Ongoing professional development is of great importance in the psychotherapy and counselling professions. Professional bodies generally require members to maintain their level of competence through ongoing attendance at courses, conferences and other training events. BACP accredited counsellors must attend a number of days of training per year to maintain their accreditation status. Attending ongoing training, should not, however, simply be a matter of meeting requirements. It is a way to stay abreast of new ideas, find peer relationships that will refresh and extend your practice, and to explore a different approach from that in which you originally trained.
For therapeutic practitioners who have an interest in spiritually based or Buddhist approaches, Amida Trust Psychotherapy Training Programme offers an excellent way to meet these requirements.
Buddhist psychology offers a way of approaching therapeutic work that is both innovative and easy to integrate with Western methodologies. It also has the advantage of bridging behavioural and psychodynamic ways of thinking. The Buddhist paradigm allows practitioners to develop their existing skills, whilst re-visiting the foundations of therapy practice. The contrast of its "other-centred" perspective creates an ethical critique of many taken for granted practices, which at least is stimulating to the practitioner's thinking and at most may be transformative of his or her approach to therapy.
A LEARNING COMMUNITY APPROACH
The Amida course structure is particularly suitable for experienced practitioners. Amida courses provide a rich learning environment in which assumptions are challenged and new perspectives introduced. Many students participating in the Amida programme have prior qualifications and bring different models and viewpoints to the discussion. Everyone brings life experience. Amida courses tend to attract people who are lively, original thinkers. Direct experimentation and reflection on experiential work create opportunities for high quality investigation of method. Theory is generally explored in relation to experience. A co-operative learning ethos creates an unusual level of group safety and open sharing. Staff are willing to demonstrate and question their own work and explore new perspectives.
POST QUALIFYING CERTIFICATE: Amida Trust offers a post-qualifying certificate in applied Buddhist Psychology.
This certificate provides a means for qualified practitioners to integrate their own method with approaches taught here. The course is predominately based on attendance, so appeals to qualified therapists and counsellors who are looking for stimulation and peer contact. The course requirements are as follows: 150 hours (21days) course attendance plus an essay setting out the student's integration of Buddhist psychology approaches with their pre-existing approach.
The Post-Qualifying Certificate consists of 21 days of course attendance. This can be achieved through attendance at any course sections from the psychotherapy course blocks offered by Amida Trust. This allows students to select those parts of the programe which are of greatest interest to them, and to spread the training over a shorter or longer period. It is also possible to avoid weekend attendance, or conversely to complete the entire programme through weekend courses.
Cost £725 plus tutorials
SHORT COURSES & SAMPLERS All courses in the short course programme are open to the public. You can attend any sections of the nine day course blocks separately or attend the complete block without enrolling on any programme. This offer the opportunity for occasional attendance, or for "sampling" the courses with a view to enrolment. We can supply letters confirming attendance or other certification as required.
OTHER COURSES: If you are looking for a more in depth exposure to the approaches taught at Amida, you may like to consider enrolling for one of our longer courses. In the past a number of students have completed Advanced Certificate and Diploma programmes as a second qualification and have benefited greatly from the experience. Other students have enrolled for the Distance Learning course in addition to the post-qualifying certificate, so that they could receive a more in depth understanding of the psychology that underpins our methods. The course structure allows considerable flexibility and transfers between programmes are possible.
FUNDING: If you are approaching your employer for funding to attend the course, we will be happy to provide whatever back-ground information is required. We can also invoice employers directly.
|
|
