Workshops
In-depth workshops developed specially for caretakers and the helping professional.
Check them out below.
WORKSHOP NUMBER ONE
The InterPlay Way
for the Helping Professional Retreat
Lead by Sheila K Collins, PhD MSW
& Lynn Coghill, LCSW, MSW
The InterPlay Way for the Helping Professional provides art-based tools and skills for professional helpers to enhance their work with clients of all ages and abilities.
The 12 hour weekend retreat is presented in a context that creates community, teaches helpers to be more embodied (integrating mind, body, emotion and spirit), increases ease in their professional lives, and fosters a freedom of expression for themselves and when the tools are used, for their clients.
What Will You Learn?
Safe Enviornments
Learn practices to help establish a safe environment for clients who carry the effects of earlier trauma in their bodies.
Teach Body Wisdom
Be able to teach clients how to access their body wisdom and use it to enhance self-confidence and self-determination towards their own goals.
Access Body Wisdom
Learn ways to access and use the wisdom of their own bodies to increase their responsiveness to their clients’ needs
Art-Based Tools
Experience how art-based tools of movement, song and story-telling enhance clients creativity and connection to one another
The Weekend Retreat
Dates: TBD
Location: TBD
Continuing education credit is requested for social workers and could be requested for Nurses, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists, and Licensed Professional Counselors if participants notify us in time.
More About InterPlay and its Value to Helping Professionals
InterPlay is an active creative way to unlock the wisdom of the body. It is a art-based system that aims to facilitate connection and community between people of all ages and abilities, across cultural barriers and divisions such as race, class, age, ethnicity, religion, and differences of political opinion.
This program provides transformational tools, ideas and practices for clinicians and other helping professionals. It draws on the deep body wisdom of the InterPlay philosophy and applies it to the challenges, stresses, and needs of those whose job it is to help others.www.interplay.org and www.interplaypittsburgh.com
Join Sheila and Lynn and learn how:
- Body Wisdom tools address both professional demands and personal challenges
- Creativity leads the way to insight, health and well-being
- Simple forms give participants access to the “harder to articulate” aspects of their work
- Professional peers can support them to do their best work in a sustainable way
- Non-verbal techniques move helpers and their clients more quickly from stress to ease
- Indirect methods shift us from fixing problems to creating new possibilities
- InterPlay tools easily access the wonder, mystery and joy of human interaction
- www.interplay.org and www.interplaypittsburgh.com
WORKSHOP NUMBER TWO
Finding and Living in the Self-Care Stillpoint
A Self-Care Playbook for Caregivers to Find Ease, and Time to Breathe, and Reclaim Joy.
Lead by Sheila K Collins, PhD MSW
& Christine Gautreaux, MSW
When Your Job is Caring For Others – For Employees and Volunteers
When Your Job is Supporting Those Caring For Others – For Leaders
Based on the recently released Stillpoint: A Self Care Playbook for Caregivers to Find Ease and Time to Breathe and Reclaim Joy these workshops and presentations address the health and business case for encouraging and enabling caregivers to take good care of themselves. Participants will learn 5 skills of Self-Care to better attune to their own needs, pay attention to their own somatic selves, and take actions on their own behalf to unlearn self-defeating habits and mindsets. Workshops include:
- “Getting to know you better” moments
- Personalized and customized takeaways
- Live, during the session polling to mine group wisdom
- May be adapted for 30, 60, 90 minute, ½ day or day-long time frames
Meet the Authors of Stillpoint
Sheila K Collins, PhD, MSW
Sheila has referred to herself as a “dancing social worker” for over 40 years. Bringing the perspective of a dancer and theater artist to her work as a social worker, professor, clinic director, keynote speaker, and organizational consultant, she writes, speaks and advocates for the power of play, dance and the expressive arts to help us make it through life’s toughest challenges.
Stillpoint was written originally to help social work students with their self-care, and the revision as a response to the proliferation of care-giving responsibilities in women’s lives. Her award winning book, Warrior Mother: Fierce Love, Unbearable Loss, and the Rituals that Heal, tells of her journeys with two of her three adult children and her best friend through their life-threatening illnesses and deaths, and of the rituals that helped her family to heal.
Her engaging 2016 TEDx talk, “When Death Threatens,” demonstrates the challenge and the gifts of being a caregiver to a loved one dealing with a death-defying illness. Sheila holds an MSW from Wayne State University School of Social Work and a PhD from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She currently consults with individuals and organizations, helping them to tell their stories in transforming ways. She directs the improvisational InterPlay troupe, Wing & A Prayer Pittsburgh Players.
Christine Gautreax, MSW
Christine Gautreaux holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Social Work and is dedicated to the pursuit of play, joy, art & social justice. Christine’s superpowers include connecting people, helping folks manifest their dreams, standing up against injustice and using art to make a difference in the world.
She currently uses performance art, movement, poetry, storytelling and Interplay to address issues of oppression with women who are incarcerated, people living with severe and persistent mental illness and homelessness. She also works with activists and artists to maintain balance and self-care during these intense times we find ourselves living.
Christine Gautreaux has professional experience with successful grant writing, community organizing and social media marketing. She is a life coach for caregivers who are burntout and ready to take back their own life and make it delightful again. She is the co-author of Stillpoint: A Caregivers Playbook to find ease and to take a deep breath and reclaim joy.
SHEILA’S CLIENTS AND COLLABORATORS HAVE BEEN
HOW TO
Work with Me
Helping people in all phases of life to find and live their best life now!
CONSULTING
I help organizations with students, clients and employees learn the skill of grieving well based on my own experience, as a social worker and having helped many people find the gift hiding behind their grief. This work begins with a single conversation.
CARE-GIVING ONLINE GROUP
I host a LIVE, and weekly, online self-care group for caregivers to support the amazing individuals working with loss daily. Here you gain access to me, my principles and exercises to take care of yourself, while caring for others.
SPECIAL EVENT SPEAKER
I customize every presentation, tapping into my experience as an improv artist, author and grief consultant. For group sizes of 25-10,000, I bring powerful topics to life whether it’s for an hour, half-day, full-day or multi-day experiences. Ask me for details!
WORKSHOPS
When organizations deal with loss, I develop workshops after interviewing representatives from the organization to insure the experience will be relevant to their members and the goals of the organization. I guarantee a lively, thought-provoking and transformational workshop.
TESTIMONIALS
