Coming From the Convention

So, the conference has come and gone. The bare bones of it, the structure, are there quite plainly in the timetable published in the leaflet and on the web: experiential spaces and workshops, seminars, demonstrations, discussions, some down time. The impact of these days on me has been way beyond those matter-of-fact descriptions, however: the community, the inclusiveness and humour and creativity that I found there were wonderful. What I brought to the mix, I think and I hope, was openness, and an increasing sense of fantastic excitement.

The excitement was about what I found, of what that community consisted of.

• It was multigenerational, for a start; a spread of maybe fifty years altogether, which made for a really natural basis for that community. Somehow that just opened me up completely, it felt so free and easy.
• It was completely open about feelings, in talking about them and feeling them when they were around, whether at a social event or in a spontaneous one-to-one; never intrusive though, never made a big deal of.
• It was thoughtful and creative, too, not just taking received wisdom but running with it and applying it to everyday life and to ideas, seeing where it would go.
• And it was fun, and funny: I split my sides at the cabaret, which had some wonderfully insightful, hysterically funny sketches in it, but there was everyday laughter too, all the time. The laughter was incredibly helpful when I came up against—and lost to—the American telephone system one Sunday. It needed a Canadian with a phonecard (my saviour, Carol). Go Carol!

Most people seemed to have another string to their bow—art, tantra, couple work, music (which was the focus of the keynote presenter, Michael DiMartino), past life work, dance, even comedy—and to be both working at and enjoying the integration of their "other" passion with primal. Many of the workshops were based around these passions, and they were all the more enjoyable for that. I found this tremendously liberating: it made me remember why I wanted to become involved in primal therapy in the first place—the excitement when you run up against an idea and a way of thinking that just makes sense: "stars have planets," "water is wet," "feelings are important." And there are particularly personal resonances of this for me. I work with a co-therapist, and we're looking at working with couples—straight away the Imago workshop jumped off the page at me (I never got to it, or to its follow up, but that's another story, about jetlag, general doziness and a need to slope off to the pool). And one workshop I did get to, which wasn't scheduled but was held twice by popular demand, was on remote viewing, a powerful extrasensory process that can be learnt, which brings about a sense of connection to something or someone distant. This is a pre-existing fascination of mine, and now I've found the means to follow it up in person, not just on the net, and maybe integrate it into primal work too. That's life-changing, no question.

Jean Rashkind and Larry Schumer, the Convention Chairs, brought together a wonderful mix that worked brilliantly well. I'll definitely be back. And I only ever got to experience this because of the generosity of the IPA as a whole, in setting up a scholarship for an international attendee. So all I can say to others who receive this newsletter in countries outside of North America is, try as hard as you can to get there—it's wonderful. And to the IPA—a big, big thank you.

Jan Armitage offers therapy in London and Brighton in partnership with Franklin Wenham. They are both registered practitioners of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.
http://www.primalengland.co.uk

This article appeared in the Fall 2003 IPA Newsletter.