“Each of us is a seed – history is repeating within us. And each of us has a unique nature and chance to not just replay the past, but to grapple with one’s own personal and collective story, changing one’s awareness in the moment, and so create a different future”. 

Arlene and Jean Claude Audergon

We (Arlene Audergon, Gill Emslie, Anup Karia and Andy Smith) are excited to be working together to offer this new modular facilitation course, ‘Facilitating our Future’. The course is coordinated by CFOR’s Facilitation Training Programmes, in cooperation with Processwork UK for the Intensive course that is integral to the training. 

‘Facilitating our Future’ is designed for practitioners and students who are dedicated to how we might grow beyond the escalating polarizations, conflict and violence of our times — and how we can each take part in facilitating the creative processes needed in our communities and world.

Each course module will focus on the practice of Processwork and Worldwork skills, linking your personal and embodied inner awareness practice with facilitating in outer contexts. You will learn facilitation skills to access the inherent wisdom within individuals, teams, organisations, communities and countries, to find pathways through troublesome and complex situations. 

We will learn and practice a range of skills for facilitating ‘hot spots’ as points of activation and potential transformation, as they arise within organisations and communities, including in conflict zones. We’ll study and learn together how to better facilitate in situations of entrenched polarizations, asymmetry, and structural discrimination, with need for processing community trauma and accountability. 

We will continually return to a focus on you as an individual practitioner, and the vitality that comes from facilitating in teams. This means working with your most subtle awareness practice as inner work, as a part of your teamwork and in your organisational or community facilitation.  

Processwork offers an extraordinary approach to facilitating awareness at points of escalating and cycling tensions and conflict. This includes perceiving the repeating patterns, attitudes and behaviours that escalate inside of our own minds, and inside of our relationships, and communities, and facilitating the discovery of emerging and creative possibilities and pathways forward.   

Over thousands of years, awareness practices have brought us profound teachings. At this important time on earth, with all the dangers we face, we are in terrible need of practices and practitioners to facilitate contact with our sentient awareness that underlies the escalating polarizations — not to ‘bypass’, but to be able to truly engage and facilitate from here.  We need leaders and facilitators, who have a passion and interest to learn and practice facilitation skills, and to explore how our personal awareness links with the wider field that we share.

 

Participants

From our experience over the years in past courses, participants tend to share an interest in linking psychological, social, ecological, and spiritual dimensions. Some participants come with an interest and expertise in community building, social action, conflict resolution, peace building, organisational consultation and facilitating awareness about structural discrimination. Others come with backgrounds in psychotherapy and coaching, facilitating in business settings, and in creative fields.  

If you have a question about if the course is right for you, please feel welcome to discuss this with us. 

Below, you’ll find the course design and description of Modules for Year One and Year Two, followed by information about how to apply and register.   

Course Design and Elements

The course includes Intensives, modules, case study evenings and small group mentoring.

The Intensives are integral to the course and will be attended by additional participants in a larger group of approximately 100. The other modules will be limited to the participants of the Facilitating our Future course, approximately 30 participants.  This makes it possible to focus on how you apply your learning in your own life and work, and to offer small group mentoring. The case study evenings and mentor small groups will take place online, and times for these will be agreed together with participants.

(We understand that sometimes people with less familiarity with our work may want to register for the Intensive only, and then make their decision about applying to the full course after experiencing the work. This may be possible, if spaces are available.)

The Modules, Year One

Module 1:  The Intensive

Collective Dreaming: Embodying new patterns for facilitation, relationships, communities and the world.  

A process-oriented facilitation training with Gill Emslie, Kate Jobe and Andy Smith

February 14 – 18th 2025 

This Intensive, coordinated by Processwork UK, is integral to the Facilitating your Future Training course. There will be a lunchtime meeting for CFOR’s ‘Facilitating our Future’ participants, to welcome you and to meet one another.
(Note: The Intensive is included in your registration to the Facilitating our Future course. If you want to register to the Intensive only, you will register through Processwork UK.)  

