Training
Group Facilitation
Soulful Group Faciliation Training
Bookings are now open for autumn 2026
Group work provides a space for soulful connection, shared experience, and collective growth, allowing participants to work dynamically with conscious and unconscious processes to make meaning of their experiences with the use of intuition, bodily sensations and feelings, images, fantasies, and live feedback from others. Groups can offer an accelerated and powerful insight into relational dynamics and provide opportunities for transformative/reparative experiences. For the facilitator, creating space for emergent possibilities between group members where participants make a commitment to learning about and breaking open old patterns, is a central task.
This Group Facilitation course will equip participants with the foundational skills to be able to hold a groups, make sense of key therapeutic group processes and develop strategies to foster growth in groups. The focus will be on the how rather than the what of leading, centring social justice and working with bodies in group settings. The course trainers will bring together theory and experiencing to foster ‘inside-out’ learning in which participants’ understanding is intimately connected to experience. This learning model will support participants to develop a soulful, imaginative and empowering way of facilitating, alongside learning practical competencies of skilful group facilitation through understanding of therapeutic approaches of running groups. Participants are invited to immerse themselves in the experience of being a group participant, to facilitate group sessions with live feedback and integrate learning through the training.
Held over seven weekends across eight months, the course will provide a framework for engaging the life and dynamics of a group, as well as practical coaching in leading of groups. We will be exploring how group processes reflect both personal process and the between spaces where something unknown is attempting to make its presence felt. Particular attention is given to a social political context in groups and the transformational effect of authentic engagement.
This training will be led by a group analyst who has trained in a range of approaches and works integrating a wide range of approaches and another trainer who is a Gestalt-oriented therapist who also uses a range of other approaches. We will have some weekend with a few other facilitators who bring a range of expertise.
While learning to hold a space within which the extraordinary may emerge in the life of a group, the practical aims of this training are to enable participants to:
- understand and work with group dynamics
- contain and catalyse unconscious process
- assess and develop your facilitating strengths and weaknesses
- work effectively with issues of power and oppression
- increase your range of group facilitation skills
- understand your own patterns and roles within groups
- engage with the soul of the group, and facilitate experiences that go beyond the self
This training is for: counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches, trainers and those who have group work experience and are facilitating or planning to facilitate workshops and training courses. It is suitable both for those who wish to incorporate a facilitation element in their work and for experienced trainers who wish to refine their skills.
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“… Negative Capability, that is, when a man (sic) is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
– Keats
Course Components
Saturday & Sunday 10am-5pm
24-25 October: Group Life – finding ourselves and each other in groups
We will study our evolving behaviour and highlight the systemic and individual factors that contribute to the dynamic experience of the group. As a first session, we will be discovering how we come into groups, exploring conscious and unconscious, or out of awareness functions of group identity.
28-29 November: Transformational Fields
Over this weekend we will explore ideas and skills through an experiential and theoretical lens, looking at practical ways of responding to the common dilemmas of facilitation. We will consider the concept of the field and how this can be used to shape the forming of the group process. We will look at the journey of selecting group members and preparation for members entering groups, working with and responding to the emergent material in groups, staying with the flow, trusting and mistrusting, and catalysing interactions through dialogue, enquiry, and metaphor.
12-13 December: Group Dynamics
We look at group dynamics and how they evolve. A practical and experiential theoretical introduction to interventions at different stages of group development will be offered, with particular emphasis on the group formation, early development and working with conflict. Starting with the exploration of safety and norms we will move on to explore distribution of roles within the groups, shame dynamics and support the group may need to explore disagreements and conflicts.
9-10 January: Group Facilitation
The aim of this weekend is to explore in more depth whole group processes and taking a look at different facilitation styles. Participants will be invited to experiment with various levels of group interventions. We will link this to other group formations and different wisdoms and thinking regarding understanding group development.
27-28 February: Working Creatively In Groups
This weekend we will explore working with different types of groups such as working online and using the arts and rituals and working in nature in group settings to support healing and growth. We will provide an embodied experience of being a group member and facilitating these types of groups. We will explore the ethical and cultural considerations in offering these types of groups and the importance of having a clear frame for working using a range of different modalities.
10-11 April: The Shadow of Groups
In this workshop we will explore how to hold individual and collective shadow, and identify how we are able to bring to the surface issues of power and privilege and positioning, looking at how these elements are pushed into the shadow of the group. These include: denial of group shadow; inflation; the need to be special; enchantment and seduction; and group regression to a narcissistic level.
8-9 May: Cycle of the group
In crossing over the threshold at the end of the course and reflecting back over the journey, participants will be invited to explore how they will hold the facilitator role and consider their leadership going forward.
Assessment and awards
You will need to send a written paper / video/ audio application answering questions below in detail of why you want to do this training. You will then be invited to have an interview to explore your training needs and readiness to do this training. As part of the holding through the training, the core trainers will meet with you twice and offer feedback as a mid-review half way through the training and final feedback at the end of the training. This will be a space for you to reflect on your developmental journey throughout the training and your growing needs in facilitating groups. Once you have complete this programme with satisfactory feedback from trainers/ peers, you will also need to complete a reflective write up of your self-assessment with peers. In addition, you will completion the training with a final written paper on the facilitation of a small group within the training. Then you will be awarded a Certificate of Group Facilitation.
Fees
£1,950 for the seven weekends, £2,300 supporters rate*
A small number of bursaries are available. Bursary applications will be agreed by a formally constituted awarding panel and will be considered on the basis of financial need and under-representation in the profession, in particular ethnicity. To apply for a bursary please request a form with your training application.
* Supporter Rates: We believe that counselling and psychotherapy and our work delivering high quality training in the craft of soul-making are vital for transformation in troubled times and can help to meet the needs of a changing world. We wish to make our diploma training as accessible as possible and not limited by financial means. If you feel moved to, and are able to, please consider paying the higher supporters rate when you book your place and the surplus fee will allocated entirely towards our bursary programme.
We will also gratefully receive any additional donation you may feel able to make, please see more details HERE
Location
SW12 9ER, Balham, London
Application
- Why do you want to do this training?
- What makes you want to lead groups and in what context?
- What do you think are skills you need help to develop to run group effectively?
- What are your personal challenges in being a group member
- What is your growing edge as a group member
Please respond to the above questions in detail and share your previous training to date, relevant qualifications and field of experience. Send your answers together with details of your name, occupation, contact address, telephone number and email address to tara@re-vision.org.uk with a non-returnable application fee of £50. Some bursaries are available – details on request.
Course co-ordinator: Anthea Benjamin
Training Team: Anthea Benjamin, Claire Gold, Cathy Lasher, Suzanne Worrica