Marlboro College Graduate Center, 29 Vernon St., Brattleboro, VT

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Description:

Please join us for a free informational open house for therapists who are considering enrolling in the Level One Internal Family Systems training.

The program will begin at 7:00pm with a brief presentation and “taste of IFS”, followed by ample time for Q&A and milling with Trainer Paul Neustadt and some of the other training staff and area IFS graduates. Bring yourself and your curiosity and questions! Light refreshments will be served.

Please contact rachel@innerwell.org or call 802-258-7014 with any questions. For those who are unable to attend on Feb. 15, there will be a Teleconference Open House on March 15. Please contact Center for Self Leadership at 708-383-2659 for details. To RSVP for the Feb. 15 open house in Brattleboro, please do so below!

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There so much good intention… get more exercise or be kinder to my partner or learn how to de-stress or to sleep better or meditate or not yell or eat local or work less or work more or do something new which makes my heart sing. Sometimes the list of intentions gets long; other times there is one clear and shining goal. From the vantage point of late December or even early January, anything seems possible. We are buoyed by hope and confidence. Our deepest selves delight in feeling connected to an intention that is true. We want to be peaceful and happy and loving and spacious in the new year. We want to take better care of ourselves and our loved ones and our precious planet.
Your “best self” is attuned to your heart’s intention. It lives from that unbroken, unbreakable place which exists in every person. From that unburdened place of spaciousness and ease. Most everyone has times when they feel free from stress and deeply at home in themselves. For some people, the pressures of daily life or the reexperiencing of past wounds and old patterns become more familiar ways of being. But nearly everyone has at least the occasional experience of peace. Watching sunlight sparkle on the snow. Getting hugged by a beloved child. Drinking hot cocoa in front of the fire. Watching a full moon rise into a star-filled sky.

This is the place from which true intention arises: beyond ego and striving. So the challenge, for bringing New Years Resolutions into the new year, is to make space for the paradox of intention and action. Intention is a wish that arises from being, from spaciousness and clarity and connection to one’s best self. Action requires doing. It is a dance.

Many people simply shift from intention to action, getting busy with the “doing” part and not attending to the “being” part. The good intention of January 1 often gives way to a kind of striving by January 15. There is a sense of not being good enough as we are. Once that story takes hold, it is very difficult to motivate, and the New Years resolutions start seeming either foolish or unrealistic. So then many people back off from their intention, and from the striving, and declare themselves and the whole project a predictable failure. For some, this shift from one’s grounded and spacious Intention-Setter to one’s anxious and self-critical Resolution-Failure becomes an annual ritual. Others have developed a sense of humor about the whole thing. But it still begs the question: is it possible to keep New Years resolutions? Does it matter if we do or don’t? How do we keep our actions aligned with our intentions? Which you is setting the intention, and which you is trying to carry out the resolve?

This year, try an experiment. Find that place in you which knows your heart’s desire. That “best self” who knows something about what you truly want to manifest. Go somewhere that makes your heart sing, and find that place inside you that is already whole. Maybe your intention, from that place, is different than what you thought before. Trust it. And then – from that place of spaciousness and ease – imagine how you will manifest that intention. As you go back into your daily life, stay connected not only to the specific “action” you wish to manifest, but to the intention for wholeness, connection, ease and joy from which your resolution springs.

Keep coming back to what is actually true right now. Meet yourself again and again from the present moment, and experiment with holding together your intention with your action, rather than shifting between the two. Develop an attitude of compassionate curiosity, and then see what happens. Invite your best self along as you unfold into the new year. You just might surprise yourself.

West Village Meeting House at All Souls Church, 29 South St., Brattleboro VT

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Description:

A one-day workshop introducing the principles and practices of Internal Family Systems Therapy. To register for the Trauma & Attachment workshop on June 25 as well as, or instead of, this one, please visit the Registration Options page. Please register below if you plan to attend only the Introduction to Internal Family Systems workshop on June 24. View Workshop Description

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