EMBODIED RELATING, RELATIONAL EMBODIMENT

This weekend workshop is a unique opportunity to see two prominent UK body psychotherapists in action and conversation together, and to participate in the ongoing evolution of our practice - through supervision, dialogue, and live work with individuals and with the group.

Nick and Michael will try to convey a cutting-edge style of work with embodied relationship. One way of conceptualising and talking about this would be in terms of ‘embodied transference and countertransference’, but this work is in the process of creating a new language for itself, drawing on both psychoanalytic and humanistic styles of work, together with neuroscience and other integrative and interdisciplinary research.

In fact, two styles of work will come together on the workshop: Michael and Nick have developed independent approaches to embodied relationship, and will be exploring the creative friction between them to move the work forward into new and unknown spaces.

We think of the different approaches constituting the therapeutic field as reflecting the plurality, depth and multi-dimensionality of the psyche, and intend to work with the differences and contradictions between the diverse schools and orientations - as represented by the participants in the group - in this spirit.

So among other things the workshop will be an exploration of risk, on several levels: the risk of thinking on our feet and improvising our relationship as leaders; the risk on your part of attending an improvised event and exposing your own theory and practice; and all this modelling the inherent risk and improvisation of the psychotherapy relationship.

The workshop is not restricted to body psychotherapists, but open to all practitioners interested in exploring embodied relationship in their work. The style we will be exploring does not require touch, although it does not exclude it either.

We invite you to bring yourself, as a person and as a practitioner, with your passions and dilemmas, your wounds and shadows, your questions and beliefs, to contribute to the explorations which this weekend and group experience seeks to open out.

 

Practical Information For further details, contact: Michael: michael@soth.co.uk Tel.: 01865 725 205 Please contact Michael for any queries related to booking, practical details or special needs you want to let us know about. Nick: nick@erthworks.co.uk Tel.: 01422 886525

Format of the Weekend:

We will meet 10am - 5pm on both days, with a couple of tea breaks during the morning and afternoon session, and one hour for lunch.

Booking & Bursaries:

To qualify for the early booking fee of £170, we need to receive your completed booking form and cheque by 1 Feb. ‘09. After that date, the full fee of £200 will be payable. These payments are non-refundable unless the workshop is cancelled. At any stage we will reserve 10% of the enrolments we receive for our bursary fund. To apply for a bursary, please send a deposit of at least £100 and a concise statement of your situation and the relevant reasons for the bursary application. We will send out confirmation of bookings, details of the venue and directions in March ‘09.

Nick Totton

I am a therapist and trainer with around 25 years experience. Originally a Reichian body therapist, my approach has become broad based and open to the spontaneous and unexpected. I have an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies, and have worked with Process Oriented Psychology and trained as a craniosacral therapist; together with Allison Priestman, I lead trainings and workshops in the style of work I have developed, Embodied-Relational Therapy. I have a 22 year old daughter. I have written several books, including Body Psychotherapy: An Introduction; Psychotherapy and Politics; and Press When Illuminated: New and Selected Poems. There is an extensive website at www.erthworks.co.uk. I live in Calderdale with my partner and grow vegetables.

Michael Soth

I describe myself these days as an integral-relational Body Psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor. Over the last 20 years I have been teaching on a variety of counselling courses and worked as Training Director at the Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy. Inheriting concepts, values and ways of working from both psychoanalytic and humanistic traditions, I am interested in the therapeutic relationship as a bodymind process between two people who are both wounded and whole.

I draw on a wide range of psychotherapeutic approaches, including Gestalt, Process-oriented Psychology, Psychosynthesis, Family Constellations and others from the humanistic side; and relational, intersubjective and object relations perspectives as well as Jungian and archetypal psychology from the psychoanalytic end of the spectrum.

I am currently setting up a new training for groupleaders and group facilitators, details of which are available at www.soth.co.uk, along with my published writing, papers and articles. I am married and live and practice in Oxford where I grow vegetables, too.