimented for quite a few years now with the online format of Zoom for shared group experience, in a way that maximises spontaneous and embodied engagement. Throughout the weekend, he will offer brief thoughts around some fundamental principles, giving some theoretical frame to our exploration so that we can more deeply attend to each other's experience. But most of the weekend is dedicated to experiential engagement through pair work, small group work and especially to individual demonstrations, reminiscent of Fritz Perls, when Michael will work with volunteers. Most participants find that - whether they volunteer or not - they can identify and have their own issues touched and addressed through somebody else's individual work that resonates deeply.
We want to be mindful of confidentiality, and commit to a shared undertaking that nothing from the workshop will be indiscreetly shared with others, other than your very own personal-professional responses to the workshop.
Some of the possible learning objectives:
- experiment with our subjective awareness of dropping into 'here and now' awareness
- notice how 'here and now' awareness fluctuates and oscillates, and how 'charge' rises and falls
- begin to recognise patterns of avoidance and distraction taking attention away from the 'here and now'
- become curious about how such patterns of avoidance are organised and what drives them
- understanding charge and vibrancy as a parallel processes between internal and external relationship
- recognise the importance of bodily sensations and breath for being anchored in the present moment
- appreciate some of the limiting traditional humanistic assumptions regarding the 'here and now'
- learn to apprehend the complex bodymind reality of the present moment, with its inherent conflicts
- learn to apprehend the parallel processes between the 'here and now' and the 'there and then'
- engage deeply with the paradoxical principle of change, and what we mean by "accepting what is"
- expand our conception of the role of the therapist beyond traditional Gestalt notions
- notice how the client's conflict becomes the therapist's conflict in the 'here and now'
- experiment with fully embracing the implications of the paradoxical principle of change for the therapist
- expanding our attention to the 'here and now' across all available channels of perception and communication, to include the whole field
- generating creative experiential experiments focusing attention on the 'here and now' at the edge of the window of tolerance
An ongoing, broad-spectrum integrative group
This semi-closed group has been running for several years now (since 2015), with new participants joining the 'pool' of members as places become available. Led by one of the most experienced integrative trainers in the UK, this group will provide an ideal relational container for your ongoing development as a therapist. By immersing yourself in a diverse group of colleagues from different schools and orientations, you will widen your perspective, deepen your practice, draw both inspiration and challenge from the co-created wide-ranging experiential work and have a reference point as well as resources and teaching to support your further development.
You can find a detailed description of the format and objectives of this group on the dedicated page.
A series of three CPD Zoom workshops, for therapeutic practitioners from across all modalities, with Michael Soth
Each session includes some theory, a supervision demonstration and discussion
Sunday afternoons Feb 9, Mar 9, April 6, 13:00 - 16:00 UK time
Integrative CPD learning for practising therapists from across all approaches, developing principles of relational groundedness when confronted with severe psychopathology, without succumbing to objectifying and pathologising therapeutic manoeuvers
In this brief series of three online workshops, we will work together towards establishing a frame, an overview and some fundamental principles for engaging with clients whom you find disturbing, and whose way of relating, attachment style, trauma or extreme states make it hard for you to establish a working alliance.
Most likely you are wondering whether there's anything beneficial you have to offer, and whether you, your therapy, or therapy in general are a suitable match for the client. You question your competence and whether what you can and are doing is helpful, or potentially damaging, to the client or to both of you. This is typically the moment when your therapeutically-trained mind will start to make sense of the vicissitudes of the relational field, which you find yourself in, via the medical notions and labels we have acquired from psychiatry.
Beyond the limited usefulness of dubious psychopathological and diagnostic categories, what are your options for relating both on a human and professional level, in a way that does justice to the person in front of you, both their suffering and their potential, as well as protecting you from overreach, damaging entanglements and ultimately complaints?
In these few short hours, we will not attempt to establish theoretical clarity in what is historically a conceptual minefield across the profession. Rather, we will try to find relational ground in our own embodied sense of disturbance, whether that manifests as, for example, mental confusion, professional inadequacy, traumatising imagery, strong emotion or somatic countertransference. We will experientially encounter - through supervision demonstrations that involve the whole group - a few typical examples of client-therapist situations, volunteered by participants. These will serve as illustrations and reference points for our learning, exploring how the perennial dilemmas and paradoxes of the therapeutic position can be inhabited and navigated, when we get pushed beyond our comfort zone.
