Our 2022 Monthly Schedule
The Collab Salon is a monthly webinar when online presenters and members from around the world meet informally in real time for 1.5 hours. We always meet at 4pm on the third Sunday of the month (New York time). In each of these Zoom “meetings on a cloud,” we focus on a different theme relating to narrative practice for further reflection/inquiry, cross-cultural exploration and learning. After the meeting is over, the recording is added to our Library of Past Salons – available 24/7 to all Collab Salon members. All levels are welcome. You just need to register, download Zoom ahead of time, check your local time zone, and then come to our meeting room at the designated time.
I can’t recommend the Collab Salon enough. This year’s lineup showcases some of the most fascinating and innovative up and coming practitioners and their practice. And you can both meet and hear about this in the most intimate of situations, almost as if your were sitting around a dinner table speaking to one another as old friends. We should all be thankful to Re-Authoring Teaching for creating such a ‘space’ for practitioners and their practices to meet one another from all around the world.
I am happy to be able to share with colleagues from around the world the methods and practices we have developed in France for working with companies and organizations!
I cannot say enough how much I have learned from and enjoy these Salons. Thank you for putting the energy and effort into such a rich experience for so many of us out ‘in the trenches’. I would like to hear more from these presenters and I hope they will return or be invited to put on an online course or somewhere on the Re-authoring Teaching website.
18 Alliant Continuing Education Credits Now Approved!
Do you want to earn Continuing Education Credit? 18 CE credits have now been approved by Alliant International University for attending and/or viewing our entire 2022 series, and filling out a brief evaluation after each Collab. CEs cost an additional $40.
Looking for a Particular Presenter, Hot Topic or Theme?
Look below to see what’s in store for 2022. This year, we selected presenters with topics particularly relevant to our 11 Hot Topics and 1 burning topic for the New Decade.
Please try out our Search! We’ve added all six years of Post Salons as well as the coming year, Type in whom or what you are looking for, and see what you find.
Click on the toggle plus sign in the red box on the left for more information; then click on the photo, for even more details.
What’s getting in the way of curiosity these days? When Justine and Chris recently published Beyond Critique: Composition and Curiosity in Therapy as a “book emerging” by Thick Press, they knew they were onto something of shared intrigue when it sold out. With social explanations becoming privileged in academic and family therapy circles, how might a narrative therapist working under the influence of critical theory and political projects maintain the link to the experience-near while maintaining critical proximity? In this Collab Salon, they will share how the work of Bruno Latour, Judith Butler, and Ana Louise Keating got them thinking beyond deconstruction, and the limitations of identity politics toward what they are calling a compositionist narrative therapy.
What does it mean to “author your life?” Like all things, the phrase has no fixed meaning. It is just a collection of words. For us, the phrase takes us to the politics of meaning-making and calls into question who has the rights to claim authorship of anything. We stand in support of the idea that you have special authorship rights when it comes to whatever it is that matters to you, whether that is your personal identity, events that have taken place in your life, or a project that you are taking up and care about. Writing what you think and feel, and why, in your unique way is precious and no one has any right to demean or diminish it. No one else has a right to evaluate what you think or how you express it. They can share the effects that it has on them or take a different position, but they don’t get to cast judgement on the legitimacy of your position or the quality of your expression.
How can we develop working relationships across narrative generations to become mentors to each other? What are some of the fresh ideas and different nuances persons from different generations are adapting to narrative practices from their cultural and historical contexts? This gathering brings together two narrative practitioners in conversation across narrative generations. Akansha will interview Peggy Sax, a narrative therapist and Founder of Re-authoring Teaching and Trishala Kanakia, a fairly new narrative therapist and the Re-authoring Teaching Assistant. We hope to spark ideas about how narrative practices are being applied in diverse work contexts and also to highlight the fresh and different nuances each practitioner may bring in as they use the practices with their know-hows, wisdoms and adaptations.
