The Basic Facilitator Training

This highly experiential training will provide you with a solid grounding in the use of the basic Shadow Work facilitation tools

 This is an invitation to learn about the essential Shadow Work facilitation skills and how to use them for yourself, your family and your community. The process we invite you to join will be intense, enjoyable and practical and will take you behind the scenes so that you can understand the thinking we employ while facilitating.

Shadow Work provides powerful tools for bringing out of the shadow and into the light whatever parts of yourself you have split off, repressed, denied, or disowned. In this way, you have more capacity, balance and choice with which to live your life. Our desire is that you will discover how to use the power of ritual space to use these tools to create these outcomes consistently for yourself and others. The scope of what you can expect to get out of this training is enormous and includes:

  • A solid grounding in the basic Shadow Work facilitation skills, using the Shadow Work Four-Quarter Model
  • A powerful experience of your own personal growth
  • Insights about facilitation: our “chop wood, carry water” approach takes you behind the scenes. We will show you how we harness our own shadows to make us better facilitators
  • A toolkit of professional coaching skills that you can apply yourself at home or in your community

Who Should Attend?

People who want one or more of the following:

  • To enhance their own personal growth
  • To learn Shadow Work tools for personal or professional application
  • To become accomplished Shadow Work group facilitators

It is recommended that you attend a Shadow Work weekend or the equivalent before attending the Basic Facilitator Training.  Other possible options – to be assessed by the trainers – include Women in Power, the New Warrior Training Adventure, Woman Within and A Band of Brothers.

This training draws a rich diversity of people, including educators, therapists, group leaders, writers, lawyers, organisational development consultants and others dedicated to their own personal and professional growth.

Programme Information

Maximum number of participants for each training: eight, on a first come, first served basis

Registration: To register you must fill out and return a Registration Form. To secure your place you must pay a deposit of £500.  Payment details are on the form using your surname as the reference. The deposit is non-refundable unless SWTE cancels the training.

Fees: To attend a BFT we require the £500 deposit to secure your place.  Then to later receive the Training Manual, you will have to pay either the full outstanding balance or a second instalment of at least £500, with the final remaining outstanding balance paid before the training begins.  A scholarship and/or payment plan may be available upon request.

 Schedule: The training lasts six or seven days depending on numbers. Daily sessions are 9:00 am to 6:00-6.30pm with drink and lunch breaks.

Full details will be included in the training packet sent to you upon registration.

For training dates and costs, see our events page here.

READ MORE ABOUT THE CONTENT OF THE TRAINING

THE BASIC STEPS OF SHADOW WORK FACILITATION

  • How to build a safe, non-shaming container: creating safety in yourself, your facilitation and your participants
  • How to communicate clearly and cleanly without shaming the listener or yourself
  • How to facilitate processes for friends and clients using the four archetypes
  • How to put the participant first: honouring the participant’s desired outcomes and risk levels throughout the process
  • How to get started: splitting out the parts, getting a triangle, regressing the split and setting a direction for the process
  • The What’s At Risk Process: seven steps for honouring the participant’s Risk Manager, to support a participant who does not trust something about the process, the facilitator, the container or the group
  • How to recognise a participant who has been previously wounded in a group process
  • How to facilitate a participant who doesn’t know what he/she wants
  • How to support the “perfectionist” or “special” participant who wants to shine or be perfect
  • How to determine an effective direction for the process; whether to choose a specific Sovereign, Lover, Magician, or Warrior process; how to offer a menu of choices, and an experiential rationale for making the best decision
  • How to notice overlays in the participant’s story, and how their first words permeate the whole process
  • How to handle a participant experiencing flashback or overflowing emotions: steps to a successful Metaphorical Pull-Out process
  • The powerful Switch process: how to move a participant from one body state or emotional state to another
  • How to use the power of the shadow reversal process to assist the participant who is “stuck”

GETTING TO KNOW YOUR SHADOW AS A FACILITATOR

We believe that being able to recognise and use your own shadows while facilitating is one of the greatest challenges of facilitating and also one of its greatest rewards. In this training you will learn how to recognise your own shadows as they appear during facilitation, how to recognise your co-facilitator’s shadows and how to use these to help you navigate the process rather than have the shadows in hiding. Other shame-free behaviours you will learn:

  • How to symbolise a process to create safety by distancing it from the here-and-now reality
  • How to distinguish between open and closed questions
  • How to avoid abusing a participant
  • How to set boundaries and agree on confidentiality
  • How to communicate using each of the four archetypes in important situations
  • How to learn to love your shadow
  • How to recognise your shadows as a facilitator in all four Quarters
  • How to facilitate yourself when you are emotionally filled to the brim
  • How to evaluate your instincts: determining what’s for you and what’s for the participant
  • How to get out of a facilitator’s “hot spot”
  • How to use your intuition to deepen the process, assess risk levels and evolve “juicy” part splits

THE BASIC PROCESSES IN ALL FOUR QUARTERS

In this training, you will learn how to recognise the underlying wounds in each of the four Quarters and how to facilitate the basic Shadow Work processes to address those wounds.

SOVEREIGN TOOLS:  CONDITIONAL LOVE WOUNDS

  • The importance of slow pacing with Sovereign tools
  • Why the participant manifesting Sovereign wounds replicates disillusionment or disappointment in others in their life
  • How to use Ideal Support, and when and how to bring that in
  • How to work in support when it isn’t well received
  • What to do when a participant tries to do the process perfectly

MAGICIAN TOOLS:  FEAR WOUNDS

  • The master tool, What’s At Risk: why, when, and how to use it
  • How to draw out and bless the participant’s Risk Manager
  • How to work from outside the circle, for the participant who may have been wounded in a group
  • What to do when a participant doesn’t know something
  • How to recap, and when to pause for a teaching moment

LOVER TOOLS:  BODY-FEELING WOUNDS

  • How to know whether to use Lover or Magician tools
  • How to read body language
  • How to use “Close your eyes and feel it in your body”
  • How to create a “container within a container” for the Inner Child
  • The importance of screening participants with history of flashback
  • How to deal with flashbacks about physical, sexual or collective abuse
  • When to elicit more detail, and when not to
  • When to use the Metaphorical Pull-Out Process to extract abusive energy safely
  • The special use and pacing of words during processes in this Quarter

WARRIOR TOOLS:  BOUNDARY WOUNDS

  • The importance of safety for both the participant and the group
  • Why Warrior processes use support from the other Quarters
  • How to use goals, boundaries and safety to create a more powerful process
  • How to use the Shadow Reversal process
  • Three ways to bolster a flagging Warrior process using the other Quarters
  • How to get those juicy lines that draw out Warrior energy

ENDING THE PROCESS

  • How to anchor the work in the participant
  • How to use metaphors and affirmations
  • How to celebrate the process
  • The importance of self-care and nurturing for the participant
  • How to handle de-roling and grounding the process

USING YOUR INTUITION

Within the basic recipe for Shadow Work, there is a lot of room for using your intuitive skills, and we will teach you how and when to use your intuition:

  • Spotting repeated patterns or overlays during the initial check-in, and recognising their possible effect on the participant’s process
  • Using overlays to help you navigate the process
  • Using “What would you like to have happen?” at crucial points in the process; avoiding representing the participant’s outcome too early in the process
  • Proven tips for getting effective splits and evolving them
  • How to determine the direction, depth and risk level of the process
  • How to help the participant who is foggy, numb or stuck while you are regressing the split