However, we will not ignore the thinking and the theories of the therapeutic traditions altogether, but use them as imaginative material for associations that deepen our understanding of our internal process within the therapeutic position. Your commitment to the course will include a few selected readings and other background materials that you need to study in preparation, and which will give us a foundation for some shared language among participants. This should make our work together more precise and efficient, and more helpful in you applying your learning to your everyday practice afterwards.
Format of the workshops
Group composition and configuration
These workshops have been initiated and requested by Michael's colleagues in Oxford, UK, through the professional referral network and community he helped to found in 2015, OTS (Oxford Therapy and Self-Development). Therefore, the group will include a significant number of participants who know each other and have worked with each other before. But all therapists, from across the approaches and modalities, and from all kinds of geographical locations, are invited to join in this rich learning opportunity. Through Michael's previous teaching connections, it is likely that the group will include therapists from Pakistan, Greece and other countries. We can expect that participants will bring quite different levels of previous experience to these workshops as well as familiarity with a wide and diverse range of therapeutic approaches - we will try to do justice to this and attempt to try and turn that problem into a productive feature of our work together.
How to get the best out of working online
Michael has experimented for quite a few years now with the online format of Zoom for shared group experience, in a way that maximises spontaneous and embodied engagement. Although there may be a significant theoretical element through slides and hand-outs, even in the online workshops Michael's emphasis is on experiential work, often in the middle of the group, sometimes in smaller breakout groups, often through role-plays of client-therapist situations. Michael has been running similar CPD workshops since 2012, both in person in different locations as well as online, with different frequencies and formats. Like all other groups that Michael facilitates, this proposed group will be cross-modality, aiming to stretch across humanistic and psychodynamic traditions, and embracing - what he calls a broad-spectrum - integrative perspective. That means he aims to draw fluidly from all the disciplines and approaches of the psychological therapies, and their accumulated gifts, knowledge and wisdoms, and that your particular approach and style will be welcome.
Proposed format of this workshop series
Although Michael's workshops usually include significant degree of unstructured space and emergent process within the group, for the purpose of these workshops and the topic we need to be focused and structured.
Each session will include an initial discussion of theory and basic principles which we will then use as a foundation for observational tasks during the supervision demonstration that is to follow in the second part. Participants are invited to volunteer a particular case during the week preceding the session via email, setting out the issues, headlines and complications of the work. From the variety of client-therapist situations offered, Michael will have selected one that seems most promising both for their clinical richness as well as for the learning opportunities they appear to offer for the group. Michael will aim to facilitate the supervision demonstration in a way that allows for stops and starts, i.e. timeouts during which the group is invited to help reflect on the process of the supervision, before we go back and continue. This should offer significant opportunities for all participants to become involved as well as giving us a chance for paying attention to parallel processes.
The third part of each session will allow for questions and answers, integration and discussion and further shared learning, through reflecting together on the demonstration.
Respect and confidentiality
We want to be mindful of the delicacy of the proposed format, in terms of the volunteer's direct exposure to the group, and the client's indirect exposure as well. It is important that we all observe confidentiality, and commit to a shared undertaking that nothing from the workshop will be indiscreetly shared with others, other than your very own personal-professional responses to the material.
Fees - UK
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: £140
OTS Members: £90
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: £140
£175 full price
Fees - Europe
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: €160
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: €150
€200 full price
Fees - Greece/Pakistan
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: €100
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: €100
€150 full price
Fees - US
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: $180
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: $180
$250 full price
A series of three CPD Zoom workshops, for therapeutic practitioners from across all modalities, with Michael Soth
Each session includes some theory, a supervision demonstration and discussion
Sunday afternoons Feb 9, Mar 9, April 6, 13:00 - 16:00 UK time
Integrative CPD learning for practising therapists from across all approaches, developing principles of relational groundedness when confronted with severe psychopathology, without succumbing to objectifying and pathologising therapeutic manoeuvers
In this brief series of three online workshops, we will work together towards establishing a frame, an overview and some fundamental principles for engaging with clients whom you find disturbing, and whose way of relating, attachment style, trauma or extreme states make it hard for you to establish a working alliance.
Most likely you are wondering whether there's anything beneficial you have to offer, and whether you, your therapy, or therapy in general are a suitable match for the client. You question your competence and whether what you can and are doing is helpful, or potentially damaging, to the client or to both of you. This is typically the moment when your therapeutically-trained mind will start to make sense of the vicissitudes of the relational field, which you find yourself in, via the medical notions and labels we have acquired from psychiatry.
Beyond the limited usefulness of dubious psychopathological and diagnostic categories, what are your options for relating both on a human and professional level, in a way that does justice to the person in front of you, both their suffering and their potential, as well as protecting you from overreach, damaging entanglements and ultimately complaints?
