PsychoEnergetics
Year of Depth Work
A PSEN Study Group in Lisbon, Portugal
2024-25
Presented by Joana Carvalho
PsychoEnergetics Training Faculty Member
Assisted by Margarida Santos
Module one with Michael Mervosh Cofounder of the PsychoEnergetics Training
PsychoEnergetics Year of Depth Work
The Core Self, Developmental of Character and Transformatinal Forces
The PsychoEnergetics Years of Depth Work in Lisbon, Portugal, meets in the beautiful and peaceful Hotel Seminar Torre d´ Aguilha in Carcavelos. Our Year of Depth Work 2024-25 is based on the theme: The Core Self, Developmental of Character and Transformational Forces
The Core Self, Developmental of Character and Transformational Forces
In this training year we will explore our human potential, including the unlived potential.
We will better understand and appreciate ‘what it takes’ to get below the surface of the ego’s conscious efforts to maintain itself, and to enter to the realm of rich potential in the unconscious – the ‘not-yet-known’.
The Core Self, Developmental of Character and Transformational Forces Dates
Session 1
New participants: October 12th 2024
1st module: November 8, 9,10th 2024
January 11th 2025
Session 2
2nd module: March 7, 8,9th
May 10th
Session 3
3rd module: June 27, 28,29th
900€ per year (new participants)
770€ per year ( ATPPSEN students)
“Early-Bird”: 60€discount for registrations before September 1st with the full payment
40 € discount for registrations before September 1st – does not apply to ATPPSEN students
We ask for a deposit of 200€ to formalize your registration
Various payment options available
The Years of Depth Work will be given in Portuguese, and the 1st module will be given in english with direct translations to portuguese
For more information or registration please contact:
Joana Carvalho: [email protected]
Location:
Torre D´Aguilha
Estrada Mata da Torre,
São Domingos de Rana 2785-599
http://www.seminariotorreaguilha.com
The Year of Depth Work is for professional practitioners and therapists from various healing modalities
We also accept applicants with a sincere interest in furthering their own personal developmen
Embodiment is the foundation for all worthwhile pursuits. It is the ground within which the conscious self is both formed and transformed”
About our 2023-24 Year of Depth Work in Portugal
– Our 2022-23 Year of Depth Work consist of the following:
- 3 in person meetings of 3 days each
- 2 in person meetings of 1 day each
- We also offer monthly online gatherings
– During these Year we will transmit and practice various ways to increase the therapeutic awareness and ability to help deepen both the personal process as well as to facilitate a deepening of our client’s process.
– We will practice and learn how to deepen the therapeutic relationship as a way of deepening the client’s process and facilitating change.
– Our Year of Depth Work is for practitioners and therapists of various body and mind healing modalities. It is also appropriate for anyone committed with their personal process and growth.
– We offer four years of Depth Work, each with a specific content and theme. Our studying years are based on the notion of ongoing, lifelong learning that happens in a circular ‘spiraling’ process, in contrast to a linear progression. A participant can enter at any particular year being offered, and if they chose to, proceed through all four years in order to complete all the themes.
– Our Years of Depth Work are conducted by Joana Carvalho, member of the PSEN faculty training program in Spain, assisted by Margarida Santos graduated from the PSEN training program.
-The 1st module of this Year of Depth Work we will have the presence of Michael Mervosh, and will also be an open workshop for all that want to join.
– We also offer an optional bi weekly online group for supervision for the participants that chose to deepen their personal and professional growth. This group takes place from Octuber 2024 to July 2025.
– We provide our Year of Depth Work in a peaceful hotel seminar where we also have the option of working in the beautiful gardens depending on the weather. This Years 1st module will take place in Clube do Lago, Estoril.
– We have the options of sleeping in the hotel for those who prefer to do it, or driving home at the end of the day.
- We will have a maximum of 24 participants.
Please note:
– Hotel Seminar Torre DAguilha and Clube do Lago have accommodation and meals available, payments for the Year are made separately from the accommodations.
-The 1st module will take place in Clube do Lago, Estoril
– Participants pay for the yearlong training costs, and they pay directly to the hotel for their meals and lodging arrangements.
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To respect the cohesiveness and integrity of the group and training process, we ask the participants to make a commitment for one full year at a time.
The Core Self, Developmental of Character and Transformacional Forces
Our practice with depth work informs us that it is the unconscious forces of our character that thwart our conscious ‘best efforts’ to change, heal or grow. These nonverbal forces are often an unconscious form of communication to others.
The Core Self
The Core Self is the center of our being and holds our unique integrity. It is only an unlived potential that exists within each person, until that moment when a person instinctually follows and uses the world around them to bring them alive.
The Core Self is invested with a positive, ruthless intention to realize its potential through the use of the world.
