Spring (along with fall) is the season that many people become motivated to explore their personal and professional development. Over the next few months I will be facilitating various courses and workshops on personal and professional themes. The short list follows below (with self-promotional blurbs attached). If you see something of interest to you that is sponsored by a specific group and is therefore a private event, drop me a line to talk about customizing a similar event for your group or organization.
March 29, 7pm
The BC Association of Clinical Counsellors
The Labyrinth of Addiction
(open to BCACC members only)
Addiction is everywhere: in families, among youth, within every culture, upon every street. Alcoholism, drug dependency, addiction to video games and the Internet: these are the constant companions to human nature. In this presentation, best-selling author Ross A. Laird will read from his new book on addictions and will discuss the themes surrounding the rise and persistence of addictions in our society. Particular focus will be on the root causes of addiction, the surprising links between early childhood and later addictive behaviour, and the ways in which adult addiction is a mirror of the inner life. Also, Dr. Laird will explore the types of support and care (from parents, spouses, siblings, friends) that are most likely to assist the addicted in discovering a path of healing.
April 4 and April 25
Vancouver Coastal Health
Professional Development Workshop
Understanding and Dealing with Vicarious Trauma
(open to VCH staff only)
April 16 and April 19 (two sections)
Vancouver Community College
Group Counselling
(10 weeks: Monday night session begins April 16, Thursday night session begins April 19)
Working with groups is immensely rewarding and uniquely challenging, requiring of the facilitator a particular blend of professional skills and self-awareness that develops only through practice and experiment. This course is designed to offer learners a wide spectrum of both theoretical and experiential approaches to group work, focusing especially on core facilitation skills. We will examine group dynamics and evolution, interpersonal relationships (e.g. conflicts, alliances and other structures), leadership styles, curriculum development, and the role of health and healing practices. Particular attention will be given to developing effective facilitation strategies through achieving greater self-awareness and active sensing. Participants will also learn about the emerging models of group work which focus on collaboration, community-building and creativity.
April 20
Jewish Family Service Agency
Canadian Memorial Centre for Peace
9am to noon
The Shadow Paths of Addiction
Addiction is a pervasive and challenging problem. In the experience of almost every family there is someone who has struggled (or is struggling) with alcoholism, or drug dependency, or addiction to video games and the Internet. Addictions exist in every culture, in every generation; they are the constant companions of human nature. In this workshop, participants will learn about the nature and causes of addiction, the surprisingly links between early childhood and later addictive behaviour, and the ways in which adult addiction is a mirror for a vulnerable and confused inner life. Particular emphasis will be placed on the types of support and care (from parents, spouses, siblings, friends) that are most likely to assist the addicted in discovering a path of healing.
Simon Fraser University
Wandering the Labyrinth: Creativity and Personal Growth
Three Saturdays: May 26, June 2, June 9
10:00 am to 2:00 pm
For a writer, nurturing the creative imagination is essential. Yet this can be difficult to accomplish: the labyrinth of creativity is a place of mercurial moods and relentless challenges. We grow tired, distracted, unsure of the next turn. This experiential workshop is designed to provide writers with a means of sustaining their energy, developing the authentic direction of their imaginative work, and integrating creative endeavor with the experiences of daily life. Dreams, creativity as devotion, moments of simplicity and reflection: these provide a way of tracking the labyrinth, of following impulses toward a bright core of mystery. In this workshop, we will explore a diverse number of approaches to sustaining and enhancing your creative process in a writing project, with a focus on the body as guide and instrument.
June 1, 10:45am to 12:15pm
The Writer’s Union of Canada
Panel Presentation with Sharon Butala and Lawrence Scanlan
It’s All in Your Head: A Discussion of Creativity, Inspiration, and the Psychology of Inquiry
My winter teaching session is off to its usual eclectic, disorganized start. Five institutions, seven courses, 35 different ways to get confused. Here's the short list:
Simon Fraser University
Wandering the Labyrinth: Creativity and Personal Growth
Three Saturdays: January 27, February 3, February 10
10:00 am to 2:00 pm
Open to the public (hint)
Kwantlen University College
Creative Writing: Creative non-fiction II (third year)
Creative Writing: Advanced Creative non-fiction (fourth year)
Vancouver Community College
Group Counselling (full)
Counselling practicum
City University
Psychology of Sexuality and Human Development
The Vancouver Art Therapy Institute
Theories of Personality and Consciousness
I will also be at a conference or two, and doing my regular group work with organizations. If you are interested in anything above, drop me a line.
It’s done: two years, nine chapters, 70 thousand words. And, along the way, many dead-ends, reversals, and uncertainties (including, at one point, the chucking of close to a hundred pages).
But it’s done. And I’m happy with the result. Now I move on to editing, copy-editing and publishing. This process requires, among other things, preparing the document in a file format that is both accessible (to those who might work on the text in digital form) and flexible (for presentation purposes that will likely be part of my publishing negotiations). If you are a regular reader of my posts here, you will be familiar with my loathing of word processors (reminder here) and of my habit of writing in plain text (with vim or emacs). For this manuscript I am using plain text lightly marked-up with tags for the LaTeX typesetting engine.
