Description:

Aging is viewed as a detriment in our society. Yet, without aging we do not live. Aging allows us to mature. As we grow in years, we often are seen as a disposable commodity. This workshop redefines maturity into a new paradigm called ‘eldering’. Eldering is moving from the external into one’s inner life to connect with what really matters to us. Eldering encompasses a valuing of each other, future generations, and the planet. Eldering, now more than ever, is a way of being that is essential for our society to survive and thrive.

By developing an attitude of eldering or eldership, we can also guide our clients to access their own eldership.  We can help our clients to call upon their inner wise elder as we confront the challenges of these times. We help them move through their existential anxiety and lack of agency to a more empowered place. This is especially relevant given today’s issues such as the pandemic, racial injustice, healthcare, as well as climate and economic insecurities.

Through didactic material and experiential processes, you will be invited to explore your personal identities and to develop frameworks for conceptualizing living and aging, meaning and purpose, for yourself and your clients. No matter the chronological age of you and your clients, this workshop will enlarge the contextual frame of your psychotherapy practice.

Nader Shabahangi, PhD., helps people look at their attitudes about their lives and maturing. He unfolds how cultural, societal and familial stories are often internalized by individuals and can block our sense of joy, our continued growth and learning.

Nader has been facilitating individual and group learning for over 20 years. He has a dynamic and interactive teaching style that keeps individuals engaged with experimental learning, peer coaching, and lots of humor.

He is a licensed psychotherapist in California and received his doctorate from Stanford University. Nader has been on the leading edge of working with elders through developing and maintaining elder care communities in the Bay area since 1995. He has authored and co-authored 6 books on Elders and the process of aging. Nader is a past president of the Existential-Humanistic Institute. Presently his goal is to develop the concept of an Elder Ashram which follows timeless principles and practices of our perennial philosophies and wisdom traditions.

You can read more about Nader here: http://www.ehinstitute.org/member-shabahangi.html

A relevant article by Nader here: Shifting Values: Aging, Elders, and the Long View of Life

References for the Workshop here: References for 2020 Workshop

For inquiries, contact Ryan Brown: treasurer@ehnwpdx.org or (503) 902-1141

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand principle goals of eldership, particularly in regard to psychotherapy.
2. Learn about the history and ways in which the humanistic movement dovetails with the emergence of a new eldership concept.
3. Small group and dyad exploration of the concept of “eldership” as relevant to both personal health and well-being, and to psychotherapy practice.
4. Learn skills to apply an eldership view of a human being’s life with oneself and with one’s clients.
5. Explore and understand the individual and societal health implications of eldership, of a non-hierarchical, systemic view of humans in relationship with other forms of planetary life.

Timeline:

9:00 – 10:30 am – Explanation of the principle goals of eldership, particularly with respect to psychotherapy; deconstructing our dominant concepts of aging and life; exercise on body symptoms to look at our own personal aging, life, old age constructs;

10:45 – 12:15 pm – Exploration from a historical perspective of the ways in which the humanistic movement dovetails with the emergence of a new eldership concept; the humanistic and process work images of the human being, of aging, of life; the different levels of reality;

1:45 – 3:15 pm – Dialogue and discussion designed to facilitate the development of an explicit eldership view of a human being’s life; the happiness U curve; exercise of life-myth; discussion of life-myth – our basic tendencies in life;

3:30 – 5:00 pm – Small group and/or dyad exploration of the concept of “eldership” as relevant to both personal health and well-being, and to psychotherapy practice; exploration regarding the psychological and societal health implications of eldership and a non-hierarchical, systemic view of humans in relationship with other forms of planetary life; concrete steps to incorporate eldership into our everyday lives and into our psychotherapeutic practice;