Psyche and Soma
The Sesame Approach to Drama and Movement in therapy
and Soul
A part-time course for registered health professionals.
The Sesame Institute offers Psyche and Soma a 15/16 month continuing professional development certificate. Although part-time this is an intensive training for registered counsellors, psychotherapists, clergy and qualified health professionals who want to draw on imagination and embodiment in their existing practice, when words are not enough. It also provides a refresher experience for Arts Therapists and teachers allowing them to revisit their practice from a soulful point of view. While having a firm structure, this innovative course places a high value on each student’s learning being inspired from unconscious knowing. Students are supported in attending to the frequently unheard or ignored inner teacher as a means of becoming individuated practitioners. They are asked to consider the possibility of an active inner intelligence who has an imperative for their life as a human being and consequently to their practice as a practitioner. Students will be given a firm grounding in use of movement, application of archetypal story, means of developing play and improvisation, working through sound and voice, the place of touch and the non verbal in therapy.
The course adheres to the notion of Soul and its symbol based language as the prime energy in any healing work. Writers who describe the Soul bias of the course include Sesame’s former Patron James Hillman (who died in 2011), our Patron Dr Robert Romanyshyn, Thomas Moore and John O’Donohue.
The first Psyche and Soma course ran in Wales from 2008-2010, the second trained in London from 2010-2012 and the third cohort trained in London from 2012 to April 2014. There is now a growing and thriving Psyche and Soma graduate community into which new graduates are warmly welcomed.
Students are gathered from a wide range of backgrounds - psychotherapy, counselling, music therapy, special needs teachers, story tellers, psychology, care work, ministry, osteopathy. Applicants need to have an existing qualification which registers them to practice.
The training runs over 15/16 months and consists of:
- A 3-day intensive to the use of drama and movement in therapy – the Sesame Approach
- 7 weekend modules
- 7 supervision groups
- Virtual contact through an ongoing e-group
- Regular assignments
- A mid course client based research project
Previous modules have included:
- Moving Experience - Laban Movement Analysisce
- Jung and the Story Chalice - Working with traditional story enactment
- Sounding Like Myself - Creative Voicework
- Emerging Story and Play - Spontaneity and the work of Peter Slade
- To Move or Two Chairs? - Movement with Touch and Sound
- Soul Perspective and Soul Research
- The Ultimate Journey - Death and the Soul
The course is convened by Mary Smail, Director of the Sesame Institute and a team of experienced tutors who are trained in the Sesame approach and in a talk therapy discipline.
Successful graduates will be awarded a Sesame Institute Certificate in the Use of Drama and Movement in Therapy. This does not allow the graduate to call themselves a Dramatherapist but does allow them to:
- name in any literature that they are trained in the use of drama and movement in therapy through the Sesame Approach
- refer to themselves as a Sesame Practitioner
- join the Psyche and Soma graduate community
- use the letters MSI after their name once they have joined the Sesame Institute.
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For information about the next Psyche and Soma course click here.