The training model and philosophy I’ve adopted is a “Mentorship/Apprenticeship” approach. This means three things to me:
- My aim is always to facilitate the growth of capacity and expertise in each practitioner and community of practitioners that I work with. This is in keeping with EFST for Parents, where we believe that families are the best ones for the job of healing their loved one. When we believe in families and facilitate their own abilities and skills—well, everyone does better. And when I believe in practitioners and facilitate their own abilities, then they pass the same on to families.
- Mentorship/apprenticeship also means that we work as a big collective with people at all different levels of their development as practitioners and trainers. I’m very passionate about training trainers because that is the way to spread the goods farther. So when someone is ready in their development, I support them to provide support to someone more beginner than them, and so on up to being supervisors and trainers. Everyone has a role, can move as high as their skills and goals allow them, and at the pace they choose. The aim is to have a worldwide community of practitioners, supervisors, and trainers all highly qualified in Emotion Focused skills.
- Because of the highly experiential nature of this training and supervision, and the philosophy upon which it is based, people report that it leads as much to Personal Growth as it does to Skill Development and Practice Change. In other words, the apprenticeship aspect of the model includes inspiring practitioners to learn through their own personal reflection and discovery.