The Intensive will draw on Process Work’s systemic, process-oriented, and embodied approach to understanding and facilitating ‘field’ dynamics and ‘collective dreaming’ in relation to inner work, relationships, teamwork, and organisational and community processes. Participants will study and practice methods to uncover dreams, myths, and visions, as underlying patterns for organisational evolution. Recognising that each of us is born into specific contexts with unique qualities, we will explore how our individual contributions and leadership are called upon and shaped by this collective dreaming.

 

Module 2 Meditation in Action 

April 9,10,11 2025 

Course Leaders: Anup Karia and Arlene Audergon

Our focus will be on learning and exploring a process-oriented awareness practice, including developing the ‘meta-skills’ or attitudes which make it possible to bring the warmth and attention needed to stay up close and alongside our experiences, and others’ experiences.  How to simultaneously access the sentient dimension, underlying polarizations, while also fluidly engaging with and facilitating the polarizations and different parts of our experience — as they arise, conflict, and interweave at different scales of our experience, internally, in relationship and teams, within our organisations and within communities and the wider society. 

 

Module 3   The Facilitator Leader 

June 4, 5, 6 2025 

Course leaders: Anup Karia and Andy Smith

Being a ‘facilitator leader’ is about being able to engage with, and facilitate the polarisations and movements in the field, including conflicts in relationships, without just getting swallowed up or staying reactive and creating further polarisation. We will learn to perceive and become aware of how our own and the ‘other’s’ personal and collective histories create powerful emotions and altered states in these scenes and how to facilitate these dynamics. Many dynamics are asymmetrical in terms of power, though these dynamics may appear stable and are normalised over time.  We will look at layers of rank and power complexities in relationships and practise ‘burning wood’ to develop more sensitivity and compassion as we develop our skills as facilitators.

 

Module 4   Conflict Zones  

September 12-14  

Course leaders: Arlene Audergon and Gill Emslie

This module brings learning from our experiences facilitating communities in conflict zones and grappling with post-conflict processes of community-wide trauma, issues of accountability and building pathways forward. This includes conflicts at your kitchen sink and in your communities, conflicts close to home and across the world. It includes communities grappling with the legacy and perpetuation of violent conflict and genocide. We will look at ways of carefully working with altered and extreme states related to war and trauma and how a model of community facilitation is a vital element and contribution for processes of transitional justice and facilitating the future.  

 

Module 5   Process mind, resilience, eldership, and 3D awareness 

November 28, 29, 30 2025 

Course leaders: Andy Smith and Arlene Audergon 

As facilitators and leaders in different fields, working with very difficult situations, how do you sustain awareness and contact with yourself, others, and with nature. What does it take over many years of practice to develop resilience and eldership, detachment and engagement? In Process Work, we describe three dimensions: Consensus reality; Dreaming; and the Sentient or essence dimension. We will explore and practise working with three-dimensional awareness.  Our attention to ‘consensus reality’, including thorough research of the context, history, themes and struggles of the situation we are facilitating, and the details needed to implement projects; Our perception and ability to facilitate the underlying ‘dreaming’ process, including our personal and collective historical experiences, emotions and feelings, and the non-local polarisation of roles and ‘ghost roles’ that involve all of us;  And our deepest sentient awareness, in tune with the Tao, or wisdom of nature, what Mindell has also called the ‘process mind’, guiding us.  

  

Facilitating our Future: 2026 (Second Year)

(Please note, where ‘working dates’ is indicated, still to be confirmed with venue)

In this second year we will deepen our focus on the link between inner work practise and facilitation in the outer context. Linking theory and practice, we will offer opportunities in each module for you to share (if you wish) your particular facilitation challenges and we will focus on the application of learning in a master-class format, allowing you and the group to engage in collective problem solving using Processwork theory and methods.

Year 2

Module 1. The Intensive 2026

You Matter: Individuation of the Facilitator 

Feb 11-15th 2026 

Course Leaders: Anup Karia, Gill Emslie, Andy Smith and Arlene Audergon 

What does it mean for you to feel called to facilitating in a given context, or in respect to a particular theme in your life, community and our world. Whether with individuals, families, organisations or communities? What does it have to do with your identity and positionality in relation to the issues? And how is this a calling for your unique nature, your spirit, gifts and limitations? This intensive offers a kind of inner retreat, to connect or reconnect to your path of individuation and your activity and work in the world. 

