The Phoenix Within: Storytelling & Psychodrama Workshop
Exploring Stories through Psychodrama
Indian Institute of Psychodrama presents a 3 day workshop
In our Psychodrama and Story Workshops, archetypal (universally-familiar) situations, relationships, characters, and emotions in stories are identified and explored.
Through Psychodrama we seek to enact and experience the issues, conflicts, and choices of the characters of the stories, and we seek to discover related elements in our own lives.
Workshop Dates: July 17 to 19 / Venue: IIP Office, Chennai
Email: storytelling7@gmail.com / What’s app +91 9884700135
To register: https://forms.gle/pB8FpV7E7QLzzX7Y6
Course Facilitators:
Dr. Magdalene Jeyarathnam is the first Psychodramatist to be trained in India. She uses Psychodrama to work with individuals, couples and groups. Dr Jeyarathnam is the Founder and Director of the Indian Institute of Psychodrama, which is the first Psychodrama training institute in India. She uses Psychodrama to promote mental health with several marginalised communities, such as sex workers, children infected and affected by HIV, people living with HIV, and LGBTQI+ people. She has worked over 30 years as a Group Psychotherapist. The American Society of Group Psychotherapy & Psychodrama (ASGPP) recently bestowed the Neil Passariello award on Magdalene for many years of her work with LGBTQI and HIV+. Magdalene has completed her doctoral study regarding ways of improving mental health through the use of Psychodrama and other Creative Arts. Magdalene’s TED Talk on Psychodrama is at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfDUUugbTeY
Dr. Eric Miller is the Director of the World Storytelling Institute, and is the Assistant Director of the East West Center for Counselling and Training. He was trained in Folklore in Philadelphia (PhD in Folklore from the University of Pennsylvania). And he was trained in Psychology in Chennai (MSc in Psychology from the University of Madras, and One-year Course in Psychological Counselling from the Chennai Counsellors Foundation).
To discuss any aspect of this workshop, please contact us at 9840394282 / 9884700135
The Indian Institute of Psychodrama presents a 3-day workshop, “Exploring Stories through Psychodrama.”
A story presents a model of the past and a model for the future. We identify with story characters, and project ourselves onto them. We vicariously experience the situations that story characters face.
In our Psychodrama and Story Workshops, archetypal (universally-familiar) situations, relationships, characters, and emotions in stories are explored. Through psychodrama, we seek to enact and experience the issues, conflicts, and choices of the characters of the stories, and we seek to discover related elements in our own lives. In the process we might increase our awareness of various perspectives. We might also gain more empathy and compassion towards, and understanding of, ourselves and those around us.
Psychodrama helps one learn more about a story and about ways one relates to and feels about the story. Working with epics, fairytales, and myths can help one to “recognise the power of archetypal elements outside and inside oneself and put one’s personal experiences into a larger perspective. Understanding the functioning of archetypal characters and situations within oneself is a way of synchronising the beating of one’s own heart with the rhythm of the cosmos” (June Singer, Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung’s Psychology, NY: Doubleday, 1972, page 127).
The Workshop title, “The Phoenix Within”, refers to the legendary immortal bird that cyclically burns in flames and then regenerates, being born again out of its own ashes. A figure in Greek mythology, the Phoenix has analogs in many cultures.
Phoenix-like qualities include the ability to rise to the occasion, even if one didn’t know one had it in oneself; to be able to call upon one’s inner resources; to access one’s life and energy source; to be resilient; and to recuperate and bounce back from setbacks and heal from traumas.