After very good experiences with opening self-learning meeting sessions for married couples as a part of Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs project for functioning family support, we will open second group for married couples.

Successive seminars offer the couples possibility of meeting their own selves and their spouses in intimate group. Meeting, reunion through having experiences with clay, stones, images. Talk to the other without words but using own body language only. Space for listening each other. In final reflection we discover together uniqueness and potential of each married couple.

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM OF THE MEETING SESSIONS

1. Male-female world. Relationship between man and woman as a family foundation. Role of a man and role of a woman. Meeting with masculine and feminine part inside ourselves and their roles in mutual understanding within the couple. (Expectations, family crest – joint couple creation. Theory of a couple, male and female inside me, joint sculpture: modeling clay – women model female and then male inside themselves, men model male and then female inside themselves, in next step they each put their models together and in a final step they both put together their creations and therefore make one joint sculpture. Self reflection of individual and joint work. Mutual feet massage.)
2. Way of life, common way of life. (Photos, roots and rituals of original end new existing family, creating timeline using strings and stones, accession to each other, opening heart – non-verbal exercises, reflection.)
3. Relationship within a couple. (Pair coherence increasing and decreasing factors, pair developmental stages. Pair imagination, working with emotions and attitudes within a couple, elements of transactional analysis, rituals in pair, sexuality in pair.) 
4. The couple and raising children (Pair role in raising children, Developmental Psychology of a child in its relationship towards socially emotional environment of a family, theory of separation, regressive imagination, sibling relationships.)
5. Psycho-social development of an individual from prenatal period up to adulthood. (How children go through different periods of their growth and personal development and what needs they fulfill in each particular period. What to pay attention? Special, abnormal children’s behavior, psycho-somatic symptoms – behavior disorders, eating disorders, allergies, gastritis, irritable bowel syndrome…)
6. Family system relational field. (Working with sibling and family relationships. Modeling relational fields. Searching possibilities offered by the system. Possibilities of a family development.)

Place of meeting sessions:
Comprehensive Therapy Center in Hradec Kralove, Kavčí plácek 121, Hradec Králové.
Date and time of meeting sessions:
First new group meeting will be specified after the capacity is filled. Following meetings will be held 2-3 times a year.

SELF-EXPERIENTIAL AND SELF-LEARNING MEETING SESSIONS FOR MARRIED COUPLES

First closed group participants’ reflection (A1 – group A, 1.meeting)
(MLSA – Functional family support project 2010: Healthy family – July 25.-30. 2010)

What did the workshop for families bring to me? Can I use it for my life? How?
-    This workshop for families surpassed my expectations. Amazing lectors, Hadas married couple, guided us intensively through self-recognition with connections to our children, all that in very intensive but nice atmosphere. For myself I take from it how to solve and fix relationship with my son, how to get closer to him and loose the created barriers and also how to deal with my daughter and wife.
-    Incredibly deep view into myself. First we talked a bit and introduced ourselves and then we started to draw. Well, I started to be impatient wondering when he’s gonna start with the actual lectures. But later, when we got to talk about what we drew, why we drew it and what we felt I started realizing that we were actually getting deep in our souls and that is where everything comes to discovery. It went very smoothly and gently and in really great atmosphere. We were all surprised by how it worked. How much we could actually get to know about ourselves and how easy it was. Probably, we would never be able to get that deep and far just by ourselves. At last it surpassed my expectations totally, 100%! The lectors were great, they just merged with us perfectly. They breathe with us, laughed with us… They became part of our group as easily as we were just old friends. All topics had its structure but were flexible to adjust and fit to us according to our personal needs and situations. It was truly unbelievably amazing experience for me. I could touch my very deep soul. I came to understanding some things that tortured me and were big burden to me for a long time. I deepened my relationships with others in our group. We were truly great group and I would love to continue meeting. And I would wish everyone else to experience it too!!! If people could experience this before actually getting married and having children, they wouldn’t hurt each other as they do now!!!
-    First of all I want to express my deepest gratitude for beautiful deep experiences – sometimes painful but very challenging and useful at the same time offering plenty new opportunities for my personal growth, marriage development and all of us who were there in general. Thank to exercises, talks and personal consultation I realized and understood what is important for our family to do in order to be happy. I could see our weaknesses and what is necessary to take care of first. Very practical explanation of how we are getting into the real – not only physical – maturity through different stages. This understanding is very useful for us as parents in order to see the gaps we need to fill in our personal development and also what we can give to our children to help them become mature adults. Getting free from fear that when there are storms in relationship it means there is something wrong. Other way round, if we want to move forward it needs to come out first. Realizing the positions of communication: Parent-Adult-Child and how it affects our emotions. Note that children need quite good parents (but not necessary ideal) to push their children out of the family social uterus with love so, the children actually see and feel the reason to leave their original families.

What was the most interesting and what I liked the most?
-    Transaction analysis. Modelling the child inside me and all the other work with models.
-    Drawing family crest, modelling clay, intimate atmosphere inside our group, openness, sincerity, understanding and acceptance from others, great access from lectors.
-    Whole program was very balanced – full of humor and lightness but still I had a feeling that I received exactly what I searched for and needed. Creative work, modelling clay, drawing family crest, modelling masculinity and femininity, connecting them two together and finally putting it together with the model of our spouse – that was unbelievably exact and deep discovering process!!! I also liked talking about person’s development into maturity and sports activities which I thought as something unimportant of at first. But then I realized how important experience it was for our family. I liked that we all accepted each other and we all were accepted by the Hadas married couple without exception.