Expressive Therapies Training Rooms, Redcliffe or Sage Counselling Sanctuary, Sunshine Coast QLD
9am - 4:30pm
Morning & afternoon tea provided
BYO Lunch
Trainer: Mark Pearson unless otherwise noted
Creative Arts-Based Approaches to Counselling with Children
This highly experiential training day will provide an overview of Expressive Therapies and introduce the main modalities. It will give practical assistance in using some of the methods with children and adolescents. The day will focus on helping clients contact, recognise, release and communicate about the feelings that may be impacting on behaviour, relating and learning.
Expressive Therapies provide support for young clients affected by grief and loss; those at risk of depression, relationship difficulties, low self-esteem, and developing behavioural difficulties. There will be new ways to use drawing, writing, self-discovery worksheets, role-play, self-awareness, bioenergetics and emotional release processes.
7 FEBRUARY 2025
$285
Redcliffe, QLD
Expressive Arts for Growth & Wellbeing
This training is designed to introduce a specialised approach for counsellors, psychotherapists, social workers, psychologists and those who support mental health and wellbeing of adult clients. It introduces the theories, principles, and methods for applying Expressive Therapies in counselling with adult clients. The Expressive Therapies approach was developed from Creative Arts Therapies by Mark and Helen, weaving together creative arts, person-centred therapy, emotion-focused and somatic therapies, applied to client issues such as: relationships, grief and loss, anger, and self-judgement.
Modalities explored: Symbol Work, Creative arts worksheets, Therapeutic writing for self-reflection, Music and rhythm.
Expressive Therapies with Young Clients
This highly experiential introductory day will model practical ways of dealing with anger, frustration, and the disruptive acting-out of children and adolescents. Expressive Therapy tools such as drawing, bioenergetics, emotion-focused activities and relaxation will be introduced. As well as presenting the framework and principles of Expressive Therapies, there will be a focus on understanding symbolic expression of anger, bringing closure after expressive work and supporting cognitive and somatic integration.
These approaches have been developed from emotion-focused and psychodynamic theory, and use creative arts approaches to support young clients to resolve underlying emotional issues impacting negatively on behaviour and cognition.
8 FEBRUARY 2025
$285
Redcliffe, QLD
Creative Arts for Linking Sensations, Emotions, Thoughts and Actions
In this one-day experiential professional development workshop you will learn multiple creative arts-based and mindfulness ways to support clients' self-awareness and discover how their sensations, emotions, thoughts and behaviours are linked. The focus will be on Expressive Therapies additions to the therapist's toolkit, including therapeutic writing, use of art, use of miniatures and somatic focus. The multiple ways ET can support integrative CBT approaches will be discussed. A number of worksheets created by the directors of ETA will be provided for: functional analysis, articulation of beliefs, problem solving and goal-setting. Relaxation activities as supports for anger management will be explored.
19 JULY 2024
$285
Redcliffe, QLD
A practical workshop to introduce the methods and frameworks of Expressive Therapies, and provide hands-on experience, theory, some research and case stories of counselling distressed and traumatised young clients. There will be a focus on the care needed in supporting those with long-term emotional problems or who are affected by trauma, prolonged duress stress disorder or post-traumatic stress disorders.
Topics covered: trauma-informed care, expressive activities for young clients, use of therapeutic writing, use of miniatures (Symbol Work), role-play for a stronger self, use of relaxation, matching treatment to types of trauma victims, the evidence base for using client-centred, activities-based approaches.
29 AUGUST 2024
$285
Sunshine Coast, QLD
Increasing Self-Compassion
This highly practical training offers creative arts-based and self-reflective approaches for identifying and disempowering automatic negative thoughts critical of the self. The Expressive Therapy tools of visual art, symbol work, self-discovery worksheets, emotion-focused role-play and dialoguing with parts, will be introduced. Along with mindfulness and self-compassion practice, we will explore understanding of, and separation from, self-criticism. This day for therapy professionals, while focused on supporting adult clients, provides much that can also be applied with younger clients.
The inner critic can be likened to a script, self, or perhaps even 'voice', scolding us from the inside – imposing prohibitions on what we do, what we need, how we feel.
Extract from Pearson & Wilson 2009
1 NOVEMBER 2024
$285
Redcliffe, QLD
Catalysts for Therapeutic Conversations
A practical workshop using projective techniques developed in Australia over the last thirty years by Mark and Helen. Learn to use a collection of miniatures to support clients to open up, symbolise their inner world, talk about self and resolve issues. In this innovative program you will gain confidence in using miniatures with art, with movement, with life narratives, with emotion-focussed processes, and with somatic awareness.
10 MAY 2024
$285
Redcliffe, QLD
17 OCTOBER 2024
$285
Sunshine Coast, QLD
In this highly experiential professional and personal development training, you will learn multiple approaches to developing mindfulness and expressing self-awareness through creative arts activities. Mindfulness is defined as "paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally" (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). For most of us, our surrounding culture in our developmental years trains us to be externally focused, and to re-visit or regret the past and worry about the future.
There are many ways to step into the present: in this workshop we explore somatic focusing, gentle movement, emotional awareness, observation of automatic thought processes, as well as ways to use the senses to arrive in the moment.
