The Passage of Life (CPD workshop and personal development course)

ONLINE CPD WORKSHOP PRESENTED BY POLLY PLOWMAN AND KEITH SILVESTER

This workshop is open to anyone 55+, from any profession or walk of life, who would like to explore existential questions we face in our spiritual life and in later years.

Ideally, participants might have some experience of therapy or psychosynthesis.

Professionals working with clients’ mental, emotional and physical wellbeing are also welcome to attend. Although this is a personal development course, you may also benefit from it professionally and in the way you approach clients.

Why participate?

Many assumptions can be made of how life is meant to be, yet its variations are hugely individual.

The wisdom and uncertainty of mature age is often neglected in psychotherapeutic agendas, with an over-emphasis on the earlier part of life. This course will attempt to redress this.

This course offers a unique opportunity to reflect on life’s achievements, difficulties and experience, in the company of others and at a comparable stage of life.

We will be using psychosynthesis as our frame (see ‘our approach’ below), and a ‘3Ts’ lens as a template:

• Tone: how the feel of life and our sensitivity to issues evolves during a lifetime

• Time: how the sense of the speed of passing years affects us

• Telos: how the meaning and purpose of life change over time

Our approach

Psychosynthesis applied to psychotherapy is a unique approach that combines both psychology and spirituality. It is a transpersonal and holistic process that helps the individual deal with patterns of behaviours which inhibit or prevent living life in meaningful and fulfilling ways.

Here, this approach takes the broad context of the life journey, fostering acceptance of the past and building a sense of meaning for the future. Opening to a particular experience of ‘Self’ in later life can be profoundly life changing.

Read the blog

What to expect?

On Friday evening, participants will have an opportunity to get to know one another. They will be asked to track the story of their lives in terms of the 3Ts: tone, time and telos.

On Saturday morning, they will be asked to identify five key subpersonalities that have provided continuous narratives throughout their lives, which will be shared and explored in groups, evoking a sense of meaning. Each subpersonality narrative will be examined in terms of the 3Ts.

On Saturday afternoon, participants will be asked to extrapolate these narratives into the future to help form a picture of what might lie ahead.

There will be whole-group discussions, breakout room discussions, drawing, guided visualisation and reflective meditation.

Ticket price

At the Trust we appreciate that each person has their own unique situation – including financial – especially during the current COVID challenge – so we invite you to select the price point that feels like it represents a fair contribution for attending this event.

There are three options to choose from when purchasing tickets:

– Low cost: £75

– Mid: £100

– Full price: £150

Trainers

Keith Silvester is a UKCP registered psychotherapist and BACP senior accredited counsellor. Originally trained at the Institute of Psychosynthesis in London he is a former training director of the Psychosynthesis Trust and currently president of the European Federation for Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy. For many years he was chair of Training Standards of the Humanistic & Integrative College of UKCP. He is also a qualified practitioner of the Alexander Technique. He has a passionate interest in the ‘ages and stages’ of life.

Polly Plowman has been a member of the UKCP since its inception. Her original Psychosynthesis training took place in London at the Institute of Psychosynthesis and at Re.Vision and, until her recent retirement, she was a BACP senior accredited supervisor of counsellors and psychotherapists, running a private therapy practice from her home on the Essex-Suffolk border. For over 25 years she taught regularly in Sweden in the PsykosyntesInstitutet in Gothenburg, where she was for many years on the governing Board. She has a personal interest in exploring purpose, meaning and value in the later years of life.

Keith and Polly have run various unconventional courses together, including ‘The Diploma Course in Failure’ and ‘Despair – for those who have tried everything’, and more recently ‘Oddballs – on being eccentric’ (watch the video and read the blog).