WORKSHOPURI

Psih. Principal Dr. Gina Chiriac

The Inner Architect: The Bridge Between Mind and Heart. A New Perspective on Rewriting a Life Story

This workshop is designed to guide participants through the profound and transformative process of understanding and reconciling the interactions between their thoughts and emotions, laying the foundation for rewriting their own life story.

This innovative session aims to explore the depths of the relationship between mind and heart from the integrative psychotherapy’s perspective, offering participants a new paradigm in intervention strategy in the integrative psychotherapeutic process.

By integrating neuroscience and techniques for accessing the unconscious mind, the presentation aims to provide participants with a new perspective on how to use and access unconscious resources, as well as equipping them with the necessary tools to navigate the complexity of emotions and thoughts, with the ultimate goal of rewriting their life scenario.

Based on the idea that the known past generates a predictable future, we will identify the areas of the brain where we could intervene in the present to build new neural networks that will determine a new body chemistry.

Alternating between theory and practice, this presentation provides an interactive and experiential setting.

Participants will receive the intervention strategy and plan, the questions to be asked in the psychotherapeutic process, and a combination of therapeutic techniques that can address the complexity of the interactions between cognitive processes and emotional reactions.

Benefits:

Participants will gain both personal experience and a deep understanding of their own dynamics between mind-heart coherence as well as new knowledge and techniques based on modern neuroscience-specific methodology, so as to provide clients in the psychotherapy office with effective strategies for reconfiguring life scenarios.

Psih. Specialist Dr. Coralina Chiriac

The transformative potential of Inspiration in integrative psychotherapy

What makes your life worth living? When is it that you feel fully alive, present, and in touch with your heart? Are you fulfilling your dreams? This workshop explores the profound impact of inspiration in our lives and in integrative psychotherapy.

To feel inspired is a deeply human experience. Throughout history, people have found inspiration in adversity, as well as in beauty, love, relationships and joy. Inspiration serves as a bridge between the present and the realm of possibilities. It encourages us to explore our identity, prompting introspection with two fundamental questions: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Who do I wish to become?’

As psychotherapists, we inspire our clients, but in witnessing the reciprocal nature of inspiration, we find ourselves inspired as well by their stories, resilience, vulnerability, and courage.

It is through these profound connections that humanity itself is shaped, fostering a deeper understanding of ourselves and others.

Drawing upon existentialist principles, we will contemplate the notion that the questions we ask often hold more value than the answers themselves, emphasizing the transformative potential of exploration itself.

Through interactive exercises and reflective discussions, participants will explore moments and areas that evoke inspiration, envision ways to infuse more inspiration into their lives, and consider how they can contribute this powerful force to their communities.

This workshop invites therapists to integrate inspiration into their practice, nurturing personal and client growth while celebrating the transformative power of human connection.

Psih. Specialist Neagu Andreea

Play therapy in working with children and their parents

Play therapy is an umbrella of therapeutic approaches, with broad addressability, in working with children and their families, aged 0 to 12/13 years.

In both directive and non-directive play therapy approaches, we find evidence-based models for therapeutic intervention in working with children who have relational problems or attachment disorders, institutionalised children, adopted children or children with relational trauma.

In the workshop, I will practically exemplify elements of two play therapy approaches: Theraplay and Filial Therapy, applicable in working with children in the mentioned categories.

You will be able to take with you into your clinical practice concrete tools to apply in working for individual therapy, attachment therapy or family therapy with your clients.

Psih. Specialist Beu Adrian

Exploring the Role of the Transcendent in Integrative Psychotherapy

This workshop explores the dimension of the relationship of the self with the transcendent as an important part of integrative psychotherapy and focuses on how client’s beliefs about the relationship with the transcendent can influence the therapeutic process.

We aim to address a wide range of topics, including the role of the transcendent in mental health and practical ways of integrating the client’s religious beliefs into therapy sessions and working with clients from different religious traditions, so the workshop provides participants with a comprehensive perspective on the topic.

Through interactive discussions, case studies and practical exercises, participants will explore how their own beliefs can influence the therapeutic process and how they can effectively navigate the complex link between a client’s religious beliefs and the psychotherapeutic process.

Prof. Univ. Dr. Eugen Avram, Lector Univ. Dr. Ionescu Daniela

Psychological interventions in health services

In this workshop we present how to work on some psychology topics in the medical area (participants will choose the topics: terminal pathology, pain, and others). Participants will see how to work with OMS codes in psychological conceptualization and how to intervene psychologically (counselling, cognitive-behavioral interventions, clinical hypnosis).

Psih. Specialist Constantin Erna

Psychotraumatology: methods of psychological assistance in case of crisis

Crisis situations can occur in an individual’s life as single events with a major impact on the psycho-emotional balance, of a traumatic type, but they can also occur during psychotherapy sessions, through the risk of dissociation and the risk of suicide or in case of bereavement.

