Person-centred family operations – kids as persons

What are the expedient practices of living with children? Is there a goal? What is the goal, what are the goals?

Consistency and flexibility.

Within and beyond what can be reasonably expected

Creative family diversity – what works for whom, and where, and what does that depend on?

I will bring a few short pieces of writing about the topic to the topical group, to get minds moving.

I haven’t made a final choice, but things like these:

https://blog.holist.hu/apro-gyozelem-small-victory/
https://blog.holist.hu/a-gyerekeink-tanitanak-minket-our-children-are-teaching-us/
https://blog.holist.hu/amit-nem-szoktak-mondani-what-they-dont-usually-tell-you/

Those and some other things are publicly available on my website (www.holist.hu).

Maximum participants: NOT LIMITED

Brúnó Fuchs

I have 8 kids: the quality of being a parent is a strong determinant of my life. As for my qualifications and attitude, I am a philosopher, as for my passion, perhaps most of all a songmaker, musician, play-back musician, but I also do some writing, drawing and painting.

Let’s paint together!

This time without brushes.

We invite you to paint together and maybe to talk about it. There’s no need to know HOW to paint, we want to forget how so it can happen in its own way. What is maybe more interesting than what we have known before.

We would like to ask the participants to consider donating a small amount that covers the equipment.

Maximum participants: 8 people

Bora Bredár and Péter Hámori:

I’m Bora, just graduated in Fine Arts University in Budapest. I visited encounter groups often the past 6-7 years and I learnt I really like to draw and paint during the groups. It helps me to be present and understand my own and the group’s inner processes beyond words. I would like to share something of this experience with you.

Péter Hámori: I’m really interested in processes, pictures, and in general in the flow of life. During visual art processes i experience somehow differently or more of the world; meeting with these depts helps me to change. We would like to share experiences like this with you. 

How do we recognize and influence group dynamic processes so that they are constructive?

Group dynamics determine the behavior of individuals in the group and vice versa, that is, individuals create the given group dynamics. If we are not aware of what is going on in the group, and what group dynamic processes determine the behavior of individuals, then we cannot influence and change it. Unfortunately, there are groups and teams where there are destructive or stuck processes that do not promote cooperation or the development of the individual, but nothing happens in the group, or they are particularly harmful and therefore very painful for one or a few members of the group, or even for the also for the whole group. Unfortunately, I have been in several such groups where the leaders were not at the level of leadership and facilitation. Still, the leaders cannot be blamed for this, because all members are responsible for the group dynamics. The train driver alone cannot solve this.

I invite you in this topic group to present them with the help of some group dynamics models, which are quite unknown in our country (Lewin – Schattenhofer’s “pendulum” model, Schindler’s role dynamics model, and Amann’s group dynamics space or field model) TOGETHER WE DISCOVER what is happening in your small group.

Recognizing the group dynamic phenomenon in your small group can help you to better influence the group dynamic processes to move the group in the direction of cooperation and development.

Maximum participants: NOT LIMITED

Péter Snír

According to my degree, I am a social worker and a Catholic theologian. in addition, I have mastered many applied psychological methods, which are group-based in nature.
For 25 years I have been dealing with groups and the development of groups, including the development of the behavior of individuals within the group, where my focus is on group dynamics and the interaction of individuals within the group, the development of the individual’s group behavior. This means how to create a group dynamic process, an “atmosphere” so that everyone can develop in the best possible way.

Emotion focus drama workshop

• Warm-up exercises, some voice exercises.
• Choosing the partner randomly.
• Improvisational exercises focusing on emotions in pairs.
• The participants choose an emotion ( joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, envy etc) talk about it then choose the space the time the conflict, and give a title for the scene.
• Each of the scenes is followed by feedback concentrating on the emotions. No judgment.

Maximum participants: 12

Katalin Lábán

Katalin Maria Laban person-centered counselor, mental health expert, actor, director.

Garden and walls

The idea for this workshop came from my life experiences when I was preparing for the second half of my life.