We will explore this fresh perspective on “following your bliss” as a fundamental force that brings each of us alive, in our own unique and idiosyncratic ways.
This is a crucial step forward in the forming of one’s own unique human character.
Understanding & Development of Character
We will come to understand character structure as a protective solution that was necessary at its origin point.
We will grow our understanding that character forces are both a defense that might prevent our true self to be seen and to feel safe, and at the time it was created, it was the best form of communication that our true self could possibly have.
We will learn to see our defenses as communication that has not been able to grow.
We will practice receiving unconscious communication from our client, and process our own counter-transference reactions in a way that allows new possibilities to emerge.
“Being a character means that one is a spirit, that one conveys something in one’s being which is barely identifiable as it moves through others to create personal effects, but which is more deeply graspable when one’s spirit moves through the mental life of the other, to leave its trace.” – Christopher Bollas
Addressing Transformational Forces in Depth Work
We will explore the depths of how we can be able to work with a sense of the life force in mind and body. This allows us to better help our clients attain a more integrated and sustained sense of well- being.
We will practice cultivating the strength of heart to be both daring and yielding as practitioners. We do this in order to learn how to effectively address the client’s embedded patterns and obstacles, which deadens the enlivening engagement with vitality.
Working With Counter-transference as Information
In depth work, we see transference as a form of communication. It is a communication of something that is unconscious and has not yet formulated words. This comes from early experiences in life where we were not accompanied by a witness. As practitioners, and as people, we grow in our ability to be open and receptive to this unconscious communication that comes from our clients.
We see counter-transference as the immediate emotional reaction we feel inside that are also colored by our own past and inner life, while we receive this unconscious communication.
We will understand counter-transference as a tool for transformational processes.
We will learn how to be informed by our experience of counter-transference at the same time that we will learn to allow ourselves to enter fully into the lived experience of another, then digesting & reflecting back to them in ways that can support change.
Embodiment
We will continue to deepen our practice of Embodiment through attention to our breath moving through our bodies, bringing special attention to breath as prana or life energy being exchanged. We will practice using breath effectively as a resource in our practicum sessions.
We will learn to pay closer attention to how our client’s bodies are signaling our bodies what is underneath the content of our client’s awareness.
We will also assist our clients in becoming aware of their unconscious body messages and make sense of them within the light of their story, as well as finding resources to shift their orientation.
In addition, we will deepen our felt sense of being in the body. We will sharpen our sense of relational embodied presence, coming to understand the function of positive regard toward our clients as well as towards the process happening between us.
Mindfulness
Our mindful morning practice will be grounding our experience of the depth of our somatic presence, finding space in the ‘here and now’ as we deepen into the experience of our physicality of the present moment. And we will explore ways in which we practice a relational Mindfulness presence.
In our Mindfulness practice we will bring awareness to self-compassion in ways that can bring a deeper and more compassionate tolerance for what it means to be human.
Present Moment
We will keep deepening our felt experience and understanding that the only place that anything is truly transpiring is in the here and now; and the only place that we can actually influence and change is what is happening here and now.
Indigenous cultures considered immersion into the present moment experience as entering eternity; and they knew that the present moment attunes us with a field of possibilities.
In our work and in our sessions we will keep coming back to the present moment experience with this awareness that it contains all of our past events and all of our future
possibilities.
We will provide enough safety to all participants to feel supported, so they can take the necessary risks that get them out of the habitual patterns in their way of relating, so to better learn and grow as practitioners.
Introduction to the PsychoEnergetics Years of Depth Work
What is PsychoEnergetics
PSEN combines a study of the ‘psyche’ and its depths, with a study of the body’s ‘energy’ and intelligence.We practice depth work and process facilitation, using the practitioners engaged body and mind to deepen the client growth and to support the awakening of conscious awareness, as well as the enlivening vitality of one’s interior life
Depth Work
Depth work refers to personal processes that are intended to be healing or therapeutic in nature; it is intended to shift one’s point of view and level of awareness beyond the current lens we typically use to perceive our lives. It requires a more ‘non-linear’ approach, one where we drop further into our interior spaces, to the more subtle and unconscious aspects of the psyche, using the felt sense of our bodies to open our minds to places we have yet to see clearly, or at all.
The Art of Process Facilitation
As process facilitators, we track and follow a process that is unfolding over time, before we make any attempts to intervene upon it. We do not direct or take over another’s experience, but instead, we profoundly accompany another to where they are, especially where they cannot accept themselves or their reality.
We also help to guide people to go where they have not yet gone, to where they have been unable or unwilling to go, without forcing them to do so, and without allowing them to remain the same – that is the art of process facilitation
Embodiment Work
Embodiment is a central component of PsychoEnergetics. We will actively cultivate exercises and practices that support our own Embodied Presence.
