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.
Course Director: Bill Gayner, MSW, RSW
Dates: September 24, 25 & November 5, 6 & December 3, 4, 2016
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.
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:
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.