Collab Salon Schedule 2016

Collab Salon Schedule for 2016

January 17, 2016 – Re-imagining Narrative Practice: Where might narrative therapy go now? Sarah Hughes & Linda Moxley

March 20, 2016 –  Bridging Narrative Therapy and Psychiatry:  SuEllen Hamkins, Stephen Burton & Beth Prullage

What do narrative therapy and narrative psychiatry have in common?  Join us for a conversation about common core principles and practices for therapeutic conversations that foster resilience,  employ externalizing practices to develop culturally-contextualized understandings of problems that are separate from the person’s identity, and build on the family’s or individual’s values, cultural context and vision of well-being.  Our three co-presenters bring different experiences with bridging narratively-informed psychotherapy, psychiatric care and mental health treatment.

April 17, 2016 – Book Launch!!! David Marsten, Laurie Markham & David Epston

Join the three co-authors to learn more about their book, Narrative Therapy in Wonderland: Connecting with Children’s Imaginative know-how.   Published by WWW. Norton, this innovative book makes a significant contribution to recognizing and utilizing the power of children’s voices and imagination in narrative therapy.

May 15, 2016 – Narrative and Mindfulness Practice:  David Paré  & Ian Percy

 Mindfulness practice, with its focus on attending to lived experience in the here and now,  offers many creative possibilities for enriching narrative therapy. At the same time, the fine-grained questions at the center of narrative work are useful tools for consolidating mindfulness practice. The cross-fertilization goes both ways. With their shared backgrounds in both traditions, this discussion with David Paré and Ian Percy promises to be a generative examination of the integrative possibilities for mindfulness and narrative therapy.

June 19, 2016 – Centering Ethics in Group Supervision: Vikki Reynolds & Shona Russell

What are narrative approaches to supervision? How does a group co-create respectful ways of exploring complex concerns and challenges that reflect the ethics of a just and accountable community? Join Shona and Vikki for a conversation about group supervision practices that contribute to a reinvigoration of professional identity,  keep faith with what is given value, and build on an ethic of justice-doing. Shona gives workshops on Exploring narrative approaches to supervision and Vikki is writes about Centering Ethics in Group Supervision:  Fostering cultures of critique and structuring safety. We are particularly eager for local consultation groups to join us!

July 17, 2016 – TBA

August 21. 2016 – TBA

September 18, 2016 – Tales of Integration: Narrative Therapy, EMDR, IPNB and Somatic-Oriented Therapies: Lynne Rosen & Larry Zucker

 How do we create a bridge between these paradigms practically, and philosophically, in ways that do not support interiority ideas and binaries of mind/body, inside/outside, thinking/feeling? How do we build a different kind of scaffolding to support clients in renegotiating their relationship with narratives  that are experienced and expressed through the body?  How can this integrative work help to deconstruct the “truth” status of trauma stories that become inscribed on the body and disrupt constraining patterns. How do we reconstruct memory in ways that opens up connection with new associations, subordinate stories, acts of redress, valued and preferred stances, and restored agency in living out meaningful lives?

In working with clients who are navigating the effects of complex trauma, eating problems, and other problems that compromise relational living, Lynne has has come to appreciate what becomes possible when we work with the language of sensation, image and memory that she sees as constructed in relationship, yet often held privately. She has also witnessed how direct experience of sensations/images often become the enemy or perpetrator, making it difficult for clients to experience a visceral sense of safety and agency.She will show how she uses this integrative approach adjunctively with a client who has been working narratively with her colleague Larry Zucker. Join us in exploring what the bridging of these paradigms can make possible for our clients.

October 16, 2016- TBA

November 20, 2016 – TBA

December 18, 2016 – A New Integration: Bridging Narrative Therapy, EMDR and Somatic Therapies: Lynne Rosen

How can we put language and understanding around an integration that resonates both philosophically and practically? Having started her training in the early 90’s, in a facility that offered movement therapy, art therapy, psychodrama and family sculpting to clients living with the effects of trauma and eating problems, Lynne’s appreciation for therapies that access wisdom outside of spoken language has always been close at hand. She discovered Narrative Therapy/social constructionism around this time, which has remained her philosophical home.  Over the years, Lynne has also resonated strongly with various thinkers: Tom Andersen, who spoke of working with the physicality of all language; Ken Gergen, who influenced her thinking as she struggled to find ways to step outside of binaries and think about experiences of thinking, feeling, sensation and brain from a relational constructionist perspective; Bessel Van der Kolk, who has written eloquently about working with the effects of trauma.  

