Posts tagged with 'personal'
Peer groups: Cumbria autumn group – reflection
25th November 2009
Wednesday morning - about 36 hours since we got back to Edinburgh and less than a week since we began the group. The last half day started as usual with some of the "self-care practices" that quite a few us use (Tai Chi, meditation, running, and so on). Good breakfast, …
Peer groups: Cumbria autumn group – challenge & flowing on
23rd November 2009
I wrote in my last blog post how the group had begun to work more deeply/flowingly. Yesterday was the final full day. I've been dunking in the cold flood stream further upriver than during other groups. It sure wakes me up to strip and hold firmly onto roots as I …
Peer groups: Cumbria autumn group – flowing
22nd November 2009
And it's the third morning of the group. Yesterday again I took time for a usual mix of "self-care" - yoga, meditation, stream-dunking, tea & fruit. As I wrote yesterday, I was very aware of feeling frustrated and impatient with how I felt the group had been going and how, …
Peer groups: Cumbria autumn group – frustration
21st November 2009
Yesterday I wrote about arriving for this Men's Group in Cumbria. It's the second morning. Groups - particularly these residential interpersonal groups - seem a bit like rivers to me. They move on inexorably, often full of surprises. I may have some guesses as to how a group will evolve …
Peer groups: Cumbria autumn group – arriving
20th November 2009
It's a little after 6.00am and I've been up and about for a while. It's the first morning of one of the four day residential peer groups that I've been coming too since 1991. This is the autumn Men's Group. In the Spring several of us also meet here in …
Social integration and a midsummer potluck lunch
21st June 2009
We have fifty to sixty people due for lunch today. I better not hang around writing blog postings for too long. There's still lots of preparation work to do. It's great. I love these midsummer potluck lunches that we've been hosting for many years now. It's such fun to invite …
The Ben Lui group (second post): how to know when to change direction on a walk or in treatment for psychological difficulties!
16th June 2009
A couple of lines from the Bruce Springsteen song "Hungry heart" kept going through my head - "Like a river that don't know where it's flowing, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going." Something was wrong. I couldn't work out where I'd got to on my map. …
The Ben Lui group (first post): the challenge of balancing planning & savouring
15th June 2009
Tomorrow I hope to head North and West up past Stirling, Lochearnhead and Crianlarich to Strath Fillan. I should be able to park at a little village called Dalrigh just before Tyndrum. From there I can walk in by the River Cononish for about 7 km to get to Ben …
Peer groups: Cumbria spring group – cathartic work from the outside
11th May 2009
So I wrote yesterday about the cathartic, emotion-focussed work that I went through. In their classic 1973 book "Encounter groups: first facts" the authors, Lieberman, Yalom and Miles, describe their major research on the potential benefits of these kinds of groups. One of their findings was that people who benefited …
Peer groups: Cumbria spring group – cathartic work from the inside
10th May 2009
I wrote yesterday about a horrid feeling of my heart "drying out" and closing. Although it seemed hard to do without possibly upsetting other people badly, I was very clear that I would share what was going on in me. These kinds of groups need honesty to flourish - otherwise …