PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS FOLLOWED BY NINE ROUNDS OF WORKSHOPS AND CONVERSATIONAL INTERVIEWS
Gestalt Group Process Residential
Peter Cole & Daisy Reese
The Sierra Institute for Contemporary Gestalt Therapy offers an annual summer intensive. The summer intensive is one of the requirements for a certification of completion of the training. The summer intensive is an experience of Gestalt Group Work. Usually the institute offers a five-day intensive. This year, in conjunction with AAGT's Vancouver conference, we plan to offer our trainees and others a two-day intensive, and have them attend the conference to meet the intensive requirement. There will be room for about six additional participants besides Sierra Institute Trainees.
Gestalt Group Marathon
Ansel Woldt & Tom Mraz
A 12-hour small group experience limited to 12 people, facilitated to explore personal and interpersonal processes. The basic content of the workshop is the participants themselves. Gestalt encounter emphasizes awareness, authenticity, spontaneity and contact, without a fixed agenda. The group develops a here and now, process-oriented experience. Participants often report gaining greater awareness and understanding of their own behaviors, plans, hopes and dreams. Many utilize the group as a safe place for experimenting with new behavior, working through unfinished situations in their life and obtaining closure of unfinished gestalts. The facilitators have several years experience in group work, dating back to the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Deepening Connections
Brian & Jenny O'Neill
Brian and Jenny will bring their work and lived experience both as a couple and as trainers of Gestalt therapists to this workshop. They will offer a focus on the paradoxical nature of intimacy and connection in relationships. Gestalt encounter emphasizes awareness, authenticity, spontaneity and contact, without a fixed agenda. Participants will engage in a marathon group experience in which they can utilize the group as a safe place for experimenting with new behavior, working through unfinished situations in their life and obtaining closure. Brian and Jenny have been facilitating groups for over two decades in Australia.
Strangers on the Shore - A Therapy Marathon
Sharon Warwick & Rob Tyson
For all of us, coming to the AAGT Conference in Vancouver will mean entering into new field conditions, which will include meeting new people. Dreaming the Future is projection. We want to provide a forum in which to explore current projections in the context of new and foreign ground. We hope this will support the emergence of a richer community and lay the ground for our co-created experience of the conference. To do this we are offering the opportunity to participate in a gestalt marathon group, using a blend of classical and relational gestalt, as a precursor to the conference.
A Day for Dreaming
Dolores Bate
Fritz Perls regarded dreams as the Royal Road to Integration. I've found this to be true. Dreams offer new information and guidance about the present, past and future as well as insight into our place in the world and our spiritual lives. If you're interested in starting a Dream Group for clients, or for yourself and your friends, this workshop is for you. We'll learn how to begin and to continue our Dream Work in a simple, effective form. If time allows, we'll look at more traditional Gestalt approaches to working with dreams, as well.
Resolving Unfinished Religious Business and Other 'God Stuff’
Philip Brownell
This will be an exploration for people interested in making progress with unresolved religious issues, processing abusive religious experiences, exploring nagging questions associated with a theistic worldview, and/or gaining cultural competence for working with religious clients. It will lay a ground for theism in Gestalt therapy and then provide opportunities for group members to respond. God will not be left out and talked about; God will be brought in and addressed. Since religious difference often stimulates the defense of belief structures, tolerance of uncertainty in the role of faith will also be considered.
Adaptation, Internal Criticism, and Psychological Withdrawal - Psychotherapy of the Schizoid Process
Richard Erskine
This workshop combines didactic material and experiential demonstration work. It presents a continuing development of thinking about the schizoid process that grew out of a collaborative endeavor with Gary Yontef and Lynne Jacobs several years ago. The manner in which ways of thinking and acting that occur in everyday life are manifested in more extreme form in Schizoid behavior are explored, and approaches to treating such behavior is presented.
