THE PROCESS WORK INSTITUTE OF INDIA
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Events Update
PWII hosted a seminar in Mumbai on the 4th and 5th of May, 2002. The seminar, titled “India in Transition: Mysticism and Social Action”, was facilitated by Drs Arnold and Amy Mindell.
Eighty-four people from within and outside Mumbai gathered together for two days to explore and process feelings and positions around the communal riots in Gujarat, terrorism, fundamentalism, tensions between Hindus and Muslims, and other topics.
The participants included social workers and activists, psychologists, therapists, students, organisational development facilitators, teachers, and individuals interested in working for inner and social change.
what is Worldwork?
Pioneered by Drs Arnold and Amy Mindell, Worldwork is a model for working with conflict in small and large organisations, cities and communitites. It is a unique and powerful method for inner and large group transformation through greater awareness and creativity.
In this new Worldwork paradigm, chaos and conflict are viewed as exciting teachers. Conflict transforms into community when we open our hearts to the intensity of conflict, recognise that we are part of every conflict around us, begin to respect the unknown and become willing to work on changing ourselves and the world around us. Worldwork encourages us to drop prescriptive programmes for behaviour and stresses attention and respect for actual human behaviour
as the starting point for change. Traditional methods of dealing with conflict are limited by their reliance on rationality and norms of socially acceptable behaviour, which are intolerant of intense emotions like rage, hostility and passion. The new paradigm holds that change becomes possible when we engage in conflict with our deepest feelings and encourage hidden and marginalised parts of ourselves to express themselves with awareness and skill.
The first Worldwork seminar took place in 1991 on the Oregon coast, and was facilitated by Drs Arny and Amy Mindell with the assistance of a staff of certified process workers. Since then Worldwork seminars have been held in Switzerland, Slovakia, India, and in the United States, facilitated by a large international staff. The last Worldwork seminar took place at Howard University in Washington D.C. in 1999, and the next one is to be held in Greece in May 2002.
about the facilitators
Dr Amy Mindell is in private therapeutic practice in Portland, Oregon. She has worked in over thirty countries, and helped develop process-oriented psychology in the areas of ethics, coma, and dance. She has an M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology and is a diplomate of the Process-Oriented Psychology Center of Zurich.
She is the author of Metaskills, The Spiritual Art of Therapy and Coma, a Healing Journey and wrote Riding the Horse Backwards with Arny. She has published many papers in professional journals. She is presently doing research on the nature of therapeutic practice and completing a book on that subject.
Dr Arnold Mindell is in private therapeutic practice in Portland, Oregon, and has taught and worked all over the world. He is best known for his development of process-oriented psychology or Process Work. Arny has an M.S. from M.I.T., was a Jungian training analyst, and got his Ph.D. in psychology in 1971.
He is the author of 15 books, which have been published in 17 different languages. Among them are Coma: The Dreambody Near Death, The Shaman's Body, Quantum Mind, and Dreaming While Awake. He is known in the area of conflict resolution and has written Sitting in the Fire, a work on conflict and diversity and The Leader as Martial Artist.
Arny has been recognised for his integration of psychology and physics, for interventions in nanoscience, for his work on dreams, bodywork, relationship and for his interventions in psychiatry and near death situations.
Amy and Arny work together as a team, teaching, facilitating town meetings, and working on conflict resolution and organisational development projects for businesses, cities, and Aboriginal communities. They are known for their work with large groups who had been struggling with multicultural problems, terrorism and near riot situations in such places as Ireland, South Africa, Russia, Poland and the Mideast and have been resident teachers at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Ca.
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