InProcess Newsletter
The Process Work Institute
Winter 2008, Volume 4
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Greetings! |
 Winter is upon us, and along with a record snow pack in the Cascade mountains, we're enjoying a busy winter with the 23rd annual Intensive course. This year's 33 participants are from 15 countries and 5 states in the USA.
Contribute to the InProcess Newsletter
We've been getting feedback from readers that they really enjoy hearing about the "little" things people do to live Process Work in their day-to-day lives. If you've got a story about your experiences, challenges, or insights of how you bring Process Work into your world, we'd love to hear from you.
The InProcess Newsletter is published three times a year: Fall, Winter and Spring. If you have news from your neck of the woods and want to share it, or know someone who's doing something interesting with Process Work, let us know. Please send your submissions, photos, etc. to Kerry at pwi@processwork.org.
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a member of Process Work Institute, and help make deep democracy and
awareness part of the global conversation. Members receive a 10%
discount on all classes at PWI. To become a member click here or contact the Process Work Institute office at 503-233-8188 or pwi@processwork.org
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Announcements
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New Courses At PWI
We're busily designing new formats for courses and classes at PWI. We plan to offer different types of courses, including professional certificate weekends, family drop in clinics with student and faculty, Open Forums and community colloquia, and courses applying Process Work to everyday challenges. The new formats will begin in September 2008, so stay tuned for the new course brochure coming out end of June 2008.
Student Visas For Studying In Portland
PWI received permission from the US Immigration Service to grant
student visas for students traveling in the United States to engage in
our Diploma, Certificate, MACF, and MAPW programs, even for those
without preexisting undergraduate degrees. We're continuing to work
with this agency so that all participants coming to attend any PWI program or
course can obtain a student visa. |
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Upcoming Events
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 PWI Community Party
On Wednesday, February 20th at 9:00 pm there will be a community party at the Process Work Institute. This event is scheduled as a farewell to both the Intensive participants and open to the whole community, including new Diploma students in town for their second residency. Please join us in saying goodbye,
connecting with others, dancing, and enjoying snacks and drinks.
Worldwork In London
Join friends and colleagues in London at the Worldwork Seminar, Doorways to Diversity: Seeking a Home in the World. Held from April 24-29, 2008 this is the 11th Worldwork since 1996. CEU credits for LPCs in Oregon and LMFCs in California are available. Read the article below by Anup Karia and Stanya Studentova about their experience organizing this Worldwork. For more information on this event please go to www.worldwork.org
Madness and Disability Rights
On Sunday, March 9 from 7-9pm, Will Hall will be facilitating a forum at PWI.
Extreme states of madness usually get labeled psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and bipolar, and treated with medications. What are different ways of understanding these experiences, and what are other options for helping people? What lessons can we learn from care in different countries? Come discuss a disability rights view on madness and extreme states of consciousness. This perspective respects individual choice to take or not take medication, welcomes a diversity of treatment possibilities, and is open to different interpretations of the mysterious experiences we call "crazy." We will also look at the economic and political forces influencing mental health.
Diagnosed with schizophrenia, presenter Will Hall is co-founder of Freedom Center (www.freedom-center.org), an award-winning peer-run support and advocacy community in Massachusetts. He is also on the collective of The Icarus Project (www.theicarusproject.net),
exploring art, creativity, spirituality, and political activism as alternatives to mainstream mental health care. Will has traveled internationally in his work, including recent visits to Toronto Canada
and Buenos Aires Argentina. Will Hall is a new Diploma student who has studied Process Work since 1996. You can contact him at will@theicarusproject.net.
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Letter From London
by Anup Karia & Stanya Studentova
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The Worldwork Team Shares Its Experience Organizing This Year's Seminar
 A warm hello to everybody. It's a great honor to write for the PWI newsletter.
We are Anup and Stanya, co coordinators of the organizing team for Doorways to Diversity, Seeking a Home in the World. This 2008 Worldwork seminar will be held in London, UK from April 24-29, and we'd like to share some of our dreams and excitement about the upcoming event.
As we write here, both of us become aware of the rich lineage which Worldwork is embedded in and how this unique gathering is ongoingly created, sustained, and eldered so lovingly by the worldwide Process Work communities. Imagine the scene - hundreds of people from round the world gathered in a powerful forum for about six days every two years contributing to dialogue and learning about diversity, multi-cultural communication, dynamics that perpetuate conflict, and conflict resolution. How far out is that?!
Worldwork is always a huge opportunity for the region where it is held as well as being a worldwide event. The title and the theme of this Worldwork is connected to our deep longing for home in relation to our inner and outer diversity and connecting to the 'big U'. At the same time, it is about the essential issues of refuge, and questions of privilege and marginalization around feeling at 'home' in respect to migration, asylum, and discrimination in multi-cultural societies. That Worldwork is happening in the heart of London is also meaningful; London is one of the most socially/ethnically diverse spots in the world. About half of London's population is born outside of the UK. Being immigrants from Kenya and Czech Republic we (Anup and Stanya) both, in a tiny way, reflect this diversity.
