A Trauma-informed, Embodied, Multi-sensory Training Workshop for Multi-disciplinary Practitioners who support people in their journey from Depression to Joy.
With Dr Elaine Grech (Ph.D.)
Warranted Gestalt and Systemic Psychotherapist,
Expressive Arts Therapist (EXAT)
Accredited Supervisor and Warranted Teacher
Date: Saturday 4th October 2025
Time: 8.30 am to 1.45 pm (5 CPD hours)
Location: Pembroke (Limited Number)
Price: 120 € *
(includes free-flowing tea breaks and a PowerPoint presentation with tools)
Early Bird: 100 € if you pay by the 4th August 2025
*Payment is non-refundable and non-transferable. Please read all the information before booking.
• Would you like to practice embodied, trauma-informed, multi-sensory expressive therapy interventions that can be incorporated into our work with people who experience depression and their significant others?
• Would you like to develop your attunement to the varied multi-sensory strengths and needs of different service-users?
• Do you aim to integrate this multi-sensory tool kit within a Gestalt and Systemic informed way of working?
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being. Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart“. Carl Jung
Aimed for: Multi-disciplinary practitioners who want to learn how to incorporate multi-sensory embodied expressive arts therapy techniques. These ideas are also contextualised within a Gestalt and systemic framework.
• One does not need to be artistically skilled to develop this approach. What helps is cultivating curiosity to develop a multi-sensory approach to expressing oneself, thereby being of service to the people we work with.
• Since the workshop is experiential, it also aims to support the personal and professional growth of the practitioners.
• The professionals include psychotherapists, family therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, guidance teachers, teachers, creative expressive arts therapists, social workers, managers, child and youth care workers, support workers, holistic well-being practitioners, etc.
My journey from darkness to light has rooted a deep passion for this process. I am an explorer who, throughout my life from childhood and leading up to adulthood, have experienced episodes of depression and anxiety. I am grateful to share that, over time, with the guidance and inspiration of various multi-disciplinary practitioners, I have managed to transcend the darkness, and I have been blessed with a good enough sense of unconditional joy and well-being for many years. I have committed myself to being an advocate for wellbeing, as well as for mental health professionals like us, to find our secure bases where we can process our vulnerabilities and attend to our own holistic well-being needs. I refer to the process as “care for the caregivers”.
The trauma-informed, multi-sensory embodied therapeutic interventions were pivotal in my recovery. In time, as I transitioned through the process of healing, I kept practising a few of my favourite ones as part of my preventive mental health daily toolkit.
Therefore, the therapeutic interventions I would like to share with you in this workshop are on depression (Saturday 4th October 2025) and the other two training workshops, which you can find on the website:
• anxiety (Friday 5th September 2025)
• anger and forgiveness (Friday 21st November 2025)
These are the ones I learnt/received and practised first on myself and then, over the years, integrated them into my work with fellow explorers (clients and supervisees) who were also in the process of experiencing anxiety and depression. The trauma-informed expressive art therapeutic interventions, which I am now officially trained in as an expressive arts therapist, will also be integrated within the other two training modalities I am trained in: Gestalt psychotherapy and Systemic Couple and Family Therapy.
Research in trauma advocates for the incorporation of sensory-based interventions that can help regulate emotions (Levine & Frederick, 1997; Malchiodi, 2020; van der Kolk, 2015). People are different in their dominant sense, the one they use most easily to express themselves, learn and heal. Visual learners might find themselves more comfortable initially expressing themselves through colour, marks, scribbles on paper, or visual symbols rather than words. Kinesthetic learners might first become aware of their experience through attuning to their body movement. Auditory learners orient themselves to sounds. So, while some people's expressions through the senses support them in eventually finding the right words and reflecting (bottom-up approach), others might need to start by talking and then get in touch with their senses through sensory-based interventions (top-down approach).
In this workshop, which focuses on working with depression and cultivating joy, we will explore embodied multi-sensory expressive therapy interventions that attune to the specific sensory needs of the people we support. When working with individuals, couples, families, or teams, these needs might differ even within the same system, and the facilitator can develop therapeutic possibilities that are attuned to the different needs within a system.
We will explore and practice trauma-informed multi-sensory expressive therapeutic interventions incorporating:
• Embodied, Sensory-based interventions, including breathing and interoceptive sensory awareness and movement
• Visualisation-based interventions
• Sound-based interventions
• Touch-based interventions
• Smell and taste-based interventions
These multi-sensory interventions are contextualised within a trauma-informed, integrative meaning-making model.
Booking and Payment Procedure:
1. Booking through the website:
https://www.drelainegrechpsychotherapist.com/upcoming-events
and click Register Now on the event of your choice. If the website allows you to book, it means there are availabilities. If the workshop is full, there will be a notification which offers the option of a waiting list.
2. How to secure your payment:
• Payment must occur within 24 hours; otherwise, your registration will not be secured.
• Write your name and the workshop’s title when processing the payment so that the payment can be identified.
• Please email payment confirmation to
ZWxhaW5lbWFyeWdyZWNoIHwgZ21haWwgISBjb20= so that I can confirm your booking: Name and Surname, Workshop Title and Date, Method of Payment chosen, and email address for correspondence regarding the workshop.
3. Participants will receive a receipt of payment via the email provided within the following week and, after completing the workshop. within a week, a certificate of attendance with the actual number of CPD hours completed. The certificate will reflect the completed hours; therefore, please ensure you are present for the entire workshop.
4. Please note that it is on a first-come, first-served basis, and your booking can only be confirmed after payment and registration.
5. The payment is non-refundable, except in the rare event that the facilitator cancels the workshop. The fee for the workshop IS NOT transferable to someone else. If the person who has booked and paid cannot attend, they cannot transfer their booking to someone else.
6. Bookings must be made individually; if an organisation wishes to sponsor employees' attendance, prospective workshop participants are still required to book and pay individually. They will be given a receipt of payment in their name, and they can choose to present it to the organisation.
7. Approximately a week before the workshop, you will receive an email with the location details and suggestions for preparing for the training.
Payment Options:
Full Fee 120€
Early bird fee: 100€ if you pay by the 4th August 2025
Payment Options:
Payment on Revolut
or Mobile Banking: 00356 99447307
PayPal
ZWxhaW5lbWFyeWdyZWNoIHwgZ21haWwgISBjb20= (If using PayPal, please add 5 euros to the amount to cover the PayPal Fee).
Online Bank Transfer
SWIFT Code: VALLMTMT IBAN: MT60VALL22013000000040013125068
I wish you well, and thank you for your service to the community!
Looking forward to our shared space.
Many blessings
Dr Elaine Grech
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