The Deep Play Institute (DPI) presents Parts Practice: Circling Meets Psychodrama: “Within You and Without You,” our third Parts Practice weekend intensive. We will be combining the practices of Circling and Psychodrama to offer participants a chance to intimately explore their psycho-social-political-spiritual selves, moving back and forth between the interpersonal and the intrapersonal, and interpreting the relationship between the two. These two practices each enable rapid depths and intimacies with oneself and others, and in combination, promise to broaden our understanding of how the personal shows up in the interpersonal and vice versa. 

Psychodrama is an action method (developed in the 1920s by Jacob Moreno in Vienna) in which participants use spontaneous dramatization, role-playing, and dramatic self-presentation to engage a situation or encounter. It is a therapeutic practice for diving deeply and playfully into the depths of one’s psyche, using the group to perform remembered or imagined scenes from one’s life, and to experiment within the scenes. In a typical Psychodrama, one participant volunteers to be the protagonist and acts out their "drama" with the aid of the director, who guides the process, and other group members who perform the other characters in the protagonist’s story. It is a highly structured technique with methods to establish safety, minimize projection, and enable rapid depth and transformative expression. 

Circling is a here-and-now practice designed to deepen connection, authenticity, and presence in groups. It was developed by Guy Sengstock in the 1990s and it involves exploring interpersonal dynamics as they occur, with an emphasis on empathic attunement and embodied experience. Circling invites disclosure of interpersonal impacts and observations, which can help participants gain clarity on their relational patterns. Circling is informed by T-groups, non-violent communication, and meditative awareness paradigms, and the practice has a lot in common with Psychodynamic Process Groups and Group Relations Conferences. 

The weekend will oscillate between Psychodramatic techniques and Circling, and we will explore the ways each influences the other. The dance of zooming in on individual psyches and zooming out to a broader interpersonal landscape beckons us towards the beauty of interconnected systems—their synchronicities and dissonances on multiple levels of analysis. 

This intensive is designed for anyone curious about their inner world and their relationships to groups, whether they are novices or experts in parts work and group work. The focus will be on experientially diving into practices rather than didactic learning. Participants will leave the intensive equipped with tools for Psychodramatic play and Circling that can be practiced independently outside the group.

–🕝— SAMPLE SCHEDULE—🕝–

Saturday
10:00-1:00: Safety agreements, sociometric warmups, exercises to explore inner parts, parts circling in large group.
1:00-2:00: Lunch break
2:00-6:00: Psychodrama introduction, somatic warmups and ally work, Psychodrama vignettes

Sunday
10:00-1:00: Alternating Psychodrama vignettes and Circling
1:00-2:00: Lunch break
2:00-5:00: Alternating Psychodrama vignettes and Circling
5:00-6:00: Integration and reflection

*This is a sample of how the weekend might be organized and not a guarantee. It will likely shift somewhat as we hone our plans.

–🌾— PRACTICALS DETAILS —🌾–
​
Price: Tuition price is tiered based on an sliding scales of income/subsistence. All prices are in USD.
Early Bird Until Sep 9: Tier 1 $300 / Tier 2 $225 / Tier 3 $150
Regular Tuition after Sep 9: Tier 1 $350 / Tier 2 $275 / Tier 3 $350
BIPOC: Tier 3

Sliding Scale: Please try to reasonably and honestly select the price that reflects your economic situation. If you are unable to find a price that is suitable for you, please get in touch [thedeepplayinstitute@gmail.com]. We are committed to covering our basic costs, while also making this possible for everyone who needs it.

Maximum Participants: 13 

Covid Policy: We will follow CDC protocol regarding covid isolation and engagement. If any participant has symptoms of covid (i.e. cold symptoms), we ask you to please take a home-test and if you test positive you cannot attend the workshop. If you test negative, and you are sick, we ask you to still wear a mask (as tests can deliver false negatives). For everyone else, masks are optional. 

Cancellation Policy: Refunds are available up to 30 days before the event - minus a $20 processing fee. After this time we are unable to provide a refund for the event. Partial refunds might be given if a cancellation takes place under extenuating circumstances (e.g. a death of a 1st or 2nd degree family member, serious non-preventable illness or accident requiring hospitalization). Refunds in such cases remain at the discretion of the local organizers and will be decided on a case to case basis according to the timing of the cancellation and other factors. 

Partial Attendance: All participants are required to attend the Opening on Day 1 of the Intensive. Given the intimacy and trust building inherent to the program, we highly recommend that all participants plan to stay for the entire weekend. 

Out of Town Participants: The Deep Play Institute is not able to provide accommodations for out-of-town participants. DPI is also not able to refund any travel or housing costs in the unlikely event of cancellation. 

NOTE ON EMOTIONAL REGULATION: This intensive is designed for highlighting and exploring the emotional landscape that unfolds within the group, and not well designed for majorly flooded emotion from outside the group. If at this moment in your life you find you are highly activated by something you cannot set down, it's best not to participate at this time. We understand that therapy can be very expensive and trusted therapists are hard to find, and there might be some temptation to come to this group for that kind of care, but it is not designed for that kind of individual attention, and the ask is that you have some settledness and calm available to you so we can play deeply together. The practices on offer are designed to cultivate vulnerability, with its pleasures and its hardships. 

The practices tend to surface conflict and hurt that might conventionally be quieted or minimized. It is common to experience triggers of past psychological wounds within this practice, and this should be accounted for as a possibility. The intimacy of these practices might be compared to the way one's deepest romantic relationships sometimes surface one's most challenging psychological material. The facilitators will use techniques to contain and care for what arises, but will not be able to provide ongoing care for emotional fallout. The invitation is to be watchful of one's own safety and opt out in little and big ways as needed, and to have emotional processing methods in place (such as therapy, meditation, journaling, processing with friends, etc) that can help you learn with and from what happens at the intensive. 

About the Deep Play Institute The Deep Play Institute is a nonprofit organization committed to exploring life’s deepest questions through transformative play. DPI’s facilitators – therapists, artists, coaches, and philosophers – aim to use play to bring people into an experiential questioning of what it means to exist. Each program that DPI runs is a unique container, creatively constructed and inspired by practices that include: Gestalt therapy, Process Work, Psychodrama, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating, Nonviolent Communication, Circling, coaching, performance art, contact improvisation, experimental theater, LARPs, surrealism, existential games, and various schools of meditation.

FACILITATORS

TESTIMONIALS
FROM PAST PARTS PRACTICE INTENSIVES WITH NETTA & AARON

​"A safe space to explore our inner worlds." 

"I would recommend Aaron and Netta to anyone hoping to learn more about IFS and psychodrama. Their capacity to remain connected to their breathe and inner sanctuary while staying authentically connected to the group was miraculous!" 

"The workshop was fantastic. I felt very comfortable, open, engaged and learned a lot about myself. The facilitators were authentic, energetic and very knowledgeable. They provided excellent, vulnerable demos and chose activities wisely. They're definitely engaged in some deep work and it was interesting and meaty content throughout the weekend."

“Aaron and Netta are a dynamic, caring duo who introduce a great balance of framework and freedom. I have attended a number of workshops, and, each time, I leave with a sense of having so much more to play with and do in this life.” 

“I'll be thinking about the tools and techniques from this workshop for a long time.”