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We live through the narrative metaphor, yet many of us as Narrative Therapists find ourselves lost when invitations to metaphor beckon at the edges of our therapeutic conversations. From the forgiving editorial space of Narrative letters, this presentation invites participants to identify, expand, and inhabit metaphor to externalize problems, develop unique outcomes, and recruit an appreciative audience. Akansha and Randy will share some of the metaphor-centered letters they’ve written and invite participants to begin exploring metaphor in text while collaboratively resisting the gravitational pull of Cleverness that sometimes keeps pen from paper.
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Irene (trauma survivor) and Christoffer Haugaard (psychologist) developed a practice of witnessing in relation to Irene’s alter ego in fictionalized life stories. This developed out of necessity in order to address an intensely traumatic life history and powerful identity conclusions that were out of reach for regular conversation. The approach that we developed used two essential survival strategies from Irene’s childhood: Her invention of an alter ego and her imagination of having an audience to the injustices in her life. Over time, these practices became the central structure of our collaboration. In this Collab Salon, Christoffer will describe this practice with examples and present Irene’s account of the effects.
In July 2020, the BIPOC narrative community was launched with the intention of providing narrative practitioners of color a supportive space to discuss “local” ideas, innovative practices, amplify one another’s work, and process their experiences. The community organizers also hoped to mentor and support newer narrative practitioners, and practitioners working in spaces that did not privilege narrative ideas or postmodern therapy practices. As the community enters its second year, planning committee members Mona, Ingrid, Candea, Shuo, and Akansha will share lessons learned and their hopes for how they envision the community will grow and be sustained in the future.
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In this Collab Sasha would like to discuss some of what she has been learning since The End of Life Choice Act came into effect in Aotearoa New Zealand. This law gives New Zealander’s living with a life ending illness the option of hastening their death should they be in the last six months of their life. Harbour hospice where she works provides palliative care that aims to alleviate suffering for people living with a life ending, life threatening
illness, and their families. Sasha will facilitate a conversation about narrative practices that might be helpful when a person is contemplating how they want to die, and an exchange with others who may have had experience in this area of practice.
David Epston has invented many imaginative, and startlingly successful ways of disappearing problems for children and young people, which he has documented in stories from his practice in many publications. This Collab revives David Epston’s longstanding work with the problem of stealing, primarily with young people, which he developed in the last 70s/early 80s. A New Series: Illustrating with recent examples from her own practice with children and young people, Kay presented our August 15, 2021 Collab Salon Temper Tantrum Parties & Learning How to Apply David Epston’s Inventions and showed us how she has been successful in just two sessions. A new series was born applying David Epston’s Inventions to Disappear Problems.
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David Epston has invented many imaginative, and startlingly successful ways of disappearing problems for children and young people, which he has documented in stories from his practice in many publications. While the August 2022 Collab focuses on reviving David’s longstanding work with the problem of stealing, this complementary Collab will introduce an approach for those young people who have been stood down or have been threatened with expulsion from their high school.
The principles of improv theater (making your partner look and feel good, counting on chaos and uncertainty, showing up for the moment) seem to be relevant to the current collective moment where there is still a lot of uncertainty. We became curious whether improv wisdom ideas and practices can go hand in hand with narrative therapy, counseling contexts and community work. We decided to talk to narrative practitioners from all over the world about their experiences around improvisation. This Salon will showcase the highlights of those conversations, provide space for reflections and new practices to emerge and, hopefully, give us an opportunity to play some improv games relevant to our work contexts.
This Salon will showcase highlights from our shared passion project of several years: the scouring for and nurturance of those unique client superpowers that can encourage courageous imaginations. Building on the centrality of the narrative practice pantheon, we will share our uses of imaginative Know-How and inspirations from Narrative Therapy Wonderland. Client story examples will include, officiating mother-daughter family reunions, the case of the talking shower cricket, the protest power of panic attacks, and the giant misunderstood tarantula.