Alternative Love Relationships – encounter-like discussion group focusing on the subject

What does cheating mean to you or to me? What challenges and delights will encounter those, who live in love triangles (hexagons, etc), open relationships, polyamorous relationships, and other peculiar ones? What do you think – how do you feel – about these questions? We – hosts of this topic group – are not experts, but these issues are important to us and affect our lives. If you are also interested in the subject, come, let’s talk about it!

Fanni Pilz:

I came across CCC first during my university years and I started out as a volunteer organizer. Later the community and the experience captured my heart: I love the intensity of CCC. During the day we invest long hours into exploring ourselves, and during the evenings the same process continues in a more informal setting. Over the years I started to learn more about the Person-Centred Approach in a more formal setting, attend the two-year training program and work much on integrating what I have experienced during these week-long workshops into my work and everyday life.

Dávid Klein:

I organize CCC since 2009. I am addicted. In my free time, I struggle with myself quite a bit. This event provides an excellent opportunity for this: I encounter amazing people and do hard work on myself. We cry together and we laugh together and the opportunity to facilitate this experience for others as an organizer is a pleasure and privilege.

Garden and walls

The title and the thought behind it come from the Brasilian 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 building 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 gardeners is a continuous challenge and adventure.

Since 2011 ’Garden and Walls’ has become a traditional workshop at CCC-s in Pécs.

Using a technique well-working on my English lessons, once or twice during the CCC-week, in pairs with various partners we spoke about this metaphor, and after speaking we made the visual representations of what we had said before in a green spiral-shape paper-garden and on the wall. I am looking forward to new encounters with everyone interested!

Ágnes Bánátiné Tóth:

I am an English teacher, a person-centred counsellor, an encounter group facilitator and a yoga instructor. I became an encounter-fan 12 years ago at CCC in Szeged, but my personal story in PCA started 30 years ago, when I started my English teacher training. During the last 12 years I have spent about 2800 hours in smaller and bigger groups, facilitated or without appointed facilitators, both as a participant and facilitator, in Hungary and abroad.

Painting workshop

We’re inviting you to paint with us. Join us in this workshop where we will spontaneously express (visually) what we feel at that moment with the material of paint or we will choose a topic together to work with. Later we can reflect on our process verbally in pairs and in the group together. Or reflect on what the visual each one of us created says to us at that moment or just share with others what comes up… The goal if there is to get closer to something inside and use other senses besides what we use in the encounter groups a lot during the week.

Bora Bredár and Peter Hamori

I’m Bora, a 23-year-old painter student, I have some experience in making pictures.
I like to dive deep into the world of symbols and archetypes.
I’m attending encounter groups for the last 4 years and it was always truly inspiring.
I had many important experiences and insights during encounter groups when I was drawing. So we wanted to create a space with Péter where you can join us in making pictures.

I’m Péter Hámori (37). I am very much interested in processes, pictures, and in general the flow of life. My experience with creating visual artworks is that I can feel more or a bigger spectrum of myself and other parts of the world. This encounter with the dept helps me to change. I’m interested in every type of encounter. With Bora, we would like to share something about this and paint together.

Janus Faces of Childbirth – Spiritual and Family Experience versus High-Tech Medicine

I gave the title of Béla Buda’s paper of ten years as the name of the topic group, thinking with respect and gratitude for everything he represented in his writings and lectures in the perinatal field. His thoughts are valid to this day, they have not lost their relevance.

The quality of childbirth is at least as important as its immediate outcome. The experience of this life event for the mother, the baby, and the unborn family can have far-reaching implications. With the participants of the topic group, we gather the aspects, conditions, circumstances that can lead to a wonderful, positive birth / birth experience. Who, when, where and how can you contribute to make it all happen?

Julianna Novák:

In 1990, as a teacher, I participated in the establishment of the Rogers School in Budapest, where all four of my – already adult – children got to know and love the freedom of learning. I have been accompanying childbirth homes and hospitals since 1996. As a perinatal counselor and doula, I help pregnant and toddler parents with communication trainings and individual counseling. I am currently teaching a course on childbirth as a lecturer at the Department of Affective Psychology at the Eötvös Loránd University PPK. My main field of interest and research is the development of perinatal sciences and events around the world.

„ Come, come, whoever you are …
Ours is not a caravan of despair.”

Rumi

OpEn – Open Encounters
open encounter groups on the CCC

OpEn is an open encounter group. It is an attempt to bridge the gap between the casual conversations in the evening and the classical small groups. Though it is held during every thematic group time, where participants commit themselves to a single occasion only and every occasion is the first one. OpEn has no upper or lower limit on the number of participants.

The evenings spent in the yard of the dormitory are unforgettable parts of the CCC. The yard – in its beauty – is open and welcoming. Stumbling into each other – playing, singing, wallowing in the grass, sipping wine, smoking the water pipe, laughing a lot, or having a serious conversation about ourselves or about the way things are in the world – countless friendships were born.

Small groups have always been at the heart of the CCC. This is where we get the most time, probably this is where we get to know each other the best. This is where we share our joys and sorrows, our trials, and our well-guarded secrets. We are forged together. The small group – in its beauty – is closed and strict. It requires commitment – be there from start to end – because this external rule helps to feel safer and freer inside.

OpEn is not so casual as to drink alcohol but is not so strict as to require a commitment for the whole CCC. We don’t stumble into each other but knowingly choose to be present from the start of the given occasion to its end, but – if we want to – we can be present somewhere else the other day. OpEn always starts anew. We can never get to the second time, but in return, every occasion can be the first one.

A new space for encounters.

Balázs Klein

I have a degree in psychology, law, and economics. I have participated in and facilitated countless CCC groups since I was 16. I live with my wife and three sons. Techno, literature, and encounters are my passions.

Lessons of the person-centered workshops (Szeged, Hungary) from an (almost) forty-year perspective

The one-week-long workshop in 1984, where Carl Rogers and his co-workers facilitated the communication of cca 300 participants has been a euphoric experience for me: I felt that almost everything is possible if we really want it. East and West, young and old, fearless and as timid as a hare, experienced and rookies, who didn’t know anything about the person-centered approach before could accept and understand each other if they can feel an honest approach from the other.

In 1986 we had two one-week workshops: one for the „experts” (the therapeutic) and one for everybody (although we did not take too seriously this discrimination). These two workshops were more about the difficulties to encounter the others, at least for me: I felt that there have been more misunderstandings, breakups, leave-takings (should we eat the barbecued pig if it cost money; shall we meet Carl ever again – he had to leave the workshop before it ended) – but with all of its pain, these workshops too gave me lifelong lessons.

I would like to evoke the past with some discussion-provoking short video-excerption of the 1984/1986 workshops, to see if (those who participated in these workshops and those who might not have even been born at that time) can find in them some messages for the present and for the future.

Sándor Klein

Forty years ago I attended a three-year training In PCA and it had a great effect on my life. I left my job at the Technical University of Budapest and concentrated my efforts to humanize teacher training in Szeged at the teacher training college. During the six years spent in Szeged in 1984 and in 1986, I invited Carl Rogers and his coworkers to hold Cross-Cultural Communication workshops. We try to revive the spirit of these meetings each summer since 2009. I believe that congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathy – if they are realized as a “way of being” – improve the quality of life in families, schools, and the workplace.