Human beings are psychologically healthy when they are creatively engaged and have a sense of purpose. When one's life is engaged in contributing to some greater project, small troubles drop away. This course block explores the way that assisting the client to develop creativity, find purpose and to focus beyond their small world, investing their energy in activity that feels worthwhile, can bring change and growth. Through the active media of creativity, cultural critique and working with body experience, we will explore how healthy engagement with life can be encouraged and facilitated.

21-22 February
CORE SKILLS THREE: BRIEF COUNSELLING AND THE USE OF CREATIVE MEDIA
There can be many reasons why counselling is brief. Sometimes constraints of the counselling setting, financial considerations and pressures on services create limits on the number of sessions that can be offered. Other times brief therapy is the approach of choice, enabling positive change to be facilitated without the difficulties of a long term dependency. When time is limited, the nature of the counselling relationship can take on a different ambience, enabling a more consultative style of interaction. In this creative techniques can be very useful in on the one hand achieving depth quickly, whilst on the other keeping focus. Such methods can model a purposeful and positive approach whilst conveying skills and techniques that can be used by the client outside the session. This weekend will offer students a chance to explore the use of a range of methods and exercises and a chance to experiment with the effects of these in facilitating change.

23-27 February
THE EXCHANGE BETWEEN CULTURE AND THERAPY
• How the individual engages with culture and how therapy impacts upon this
• How cultural & artistic participation is therapeutic
• How therapy values impact upon culture
• How the individual becomes liberated into a creative engagement
Jacob Moreno, the inventor of psychodrama, coined the term cultural conserve. He believed that therapy was an inherently spiritual process and that creativity and spontaneity were instances of divine force breaking into our world and thus transforming the cultural conserve. His idea is not too distant from the other-power concept at the heart of Pureland Buddhism. A positive life is an inspired life. Creative activity often comes out of cultural clash and yet for creative work to happen, we also need a context which is enabling and stimulating. Can the therapeutic context be perceived as a creative milieu and if so, how can be best understand and enhance our clients' capacities for creative growth? This five day section will offer opportunities to explore the impact of culture on the person and the scope of creative methods. The course section will offer a varied package of learning situations, including practical creative work, personal exploration, seminars and discussion. It will look both at the micro-level of skills development, and more broadly at the underpinning philosophical and ethical issues which form the backdrop to our cultural environment. It may involve some evening attendance.

28 February - March 1
CORE SKILLS FOUR: BEING IN SPACE
We are energetic, embodied beings existing within and occupying physical space. The impact of the environment we inhabit is felt at a bodily level and in this way further impacts on our mental process. This final weekend of the course block will focus on the physical dimension of mental health. It will look at different aspects of our bodily state and the way these can enhance our feeling of purposefulness and focus or detract from it. We will explore the way that the client's space and the manner in which they occupy it can be brought to awareness and modified to create more healthy mental states.