In these few short hours, we will not attempt to establish theoretical clarity in what is historically a conceptual minefield across the profession. Rather, we will try to find relational ground in our own embodied sense of disturbance, whether that manifests as, for example, mental confusion, professional inadequacy, traumatising imagery, strong emotion or somatic countertransference. We will experientially encounter - through supervision demonstrations that involve the whole group - a few typical examples of client-therapist situations, volunteered by participants. These will serve as illustrations and reference points for our learning, exploring how the perennial dilemmas and paradoxes of the therapeutic position can be inhabited and navigated, when we get pushed beyond our comfort zone.
However, we will not ignore the thinking and the theories of the therapeutic traditions altogether, but use them as imaginative material for associations that deepen our understanding of our internal process within the therapeutic position. Your commitment to the course will include a few selected readings and other background materials that you need to study in preparation, and which will give us a foundation for some shared language among participants. This should make our work together more precise and efficient, and more helpful in you applying your learning to your everyday practice afterwards.
Format of the workshops
Group composition and configuration
These workshops have been initiated and requested by Michael's colleagues in Oxford, UK, through the professional referral network and community he helped to found in 2015, OTS (Oxford Therapy and Self-Development). Therefore, the group will include a significant number of participants who know each other and have worked with each other before. But all therapists, from across the approaches and modalities, and from all kinds of geographical locations, are invited to join in this rich learning opportunity. Through Michael's previous teaching connections, it is likely that the group will include therapists from Pakistan, Greece and other countries. We can expect that participants will bring quite different levels of previous experience to these workshops as well as familiarity with a wide and diverse range of therapeutic approaches - we will try to do justice to this and attempt to try and turn that problem into a productive feature of our work together.
How to get the best out of working online
Michael has experimented for quite a few years now with the online format of Zoom for shared group experience, in a way that maximises spontaneous and embodied engagement. Although there may be a significant theoretical element through slides and hand-outs, even in the online workshops Michael's emphasis is on experiential work, often in the middle of the group, sometimes in smaller breakout groups, often through role-plays of client-therapist situations. Michael has been running similar CPD workshops since 2012, both in person in different locations as well as online, with different frequencies and formats. Like all other groups that Michael facilitates, this proposed group will be cross-modality, aiming to stretch across humanistic and psychodynamic traditions, and embracing - what he calls a broad-spectrum - integrative perspective. That means he aims to draw fluidly from all the disciplines and approaches of the psychological therapies, and their accumulated gifts, knowledge and wisdoms, and that your particular approach and style will be welcome.
Proposed format of this workshop series
Although Michael's workshops usually include significant degree of unstructured space and emergent process within the group, for the purpose of these workshops and the topic we need to be focused and structured.
Each session will include an initial discussion of theory and basic principles which we will then use as a foundation for observational tasks during the supervision demonstration that is to follow in the second part. Participants are invited to volunteer a particular case during the week preceding the session via email, setting out the issues, headlines and complications of the work. From the variety of client-therapist situations offered, Michael will have selected one that seems most promising both for their clinical richness as well as for the learning opportunities they appear to offer for the group. Michael will aim to facilitate the supervision demonstration in a way that allows for stops and starts, i.e. timeouts during which the group is invited to help reflect on the process of the supervision, before we go back and continue. This should offer significant opportunities for all participants to become involved as well as giving us a chance for paying attention to parallel processes.
The third part of each session will allow for questions and answers, integration and discussion and further shared learning, through reflecting together on the demonstration.
Respect and confidentiality
We want to be mindful of the delicacy of the proposed format, in terms of the volunteer's direct exposure to the group, and the client's indirect exposure as well. It is important that we all observe confidentiality, and commit to a shared undertaking that nothing from the workshop will be indiscreetly shared with others, other than your very own personal-professional responses to the material.
Fees - UK
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: £140
OTS Members: £90
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: £140
£175 full price
Fees - Europe
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: €160
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: €150
€200 full price
Fees - Greece/Pakistan
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: €100
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: €100
€150 full price
Fees - US
Early Bird before 1 Dec 2024: $180
Recipients of mailchimp newsletter: $180
$250 full price
Online Zoom Workshop for everybody interested the power of the breath
Sat & Sun, 24 & 25 May 2025, 15.00 – 21.00 EET
in English (with expert simultaneous Greek translation)
More Info & Booking: website: https://upliftingevent.com/
More info for participants from Greece: Dimitris Tzachanis - info@gestaltsynthesis.gr
More info for participants from UK, US and elsewhere: Michael Soth
About integral-relational Breathwork