Vitalizing Processes
Enlivening The Vital Self With Another
A Three-Day
PSEN Workshop in
Lisbon, Portugal
November 8th – 10th, 2024
Presented by
Michael Mervosh & Joana Carvalho
Please note: This workshop is also the module 1 of the Portugal PSEN Study Group led by Joana Carvalho
Engaging Spontaneity & Passion in Service Of Change, Growth & Aliveness
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening,
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all of time,
this expression is unique.
And if you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is,
nor how valuable,
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open.
Martha Graham
About The Theme For The Workshop
The theme and the content for this particular workshop is based on Michael’s own deep immersion into the content and material that he is bringing to Lisbon.
He has spent many months exploring this vitalization theme, studying various theories and approaches, and he has been practicing these applications with active clients.
He and Joana will sculpt this workshop to the relevance of this theme for each of the participants who attend this workshop.
This workshop explores using vitalizing interventions that are enriching and transformative in their lived encounters. It is about having an experience of self, rather than simply reflecting on one’s own self-process.
The practitioner’s ability to enact their own embodied and vitalized presence depends on their ability to participate in unconsciously driven, spontaneous, and viscerally felt encounters with their clients.
As practitioners, we must be capable of setting aside our need to be helpful in order to be available for a vitalizing encounter.
We work with ‘active witnessing‘by entering fully into the lived experience of another, then we digest within ourselves. Finally, we reflect back to the other their own internal conflicts and dilemmas in ways that recognizes them, empowers them, and moves their lives forward in new ways – becoming better able to bear living.
Entering into vitalizing processes is such challenging and rewarding work. It supports the client’s ability to grow by facing their paradoxes and dilemmas, helping them to better tolerate uncertainty and complexity, and ultimately, to accept ‘what is’ about themselves and about life.
“Transformative change is not a consequence of a logical, sequential, reflected upon process, but of conscious, pre-conscious, and unconscious, mutual penetration.
The goal is not insight or understanding alone, but rather a transformation, a radical change in people’s nature as they come into contact with the frozen parts of themselves that are yearning to be reached, known and recognized – a change which is always a result of an interaction.”
– Boaz Shalgi
In this workshop, we will:
Experience The Core Self
The Core Self holds the unique integrity of the individual, which we as helpers must be aware of, but can never interfere with. The work takes place within the therapist, not in the client.
This experience is a kind of conscious ‘echo-location’, a sensing of the inherent vulnerability of one’s own very existence. There is a great deal of sensitivity needed to attend to the Core Self in another.
Understand & Activate One’s Personal Idiom
The Core Self is the kernel of our very being. It is invested with a positive, ruthless demand to realize its potential through the ‘use of the object’. We will better understand how this use of another is healthy and necessary for genuine growth to take place.
This ability is a crucial step forward in the forming of one’s own unique human character.
The practitioner’s receptivity to the idiomatic aliveness of the client can support the release of that person’s true self. This allows a person to realize a future that has been unknown to them and has been, up until now, unexperienced by them.
This is a remarkable thing to witness and experience, for both practitioner and client.
Opening To The ‘Boon’ Of Being Vitalized – Through Embodied Presence, A Living Myth, & The Pursuit of Passion
“It is of great importance that the therapeutic ‘material’ we discuss with our clients be present, to some degree, to our senses. It must not just be an abstract idea, but something which is ‘happening’, that we can feel, and almost touch.” (Boaz Shalgi)
If we are to transform what is foreign, alienating or unreal in our clients into something real and personal, into something they can feel and sense for themselves as a real part of their life, it is crucial that we learn how to speak to them in a way that is grounded, felt, and tangible.
This way of being in an encounter with our clients can pull them into a reality they can better face, better live with, and become enlivened by.
Registration and Contact:
Scheudule:
From Friday 8th 9.30 am to Sunday 10th 5 pm
Workshop Fees:
380€– if paid before September 29th
430€ – if paid after September 29th
* Participants pay a 200€ deposit to reserve a place in this workshop.
Workshop Venue:
Clube do Lago Hotel
https://www.clubedolagohotel.pt/
Clube do Lago has set special prieces for our workshop group.
Participants do the hotel reservation via :
Bernardo Figueiroa
[email protected]
Using te code: PSENWK
How We Will Practice Vitalizing Processes
Using Embodied Presence – this is our most essential and fundamental skill for containing the possibility of novelty and spontaneous aliveness, when we can be individuated, present, and also an ‘other’ to our clients.
Orienting Towards Aliveness – this requires the ability of our bodies to have a felt exchange with the flow of life, and the ability to open our minds to new possibilities and novel encounters in the presence of risk.
Holding A Vital Mind – only a passionate mind living within the therapist can engage the client’s deadness and fears, and truly help them address and transform their darkest fears.
Accessing The Generative Unconscious – grow a deeper appreciation for how the unconscious core of both therapist and client are in constant communication, always a mystery, and always surprising us.
Deep & Active Witnessing – witnessing is a vitalizing therapeutic function. Experience how our own internal worlds resonate with and respond to what a client carries within. Use this awareness to create new ground.
Deepening Personal Process – learn how to join with & enter the client’s surface issue. Hold their trouble in both mind and body. Move beyond knowing into wonder. Engage a state of reverie.
Michael Mervosh
Licensed Psychologist
Michael is a licensed clinical psychologist with MGM PsychologicalAssociates in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. He has been devoted to full-time private practice, providing intensive individual and group psychotherapy for 25 years as a Gestalt and Object Relations trained psychotherapist, who utilizes a body- oriented as well as Jungian influenced approach to working with his clients.
He is the co-founder and a primary instructor of PsychoEnergetics Training, a four-year depth and process facilitation training program and community-oriented learning group. PSEN Training is offered in the United States and Europe, with 50 students in each training year. It has been in existence since 2006.
For more information about Michael’s work, go to michaelmervosh.com.
Joana Carvalho
Joana started working with groups as a yoga teacher since 2000.
Her passion for deepening lead her to study body-mind oriented therapy, including healing work and transpersonal work. She is a PsychoEnergetics Practitioner and a Psychotherapist.
She has a private practice in Lisbon where she works individually and with groups. Joana is a Faculty Member in the PSEN Training in Spain since 2012 and a Staff Member/Supervisor in AlmaSoma Transpersonal Institute in Lisbon since 2012.
She facilitates PSEN workshops in Lisbon since 2017 and started the Portugal PSEN Study Group in 2021.
Depth work involves engaging the life forces
needed to be embodied for transformation,
so it essential to understand that
it is only by bearing the heat of passion
that old attachments are weakened,
and new attachments can be forged.