Biographical Counselling Training

What is Biography Work? The experiences we have in our lives are both unique and universal. We share many common human experiences, and yet how we piece them together, how we respond to and live through them, and find meaning in them is unique to each of us. Biography Work offers an opportunity to explore the extraordinary and sacred panorama that is your life so that you can take a step back from just being in it to becoming a witness to it. This process opens our mind, heart and will to new possibilities.

Our development doesn’t stop when we reach adulthood – even though we have stopped growing physically much of us keep developing. Who we are at 42 feels very different to who we were at 27. Capacities become available to us at different stages of our lives, and ideally, as we grow and mature, our consciousness, wisdom, understanding and meaning for life also grows.

We have been on a journey since we were born with profoundly individual experiences. Our gender, our place in the family, our ethnicity and where we live all shape us. Biography Work opens up questions about why something might be happening to me that is beyond these outer and material factors that form my identity. Why am I meeting the same challenges or situations again and again? What if these life events had something profound to teach me? How might I see that this has meaning and value which makes it deeply personal and relevant to who I am in the world?

Biography Work helps us notice the themes that weave through our life. It provides us with a map to help us chart who we are and what our life experiences are telling us about our talents, skills, ideals, passions, longings and hardships. It helps us make sense of this unfolding life that we are living - supporting us to experience a deeper, fuller and richer relationship with ourselves, where we can move from being a victim of our experiences to becoming a creator of our life.

Since 2003 an international training collegiate: the International Trainers Forum meets annually. This organ within the General Anthroposophical Section of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum is responsible for specialised collegial exchange, and also for an intervention based evaluation and recognition of the certification and accreditation of professional trainings for Biography Work based on anthroposophy.

Currently, there is no immediate plan on running Biographical Counselling Training in the UK. Please do contact the International Trainers Forum or other English programme providers such as Professional Association of Biographical Counsellors and Biography and Social Art Certificate Program for further information.

There is an one-year course run by Professional Association of Biographical Counsellors introducing elements of the biographical counselling to individuals interested in the UK. This course will offer an introduction to counselling, outlining a framework for developing speaking and listening skills to enable transformative dialogue. These counselling tools will help us form the basis of positive communication that moves from polarisation to enquiry, from conflict to love and from rigidity to possibility. The course will work with events from the past, navigate the present moment and develop awareness of what is coming towards us from the future. Biographical Counselling Skills for Professionals will provide further info.

.