Trevor Smith Testimonial
“I recently (October, 2016) had the pleasure of attending Dr. Dan Wiener’s Rehearsals for Growth weekend workshop. To say it was a great training experience is an understatement– I have to say that it was the most meaningful professional development experience that I have ever had! While I use Improvisational theater exercises in my consulting work, the way this workshop was conducted was really amazing and helped me move outside my comfort zone. What I really think made this training so powerful is that Dr. Wiener created such a positive and safe learning environment that it really empowered me to take risks that I would not normally take. If you are looking to grow professionally and personally, you need to take this training!”
Trevor Smith B.A. M.A. M.Ed, CLL
Performance Improvement Specialist
Blue Sky Consulting
Reflections on attending a RfG Weekend Workshop
by David Miller, Architect and CCSU MFT graduate
People have often said to me, “Lighten up!” By participating in the RfG weekend workshop I saw how this was like saying, “You’re acting too much like an adult!” What does this imply about me? A simple, but powerful, distinction became clear during the workshop. “Adult” implies “survival mind,” focused on outcome, and “Child” then suggests “adventure mind,” a mind openly curious about the journey itself. And how do children do this? They play! And what was I hooked on typically? Acting like an adult. But wait a minute! If I’m the actor, I can act like a child as easily as I can act like an adult. Suddenly I’m at choice. As an adult I’m free to engage my imagination in play!
People have often said to me, “Lighten up!” By participating in the RfG weekend workshop I saw how this was like saying, “You’re acting too much like an adult!” What does this imply about me? A simple, but powerful, distinction became clear during the workshop. “Adult” implies “survival mind,” focused on outcome, and “Child” then suggests “adventure mind,” a mind openly curious about the journey itself. And how do children do this? They play! And what was I hooked on typically? Acting like an adult. But wait a minute! If I’m the actor, I can act like a child as easily as I can act like an adult. Suddenly I’m at choice. As an adult I’m free to engage my imagination in play!
For me being at choice is what the RfG workshop is all about. We get into ruts, doing what we imagine is necessary for our survival, but are we really using our imaginations? RfG suggests that within our imaginations there are unacknowledged treasure chests full of alternative possibilities. Yet how do we open those treasure chests? RfG offers us a multitude of safe and fun ways to tap into our dramatic imaginations, engaging body and mind through playful, and sometimes surprisingly revealing, interactions with each other. These often hilarious interactions become a way to explore an ever-expanding awareness of who we are and who we can be. And I discovered that the surprises are endless, for we aren’t looking for any “outcome,” even though surprisingly enough one might show up. The many creative avenues explored during the RfG workshop playfully generate new insights about ourselves, about others and how we are all connected.
As therapists, how can we pass onto our clients the value of what we’ve learned through this “hands on” RfG workshop experience? For we need to learn to creatively determine how particular clients “stuckness” might be released by enacting a particular RfG scenario. Our workshop experience, of course, helps begin our own list of possible options. Yet we also have to learn how to direct our clients in the scenario we’ve chosen to enact. So we then practice being the “director/therapist.” A really helpful workshop exercise tying all of this together was our “staging a play” of an actual therapeutic consultation. The actual therapist of the chosen consultation first selects RfG group members to represent the roles of the client family members and then instructs them on how to play their roles. Dr. Wiener then guides the therapist through both the choice and the enactment of one or more “playful” dramatic scenarios that seemed to offer the most therapeutic potential. I put “playful” in quotes, since these enactments can become very serious indeed. Yet it all remains play! That is the beauty of the workshop.
