Workshop List

Workshop Descriptions Saturday

Workshop 1 – Pain and Joy on becoming and being a therapist

Naila Dunleavy – Integrative therapist, writer and artist working in private practice.

Poppy Banerjee – Person-Centred/Existential Counsellor

Workshop Outline

The workshop will provide an opportunity to share narratives focusing on challenges and achievements – on becoming and being a therapist. We would like the participants to explore what inspired them to choose to become a therapist of colour in particular.

Workshop 2 – Reflections on keynote talk: Moving through our doorways of shame

Dr Kam Dhillon – Counsellor, Supervisor and Tutor

Workshop 3 – Open Discussion Workshop

 Mickey Peake – Counsellor, group facilitator and BAATN Leadership and Advisory Team member

Robert Sookhan – person-centred psychotherapist and BAATN Leadership and Advisory Team member

Workshop Outline

An opportunity to reflect on the themes of the conference in a supportive, open space.

Workshop 4 – The Joys of GSRD

Kirath Ghataora – UKCP Accred. Integrative Psychotherapist working with individuals and groups in private practice, across community settings and with organisations, with adults and young people.

Dennis L Carney – Therapist, facilitator, trainer and member of the BAATN Leadership and Advisory Team.

Workshop Outline

This workshop space is a gathering for people who personally identify with some aspect of LGBTQIA+ or GSRD (Gender, Sexuality & Relationship diversity).

This queer-facilitated space is a gathering for attendees to process what has emerged from the BAATN conference. Together, cultivating a safer space for LGBTQIA+ peoples to be with their personal and professional experiences and needs.

This space is an opportunity to bring our fuller selves, i.e. the intersections of GSRD, race, heritage, culture and any other/all intersections (e.g. age, disability, class, neurodiversity), that may have limited invitation, space or safety elsewhere. Here the invitation is to breathe into our fullness, all our intersecting parts, identities and experiences to further reflect and process the content and experience of the conference.

Integral to the offering of this space is holistic attention and care. Whatever emerges, let us access and cultivate our resources to freely bring ourselves and be met, with and by fellow queer bodies, minds and hearts.

Workshop 5 – Cacao Meditation Ceremony

Dee Albert – Transactional Analysis Psychotherapist, Integrative Supervisor and Shamanic Practitioner.

Workshop Outline

Join me in this community healing ritual practised by the Mayans and Aztec for centuries. Cacao, also known as the ‘Food of the Gods’, is the ultimate heart-opener. Full of vitamins and minerals, helping our bodies to heal and detoxify while giving the immune system a boost.

You are invited on a musical journey of Cacao, meditation and healing.

Please note this cacao ceremony is a taster session, and a small cup of 15 –20 g will be served.

A few precautions regarding Cacoa’s compatibility with some health disorders or medications – Contraindications

Workshop 6 – Reflection on keynote Talk: Alienation, Trauma and Recovery

Karen Minikin – Psychotherapist and author of “Alienation: Radical and Relational Perspectives in TA Psychotherapy”.

Workshop 7 – Do you know who you believe you are: restructuring negative self-beliefs created by intergenerational trauma and reclaiming the narrative – using a concept derived from EMDR theory

Amal Wartalska – Integrative counsellor and psychotherapist and an EMDR UK- and Europe-accredited practitioner.

Misgana Berhane – Counsellor, Supervisor, Trainer and EMDR therapist

Workshop Outline

The workshop will provide a safe and supportive space for exploring the impact of intergenerational trauma on our unconscious self-beliefs. We will explore replacing negative self-beliefs with positive ones using the concept of “reprocessing of negative cognition” from the EMDR model. We will also reflect on the “cultural wealth” our families and communities would have drawn on to survive, the ways in which they coped with adversity and embodied resilience.

Workshop Descriptions Sunday

Workshop 1 – Reflections on Keynote talk, Our Grief: Black Women Speak

Dr Yansie Rolston – Trainer, facilitator,  researcher and trustee at Future Men, and the Fathers Development Foundation.

