When
Saturday October 3, 2015 at 8:30 AM EDT-to-
Sunday December 13, 2015 at 5:00 PM EST
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Course Faculty
Bill Gayner, BSW, MSW, RSW, has trained and mentored mental health professionals in mindfulness for over a decade. An Adjunct Lecturer at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, and mental health clinician at Mt. Sinai Hospital, he leads and researches mindfulness-based programs for hospital staff, people living with HIV, and outpatients in general psychiatry, and integrates mindfulness into individual psychotherapy. He co-led a large randomized-controlled trial of mindfulness for gay men living with HIV. He has had a mindfulness meditation practice for thirty years. Bill is innovating and transposing Jason Siff’s sophisticated, pragmatic Buddhist approach of Recollective Awareness Meditation into a psychologically-based modality, Emotion-Focused Meditation, using Les Greenberg’s Emotion-Focused Therapy as a trans-theoretical frame.
Kate Kitchen, MSW, RSW, is a social worker with a psychotherapy practice for over thirty years, specializing in working with those with symptoms of depression and anxiety. She was a social worker and advanced practice clinician (APC) at CAMH for twelve years. She now works at the Frederick W. Thompson Anxiety Disorders Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and in her private practice.
Jason Siff was a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990, has a master in counselling psychology and now teaches meditation at various centers, including Esalen, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, and Cloud Mountain Meditation Center. He has given invited talks and workshops to various lay Buddhist (Vipassana) communities in the US, Canada, and Australia. Jason has innovated a new approach to meditation, called Recollective Awareness Meditation. His books include Unlearning Meditation: What to do when the instructions get in the way (Shambhala, 2010) and Thoughts Are Not the Enemy: An Innovative Approach to Meditation (in press).
Mindful Psychotherapy
Mount Sinai Psychotherapy Institute
Course Director: Bill Gayner, MSW, RSW
Course Faculty: Kate Kitchen, MSW, RSW & Jason Siff
Dates: October 3, 4, November 7, 8, & December 12, 13, 2015
The MSPI Mindful Psychotherapy skills-based workshop series and certificate program focuses on the fundamentals of clinically applying and teaching mindfulness meditation in psychotherapy. Participants will develop clinical mindfulness skills grounded in emotion-focused psychotherapy essentials to enhance therapeutic alliances, empathic reflection and therapeutic presence in all psychotherapy modalities.
The training program integrates didactics, meditative practice, experientially-grounded inquiry, reflection, and clinical- and theory-based discussions. Participants will learn a meditation practice that enhances the core skills of mindfulness to help clients engage more effectively in psychotherapy. The MSPI Mindful Psychotherapy workshop teaches an experientially open meditation approach that emphasizes a receptive relationship with emergent mind states. The series highlights Recollective Awareness Meditation, a gentle, psychologically-oriented meditation that builds on the practices found in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and is accessible to long-time meditators and beginners alike. This style of mindfulness was developed to help meditators escape inevitable impasses in meditation and is particularly suited to supporting the development of a mature meditation practice that can be fully integrated into clinical psychotherapy practices. Bill Gayner’s Mindful Psychotherapy approach transposes Jason Siff’s sophisticated, pragmatic Buddhist approach of Recollective Awareness Meditation into a psychologically-based modality, Emotion-Focused Meditation, using Les Greenberg’s Emotion-Focused Therapy as a trans-theoretical frame. Weekends will also include movement sessions or gentle yoga in order to orient to embodied experiencing.
Who should attend? Clinical professionals and students providing counselling or psychotherapy from all professions, including psychiatry, family practice, psychology, social work, nursing, occupational therapy and chaplaincy, whether new to mindfulness or established mindfulness teachers.
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:
- Assess, set up and coach patients/clients in how to use mindfulness in psychotherapy
- Actively listen, use reflection and explore through mindful inquiry
- Coach clients in self-compassionate awareness to navigate and transform difficult emotions
- Ground and calm clients struggling with overwhelming affect through brief, guided mindfulness exercises.
Fee
Workshop Fee: $995
What past participants have said about our faculty and mindfulness workshops:
“The entire workshop was instructive and constructive and felt myself and others were honoured in their experience. Thank you so much!”
“Life-changing experience.”
“Thank you so much for a wonderful course and learning experience. Learning has never been so gentle!”
Cancellation and Refund Policy
A $50.00 handling fee will be deducted upon cancellation. Refund requests must be received in writing at least 2 weeks prior to the start date. No refunds will be given after this time.