Practice with the activities, observing and sharing internal experiences, and integrating through visual art, claywork, and use of miniatures, provides confidence for both our personal quest and support of others. Mindfulness practice has been shown to lead to increases in wellbeing and therapeutic presence when we are supporting others.
16 OCTOBER 2024
$285
Sunshine Coast, QLD
Creative Arts Support for All Ages
Music, Metaphor and Movement in Counselling Creative arts support for clients of all ages The creative arts have been identified as one way to increase emotional intelligence. In this highly experiential one-day training, you will learn multiple ways to support clients of all ages to interact with music in order to evoke deeper self-awareness. Music can help us access personal metaphors associated with implicit aspects of the psyche.
We will explore responding to recorded music through visual arts, movement and selections of miniatures in order to enhance self-awareness. You will also learn to offer rhythmic and movement-based strategies that integrate body awareness and spontaneity, to support client wellbeing, reflection, communication and relaxation. Other activities include: artistic responses to music, guided imagery through music, emotional memory responses to music, and emotion processing through music making. The skills of selecting music suitable for therapy will be introduced.
TBA
Emotion-Focussed Approaches to Counselling Young Clients
Many children and adolescents encounter feelings of grief. Many have had to deal with an issue of loss and separation, whether that loss came through a disability, an accident, the onset of illness, a major change in life, a sense of isolation, separation from – or loss of – someone close to them. This workshop explores new ways we can help them address any unfinished feelings carried over from past events that may be impacting on current behaviour. We will explore emotional release activities, symbol work, self-discovery worksheets and life review maps, expressive writing and bioenergetics, as ways to support the journey of emotional healing through grief and loss.
TBA
Enhancing Client Communication through Expressive Therapies
Help your clients accept, value and communicate their existential questions and spiritual quest. This highly experiential workshop includes practical ways of supporting your spiritual self-exploration as a therapist and your therapeutic work with adult clients. There will be discussion on the relationship between religion and spirituality, and how an individual search for meaning can contribute to wellbeing.
The Expressive Therapies of using writing and art for self-reflection, symbol work, visualisation, and mindfulness will be explored. Along with some of the core concepts and history of Transpersonal Psychotherapy, there will be some practical ways of introducing meditative practice. The evidence-base for including spirituality in counselling will be reviewed.
TBA
Expressive Therapies to Build Client Strengths
The APA identifies ten basic pathways to build resilience - all these pathways could be navigated more effectively with counselling support, and equate to some of the core aims and activities of strengths-based counsellors. This workshop presents the ways counsellors act as guides; and provide a caring therapeutic relationship from which clients' resilience levels are bolstered.
Five central Expressive Therapies activities for counsellors to build client awareness of strengths and resilience will be introduced. Finding the most effective activities to suit each client is at the heart of pluralistic practice, and in conjunction with finding clients' multiple intelligences strengths, can lead to enhanced resilience in the face of life's challenges.
The five therapeutic activities explored in this program include:
TBA
Expressive Therapies and Mindfulness Approaches for Therapists
This program reviews the need for self-care to maintain optimal clinical effectiveness and avoid compassion fatigue and burnout. Topics covered will include: how to recognise signs of impending burn-out, and individual and organisational actions to reduce the risks.
A combination of organisational, mindfulness-based and creative arts responses to self-care will be explored, including increasing workload flexibility, simple and quick mindfulness time-out activities, use of reflective self-compassion journaling, visual arts, relaxation techniques and increasing time with nature.
TBA
Creative Arts Support for Adult Clients
Some issues that may be presented through dreams include: current problems in day-to-day life such as significant change, loss, bereavement, tragedy; fears that are surfacing from past events; childhood trauma; re-emergence of previously disowned energies or characteristics such as assertiveness, resilience; or re-connection to spiritual life. Many clients find that in times of stress or internal crisis, their dream life becomes more active. Working with their dreams at these times may accelerate the connection with these issues.
This one-day training introduces dreamwork methods that have evolved from our practice over 30 years, and are based on both Gestalt and Jungian theory. You will explore verbal, artistic and somatic approaches, including developing a dream scene with miniatures, the psycho-dramatic role-play method, as well as free-association and active imagination processes.
TBA
Reflection, metaphor and language in counselling adult clients
This introductory workshop draws on a range of current literature on the theory, evidence-base, principles and practice of writing for therapeutic purposes. Therapeutic writing within counselling incorporates reflection followed by expressing cognitive, emotional and somatic experiences, and has the potential to support psychological, emotional resolution, and contribute to physical wellbeing. A range of therapeutic skills and activities for harnessing creativity through language exploration with adult clients will be practiced. Therapeutic writing is an expressive therapy that can be safely incorporated into telehealth.
TBA
Using Expressive Therapies with Adult Clients
Learn to use the multiple intelligences (MI) framework and related expressive therapies activities in your professional work, according to client preferences. Responding to client preferences has been shown to improve therapy outcomes and dramatically reduce drop out.
This training provides:
Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences – first published in 1983 – delineates eight (possibly nine) distinct intelligences, each one representing a different way that clients can communicate and learn. Expressive Therapies activities related to the original seven intelligences will be used in this program.
TBA
