ABOUT THIS COURSE
At a time of uncertainty in our world, the learnable skills of practical resilience strengthen our capacity to deal with difficult situations and rise to the occasion. Drawing upon psychological, neurobiological, relational and eco-spiritual perspectives, the course focuses on ways to cultivate resilience in ourselves (me), in other people (you), and within the teams, groups or communities we belong to (us).
This course is designed to help participants grow their capacity to support and build resilience in a range of contexts, considering the three levels of:
Me – looking at our own lives and the challenges we face
You – where we play a role supporting resilience in others, whether professionally or informally.
Us – exploring the role we can play in strengthening collective resilience and responding to shared adversities.
There are four inter-related elements in the course:
1) A two-hour webinar each week for eight weeks. Thursday evenings, 7-9pm UK time. These include a mix of teaching input, discussion, resilience practices, personal reflection and small group time. We will draw from a range of sources that include evolutionary neurobiology, embodied mindful practice, positive psychology, eco-psychology, narrative perspectives and systems thinking. The webinars (except small group time) will be recorded, with the recordings available for access.
2) The course also includes access to an online resource with over four hours of additional video material, including tutorials and interviews with leading practitioners, plus the webinar recordings, downloadable handouts and a discussion forum. Participants will have access to this, and don’t need to watch all the material during the eight weeks of the live course. It is a supporting resource adding value and depth to the course.
3) Each fortnight, participants are invited to meet in pairs for a one-to-one conversation (phone, zoom or skype), as a way of exploring themes linked to the course (this is optional, though highly recommended). Through meeting other members of our circle we strengthen the mutual support that builds a sense of nourishing community.
4) Each week participants will be invited to try out a resilience practice linked to the main theme of the course that week. Participants are encouraged to keep a reflective diary and we’ll have opportunities to review experience of these practices both during the webinars and on the online discussion forum.
Early in the course, participants are invited to identify the contexts they want to apply the course to, using storyboarding tools to map out elements in the resilience building process. Using a reflective action-learning cycle, we aim to deepen, shape and personalise the learning so that it becomes a better fit for the circumstances of each participant.
For an optimal learning experience that includes the practices, webinars, partnered conversations and additional videos, it is worth thinking of the course as requiring four hours of time input each week. However, if limited time is available, it is possible to just come to the webinars and save other elements for a later date (reducing the time commitment to 2 hours a week).
Booking:
Teachers:
DR CHRIS JOHNSTONE
Dr Chris Johnstone is one of the UK’s leading resilience trainers and has been teaching resilience skills for over thirty years, pioneering the role of resilience training in mental health promotion, coaching practice and in relation to addressing concerns about the world. He has a background in medicine, psychology, activism, transformative groupwork, coaching and online education. His books include Seven Ways to Build Resilience and Active Hope (co-authored with Joanna Macy and published in 14 languages). He teaches online at the College of Wellbeing and ActiveHope.training, his online resilience courses reaching students from more than sixty countries.
PROFESSOR DAVID PETERS
David is Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Westminster where, until recently he directed the Centre for Resilience. The Centre is researching ways of measuring resilience, and for improving it through lifestyle change, biofeedback, mindfulness, positive emotion and self-care.