Soulful Group Faciliation Training

Group work provides a space for soulful connection, shared experience, and collective growth, allowing participants to work soulfully with conscious and unconscious processes to make meaning of their experiences with the use of intuition, bodily sensations, images, fantasies and feelings. Groups can offer an accelerated and powerful insight into relational dynamics and provide opportunities for corrective experiences. For the facilitator creating  group space to allow emergent possibilities for group members to make a commitment to breaking open old patterns.

This Group Facilitation course will provide participants with foundational skills in being able to hold a group, make sense of key group processes and develop strategies to foster growth in groups. The focus will be on the how rather than the what of leading. The course trainers will bring together theory and experience to foster ‘inside-out’ learning in which participants’ understanding is intimately connected to experience. This learning model will support participants to develop a soulful, imaginative and empowering context in the practical competences of skilful group facilitation. It provides the experience of being a group participant, facilitating group sessions with live feedback and integrating learning through supervision.

In seven weekends over eight months the course will provide a framework for engaging the life and dynamics of a group, as well as practical coaching in the design and leading of groups. For facilitators, it will be an exploration into how group processes reflect both their own process and something unknown that is attempting to make its presence felt. Particular attention is given to how difference is managed and the transformational effect of authentic engagement.

While learning to hold a space within which the extraordinary may emerge in the life of a group, the practical aims of this training are to enable participants to:

• understand and work with group dynamics 
• contain and catalyse unconscious process
• assess your facilitating strengths and weaknesses
• work effectively with issues of power and oppression
• increase your range of group facilitation skills
• understand your own patterns and roles within groups
• engage with the soul of the group, and facilitate experiences that go beyond the self

This training is for: counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches, trainers and those who have group work experience and are facilitating or planning to facilitate workshops and training courses. It is suitable both for those who wish to incorporate a facilitation element in their work and for experienced trainers who wish to refine their skills.  

“… Negative Capability, that is, when a man (sic) is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”   Keats

Course Components
Saturday & Sunday 10am-5pm

25-26 October: Group Life – finding ourselves and each other in groups
We will study our evolving behaviour and highlight the systemic and individual factors that contribute to the dynamic experience of the group. As a first session, we will be discovering how we come into groups, exploring conscious and unconscious functions of group identity.

29-30 November: Transformational Fields
Over this weekend we will explore ideas and skills through an experiential and theoretical lens, looking at practical ways of responding to the common dilemmas of facilitation. We will consider the transformational edge of uncertainty through the skills of developing negative capability, staying with the flow, trusting and mistrusting, and catalysing interactions through dialogue, enquiry, and metaphor.

10-11 January: Group Dynamics
We look at group dynamics and how they evolve. A practical and theoretical introduction to interventions at different stages of group development will be offered, with particular emphasis on the group formation, early development and working with conflict. Starting with the exploration of safety and norms we will move on to explore distribution of roles within the groups, shame dynamics and support the group may need to explore disagreements and conflicts.

7-8 February: Group Facilitation
The aim of this weekend is to explore in more depth whole group processes and taking a look at different facilitation styles. Participants will be invited to experiment with various levels of group interventions. We will link this to other group formations and different wisdoms and thinking regarding understanding group development.

7-8 March: Working online (please note this weekend will be taught online)
This live experience of working remotely will provide an embodied experience of being a group member and facilitating a group online. We will explore the ethical and cultural considerations through working together whilst not sharing the same physical space.

11-12 April: The Shadow of Groups
In this workshop we will explore how to hold individual and collective shadow, and identify how we are able to bring to the surface issues of power and privilege and positioning, looking at how these elements are pushed into the shadow of the group. These include: denial of group shadow; inflation; the need to be special; enchantment and seduction; and group regression to a narcissistic level.

9-10 May: Cycle of the group
In crossing over the threshold at the end of the course and reflecting back over the journey, participants will be invited to explore how they will hold the facilitator role and consider their leadership going forward. 

Assessment and awards
Those students who complete this programme with satisfactory feedback from their peers and completion of a reflective write up on the facilitation of a small group within the training will lead to receiving a Certificate of Group Facilitation.

Fees
£1,950 for the seven weekends, £2,300 supporters rate*
A small number of bursaries are available. Bursary applications will be agreed by a formally constituted awarding panel and will be considered on the basis of financial need and under-representation in the profession, in particular ethnicity. To apply for a  bursary please request a form with your training application.

* Supporter Rates: We believe that counselling and psychotherapy and our work delivering high quality training in the craft of soul-making are vital for transformation in troubled times and can help to meet the needs of a changing world. We wish to make our diploma training as accessible as possible and not limited by financial means. If you feel moved to, and are able to, please consider paying the higher supporters rate when you book your place and the surplus fee will allocated entirely towards our bursary programme.
We will also gratefully receive any additional donation you may feel able to make, please see more details at www.re-vision.org.uk/support-us/

Location
The Minster Centre, 20 Lonsdale Rd, London NW6 6RD

Application
Why do you want to do this training?
What makes you want to lead groups and in what context?
What do you think are skills you need help to develop to run group effectively?

Please respond to the above questions and give details of your training, relevant qualifications and field of experience.Send your answers together with details of your name, occupation, contact address, telephone number and email address to tara@re-vision.org.uk with a non-returnable application fee of £50. Some bursaries are available – details on request.

Course co-ordinator: Anthea Benjamin
Training Team: Anthea Benjamin, Sophie Clarke, Claire Gold, Cathy Lasher, Claudine Maguire, Aoife Nic Charthaigh, Suzanne Worrica

Last updated 02/07/2025