We will focus on facilitating mind-body awareness, working with body symptoms and signals, with attention to sensing your relation to the field. Both in respect to your position and accountability in any given moment, and in respect to your long-term sense of purpose and presence as an individual.

We will practice perceiving and facilitating your individual nature, your personal myth (long term patterns), dreams and personal edges, as pathways over collective edges, beyond the status quo, and from where you can facilitate complex situations with respect for your own and others’ wholeness. 

This module is an Intensive course, offered in partnership with Processwork UK

   

Year 2 Module 2: Deepening Awareness in Relationship and Team Facilitation

Working dates: April 17, 18, 19 2026

Course leaders: Gill Emslie and Anup Karia 

This module will deepen our awareness and ability to facilitate relationships and teams — a central tenet being awareness of how the ‘field’ expresses itself through relationship and team dynamics.

Participants will explore complex systemic dynamics and develop techniques for effective communication and collaboration. We will understand how essential it is to think systemically and see how the asymmetry of the dynamics of rank, power, and privilege, along with our positionality as a facilitator, impacts every interaction.

We will recognize and work with both intended and unintended communication signals, develop skills in reading body language, tone of voice, and atmosphere, and deepen our felt sense of relationship and teamwork in the moment. As we develop skills to facilitate polarizations that arise in the field, we will also focus on building team spirit, collegiality, and navigating multiple roles.

 

Year 2 Module 3: Inner Work in Practice   

Working dates: June 5,6,7 2026

Course leaders: Arlene Audergon and Andy Smith

Inner Work in Process Work brings profound gifts that can support you in deeply personal and private ways. It is also at the core of preparing and debriefing every aspect of your facilitation practice. And it is a moment-to-moment practice, while facilitating around heated and complex themes, with individuals, groups and communities. 

This means learning to track your awareness of your own process, what is arising in you, while perceiving and following your client and the feedback from your client, team or group. By noticing essential signals where you are stirred, or touched, or activated, you also are more able to perceive, engage and facilitate within the context you are in.  This means attuning your awareness to your body symptoms and signals and subtle sentient experiences inside of you, while simultaneously sensing and facilitating the atmosphere and dynamics of the context you are facilitating, discovering how these worlds interconnect.

 

Year 2 Module 4:  The inner and outer field of trauma – working with pre-activation signals 

Working dates: September 25 – 27 2026  

Course leaders: Arlene Audergon and Gill Emslie

Facilitating in difficult situations for individuals, relationships, organisations and communities requires great care and awareness of dynamics of trauma. Honing your skills and accuracy as a facilitator, to be able to closely and carefully work with individuals, groups and communities, requires you to appreciate and sense your own must subtle signals, feelings, responsiveness and perception as a facilitator.   

We will study dynamics and skills for working with personal and community wide trauma. We will focus on subtle awareness of pre-signals of activation, as a way of developing care, safety, choice and resilience. ‘Burning wood’ is about getting to know your own personal and collective history, as a facilitator, so that become less reactive, while ever more sensitive. 

 

Year 2 Module 5: Facilitation and Leadership in a Process Model 

Working dates: Nov 6,7,8 2026 or Nov 13,14,15 2026

Course leaders: Gill Emslie and Anup Karia

This final module brings together key learning in respect to themes of facilitation and leadership in the contexts where you live and work.  We will look at leadership in a process model, in respect to perceiving and facilitating the emerging process, and in respect to the devotion, responsibility and service to the underlying process that is structuring organisational and community life. We’ll explore how awareness practice can guide us in stepping into the roles of facilitator, leader, and elder, in order to contribute in these transforming times. 

As this is our last module, we will recognise and celebrate the culmination of our learning and practice, in relation to your individual journeys and next steps, and in appreciation of our relationships and shared completion of the 2 year programme.

Course completion 

A Certificate of Completion will be offered by CFOR, including hours for Continuing Education. 

Arlene Audergon

Arlene Audergon (Ph.D.) is co-founder of CFOR, and a co-founder of Processwork UK. She is interested in the role of awareness and consciousness in individual and collective change, so that as individuals, organisations and whole communities, we can access our innate capacity to process issues of accountability and community trauma, growing beyond our entrenched polarisations, and discover creative pathways forward.

