Working With The Helper's Shadow
A Personal Four Day Intensive For Therapists & HealersAn In Depth Exploration Of Our Challenges In Being Helpers
“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the darker it is…
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
– Carl Jung
This experience for professionals is specifically designed to cast light on their own shadows, making them more effective as practitioners. We do the work necessary to further an enlivening of the body and a clarity of mind that deepens each practitioner’s sense of presence.
Workshop Logistics
Thursday, May 12th – Sunday, May 16th
This workshop is limited to eight participants.
- Arrivals are on Wednesday evening.
- Workshop starts Thursday morning.
- Workshop concludes with lunch on Sunday.
Workshop Segments
Moving The Body
You will receive restorative embodiment opportunities each day via walking in nature, pranayama breath work, and morning yoga.
Group Work
Our primary practice tool to develop the ability to deepen process sessions for practitioners, and for the client to learn more about their own depths.
Embodied Meditations
Deepening embodiment is supported by the mind’s ability to calm itself, and to be present to a felt exchange with our client’s unfolding process.
Horse Presence
We will have the opportunity to experience the subtle relational energy and feedback that our pre-sense has on these majestic beings.
Dynamic Content
Embodied transmissions of essential content for doing shadow work in the helper, deepening the capacity to face and work with client challenges.
Surrounded In Beauty
We will spend portions of our day being out in the beauty of the nature setting that surrounds us, and allows us to balance the depth work we do.
Workshop Readings
Are provided so that participants will be prepared, gain the most benefit from this particular workshop intensive.
These readings will be referenced regularly throughout the training, as they are relevant to the unfolding processes that we share.
They provide us with a useful lens through which we can deepen our understanding and appreciation for how the helper’s shadow can assist or hinder the client’s process.
Renewing and enlivening the practitioner’s body and mind through shadow work
to facilitate deeper meaning and vitality in our work with clients.
Workshop Content
A meditative space at Dojo Bianco.
We can make our minds
So like still water
That beings gather about us
that they may see
It may be,
Their own images,
And so live for a moment
With a clearer,
Perhaps even fiercer life
Because of our quiet.
– Yeats
Our Workshop Setting
We will be immersed in the beautiful and intimate setting of Dojo Bianco, in the heart of the Tuscan countryside in Italy – where we will be graciously and attentively hosted by Ceren Akcelik.
Everything about this unique atmosphere will be conducive to the space we will work, play and rest in.
The quality of the all that we enter, from the group space, the lodging, and the meals – to the vastness of the rural fields and mountains, the majesty of the horses, and elegance of the setting – all this will support a deep exploration of the transformational work we will do together ..
Through small group work and ‘active witnessing’ practices, we deepen the practitioner’s ability to listen more closely, to see more clearly, and to feel more deeply.
This better allows them to be impacted and moved by others, & thus they can more effectively respond to the subtleties & the nuances of their client’s more revealing depths, as they emerge in a process.
Sample A Guided Embodiment Meditation
Below is a guided embodiment meditation from a recent PSEN US Training.
Embodiment - Bringing Breath To The Pelvic Floor
Attention to detail is an important part of the workshop atmosphere.
The Workshop Facilitator
Michael Mervosh
PSEN Co-Founder
Michael is a licensed clinical psychologist in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. He has been devoted to his full-time private practice, providing intensive individual and group psychotherapy for 30 years.
His founding and lifelong work is with the Hero’s Journey Foundation, which he has cultivated over the past 25 years. This work is a uniquely crafted blend of nature-based psychological and mythological transformation work.
He makes use of group process, community settings and majestic wilderness environments to deepen an individual’s self-awareness, and to help them embrace unifying life experiences.
He is the co-founder and lead trainer of PsychoEnergetics Training, a four-year training program for depth work and process facilitation, set in community-oriented learning groups.
PSEN Training is offered in the United States and Europe, with 50 students in each training program. It has been in existence since 2006.