We will provide participants with various opportunities to practice both embodying and transmitting their own presence in and of itself as a function of wholeness, vitality and health.
We will actively explore the differences between speaking generally about our experiences and speaking directly from our experiences, as we become more capable of being ’embodied presences’ who can bring forth and transmit the energy of our internal experiences.
Mindfulness Practice
We will be focusing on strengthening and solidifying our presence by actively practicing mindfulness.
We will be practicing Mindfulness as a way to helps us not to judge our experience. Learning to accept our experience as it is, while also learning to accept the impermanent nature in all of our experience.
Practitioner’s Mind
We consider developing a ‘Practitioner’s Mind’ essential for becoming skilled facilitators, as this fosters the ability to actively think on behalf of the client.
We will have with immediate consults available, and post-session group supervision sessions.
We work with Transference by focusing more on how to be informed by, and make use of, our own Counter-Transference as practitioners.
Process Teachings
Learning how to enter, deepen and navigate our own internal processes is fundamental to understand the interior lives of others, making us better able to accompany them as the move through their own increasingly subtle and complex depths.
PSEN process teachings support the ongoing learning of the practitioner by deepening their awareness, appreciation and understanding of the underlying and dynamic processes taking place in our interior lives.
PSEN process teachings also provide us with useful lenses through which we can hold our attention on another’s interior space, and also to support its unfolding movement and lived experience.
We will be focusing on these specific Process Teachings:
CREATING CONTAINMENT – We learn to be deeply embodied and mindfully aware of our own interior, as well as being attuned to the body and mind of another.
CREATING SPACIOUSNESS – Deepening requires time, space and patience. We learn to make room for something to happen.
BOUNDARIES AND LIMITS – The ability to establish and maintain boundaries and to set and honor limits, are aspects of a functioning holding container. And they are fundamental in creating safety for both the client and practitioner
SLOWING DOWN THE PROCESS – We do this to be sufficiently grounded and centered in our bodies, and to be responsive to our client’s present moment experience.
TOLERATING UNCERTAINTY – We learn to trust the process of the unfolding “not-yet-known“.
CREATING AND TOLERATING DYNAMIC TENSION– we keep a ‘dynamically charged’ experience in the ‘here and now’, and staying with the experience by giving it the time, space and attention required.
BEING ATTUNED AND DIFERENTIATED – by doing so, we provide enough safety to support our clients, so they can take the necessary enlivening risks that get them out of the habitual patterns in their way of relating.
TRACKING PROCESS vs CONTENT – these is another important skill, necessary to help the client to go pass the verbalization of an event to the deeper meaning that is giving life to that event.
SUSPENDING JUDGMENTS – we practice setting aside the impulse for judgments rather than make it go away. This allows for a more vulnerable aspect of the self to emerge.
MAKING PROCESS OBSERVATIONS – making an observation about a client’s process, does not require a response from the client, rather it allows for a new orientation to arise in a way they could have do it on their own
USING QUESTIONS AS INQUIRIES – a good question does not lead to an immediate answer. It creates an owning that leads to an exploration towards something “as yet unknown”
TRACKING PECULIARITIES – we learn to notice small and subtle idiosyncrasies- those uniquely defining features that grab our attention but are unaware to the clients. We practice bringing these forward for exploration and not correction.
BECOMING A USEFUL DISTURBING FORCE – the active interest and aliveness of the practitioner is key to initiate new possibilities that disturb the sameness of the client´s cryonics habit and ways of being.
Years of Depth Work Structure
We will offer four Years of Depth Work each with a specific content and theme to be practiced which meet three times a year. Our Years of Depth Work are based on the circular notion of ongoing learning, in contrast to a linear progression. A participant can enter at any particular Year being offered, and then, if they choose to, proceed through all four years in order to complete all the themes.
Our Years of Depth Work will be conducted by Joana Carvalho, member of the PSEN faculty training program in Spain, assisted by Margarida Santos graduated from the PSEN training program. We will also have the collaboration of Michael Mervosh co founder of the PsychoEnergetics Training Program .
We also offer an optional bi-weekly online group for personal process and supervision for the participants that chose to deepen their personal and professional growth. These group is facilitated by Joana Carvalho.
Each day of each module for the Year follows a specific format
Mornings 
- Guided Mindfulness & Embodiment Meditation
- Lecture/Presentation/ Transmission on Theme for the Day
- Initial Experiential Practicum Session Based on Theme
- Peer Support Group Processes Based on Theme
Afternons
- Embodied Awareness Movement
- One to One Practicum Sessions Based on Theme
- Demo Sessions with Supervision
- Supervision Group Sessions
- Community Integration Experience in Large Group
