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Emotion-focused therapy workshop series (first post): excitement and why am I doing this?

I woke gently bubbling with excitement.  I'm off in a couple of hours or so to Glasgow to join a course entitled "Emotion-focused psychotherapy: Level 2 workshop series".  Sadly I missed the first day of this seven seminar sequence - I was at the October Scottish Mixed Group peer residential.  Hopefully I'll get to all of the next six.  There's a seminar scheduled for today and then one a month from January through until May.  I believe there will be about 20 participants, presumably all pretty experienced psychotherapists/counsellors.  What fun!

Is interpersonal group work better than sitting meditation for training mindfulness?

I'm missing the seventh session of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course that I've been attending because I've come down to our annual four day UK Men's Group in Cumbria.  I've written about these peer groups many times on this blog - for example, last year's Men's Group and the year before's, as well as Mixed Groups here in Cumbria and just last month a Scottish Mixed Group too.  I woke this morning and wondered - as a kind of thought experiment - whether maybe this four day interpersonal group is, in some ways, a "better" way of training mindfulness than the more traditional practice of sitting in meditation. 

"Sleep well and live better: overcoming insomnia using CBT"- a workshop with Colin Espie (first post)

Yesterday I went to a one-day workshop with Professor Colin Espie on sleep disorders and CBT organized by the Scottish Branch of the BABCP.  Bike to the station, then a train from Edinburgh to Dundee.  Lovely, early morning light up the Fife coast.  Then a taxi to the conference venue where they were serving egg rolls, bacon rolls, and plenty of coffee for the gradually arriving delegates.