I'm booked in for a course today with Professor Mick Cooper of the University of Strathclyde entitled "Meeting at relational depth: a research workshop".  The publicity blurb reads "This experiential workshop, which Mick Cooper has been running nationally and internationally since the publication of 'Working at relational depth in counselling and psychotherapy' (Sage, 2005), will give participants an opportunity to explore their experiences of relational depth, and to look at how it feels to meet others at this level of intensity - in both their therapeutic practice and everyday life.  Through practical exercises, pairs-work and small and large group discussion, the workshop will help partici

We had the final meeting of this eight session "Opening up" group last night.  I wrote last week about the seventh session.  This last meeting ran a day later than usual because of a clash with a family birthday. 

“

Do you want to hear my favourite procrastination joke?  I'll tell you later.

” - Piers Steel

So this was the seventh - and penultimate - meeting of this "Opening up" group.  I wrote about the sixth session last week.  Sadly, because of family crises, a couple of people hadn't been able to get to this evening's meeting.  In fact, of the five of us at this session, one arrived late.  Rather than simply get going and possibly want to update the late arrival once they were with us, or wait for them rather than getting started, I used a method that often seems helpful when somebody is a little late.  So instead of starting with a verbal check-in, I suggested we all take ten minutes to write about how we were feeling now at the start of this evening, at the penultimate meeting of this group.  As usual I explained that I wanted them to write very freely and deeply about their emotions and thoughts, but that they would t

“

I thank you God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of the trees, and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.

” - e e cummings

Yesterday evening was the sixth session of the "Opening up" group.  It had been a longer gap than usual - ten days since our full day meeting at the fifth session.  As we often do, we began with a round of "checking in"; an opportunity for all of us to say briefly how we were feeling.  Like two or three others, I had been particulary busy in the preceding few days.  Great how present-time, honest interaction with a group of others brings me out of all that brain-busyness into being more here-and-now.

“

I thank you God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of the trees, and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.

” - e e cummings

I wrote just a few days ago about the fourth session of this "Opening up" group.  This fifth session was a full day meeting.  Good to have a whole day together.  A bigger pool to swim in, more time to explore.  Nice too to share food together - we all brought contributions for lunch.

“

One who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

” - Albert Einstein

I wrote last week about the third session of this "Opening up" group.  Yesterday evening was the fourth session.  The "cooking pot" of the group (a metaphor I used at the end of the post about our first group session) is getting stronger.  Group members seem to be feeling more trusting, more ready to share deeply.  And this produces a "virtuous circle" of taking more interpersonal risks, developing more care for each other, so feeling safer to be vulnerable, and then still more understanding and kindness.  Being part of this gives me hope for us as human beings.  We're surely capable of so much cruelty & ignorance, but we're also so capable of sensi

“ The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. ” - Eden Phillpotts

I posted last week on the first meeting of this "Opening up" group.  The reflection sheets everyone had filled in after the initial meeting had been copied and sent to all participants, so we already had more material to work with as we started this second session.  I've experimented with different ways of beginning interpersonal group meetings over the years.  In peer groups I usually bid to start with a few minutes of silence.  I find it seems to help people "arrive" and then to engage more deeply, more quickly - it certainly does this for me.

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"These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions" ... we are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

” - Aristotle/Durant

For many years I have run two kinds of "training group" for clients.  One teaches what can loosely be thought of as "stress management skills".  The latest version of this is the "Life skills for stress, health & wellbeing" course that I have been describing at some length in blog posts over the last three months.  The other kind of group that I regularly facilitate focuses on relationships.  As this group has evolved over the years it has been given various titles.  For quite some time I called it the "Relationships & emotional intelligence" group.  It was an accurate description of what we focused on, but it was kind of clunky as a label.  I've now reverted to simply calling the course "Opening up&

 "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."  John Donne

"No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted."      Aesop

"Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow - perhaps it all will."     Einstein