Michael White (2004), in writing about responses to trauma, referenced the work of the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (Zone of Proximal Development), and the Australian psychiatrist Russell Meares. Two tenets that caught Lynne’s attention are that children learn from the responses of important adults in ways that help them construct a reference point to evaluate and make meaning of new experiences, and that memory unfolds from an unconscious to a conscious process during early childhood. This maturation is important in developing concepts for narrative construction, autobiographical memory (a sense of “myself” that unfolds over time), and a language for inner life (stream of consciousness). One effect of severe and early trauma is that it seems to rob clients of memories, and disconnects them from what has shaped moral virtues and intentions, as well as a sense of “myself” across time, constraining the movement from the known to what is possible to know. Exploring distress as tribute to what one treasured that was threatened or corroded, discovering acts of resistance and redress, and thickening subordinate stories, actively engages clients in a process of reestablishing memory, and a connection with the language of inner life.

 Working with the effects of severe and/or early trauma, Lynne has also witnessed how some of the connections made in re-authoring conversations seem to vanish outside of the therapist’s door; clients lose a reference point and a sense of agency, and moment-to-moment experiences continue to be influenced by trauma in ways that seem unconscious and factual. Experiences of sensations and images become the enemy. The turning away from these experiences often leads to a sense of confusion, numbness, anger and shame. Learning EMDR and other somatic-oriented therapies has been an exciting next step for Lynne in grappling with  how to better bring client experiences of sensations, feelings, images and memories into the therapy room. She has come to appreciate how using a process of dual awareness to re-member early experiences sparks new associations with memories not ordinarily accessed (a kind of “double seeing”). This leads to discovering different metaphors and ways of looking; reinvigorating a connection with moral virtues, a language for inner life and new possibilities for action. When sensations, images and memories are engaged in this way, with child-like creativity, clients connect with real and imagined allies, and solutions and subordinate stories emerge.  A sense of “aliveness” and agency creates new possibilities for relating.

 Join Lynne as she shares her co-research with those who consult her into the effects of integrating Narrative Therapy and EMDR/Somatic Therapies. She looks forward to conversation that makes meaning of what she has witnessed along the way: an integrative way of working that accelerates and amplifies healing and bestows dignity and moral agency to clients in ways that position them; back in the drivers seat to act in accordance with intentions, values, purposes, hopes, dreams, beliefs and commitments.

What is The Collab Salon?

The Collab Salon brings together faculty and members for monthly meetings-on-a-cloud that occur at the same time each month (New York time, 5 pm on the third Sunday). Participants join in from around the world including New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, India, Europe, Canada, USA and Latin America. Peggy Sax and Charley Lang facilitate the Collab Salon meetings. Annual membership only costs $100!

Each month our featured presenter(s) share some current thinking around a particular topic before  inviting Collab Salon members to join in the conversation.  We bear witness to mentors’ and colleagues’ emergent work, build bridges between narrative therapy and other valued approaches, and dialogue across the globe with a shared sense of discovery. We usually meet for about an hour unless we schedule a special longer meeting such as when David Epston comes back in February for part two of a conversation about Case Studies as Pedagogy.

Whenever possible, we post a recording or text for participants to review ahead of time so we can reserve as much time as possible for conversation rather than lecture. All events are recorded, and then become available on-demand afterwards to all Collab Salon members including anyone not able to join in real time. Members can also post reflections and questions on the bottom of each Collab Salon post.

Scroll down to learn more about our Collab Salon schedule for the first six months of 2016, and for instructions for members.

Four Easy Steps

1- Become a Member (annual fee: $100 USD) and receive login information;

2- Login, Register for this month’s Salon, and access materials to review in preparation;

3- Download Zoom and then check the world clock to find the correct time for you;

4- Afterwards, members are welcome to review and reflect on the recording in Past Salons.