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Introduction
 Composed
of six five-day seminars
offered over two years, 2007-2009
Presented by Franklyn and Maura Sills, Directors of the Karuna Institute and
supporting staff
Dates & Cost
Introduction
The Primal Sympathy Training is a postgraduate CPD training for therapists
and clinicians who wish to extend their therapeutic practice or deepen their
understanding of pre- and perinatal psychology and therapy approaches. The
training explores the most primal period of personality development, the
first 18 months of life from conception to nine months or so after birth.
Participants will explore their own early life experience within the context
of relational skills from Core Process Psychotherapy and Buddhist
self-psychology and contemplative practices. The overall framework for the
training is derived from the integrative work of Franklyn and Maura Sills,
the Directors of the Institute. The training uses the pre- and perinatal
paradigm developed by Dr. Frank Lake, one of the fathers of pre- and
perinatal psychology, as an orienting structure. Input also draws upon the
visionary work of Dr. William Emerson, another early pioneer in this
territory, the object relations context of Ronald Fairbairn and Donald
Winnicott and the related work of Daniel Stern. The training is
experientially based and theory is offered in the context of inquiry,
relational exercises and therapeutic explorations. This training is open to
accredited psychotherapists and complementary and orthodox health
professionals. One 5,000-word essay is undertaken each year and is required
for CPD credits and completion certificate.
Year One: Womb as World
Seminar One: The Relational Field and
Womb-as-World
This seminar focuses on the nature of awareness, intentionality and
relationship, and the establishment of a safe holding environment. Topics
include: the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism within a therapeutic context; the
nature of sentience as a primordial ground of being; the role of mindfulness
as a state of presence; introduction to the territories of Source, being and
self and Heidegger’s three questions related to the nature of being.
Winnicott’s concept of the safe holding environment is introduced along with
his understanding of relational impingement and the importance of the
generation of a cohesive state of being within the developing self-system;
Lake’s related concept of the womb of spirit, the period from conception to
the first nine months after birth, the basic needs of being and wellbeing,
and the nature of wounding at the level of being and wellbeing due to loss
of empathetic holding, needs deprivation, relational and environmental
overwhelm and trauma, and relational ambiguity. The importance and nature of
empathy, compassion and love is discussed as the ground for establishing the
good-enough holding environment and safe “womb surround”. Mindfulness as a
basic ground of the healing process and learning mindfulness process, sati
as a state of presence and an introduction to the Four Foundations of
Mindfulness.
Experiential work orients to: (1) establishing
felt-resources, mindfulness process, and Emerson’s “spirit pulsation”
meditations, (2) the nature of empathy and therapist attunement, resonance
and response (3) establishing practitioner fulcrums and sensitivity to
energetic fields of interchange and the negotiation of therapist attention
(4) establishing the safe holding environment (5) establishing a conjoined
being-to-being field of joint inquiry, and (6) accessing the felt-experience
of world-as-womb and the inner prenate within adult awareness and the safe
holding environment.
Seminar Two: Gestation and the Ground of
Selfhood
This seminar introduces Frank Lake’s pre- and perinatal paradigm; an
overview of the three trimesters in utero, introduction to the psychological
correlates of the trimesters; introduction to embryology and embryological
images; life as an ongoing gestation; womb as world and living in womb-time;
Lake’s concept of umbilical affect and basic wounding as breaches in the
empathetic holding field; Fairbairn’s understanding of the primacy of
relationship and his concepts of basic ambiguity and primary trauma, pre-
and perinatal self-other experience based upon these factors; the
obscuration of being and Source; developmental trauma and shock trauma,
introduction to trauma skills, hyperarousal states. This seminar also
introduces the Buddhist concepts of dukkha, anicca, and anatta (suffering,
impermanence and no-self) as a backdrop to Fairbairn and Lake’s concepts.
Further topics include: the Brahma Viharas, a universal and underlying
health, sometimes called True Mind in Zen, that manifests in expanded states
of consciousness as interconnection, compassion, intelligence and presence
and the co-arising nature of universal and conditional forces.
Experiential work orients to: (1) accessing the
felt experience of inner health in the context of the Brahma Viharas,
mindfulness processes continued; (2) accessing the felt experience of the
inner embryo and fetus and related umbilical affect within adult
consciousness and being-to-being holding fields (3) orienting to life
statements and psychological correlates that arise within session work; (4)
introduction to trauma skills: working with hyperarousal states.
Seminar Three: Back to Beginnings
This seminar explores the nature of the earliest experiences of
preconception, conception and implantation. The themes are, “What is
embodiment?” “Who is conceived and who embodies?” “What is the nature of
being and embodiment?” Topics include: the Buddhist concept of karma and
becoming; citta and innate luminosity; the embryology of conception and
implantation; the nature of the preconception and conception journeys;
insights from the work of Emerson, his concepts of the merged state and
separation from Source, divine exile and divine longing; the sperm and ovum,
father and mother’s consciousness and ancestral memory; twin dynamics and
the loss of the ‘other’; Lake’s concept of transmarginal stress, the tragic
descent into non-being and primal emptiness; primal defenses of withdrawal,
dissociation and disconnection; Fairbairn’s concept of the splitting of the
self; the nature of wholeness and of splitting; splitting of self relative
to perceived relational goodness and badness; the early internalization of
self-other interchanges and the generation of dynamic endopsychic structure;
the schizoid and depressive positions as the infant’s response to relational
ambiguity and primal trauma; Stern’s concept of early relational experience
and schemas-of-being-with; trauma skills continued: the nature of
hypoarousal states, freezing and dissociation.
