Embodied approaches to Life and to Therapy

encouraging aliveness......healing trauma ......promoting growth.....

         workshops and professional training  with Michael Gavin

DISCOVER:

The Five Healthy Core Beliefs

- and how to cultivate them
- though a simple practice
- in a few minutes a day

The most important question you must ask yourself.

The infallible guide that is always with you

Why Human Esteem is so much more than Self Esteem

How to become a Peacemaker
- in your inner world
- in the world around you

Michael's message:  updated  April 2023

Since you are here, I assume that we share some interests, things like

  • Encouraging and developing Aliveness and Awareness
  • Healing Trauma
  • Embodied living
  • Embodied ways of helping
  • Building resilience and confidence (in oneself and others)
  • Developing a richer, more vital, creative and expressive life
    • (for oneself and for others)
  • Curiosity about the deeper things of the psyche
  • Building mutual human esteem and a more peaceful world for us all to live in.

I hope you will be interested in what I am doing and offering this year (and in the years to come.)

Some wise person said:

"Live as if you would die tomorrow, 

and study as if you would live a hundred years."


A couple of years ago, as I approached my 80th birthday, I decided to emerge from retirement intending to   focus on  my  work for the next five years, and then at 85, consider turning more towards reflection, contemplation and reminiscence.  


 For some years now it has been my wish and stated intention to reach the age of 93 "practising Taiji and wondering about the future."  (At 63 I calculated that this was about 10,000 days away- a big but finite number. Now I well  am past the halfway mark, under 4000 .)


However: "Man proposes, God disposes."


I feel that my work is to pass on some what I have learned, and am still learning;

  • about an living in an embodied way; 
  • about the unavoidable clash of opposites and their power to generate new, unimagined, creative possibilities; 
  • about authenticity, authority and integrity; mutuality, respect, dependence, independence and interdependence; 
  • about Self-directed learning and about collaboration; 
  • and about the Socratic dictum that "wisdom consists in knowing that one does not know..."

It is a some years now since I retired as a Supervisor at London Underground, and even longer since I was in practice as a Somatic Trauma Therapist, and Body Psychotherapist.  I shall not be returning to that kind of regular and relatively intense personal commitment.  I have been enjoying having more space and freedom in my life.


Instead I have building a practice offering support and encouragement - mostly in the form of Mentoring and/or Coaching - to people already set on some personal path of helping, creating, exploring.

I want to work with people already engaged in a process of Individuation - to use the Jungian term -  Healers, Teachers, Creators, and Seekers.   I am thinking of people who have made and want to make a contribution,  at the same time as pursuing their own personal Growth.


In practice this means a number of projects :

  • working one to one with a limited number of people, and perhaps with small groups 
  • encouraging an embodied approach to therapy through the course: Working with Body in Mind
  • promoting Self-Esteem, and beyond that  (mutual) Human Esteem, as a foundation for Peacemaking (so sorely needed just now) through work based on the book Able & Equal; a gentle path to peace by Denton L Roberts: Self-Esteem and Beyond
  • creating a programme for the Self-Care of Helping Professionals, from Burnout Recovery to professional fulfilment
  • exploring  autonomy, power and authority with, especially leaders and teachers, and working to create and support healthy organisations
  • continuing to encourage people to experience how Embodiment, Awareness and Aliveness enrich their lives through the Radix residential Workshop programme  (now live workshops ae possible again.)
  • working as a Trustee in the Champernowne Trust on behalf of a Jungian perspective that acknowledges the depth of the Psyche, the power of imagination and creativity, and the scope ( and constraints) of human possibility.
  • and continuing to share my Qigong practice for those who are interested.

Congratulations on making it all the way to this point. I hope there may be some ways in we which we can work together or share our thoughts and insights.


Michael Gavin