Crisis situations may meet DSM-5 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Criterion A: Exposure to a concrete situation or threat of death, severe harm, or sexual violence in one (or more) of the following ways:

  1. The individual directly experiences the traumatic event(s)
  2. The individual witnesses the event(s) that others experience
  3. The individual is exposed repeatedly or to extreme intensity to the repulsive details of the traumatic event

For each situation with psychotraumatic impact there are specific protocols of assistance.

Psychological assistance in crisis situations takes into account peritraumatic (during the event) and posttraumatic (after the event) details and less pretraumatic (before the event) psychological elements. However, this strategy is different in the case of suicide risk, which is one of the first aspects to be assessed before establishing the psychotherapeutic intervention, throughout the psychotherapy process. Finally, the workshop aims to assess people in crisis, which is in fact a difficult process that stems from the very difficulty of defining crisis. So, we might rightly ask: “How do I recognize a person in crisis? How do I distinguish a person in crisis from a person who is mentally disturbed but not in crisis? How do I find out what is really going on with a person in crisis if they are so disturbed? What can I say or ask a person in crisis?’

Psih. Clenciu Carmen

Melotherapy in psychotherapy

“Music is born in the soul of man, and is addressed to the soul” – George Enescu

The workshop is designed for psychotherapists who wish to use the beneficial effects of music in psychotherapy and explains the differences between receptive and active music therapy.

Music is the voice of our depths, in psychotherapy we sometimes aim to lead the person into the “state of music”, into a state of essential inner transfiguration, which moves him from the purely cognitive plane to the emotional plane and into a state of balance.

The workshop aims to show through direct experimentation how music becomes an enhancer and creator of well-being, coherence, a link in verbal and especially non-verbal communication.

The workshop also presents techniques and exercises for awareness and creative expression of functional and non-functional emotions and techniques for emotional regulation through sound.

We will experience the sound and melody produced by the human voice, then by simple melodic instruments (Tibetan bowls, sound bars, bells, aquadrums, lyre, kalimba,) as well as sounds and rhythms produced by percussion instruments (Orff set, drums, djembe, rhythm sticks, shakers, rattles) to directly experience how thought, and emotion change is produced by touching and handling musical instruments.

Psih. Preda Cristina Simona

Integrative techniques for emotional regulation and development of the relationship between self and self with the help of the heart

Current research shows that the heart is more than just a pump. The heart has a complex neural network that is extensive enough to be characterized as a brain. The heart-brain or intrinsic cardiac nervous system is a complex network of ganglia, neurotransmitters and supporting cells, just like those of the brain. The heart brain’s neural circuitry allows it to act independently of the cranial brain (e.g. to learn, remember, make decisions).

In the workshop, we will experiment on the spot with techniques for regulating and activating regenerative emotions, so that we can observe in real time how we can become more resilient and how we can manage to spend as little time as possible in a state of stress that we are often not even aware of. Also, in the theoretical part, I will show how the heart works and why it is important, plus studies that attest to the benefits that participants can bring to their lives as a result of practicing the regulation techniques.

                In the second part of the workshop, I will focus on developing the ability to look deeply at who we are beyond learned behaviors and habitual emotions. We will discuss developing the relationship of self to self, where the heart becomes a catalyst. The goal of this workshop is to bring us as close to ourselves as possible, activating emotions of compassion and gratitude for the value we add to both our lives and our environment.

Psih. Popescu Aurora

Tapping into the unconscious through art therapy techniques

The American Art Therapy Association defines art therapy as the profession that combines an active creative process with a therapeutic relationship. The art therapist taps into and encourages the process of self-expression, and the result is an art form that helps the person explore and understand their emotions, emotional conflicts and trauma, reduce stress, improve social skills, and increase self-esteem.

Artistic-symbolic expression can bring the unconscious into awareness, it can bring to the surface images that lie deep within the unconscious. Gaining emotional maturity in therapy through art can be within the reach of any client.

For the free expression of emotions, anxieties, frustrations, ideas, tensions, for self-understanding and facilitating communication and relationships, art therapy uses techniques such as: drawing, painting, active imagery, role-playing, therapeutic storytelling, creative theatre, dance, movement, music, puppetry, modelling, bodywork, sculpture, collage, storytelling, photography, etc.

Art therapy is effective in treating:

Anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, depression, grief, addictions, various traumas, shyness, relationship and communication problems, physical, cognitive and neurological problems, negativity, hyperactivity, sleep disorders, expression disorders, chronic diseases, degenerative diseases (e.g. Alzheimer’s).

Art therapists work with children, adolescents, adults and seniors, couples, families, groups and communities. They provide services in mental health institutions, rehabilitation institutions, medical or forensic institutions, work in community programs, health centers, schools, nursing homes, corporate structures or independent clinics.

Psih. Cepoi Stefan

The Vital Art of Relationship - Paradigms of Human Interactions

The central idea of the workshop is to approach the Relationship as an Act of Creation, with a unique and unrepeatable character anchored in the Here and Now. The theoretical elements on which we will base our work process are the six paradigms of inter-human interaction and transaction classified as follows from the perspective of Loss and Gain. Exploration method: Embodyment – Bringing the body into action.

