Chairwork: Beyond the Basics - Three Day Intensive Training

Chairwork uses chairs, action, and here-and-now dialogue to work with 'parts' of the self. Used by therapists for over 100 years, many regard it as one of the most powerful and exciting ways of working.

This comprehensive three day training will give you the skills and confidence to bring chairwork into your practice right away. You experience and practice some of the most effective chairwork interventions available, and learn how they can be applied to a variety of client issues. You will also learn how to use these methods online.

Our chairwork workshops use a unique blend of teaching, self-practice/self-reflective exercises, live demonstrations, and breakout room role-plays. Practitioners who use Schema Therapy, Compassion Focused Therapy, CBT, ACT, CAT, Voice Dialogue, and Internal Family Systems Therapy approaches will find it particularly useful.

Topics for this course will include:

Theory:

… Provenance: The history and evolution of chairwork.

… Foundations: The four essential ‘pillars' underlying all chairwork.

... Parts of the self: How to bring self-multiplicity into your work.

… Mechanisms: Why chairwork achieves dramatic changes.

… Magic ingredients: How to turbo-charge your chairwork.

Practice:

… How to introduce, facilitate, and consolidate chairwork confidently.

… How to enhance engagement in chairwork.

… How to overcome common obstacles, including client skepticism.

… How to adapt (and enhance) chairwork when using online platforms (e.g., Zoom).

Applications:

Participants will learn how to use chairwork to address:

… Negative thoughts and beliefs

… Worry, self-criticism, and other distressing cognitive processes

… Emotional distress and dysregulation

… Self-compassion and self-care

… Traumatic memories and “unfinished business”

… Behaviour change, skills training, and action insight

… Ambivalence - how to resolve it and strengthen commitment to change

… Problems in the therapeutic relationship, including negative transference

… Mindfulness, cognitive defusion, and self-observation

Inspried by Leading Approaches to Chairwork, including:

… Compassion Focused Therapy

… Schema Therapy

… Emotion Focused Therapy

… Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

… Psychodrama

… Voice Dialogue

Please note that this is an intensive training programme and tickets are limited. Each day will begin at 0900 and end at 1715.

Feedback on our previous courses:

"A wonderful three days of training... Brilliantly planned, organised and delivered, and really comprehensive and engaging... Watching the demonstrations was incredibly helpful and inspiring and a real privilege... Thank you for your wisdom and inspiration."

"The three day training was excellent, exceeding all expectations... Matt and Tobyn are highly knowledgable, gentle, and generous. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to practice multiple different uses of chairwork in such a supportive environment."

"I have done a lot of online training courses over the last 2 years and this was absolutely the best I have experienced... Outstanding, clear, authentic, sensitively delivered, and accessible... I've done [named training course] but this absolutely tooks things to another level in terms of theory and practice."

"An incredibly helpful and innovative training on how to use chairwork... I was clinically on fire with my clients today, doing the deep work that chairwork evokes and borrowing with pride many of the innovations that were shared."

"A great three-day chairwork course. Matt and Tobyn are so knowledgeable and skilled in this field, it was a joy to see them working together… I came away enthusiastic for chairwork, and feeling I have the knowledge and skills to put what we learnt into practice immediately."

"Superb workshop… Highly informative, eminently useful, participatory, and great fun."

Event Venue

Online