Group Process

Working in and with Groups

This is an opportunity to examine how to work powerfully with group dynamics, and with people in groups, from a humanistic/transpersonal perspective.

Intended as an in-depth workshop on group facilitation, this course will explore the process a group goes through, partly by theoretical in-put and partly by experiential work in the group itself. This includes working at a variety of levels, the individual/intrapersonal level, the inter-personal level and group level, carrying a multitude of agendas, being connected to one’s own self-awareness and self-support skills, working with high and low energy levels and working with strong emotion. Theoretical in-put will provide some interpretive models and an opportunity for reflection on key issues and pitfalls that occur. 

The programme will include:

• Experiencing and understanding group process
• Self-awareness of the facilitator
• Reviewing relevant facilitation skills
• Theory in-put, including Humanistic and Transpersonal models of group work, stages in a group’s life cycle, Gestalt theory and groups, the role of the leader and options for interventions
• Working with presence
• Reflecting on key issues in groups, with a specific reference to projection
• Awareness of some classic pitfalls and traps that the facilitator can fall into
• Working with emotion
• Using activities and experiments to support group learning
• Self-support for the facilitator and participants
• The importance of completion

Past participants have said:

"Great time to think and experience in a group of high level practitioners and excellent model of facilitation."

"Excellent; liked the way you used live material to explore and explain facilitation skills."

"Good balance between experience and theory."

"I felt I understood more of my own work around group process - my own edge I need to work towards".

"Appreciated your deep groundedness...your staying with the process".

"This has been a very powerful process for me personally and I appreciate very much how you have held the space and enabled such deep work. I felt safe in it and with you. I also appreciate how you have kept the focus of applying this group's process and experience to our work as facilitators 'out there'."

"I valued being able to get to the heart of group process by being able to reflect on what was happening in the group itself".

"A well-balanced and thought-out experience and one which I will recommend to others, and I would certainly wish to attend others you may run. Thank you".

"I have learned as much from your way of presenting the workshop as I have from the work done with and within the group. Your affirmation and accepting approach has taught me how to create a "safe emotionally" environment for real life-changing work to take place".

"John and Akasha have demonstrated facilitation in its true sense. I felt encouraged, supported, challenged and held to the point that I managed, in spite of my resistance, to contact my deeply held negative beliefs about myself and have a sense that I could begin to accept myself as others had. What a gift!"

Further details