The title and the thought behind it come from the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. He writes in his book ’Brida’ that people take two basic attitudes in their lives: they either BUILD WALLS or LOOK AFTER A GARDEN. BUILDERS build the walls of their buildings making a lot of effort for a long time, but when the construction is ready, they finish their activity and go on living, closed within those walls that never grow further. GARDENERS, who plant and look after their gardens learn to cope with the adversities of weather, learn to care for and renew the things that regularly die and need renewal. The life of a gardener is a continuous challenge and adventure.

This metaphor inspired me a lot when I was preparing for CCC in Pécs in 2011, not long after I had left the walls of my stability in Hungary, worked in England for 9 months, and had very hard life lessons there. Since then I have regularly checked my answers to the following questions:

• Is it true, that people either just BUILD WALLS or just LOOK AFTER A GARDEN? Isn’t it possible, that they do both depending on which period of life they are in?
• Do I have WALLS, and if so, what are they?
• If I am aware of my WALLS, am I brave enough to step out of them from time to time to learn something new?
• Do I have a GARDEN, and if so, what am I growing in it? Am I a good gardener?
• Do I love my work?
• Am I the captain of my life or do I live someone else’s life?

Since 2011 ’Garden and Walls’ has become a traditional workshop of CCC-s in Pécs. Using a technique well-working on my English lessons, once or twice during the CCC week we answer those questions in pairs with various partners, and after speaking we make the visual representation of our answers in a green spiral-shape paper garden and on the wall. Let’s talk about those answers again and see if they have changed! Newcomers are most welcome, too!!!

Maximum participants: NOT LIMITED

Ágnes Bánátiné Tóth:

I am an English teacher, a person-centered counselor, an encounter group facilitator, and a yoga instructor.

I became an encounter fan in 2009 on CCC in Szeged. Still, my personal story in person-centredness started in 1991, when – as a newly graduated  History and Russian grammar school teacher, who had to get retrained because the Russian language was no longer taught in Hungarian schools,  – I had a great opportunity and good luck to get into an alternative, person-centered English teacher training system that had been established and built up by Leslie Simonfalvi, EFL teacher and teacher trainer, the Hungarian translator of  Rogers’s book ’On Becoming a Person’. In that training environment I first became a teacher, then a teacher trainer, and had countless memorable group experiences.

In that environment, I got to know my yoga teacher with whom we made friends, and discovered so many similarities between the principles and values of yoga and person-centredness. I still thank her every single day that I have been practicing since 2000 and teaching since 2006 the system ’Yoga in Daily Life’ (YDL).

It was Leslie Simonfalvi who encouraged me to take part in the first encounter event of my life in Szeged in 2009 when Í did not have any idea about what an encounter group might be like when we did not speak about learning or teaching English.

The CCC in Szeged was an important turning point for me, it showed me my path and direction for the second half of my life. Since then I have completed the person-centered counselor training, and being in encounter groups, like practicing yoga, has become an organic part of my life. I have spent more than 3000 hours in smaller and bigger groups, facilitated or without appointed facilitators, both as a participant and facilitator, in Hungary and abroad.

How can we more consciously perceive and articulate what is happening in the present?

For years I have been wondering: in encounter groups, when we talk about our feelings and attitudes in the present, how far can we stay consciously in the “here and now” and how far do we wander into the past or even into the future?

I want to provide you with a creative space where you can express your feelings in the present and then express them through drawing, movement, photography, or sound.
We would also like to launch a competition with the CCC organizers. The aim is to make us more aware of how we observe and express our feelings in the present. We expect to organize an exhibition at the end of the year of the artworks that participants send us.

Maximum participants: 15

Ádám Kiss György:

As a training psychodrama facilitator, supervisor, and playback theatre game master, I help individuals, groups, and communities using the creative possibilities of spontaneity. Since 2014, I have experienced the liberating power of free thinking, free speech and free action at every CCC. During these 10 years, meeting the present has become significant for me. What I am most concerned about is what we need to connect with the present in small and large groups and workshops and to be able to articulate our primary feelings, desires, and doubts that are born in the present.