When the Tao chose UK to be the next venue for Worldwork, it was in many ways the next step of a dream that many of us out here had been nurturing for a few years. Since then, an incredible and enthusiastic team got together under the eldership of Arlene and Jean Claude Audergon to carry various tasks to manifest this dream. In the USA, Will Hall (student of process work in Portland) is part of the organizing team; helping people from the US with ideas around funding.
Worldwork is as much a seminar as it is a way of creating a community and interacting with each other in this diverse world. To make worldwork as accessible to people from various backgrounds and all corners of the world, large portion of scholarships is offered. For this purpose we welcome any donations. Please contact us on worldwork@worldwork.org
Do visit and enjoy the Worldwork website at www.worldwork.org
You will find information on how to register and all the other information about the event.
We would love to see you in London in April 2008!
Anup and Stanya
On behalf of the organizing team 2008
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Community Development Internship In The Midwest USA by Monica McCarthy
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As a student in the MA in Conflict Facilitation and Organizational Change program, I focused my first internship on the Midwest Process Work Community. This is a community that has existed for a long time and is dispersed over a wide geographic area, from Minneapolis to Chicago. My goal was to support the community and also to discover my own leadership/eldership role in the community.
 Personally, I learned a lot about crossing over my own edges of concern about offending people who have been around for a long time and who I thought would perceive me as stepping on their toes. Much to the contrary, I found that my interest and enthusiasm was very much welcomed. I also learned about the interrelationship and overlap between my own personal inner life and the community "field".
The big theme that emerged for me was about focusing on noticing and supporting what is already present in the field. When I got into my own world of how it "should be", I was often met with disappointments and feelings of being let down. But when I focused on what was actually already present, exciting things happened. For example, I organized a weekend workshop, and was disappointed when the registration forms didn't flood my mailbox. In the end, we had an exciting and transformative weekend with the 7 of us who ended up participating. Taking the time to really listen to people was a key part of this process.
As for community development, I learned a lot about seeing disturbances as secondary processes and as opportunities. Sometimes this was quite a challenge! Here are a few examples:
· Competition as an opening for shared/collaborative leadership.
· Chaos as an opening for the Tao.
· Complaining as an opening for new ideas.
· Distance/apathy as an opening for more individual autonomy.
· Scarcity as an opening for generosity.
· Conflict as an opening for deep communication.
We (or at least some of us) have come to think of PW Midwest as a "loose network" rather than a "tight community". It relieves the pressure to live up to what a "tight community" is supposed to be and leaves space for new openings, future surprises, and local independence.
On the practical side, we have established a Midwest PW Community string and will have an updated website this spring. Stephen Schuitevoerder will be coming to Minneapolis on August 2-3 for a workshop on "Fires of change and the cultivation of wisdom: PW contributions to personal and community transformation". Stay tuned for future news and events
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Teaching In China by Bill Say
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Last year I was invited to teach in China, and I eagerly accepted. My organizer and I agreed upon two topics for the seminars, one was overcoming isolation and mistrust; the other on embracing diversity and transforming aliens into allies.
As a phase two student in the Process Work Diploma program, this was an amazing opportunity to use Process Work in a culture different than the U.S., and although I am Korean Japanese American, there is much that I don't know about Chinese culture. Personally, I found the experience incredible. I was treated like a celebrity and found a new level of rank as a visiting teacher. This seemed to increase my intelligence, and I found that the level of work I was doing to be quite high, perhaps unprecedented for me.
I found the Chinese participants in the seminars to be extremely eager for my work and teachings. At times I felt pressure, like they wanted everything I had. Probably most outstanding in my facilitation experience there were the traumas that arose, stemming from the Cultural Revolution. In relationship work, in body symptom work, in secondary process work, the after effects of the Cultural Revolution kept appearing. Some of the relationship work I did with people around this was wrenching and profound. One strong theme was the relationship between mothers and daughters. Though I have an extensive background as a Core Energetic therapist (a neo Reichian approach), I have rarely encountered the intensity of emotions that I found in working with the issues of mother and daughter. The relationship between mother and daughter is one possible seminar theme for a future trip.
This was also my first significant experience of doing work through translation. I was aided greatly by Lane Arye's suggestions that translation can be a great aid in slowing down work and also to ask for sentence by sentence translation when I was working. I felt at once in a very privileged and fairly ignorant position. I am fortunate for this opportunity and am also thankful to Process Work, Arny Mindell, Caroline Spark, and Renata Ackermann for guiding me in my experiences and teaching there.
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We hope that you have enjoyed this issue of the InProcess Newsletter!
Sincerely,
The Process Work Institute
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