Experiential work orients to: (1) sustaining a wide field of awareness and
the nature of sustained attention, subliminal mind and information exchange,
mindfulness processes continued; (2) the early mother-embryo relational
environment as a field of co-arising presence, the relational field of
mother as holding field for our earliest experiences; (3) exchange sessions
orienting to conception experience and the nature of being, the blastocyst
journey, implantation, being received and the process of embodiment; (4)
trauma skills continued: working with hypoarousal states.
Year Two: World as Womb
Seminar Four: Into the World, Introduction to
Birth Dynamics
This seminar introduces the dynamics of the birth process. Birth is the
powerful transition from womb-as-world to world-as-womb. Topics include:
introduction to birth dynamics; the ESC stages of birth (Emerson, Sills,
Castellino birth stages) the movement dynamics of common births; pelvic
shapes and birth process; medical interventions; breech and caesarian
births, psychological correlates of the stages of birth. The nature of
Lake’s transmarginally stressed state and early shock trauma, the descent
into non-being, and the loss of connection to being and Source as a
consequence of primary trauma and overwhelm. The nature of transference is
explored. Trauma skills are continued with an exploration of dissociative
states.
Experiential work orients to: (1) trauma skills
continued, working with dissociative states, (2) awareness of transference
and projective energies; (3) birth access sessions, the maintenance of
presence and adult consciousness and the use of trauma skills as
appropriate; (4) awareness of arising life statements and psychological
fulcrums.
Seminar Five: The Dynamic Cycle, Being and
Selfhood
This seminar introduces the developmental concepts of Fairbairn and Lake and
explores the nature of selfhood and personality defenses as responses to
early relational experience. Fairbairn’s three developmental stages and
Lake’s developmental concept of the Dynamic Cycle is the heart of this
exploration. Topics also include: the nature of relational exchanges as
discussed in Fairbairn’s objects relations theories, his concept of
transitional modes of relating, primal defensive processes and personality
formation; the role of primary caregivers, society and culture; attachment
processes in the light of pre- and perinatal dynamics; integration of pre-
and perinatal therapy approaches into existing clinical practice.
Experiential work orients to: (1) umbilical affect
and the womb field with the added inquiry into the nature of goodness and
badness, “where is my wound?”; “what do I do with the badness?”; (2)
orienting to the holding field with an inquiry into transitional modes of
relating, and projective processes, “what is my primary mode of relating?”
(3) Open sessions.
Seminar Six, The Womb of Spirit, The Healing
Moment
This seminar continues the inquiry into the nature of self-formation and
healing. Topics include: the generation of personality structure;
Fairbairn’s non-pathological model of personality distortion as attempts to
maintain relationship; Lake’s personality typing as outcomes of the
transmarginal stress hierarchy; attachment processes as expressions of
internal organization of self; sessions oriented to awareness of personality
forms and defensive tendencies; the role of stillness in healing processes;
the spiritual nature of healing a wound at the level of being.
Experiential work orients to: (1) the nature of mindfulness and dynamic
stillness in healing wounding; (2) Jung’s transcendent faculty, a dynamic
balance in conditional and unconditional forces; (3) healing wounds at the
level of being as a reclamation of being and reconnection to Source.
Application:
Dates & Cost
I. CPD entry Requirements:
Accreditation in psychotherapy, counselling or orthodox or complementary
health practice.
Two years clinical practice.
Interview.
II. Application:
send for application, or
download. Please send
applications preferably by 31 July 2007.
Franklyn Sills is Co-Director of the Karuna Institute,
lectures on the Core Process Psychotherapy Training, with specialist input
in pre- and perinatal psychology and trauma skills. He also co-ordinates the
Karuna Training in Craniosacral Biodynamics and is a pioneer in the field.
Maura Sills
is Co-Director of the Karuna Institute and founder of Core Process
Psychotherapy, a Buddhist influenced psychotherapy form that acknowledges
the pre- and perinatal roots of the human condition.
Dates
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Year 1: 2007/2008
7-12 Oct 2007
27 Jan-1 Feb 2008
25-30 May 2008
Year 2: 2008/2009
12-17 Oct 2008
25-30 Jan 2009
26 Apr - 1 May 2009 |
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Facilitator
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Franklyn Sills and Maura Sills |
Fees
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The course cost is £3,900. Payment is made with a
deposit of £900 and then you have the opportunity of using our Budget Scheme
with 20 monthly payments of £157.50. Alternatively save 5% and make a single
payment per annum of £1,500
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Location
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Karuna Institute, Devon
An interview may be required.
Early application is recommended.
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Application
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Download - PDF
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