Windhorse Zen Community is pleased to announce that our upcoming December 2015 Zentensive Workshop and Retreat has been pre-approved for 30 CE credits by The Washington School of Psychiatry; credits have been approved for a range of mental health professionals including those for physicians, psychologists, and social workers. This program will run from Monday, December 7th through Saturday, December 12th.

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Intensified Zen practice embodies a remarkable paradox. On the one hand, as the more superficial chatter of the mind quiets down, we naturally open to deeper, non-dual currents of awareness. The edges soften, our hearts open, and we touch into a more natural, universal flow. At the same time, though, the unconscious becomes mobilized, much as it does during the more pressured stages of experiential psychotherapies, allowing for an entirely different level of work.

So these retreats give us the opportunity to touch into, and work directly with, our own restrictive patterns, and to see into the self-isolating forces silently embedded in the structures of dualistic thought. For psychotherapists, this means that a Zentensive can help dissolve some of the artificial distinctions that arise between our notions of personal and professional, spiritual and psychological work allowing us to engage more directly with others.

On a practical level this unearthing process not only offers us new insights and skills, but it complements other therapeutically-based trainings by helping us shift our understanding beyond the level of technique. More than this, though, they can also open us to a richer and broader understanding of the power of the unconscious itself; and by naturally including an intrapsychic focus within the triangle of conflict, they can bring in further dimensions of understanding to all aspects of our work.

To be sure, these retreats are not for everyone; they call for a kind of sustained inward effort that challenges everyone involved. But for those who are drawn to this kind of collective endeavor, they provide a unique and powerful context for genuine transformation.

This December 2015 Zentensive is being sponsored by Windhorse Zen Community, the Washington School of Psychiatry, and Touchstone Continuing Education.

For further information: about the CEs being offered; about the structure of the retreat itself; or to register online, please go to:

http://windhorsezen.org/zentensive-december-2015

and

http://windhorsezen.org/zentensive-december-2015-registration