Workshop 2 – African diaspora concerns workshop

Rotimi Akinsete, Therapeutic Counsellor (MBACP), Clinical Supervisor (CPPD), Training & Organisational Development Consultant and Mentor.

Judy Nkechukwu, Dramatherapist Counsellor, EMDR Therapist and Clinical Supervisor.

Theme: Increasing our Capacity to Reflect on our Ethnic Identity, Transform our Lives and Influence Others.

Objective: To get really clear about how important it is to be proactive in our thinking about who we are and what we can reflect upon about our lives to make that happen.

Purpose: Understanding our communities from many perspectives, and ourselves better within them – in order to have the greatest possible chance to influence them well and positively.

This workshop space is a gathering for people who identify with an African Heritage.

Workshop 3 – Open Discussion Workshop

Ian Thompson – Counsellor and former BACP’s Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Advisor.

Robert Sookhan – person centred psychotherapist

Jayakara – Transactional Analyst psychotherapist, 

Workshop Outline

An opportunity to reflect on the themes of the conference in a supportive, open space.

Workshop 4 – Taking Up Space

Palak Mehta – Art psychotherapist, mental health counsellor and clinical supervisor.

Naila Dunleavy – Integrative therapist, writer and artist.

Workshop Outline

Taking Up Space is an arts-based workshop. We will be sharing our journeys to becoming brown art therapists. Participants will be invited to take up space for their voices, thoughts, feelings and identities through the creative process. The workshop is open to all.

Workshop 5 – It’s All About Joy

Dennis L Carney: Therapist, facilitator, trainer and member of the BAATN Leadership and Advisory Team.

Workshop Outline

“People of colour have a duty to bear witness to the full breadth, richness, and beauty of being their full and authentic selves. The Black & Brown experience does not begin and end with anguish, grief, violence, and pain.”

Come along and join a group of like-minded BAATN members and participate in a range of fun, highly interactive group games and activities. This workshop involves lots of movement, and everyone will be encouraged to have fun and be their full, authentic selves.

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” — Audre Lorde

Workshop 6 – What Comes First?

Taylor Mitchell: Dramatherapist and artist

Workshop Outline

We will begin the workshop by exploring the concept of the primary self in Jungian theory and the idea of the proto-self as described by Damasio in neuroscience and cybernetic theory. Afterwards, we will open up a discussion around Ubuntu to explore a collectivist perspective on intersectionality and being.

Next, we will move on to the more physical and experiential aspects of the workshop, where we will focus on touch and object exploration. Participants will have the opportunity to embody an object in the space that they would like to celebrate. If not as a whole group, then they can ritualise a way to do this for themselves in the space or later.

The primary self is essentially the totality of one’s self, while the proto-self identifies with the world around it before processing interpretation. Our goal is to create a safe and inclusive space, not to unmask, but to recognise where the boundaries of masks may reside on different faces and to hopefully give agency to individuals who may have been forced into roles they did not choose.

Workshop 7 – Embodied Joy – knowing joy in the body through mindful movement and mindfulness meditation

Salma Darling – a conscious dance facilitator, dance movement psychotherapist, dharma and mindfulness teacher.

Join us for an experiential session where you will be guided through mindful, gentle movement, some freeform dance movement, mindfulness meditation and discussion on knowing joy in the body.  Suited and adaptable to all bodies and energy levels.

This session will support acknowledging, processing and settling the input and interactions of the weekend.

Gentle, yoga type movements will warm us up, help us land deeper in our bodies and shift energy.  With suggestions to inspire movement, your body will lead you in freeform dance, where movements might be small and subtle or big and vigorous. You will be guided in seated or lying mindfulness meditation, inviting access to joy in our physical bodies, concluding with a discussion and questions related to your experiences of the workshop and talk.