Facilitator(s) Allison Priestman & Stephen Tame
Date/Time
Date: 12/06/2025
All Day
About this event
The Embodied-Relational Therapy training has been running successfully for 25 years.
In 2025, the 16th intake of the training will bring together the core of the ERT tradition; embodying the 4-stage approach, Reichian character structure and ERT metaskills, and incorporating our passion for connection, movement and stillness, spontaneity, working with the embodied experience of social injustice, psychotherapy theory, wild therapy, and the impossibly complex & impossibly simple task of being human alongside other humans.
At the core of Embodied-Relational Therapy is the study of our embodied relating to self, other and environment. How are, our embodiments shaped by this meeting with the other?
In embodied encounters with clients, we seek to keep awake to our rank, power and privilege as therapist – being curious about the intersections between our own experiences of marginalisation and privilege, and how they meet with our clients’ experiences of marginalisation and privilege.
Stepping into the embodied knowledge that therapy, as all areas of our lives, is political. In this training, we are integrating embodiment, relationship and social justice.
In year one of the training:
We use our embodied experiences to learn and inhabit the four-stage model of ERT: Contact, Information gathering, Amplification and Integration. We have a dive into embodied character theory. We will be exploring our own embodied marginalisation, power, and privilege – and how to work with our clients’ lived experiences of marginalisation and privilege. You will work with breath, movement, internal sensation and emotion, pulsation, proximity, and the possibility of different forms of touch.
In Year Two:
We will explore in more depth specific areas of oppression, for example:- race, neuro-diversity, disability and gender diversity. We support you to deepen your skills and confidence in working physically with clients, deepening your trust in your embodied-relational work.
We attract participants looking for a robust training in working with embodiment and relationship, and we are passionate about supporting you to become more deeply the therapist you already are. ERT encourages spontaneity, creativity, and deep trust of your own inherent competence, and of your clients and their unfolding process.
We will nurture a collective learning community of trainees, enabling a depth of trust and learning. We particularly welcome applicants from marginalised communities. Explorations will be collaborative – building trust so that complex issues and vulnerable experiences can be explored.
To watch a video of Allison and Stephen speaking about Embodied-Relational Therapy and the 2022 training – click here
PRACTICALITIES
Dates:
12-16 June 2025
11-15 September 2025
13-17 November 2025
15-19 January 2026
12-16 March 2026
28 May – 1 June 2026
ERT Trainers: The training facilitators will include Allison Priestman and Stephen Tame – the current ERT training team. At this stage it is too early to say if the team will be expanded for the 2025 training.
Venue: Eden Rise Retreat Venue – beautifully converted barns in rural Devon, close to mainline rail connection. Have a look at their website here: Eden Rise Retreat Venue
Cost: Please contact us for more details on the cost as we’re still pricing the training.
We’re aiming to offer a generous sliding scale to make the course accessible.
The full cost (inclusive of accommodation, food and all training) of Year 1 in 2022 was £3450.
We will add more information about the June 2025 training in the months to come.
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For context, here is information about the 2022 training:
- We will support you to be courageous, heartfelt and passionate therapists.
- We will encourage you to learn how to consult and trust your own body in the work; to inhabit your body in relation to your clients, to be willing to move towards, away, to be available, to be pushed, touched, to hold and be held.
- We will explore, through our bodies, the marginal, the excluded, and the wild parts of ourselves and our clients, waiting to be seen, heard and expressed.
- You will need a degree of robustness and self-awareness to embark on this journey, although the rewards will be great, for yourself, your clients and for the wider world.
Starting in June 2022 we invite you to come and join others in a diverse community of human and other-than-human, that will examine itself, the world of therapy, and the wider world. Many people join us who are looking for a home, a place to belong for their work. - The residential nature of the course means that we will be living, working, cooking and socialising together, This supports a greater depth of relating in a rich community.
- Graduates of the training are eligible to join the Embodied-Relational Therapy Association – a ‘tribe’ for people working in innovative, integrative and courageous ways.
See documents below for more course information and booking process.
The Advanced course is the same price pro-rata (it’s a shorter course so will cost less), and the optional Wild Therapy year which some people take after the Advanced year is generally a lower price.
We ask for an initial deposit of £500.
We are committed to making the course as affordable as is possible. We therefore offer a very flexible approach to payment plans. It is possible to pay upfront, monthly (from time of booking if helpful), at each residential, or we will agree other payment plans to suit you.
For those on low income, we are able to offer up to three concessionary places, of £350 reduction.
(End of 2022 Information)
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For course admin inquiries or queries, or if you have difficulties downloading the application documents please email: [email protected]
Application documents to follow.
For queries about the training, contact Stephen or Allison:
[email protected] [email protected]
Location Eden Rise Sandwell Barns Totnes Devon TQ9 7LJ
Contact Details Contact Person: Paul (ERT Training Admin) Email: [email protected] More contact details: [email protected], [email protected] Website: https://erthworks.co.uk/events/embodied-relational-therapy-training-course-2021/
Cost The full cost (inclusive of accommodation, food and all training) of Year 1 in 2022 was £3450.