Voice Dialogue (Levels 1 & 2)

A 10-Day Professional Training Offering Continuing Education Units

Dassie Hoffman, PhD, LCAT, BC/DTR and Bridgit Dengel Gaspard, LCSW

This training offers therapists, coaches and consultants an opportunity to acquire an invaluable addition to their therapeutic toolboxes and can also be of great benefit to individuals interested in personal growth who long to fulfill their greater potential. Many actors have also successfully incorporated insights drawn from Voice Dialogue into their character work.

Voice Dialogue, a Jungian-based experiential technique developed in the 1970s by the Drs. Stone, is based on the premise that our personality is made up of a family of internal Selves (or “sub-personalities”). As we grow up, we tend to identify with some and reject others. This over-identification with some Selves (for example our “Responsible Self” or “Protector Self”) and rejection of others (e.g. our “Lazy Self” or “Wild Self”) can create imbalance, blind spots and a general feeling of stuckness and not being whole.

The core of Voice Dialogue work is the experience of meeting parts of ourselves in a structured way. This safe and effective method of personal investigation involves having a facilitator engage in a dialogue directly with various parts of our psyche to discover which Selves we have most identified with and which we have sought to disown, offering us insight into how these different Selves have influenced our lives, liberating us to “grow” a more aware Ego. Deepening our knowledge of our “Primary Self System” is profoundly transformational and energizing. Rather than being driven by our various Selves and blindly reacting in habitual ways, we can navigate with far more choice, flexibility and spontaneity in all aspects of our lives. It can even often reduce or eliminate symptoms of some illnesses and improve overall health.

Voice Dialogue is a powerfully effective technique that can help us: expand and deepen our horizons; identify and release past injuries and grief; prevent secondary trauma and therapeutic burnout; boost our courage; achieve greater inner balance; build better relationships as well as a stronger sense of our own essence; trust our intuition; tolerate not knowing and taking risks; and journey toward personal and creative fulfillment.

LEVEL 1 (3 WEEKENDS)
This in-depth foundational course offers a comprehensive orientation to Voice Dialogue. Using lecture, demonstration, movement and energetics exercises, worksheets, group discussion, visual aids, dreamwork, active listening, supervised facilitations and homework, students will:
• Learn the history and theory of Voice Dialogue
and the Psychology of the Selves
• Observe and dissect a live Voice Dialogue facilitation session demonstration
• Each experience a facilitated Voice Dialogue session and learn to facilitate under supervision
• Learn to map their own and, if applicable, their clients’ Primary and Disowned Selves
• Begin to develop the “Aware Ego Process” that allows us to consciously experience and integrate our various Selves
• Discover how to let the Aware Ego become a conductor of the psyche that orchestrates the Selves so none dominate and none are absent

Saturdays and Sundays, 10am-6pm
March 6 & 7, April 10 & 11, April 24 & 25
10WP46S
Members: $990 / Nonmembers: $1080

LEVEL 2 (2 WEEKENDS)
This level permits us to refine, broaden and deepen our Voice Dialogue work. The material covered will include:
• Learning how Selves operate in intimate, family and professional relationships
• Understanding positive and negative bonding patterns
• Discovering how to identify our reactions in order to more consciously guide them
• Investigating how our current bonding patterns reflect the often unconscious blueprint
set by our interactions with parents or caretakers when we were children
• Generating diagrams of how the Selves of one partner interact with the Selves of the other
• In vivo demonstration of using Voice Dialogue with a couple
• Advanced energetics work (mastering the intentional channeling of energies of specific Selves)
• Learning to embrace all our Selves, not just the dominant ones

Saturdays and Sundays, 10am-6pm
May 15 & 16 and June 12 & 13
10WP48S
Members: $660 / Nonmembers: $720

Notes: Register early, as class size is limited to 25.  Each level earns Continuing Education Credits (CECs): 42 CECs from the International Federation of Coaches, or 39 CECs from the Association of Humanistic Psychology, or 48 CECs from the National Association of Social Workers. For those who want CECs, 2 private supervision sessions are required.

Note: Participants are not required to sign up for both levels, but completion of Level 1 is required to enroll in Level 2. If you have already studied Level 1 elsewhere, contact the teachers as you may be eligible to enroll directly into Level 2. Those who complete Levels 1 & 2 can attend a Level 3 training with the founders of Voice Dialogue if they so desire.

Required reading (available in the Open Center bookstore): Embracing Ourselves by the Drs. Stone, The Voice Dialogue Facilitator’s Handbook by Miriam Dyak. Recommended: The Aware Ego CD Series by the Drs. Stone.

Payment plan available: Call 212-219-2527 x 2 for more information.

Free introductory class on Thursday, February 18, at 6pm.

Dassie Hoffman, PhD, LCAT, BC/DTR, a co-founder the New York Voice Dialogue Institute, has been in private practice and teaching the method for 25 years. She assists the founders of Voice Dialogue, the Drs. Stone, in their Level 3 trainings. She also writes widely on the discipline and is editing an upcoming anthology of writings on Voice Dialogue.

Bridgit Dengel Gaspard, LCSW, is in private practice in NYC and has been involved with Voice Dialogue for over ten years. She co-founded the New York Voice Dialogue Institute with Dr. Hoffman, and also has certifications in Cognitive Behavioral and Dialectical Behavior therapies.

For more information: www.newyorkvoicedialogueinstitute.com