Endings and beginnings and the rocky road ahead.

A fantastic opportunity to gather yourself before the onslaught of Xmas and the Australian Silly Season, take account of your year, and awaken dreams for 2026

This workshop is designed with a variety of outcomes for participants in mind. Given the time of year it is running, a time of year that is often referred to as the “silly season” in Australia, the focus will be one that participants can immediately capitalise on in their lives, the lives of their families, and communities. At this time of the year many people are asking, “what the heck just happened … January was just yesterday?” or “What a rush – I’m glad that’s over!” and “I wonder what I’ll get up to next year?” and “How the heck will I survive Xmas and the Xmas madness?” Concerns such as, “I had so much hope for this year” and “Where does it all go?” come immediately to mind.

I invite you to this well air-conditioned workshop space in a rather great yoga centre in West End, Brisbane, Australia; and along with me and the other participants begin to unpack life as it’s been, as it is, and as it might come to be. The workshop is about coming to presentness with oneself – the solid bits, the flighty bits, the amorphous bits. And together with some serious use of action methods, we can find new ways to celebrate life, remind us of what there is to celebrate, and plot worthwhile next steps for whatever the road ahead has in store.

This December I will be running a fantastic weekend workshop with a whole new way of making it work.

The workshop itself starts Friday night and runs 7.00 pm – 9.00 pm, continues on Saturday 1.00 pm – 5.30 pm and finishes on Sunday 9.30 am – 1.30 pm. In years gone by when my colleagues and I have run workshops with the normal 10 – 4 or similar day-time times, we’ve often found that the lunch and tea breaks often consume half the workshop time. This leads to multiple restarting times and also to participants having a sense of having “missed” their weekend or their family or their playtime. Instead, the format for this coming workshop allows us to work deeply and have a life.

The fees for the workshops are $35 for one session, $45 for two sessions, and $55 for all three. Can’t do better than that! Come to one, two, or three sessions. You can buy one, two, or three sessions from any of the dates in the tickets.

People considering coming are welcome to attend one or all of the workshop sessions. Each one will have a slightly different focus. These are:

Endings: Using creative engaging processes each person will be given an opportunity to map their year, witness other people’s year-long sojourns, and consider loving and friendly ways to review or reconsider their own experiences. The psychodrama method lends itself to such creative review processes. The process itself is a skill all everyone can take away. Your focus can be on endings that happened, endings that should have happened, or endings that are on their way. Participants will bring the endings that they are most aware of. This one is on Friday.

Beginnings: Beginnings are that magical time when new things emerge … unless those things are tragedy and suffering, in which case … not so magical. In this second workshop, you bring your beginnings – the ones you are involved in or the ones you plan to get involved in. Maybe for the first time, you might do some serious New Year’s resolution planning rather than just rehashing the familiar regulars? Or perhaps next year is one giant beginning time – in which case, come and play with me and the group and let’s look at it, in funny and illuminating ways. If planning is required, we can use one of the many useful tools that work with lazy attitudes – to change rather than ignore them entirely… sort of a Tai Chi way of learning, rather than the Bull at a Gate style of learning. This one is on Saturday.

Rocky Road Ahead: The anthem for this workshop will be the Long and Winding Road because, as the song suggests, the road will never disappear. If you haven’t heard the song for a while or you have never experienced it, I invite you to do so. In this third workshop bring yourself, your dreams, your losses, successes, regrets, any ancient curses you carry, your living breathing relationships, communities, transmissions, goals for life, hopes and hopelessnesses, and join with others to bring yourself to life and find yourself again as we all sail off into that wonderful mad time of the Australian year. This one is on Sunday.

I have been learning about and working with groups for close to 40 years, specifically using group work and psychodrama and deep learning processes, all of which might be called “action methods”. These action methods work because they offer a straightforward way in, when words aren’t enough. Come and join the play and find out about the power of learning with peers and being in group settings when the processes are firmly contained and safety is high. All that is required is an active interest in learning new and novel ways of working collaboratively with others.

If you have any questions please either email on the site, or here drpeter@drpeterhowie.com or text me on 0411873851