PSEN Training Content
A TRAINING YEAR WORKING WITH CHAOS, UNCERTAINTY & COMPLEXITY
While much of the focus of the training is on the deepening of unfolding process,
we also give our attention to relevant content to support depth work.
Working With Chaos, Uncertainty & Complexity:
TOLERATING DYNAMIC TENSION
IN SERVICE OF CHANGE &
GROWTH
This year’s training themes center around the practitioner’s ability to be rooted in their own embodied presence, capable of setting aside a helping or a ‘fixing’ agenda, and learning to withstand the unknown as a doorway to a richer and more meaningful life.
We will keep cultivating an ‘active witnessing’ function, capable of accompanying another, while holding and reflecting back to them their internal conflicts and dilemmas in ways that can both empower them and move their lives forward – as they become better able to think and act in new ways; and better able to live.
This is challenging but rewarding work: supporting the client’s growing ability to develop by facing paradox, tolerating uncertainty and complexity, and accepting ‘what is’.
Examples of Practitioner Content
Embodied Presence
Relating To Wholeness
An introduction to the work of Marks-Terlow in Pscyhe’s Veil, we gain an appreciation for the importance of ‘nonlinear processes’ in our work.
Practitioner’s Mind
Learn about the function, the trouble, and transformative potential of Projection & Projective Identification in depth processes.
The Unconscious Self
Counter-Transference
Containing & understanding our own reactions to the inevitable and important emotional enactments and transferences clients have with us.
Deepening Into Processes
Learning how to 1) Join with the trouble 2) allow the trouble to unfold; 3) Hold the trouble in mind body; 3) Move beyond the fixed & familiar pattern.
Training Content
Here are some samples of essential clinical material to be presented this year.
Working With Breakdown in Transformative Processes
These are events imbued with profound personal significances. The unconscious purpose of breakdown is to present the self to the other for transformative understanding; to have its core distress met and understood directly – so that breakdown can become a breakthrough.
Working With The Dynamics of Overwhelm
Overwhelm is what happens when escalating excitations are pushed to the limit. This can bring about a radical unbinding of the ego, for better or for worse. It can unravel us, undoing old paradigms in order to make room for new ones. We will also look at the role sexuality plays in this profound inner state of being.
Understanding How To Work More Effectively With Character Structure
Our client’s character provides a powerful and unconscious form of communication, leaving its traces upon our interior lives as their practitioners. Their character is a nonverbal, ego-syntonic and powerful shaper of interpersonal space as well – through action as well as inaction. In depth work, character needs the ‘other’ in order to come into life, to make its mark, and to find its meaning.
Our Training Format
Online Large Group
Our primary way of working together for all embodied mindfulness practices, and for all training lectures, & demo sessions.
Small Peer Groups
Usually 5-6 group members who lead their own group, while developing their ‘working edge’. Meets between the training weeks.
Online Dyad Sessions
Used daily during the training week. Consists of individual client and practitioner ‘practice sessions’ to work one’s developmental edge.
Online Working Groups
Consists of 8-10 members and PSEN staff. Helps to deepen the work by using ‘the practitioner’s mind to think more clearly about the work.
Zoom Morning Movement
Optional early morning movement segments before the training day starts. Energy movements, yoga or kundalini breathing are options.
Zoom Evening Community
Supportive and integrative informal communal sharing each evening to solidify connection and deepen mutual enjoyment of being together.