Psih. Jignea Ana

Self-perception and self-esteem in the mirror of the relationship with the self

Building self-esteem is part of the psychotherapeutic process regardless of the nature of the client’s problem and is also essential in the process of penetrating to the deeper underpinnings of the psyche. Self-perception and self-esteem shape the self and influence the whole intrapsychic relationship. In this workshop I will address self-esteem as a transdiagnostic construct, as part of the intrapsychic relationship, it correlates with resilience and posttraumatic growth.  

Limiting beliefs about the self and working with emotions that impact self-esteem – shame, despair, pride, etc. I will address the qualities of the therapist’s self in shaping the client’s new perception of the authentic self and specific techniques for developing self-esteem – metaphors, mindfulness, meditation, guided imagery, etc.

Psih. Grădinaru Oana

Individual therapeutic process explored and integrated into group dynamics

From social psychology and group dynamics to the games and life scenarios of transactional analysis, through storytelling, metaphors and reframing – the aim of this workshop is to take us from social interactions to the parts within us that influence our behaviours, emotions, thoughts when we are a member of a community.

Group dynamics and how the individual adapts to the group can be resources in further individual exploration, as we can identify parts of our individual life scenario from the way we relate to the group.

The way we behave in communities (whatever they may be – be they those of friends, of the workplace, of activities outside family or work) can indicate from what role and to what extent we fit into each of the social contexts in which we find ourselves every day. In this workshop we will explore together how a group is formed, what the criteria for group membership are, how we negotiate our presence or absence in the goals set by the group and our ability to let the creativity within us exist.

I look forward to telling a group story together with and about transactional analysis!

Psih. Marculesteanu Nicoleta, Psih. Leseru Diana Andreea

Integrative psychotherapy and modern diagnostic methods and interventions: BrainMap, Neurofeedback and HeartMath

In the workshop, we will focus on exploring and understanding the Brain Map (QEEG) method of assessment and diagnosis, which is a process of scanning the brain at the Cognitive, Executive and Functional levels.

The Brain Map is basically a map of the brain, which can be used to identify brain activity and diagnose the functionality of neural areas such as those involved in decision-making, concentration, attention, memory, emotion regulation, information management, language processing, etc.

We will discover how this diagnostic technique works and how it can determine and enhance the therapeutic process.

  • The BrainMap involves the use of a device that measures brain activity, so the workshop will include a practical component where participants will have the opportunity to experience how a Brain Map is made and how the information from the brainwave analysis obtained can be used to develop more effective personalized psychotherapeutic intervention strategies.
  • Neurofeedback can be used to help patients regulate their brain activity and improve their mental functioning. Neuro-coherence training is used to create coherent brain patterns. We will learn how we can use neurofeedback training as a way to enhance the integrative psychotherapeutic process.
  • HeartMath, a technology that can be used in interventions that support changing heart rhythm wave patterns to create heart coherence and physiological coherence, a scientifically measurable state characterized by increased order and harmony between mind, emotions and body, producing a state of integration.

Given the integrative nature, we aim to approach these topics from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining knowledge from psychology, neuroscience and psychotherapy. This approach will allow us to improve clinical practice.

In conclusion, this workshop offers a unique opportunity for participants to learn how elements of neuroscience can be integrated into the integrative psychotherapeutic process, using state-of-the-art technologies, methods and techniques of assessment, diagnosis and intervention that provide solutions to mental and emotional health problems, as well as optimizing brain function.

Psih. Mosteanu Loredana

The body, source and resource

We are born with a story. A unique story, full of wisdom, deep and mysterious. Our story helps us grow, validates our truths and challenges our character. It builds our reality and accompanies us in the process of becoming. We live our story from the roles of main character, director and producer. How many of us are aware that we are doing this?
Some stories are pleasant, some are tragic, but all are teachers that hold deep meanings, meanings waiting to be explored. Stories retain their power and can be accessed through our bodies, we can remember them, discover their origin and the message they hold for us.

Our body, like the earth, collects and collates the historical library of our lives. It represents our connection to wisdom, our innate power, while being the repository of the symbols that guide us and the shadows in our lives. Personal history can be the premise of the future and only its examination offers alternatives for the future.
The elements held in the body influence our health, thoughts, relationships and actions, and bringing them to light can generate well-being and harmony.
In every moment of our lives we simultaneously construct stories and history, forgetting to remember the genesis of our suffering and the origins of our truth.
If you feel you don’t know or no longer know who you are, what excites you or where you belong, unfolding your body story will help you see what brought you here. Even if you don’t like what you find, I invite you to keep digging.

The purpose of this practice is to find the passion and born potential of being Creator. Your body tells you stories through symbols, images, colors, patterns and feelings. Allow your body to follow an instinctive healing path, it already has the innate wisdom to guide healing when given the opportunity and attention to do so.