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Circle of trees specialist practitioner course with Marianne Siddons Heginworth

Time commitment

What to expect

Practicalities

Themes through the year

Circle of trees specialist practitioner course with Marianne Siddons Heginworth

Marianne is a co founder and pioneer of this modality with her husband Ian Siddons Heginworth. She originally trained as a drama therapist receiving a special commendation for her work after completing a degree in drama and a psychotherapy and the arts diploma.

She has continued to develop her unique modality informed by what the client brings and where we are in the turning year.

She skilfully brings embodied work, trauma release, grief tending, integration work, role and parts work, shamanic, (particularly ancestral ) healing and ritual with environmental arts both indoors inside her studio and out in the forest.

She is trauma trained and her way of working is trauma informed allowing for gentle trauma release in a resourced, titrated and safe way.

Marianne has trained in Trauma resolution with Rachael Maddox of Re bloom foundation.
She initially worked as a client with trauma specialist Yig Labworth, spent the last 20 years in peer led trauma healing spaces as well is a founding member of both grief tending space from the lineage of Subonfu Somme and has developed Environmental arts therapy with her husband in a whole host of settings: Prisons, hospice, with drug and alcohol survivors, young adults and adults in mental health recovery as well as elders with dementia.

Her shamanic background is with Suzi Crockford of the sacred Trust lineage and Christina Pratt of the last mask centre for shamanic studies. Informally (for now) her work is also informed by the work of Daniel Foor and Ancestral medicine. Marianne runs the course from the beloved land that Ian and Marianne have worked with for the last 20 years so it is ensouled and enchanted by their continued practise.

Time Commitment

The course only ever runs for 6 participants and everyone will need to attend the 12 weekends running from Nov 2024 to Oct 2025. There will then be opportunities yearly to do one off workshops with your cohort here with me if you wish.

This course was created for people who’s modality might not be as an arts therapist but is open to those with other healing modalities that might benefit from taking their work outdoors or using the themes of the turning year and bringing natural materials inside to their work spaces.

During the course you will learn the core competencies that enable you to work safely and creatively with the layers of material arising both thematically within the turning year and individually from the embodied and emotional perspective of your clients in an embodied and creative way.

These ways of working can enhance and deepen your current skillset whether that be as a psychotherapist, community artist, youth leader, forest school leader, hospice worker, NHS worker in mental health, counsellor or other kind of healer, practitioner or facilitator.

The course participation will require you to book at least one 1:1 therapy session and one supervision session with me during the year. A two hour session costs £90, this will ensure you get the most out of the experience. It will guide you to bring your training in line with your vision for your private practice going forward.

What to Expect

Every weekend on the course you will be required to bring your own emergent emotional process to the space. The course lies at the intersection between a training group and therapy. We see that working with your own process is the most powerful way to go on to support others by experimenting the work yourself.  In our initial conversations I will be asking about your current resource to enter a year’s therapeutic work and your willingness and capacity to engage fully in emotional and embodied group work. Because this is also a training group you will need to have some level of awareness of your own process and capacity to resource yourself during and after the weekends. You do not need to be an ‘artist’.

After each weekend you will receive a thorough teaching resource to accompany the work. The level that you commit to this is entirely up to you. It is intended as something you can engage in at a deep level of enquiry in between course weekends or over the following years as you return again and again to revisit the month’s themes as they arise if time is tight now.

The expectation on the course however is that you commit to all 12 weekends and that you have a willingness to engage in your own emotional process and have some capacity to be involved in the process of the others in the group.

Ideally you will practise in between weekends some of the skills learned either with a buddy or in your workplace. If you haven’t got this in place you may be able to buddy with someone on the course who lives near you. It may be possible for me to introduce you to past participants looking for peer practise too. This might just look like 2 hours a month. I encourage daily self awareness practise informally but your commitment and there is no judgement regarding your capacity.

Core competencies you will learn and be skilled in and pass on to your clients through your work with them are:

• Energy body intelligence
• Emotional intelligence
• Safe emotional release
• Awareness building
• Interoception
• Clear communication
• Body dialogue
• Finding and embodying metaphor
• Using your own body, intuition and internal guidance system to support your clients
• Using environmental art making meaningfully and uniquely
• Creating meaningful and unique rituals from the metaphors and process that arises
• Developing inner and outer resources and building living relationships with allies
• Constellating new once exiled parts
• Learning to journey
• Learning to pendulate between polarities such as resource and difficulty to find the middle way
• An understanding and practice of Titration: such as right dose, right fit resource, right pace, right distance
• Embodied consent
• Safe trauma release
• Trauma informed practice
• Intercept old stories and reimagine them creatively

By engaging in the years practice you will inhabit these ways of working, (both the core competencies and the ritual and therapeutic techniques) on an embodied level and naturally be able to draw upon them spontaneously when working with your clients in line with your growing skillset and capacity (Especially if you commit to peer practice sessions throughout each month or practice within your current work) Equally you will be able to plan structured work around these skills and techniques.

Practicalities

The course costs £200 pounds per weekend and this should be set up as a standing order to arrive on the first of every month from November 24 to October 25. Contact me if you would like to request a different day.

There is one bursary place but payment plans can be arranged if this would help you attend.

After an phone meeting with me, if we both feel the course is a good fit then a £100 deposit is required to ensure your place.

If for any reason you are unable to attend after booking please inform me in good time.

Teas and coffees are available throughout the weekend and a kitchen you can use to heat food. Please bring a packed lunch and snacks.

The only other costs are the two other sessions you are required to book at some point in the year. A 1:1 therapy session with me £90 and a supervision session with me £90. These are two hourly sessions.

You will need full waterproof trousers and clothes for all weathers. The woods are steep in places so good footwear is also important.

Ideally you will have a copy of the handbook Environmental Arts Therapy and the Tree of Life by Ian Siddons Heginworth (click here to buy a copy)

The monthly teaching resource will be sent digitally.

Themes through the year