In addition to consulting with organisations, Arlene’s work over many years has focused on facilitating post-conflict communities, in grappling with conflict resolution and violence prevention, particularly in the Balkans and Rwanda. Arlene is author of The War Hotel: Psychological Dynamics in Violent Conflict,  Wiley -Blackwell 2005; ‘Daring to Dream’, chapter in Hart B (Ed.) Trauma and Peace-building, University Press of America 2007; ‘Transforming Conflict into Community, chapter in Psychotherapy and Politics, Totton, (Ed.), Open University Press 2005; and several articles in the areas of Collective Trauma, Conflict Resolution, Process Work, Mental Health, and  Theatre.  Arlene has also developed methods of applying Process Work to theatre and has loved working with actors, musicians, opera singers, improvisers, puppeteers, directors and writers.  As a founder-elder of Processwork UK, Arlene continues to teach in Processwork UK and internationally, and enjoys her private therapy and supervision practice.

 

Anup Karia

Anup Karia is a facilitator, psychotherapist and consultant supporting individuals, groups and organisations to discover their wholeness and creativity. He has a deep passion and calling in seeking what lies beyond the boundaries of our everyday lives and limitations, and in discovering and engaging with diversity issues that both enrich and trouble us as individuals and communities.

He has worked for many years in the fields of trauma, mental health, HIV/AIDS and with refugees and people seeking asylum in the UK. He pioneered one of the first counselling programmes for gay/bisexual men from Black and Asian communities in London.

He teaches Processwork in the UK and internationally and consults with organisations around leadership, conflict facilitation and change.

He was a co-director of and is currently senior faculty member of both Processwork UK and IPOP (Processwork programme in Czech republic) and is co-founder of Asta Facilitation.

He was born in post-colonial Kenya and lives in London.

Gill Emslie

Gill Emslie, PhD, works internationally as a facilitator, psychotherapist, and consultant focusing on process-oriented regenerative practices supporting individual and collective agency to take leadership and facilitate change. She is passionate about life and the need to address the asymmetrical systemic social and environmental justice issues that organise the field, affecting us all internally and in our relationships and communities.

Gill, founder of the Institute of Processwork and Deep Democracy in Barcelona and faculty of Processwork UK, teaches in diverse settings, ranging from NGOs to business and local government. She facilitates in-depth training programs and works directly with leadership teams. When she’s not travelling, Gill lives in the Findhorn ecovillage in Scotland, an NGO providing training on issues of global concern related to sustainability, the environment, peace, shelter, and the creation of a sustainable world.

Gill has spent several years living in remote regions of the Earth. This experience has awakened in her a particular love for the beauty of nature in all its facets, the need for bio-cultural diversity, and a deep concern about our current predicament.

 

Andy Smith 

Andy’s co-founded Diversity Matters (2001 – 2019) which focussed on how to nurture a more inclusive society particularly in communities and in social care and health systems: This work resulted in three international awards for educational/community based design at both university and grassroots levels, with awards for inclusivity, changing workplace practice and lifelong learning.

A GENE (Global Education Network Europe) award for innovation in education was given to the Go Deep Project in 2018. The GoDeep Game is a community building process that builds capacity and networks in communities and neighbourhoods and explores issues of diversity and creates positive action.

Andy is a Human Ecologist by training and has initiated and co-created partnerships, working with government and NGO groups, CSO’s and grassroots communities: Including partnerships with the Scottish Government, Scottish Social Service Council, Minority Ethnic Carers organisations, local administrations and a range of international partners including Erasmus+, The EU’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship programme (Horizon 2020), and the European Programme for Integration and Migration.

Andy is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, supervisor and training supervisor, and teaches internationally. In 2006 and 2009, he was treated for cancer and lives with long term neurological issues. He is interested in how processes that are in the world appear in the body not only as part of our physiology or biochemistry but also as psychological embodied processes that relate to our cultural and social belief systems. Exploring and unfolding complex body experiences is helpful for not only us but also our relationships and the world.