LaTeX is remarkable. It offers the capability of typesetting plain text documents using design principles inherited from the long traditions of printing. The text remains in its native format, but is marked-up with — in my case, a small number — of formatting tags. These tags are read by the LaTeX engine, much like html is read by a web browser, and output to the page (or to pdf, or to whatever format you like) with a level of precision that is unmatched by any other typesetting system.
I have bookmarked a few LaTeX-related items on my del.icio.us page, for those who might be interested.
Typesetting is fun; just like writing, but with more flexibility to make global changes and test them out. Fun indeed. And now I have a small amount of time to tinker in this way, to learn and test and discover. Then, starting in January, on to the next book.
Starting in January, I will be teaching in the Kwantlen University College creative writing program. My course, which will be offered mostly online (with some face-to-face interaction), will examine advanced topics in creative non-fiction.
From the program's website:
The Creative Writing Department at Kwantlen University College offers a full range of courses in first, second and third year, both face-to-face and online, in Surrey, Langley, and Richmond. In the first year, students study fiction, poetry and screenwriting; in second year, students may work on selected projects, such as a book of poetry, or a collection of short stories started earlier in their studies; and in third-year, students enroll in advanced, genre-specific courses offered on rotation.
My course is cross-listed; which means, essentially, that there will be two courses offered in the context of a single learning environment. The two courses are as follows:
CRWR 3230 (3 credits)
Creative Non-Fiction II
Students will continue to develop and practise writing, reading, and revision of creative non-fiction through the writing of their own work, and through the critique of their peers' work, in a combination lecture/workshop setting. Students will also analyze published creative non-fiction from a writer's perspective through close reading, informed discussion, and writing.
Prerequisites: CRWR 3130 with a B-
CRWR 4130 (3 credits)These courses would be suitable for people who have participated in my creative process groups (especially the creative writing workshops, such as Wandering the Labyrinth), and for counselling students interested in expressive arts therapies (especially creative writing therapy). My plan for these courses is to explore interesting texts, to create a collaborative learning community, and -- of course -- to have fun.
Advanced Creative Non-Fiction I
Students will develop and practice writing, reading, and revision of creative non-fiction on a sustained project, or series of projects, of their choice. They will critique their peers’ work in a workshop setting. Students will also analyze published creative non-fiction from a writer’s perspective through close reading, informed discussion, and writing.
Prerequisites: CRWR 3230
As anyone who has been in one of my recent groups will attest, I am a fan of juggling as a self-awareness practice. Juggling is an excellent activity for assisting in the development of grounding, centering, and body awareness. It’s fun, and it’s not hard to learn.
Today I came across this juggling video for beginners, which breaks the process down into simple steps. Check it out.
Now that Fall semester is fully under way, and the three sections of Group Counselling have begun (at two separate institutions), I thought it might be useful to post a few of the popular group counselling resources on this site. This will make it easier for students who might otherwise resort to the search button.
The short list:
Recently an old acquaintance sent me this photo of a bunch of kids on a sailboat in 1974. These are all the kids I grew up with. I'm second from the front; the kid shielding his eyes from the blinding radiance of the world...
Dr. Janet Roseman, one of my colleagues from The Union Institute, has written a chapter for a new book from Oxford University Press entitled A Time for Listening and Caring: Spirituality and the Care of the Chronically Ill and Dying (with a foreward by The Dalai Lama). Dr. Roseman is a scholar of dance; her chapter in A Time for Listening is about the relationship between dance and healing. As part of her preparation for that chapter, Dr. Roseman spoke with me about the nature of healing and creativity. Subsequently I provided her with the following tidbit (which, I believe, is quoted in the new book):
Everything dances: leaves in the autumn wind, waves traversing the trackless sea, planets and stars in their languid orbits across the heavens. Those dances, ecstatic or tranquil or suffused with longing, are a way of taking a stand in the face of oblivion. In the spiraling and turning that lead ever toward a core of aliveness, the dancer affirms the spirit, calls forth its voice, pays attention to the patient instructions of the innermost self. Dance, and its handmaiden music, are spontaneous and authentic prayers of the soul.
Breath and bones and blood are the instruments of the soul's expression: frail, small things prone to the many sufferings of the world. All dances are therefore devotions of vulnerability. The dancer beseeches the soul, asks to be carried into solace, into comfort, into peace. The soul's answer is movement: thumping feet, an arm descending in a gentle arc, a shout emerging from the grieving heart. The sounds and movements of dance evoke all the secrets, reveal all the hidden places of refuge and sorrow. When you finally see that the lights and shadows of all creation are within you, the only reasonable response is to dance them awake.
This awakeness is the essence of healing. Life stretches us thin on our bones, makes us brittle and windswept, makes us yearn for something we can't quite reach. Dance delivers us into the knowledge of the vast being that hovers over our shoulder. Dance cracks us open, makes us light as gossamer, then knits together our dry bones into a kite whose string is pulled by the invisible.
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