About Reflection & Renewal

The Wealth We Offer

Fullness, drawn from this well,
flows forth unto our country and our people.
—Paraphrase of a passage from Horace, Ode 6, Book III

Through Renewal, you can become more aware and expressive of your authentic self. The unresolved issues inside you are a form of stored energy that is waiting to be illuminated and liberated for your well-being and for the benefit of all. Renewal practice integrates the human and the Divine in ways that are deep and fundamental.

Practitioners report that through Renewal they:

• Evolve "core wounds" more easily
• Experience more clearly "how I am at choice in every situation"
• Act with greater self-respect and self-love
• Build more radiant and resonant consciousness
• Reach new states of calm and balance, even under pressure
• Perceive other people's "wounds," patterns, and choices more clearly
• Develop the art of interventions that allow and invite healing and change, rather than pushing, in order to get more powerful results

Structurally there are four components to Renewal: Renewal theory and skills; the Triangle in which you explore and practice theory and skills; the Steward who supports your Triangle; and the Network that connects you with other practitioners and Triangles.

Theory and skills: To "get" the context of what we do, you can read about the work at the web site one of our curriculum development partners, RoseLight, www.roselight.com and take the home study suggestions. To take the next step and learn "how to do it," we suggest that you attend the Renewal training. At this seminar intensive you have the in-person support of an experienced teacher and face-to-face practice opportunities with others interested in learning the practice.

Practice: If you want to actively practice, in order to expand and develop your understanding, we suggest that you join the Gauden reflective practice community, the Renewal Network. The Network is made up of graduates of the Renewal seminar who want to deepen and expand their balance through greater skills of self-awareness, illumination, and integration. Most Network meetings take place over the telephone, allowing you to build your practice from home, at your own convenience. Once you have learned the practice at the class, it works as well over the telephone as in person. Typically you meet once a month by phone with your Network practice partners, and quarterly by phone with your Network support person, known as a Steward. Your Steward helps ensure that your practice is on track and that your development continues well after the live class has ended. Your Steward has extensive experience with Renewal practice, and has strongly developed subtle energy skills to support working with you long distance, by internet and telephone.

Triangle: In the Network, Renewal is practiced in peer-to-peer Triangles. In a Triangle, with the help of your Steward, you co-create a collaborative, non-hierarchical environment dedicated to learning and development. This can greatly increase your ability to care for yourself and those whom you serve.

Community: The power of your Triangle practice is heightened by being in a Renewal Network of practitioners from around the world; this is a collective consciousness that is working together to shine a great light for healing into the planetary energy field. The community is connected by the internet and teleconference, allowing you to stay at home and in your regular work arena while benefiting from Renewal. Gauden groups gather together in person from time to time for focused learning in a face-to-face setting, and to explore other topics of mutual interest relating to the practice.

Continuing Education: From time to time may be interested in attending advanced courses with additional skills to bring into your Renewal practice.

The Importance of Reflection

When you are in a position of trust, helping other people, it is important to take care of your own renewal of vitality and clarity. Renewal comes about through self-care and through creating time and space to reflect upon your work and your professional development.

It is easy to be "too busy" to take regular care and time for this self-care and reflection. It is also all too easy to become isolated in your own way of seeing things, especially when you are in a position of giving advice, facilitating, etc.

Setting aside regular time and space to reflect is known as "reflective practice." Reflection is most powerful when done in partnership with others who can help you see new perspectives, beyond the "blind spots" that each of us have. Gauden's reflective practice seminars and programs are focused on your enlightenment and your embodiment of higher consciousness, and through your personal practice, the enlightenment and embodiment of higher consciousness for humanity.

In each of us
a different part of the mystery becomes luminous.
To truly be and become yourself,
you need the ancient radiance of others.
—John O'Donahue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, pp. 94-95

Supervision

Reflective practice is also known in some professions as "supervision," a term which may call to mind images of someone telling you "what to do" or "how to do it," but, that is not its meaning in our Renewal supervision/reflective practice work, or any good supervision setting to support your professional development.

In general, supervision focuses upon what can change and expand within your self as a helping professional in order to have more balance and clarity in your helping work. A skilled supervisor is a great asset in keeping your awareness focused and to help you grow in a positive, life-sustaining way. Supervision can take many forms, from classical therapeutic supervision focused on the transference and counter-transference of psychological development; to types of business coaching; to peer-to-peer co-counseling by trained peer facilitators. Gauden's supervision techniques combine these strands and also focus on enlightenment and embodiment, using advanced subtle energy techniques that work with your vital life force (known as Qi) and higher consciousness. You learn to enter and open a sacred co-creative silence, "opening the void" in metaphysical terms, to bring forth more harmonized energy in whatever situation is being presented.

Our Supervision Culture

Gauden promotes the idea and the practice of a culture of supervision, relational awareness, professional ethics, and greater vitality and higher consciousness for helping professionals.

Your professionalism is defined by your commitment to service and your adherence to a professional code of ethics for your service work, including self-care and supervision—not whether you receive money for your work. This means attending regularly to professional development as part of the ordinary course of doing business, rather than as something for emergencies or extraordinary circumstances. By investing in yourself as the instrument of service, you can be more clear, connected, accurate, and effective—sustainably and reliably, for yourself and for others.

The Relational Nature of Our Work

On September 15, 2008, after a period of several years of contemplation and dialogue, the governors of Gauden adopted this resolution about the relational nature of our work, which is the philosophy that underlies the perspectives and approaches you will find in the Gauden Professional Development trainings and programs:

We are all centers through which Spirit emerges, fonts of co-creation with the Divine. We all are portals through which Truth can be revealed and emerge. This emergence happens through our interactions with other people, in community, and through our response to the challenges and opportunities of life.

Often, truth emerges in conversation between people and is not something already fixed and established in a dogma or teaching or belief. To find the truth in the moment, we ask, “How does this touch us? Who are we with this? Who are we together?”

As we evolve we are able to integrate higher and broader aspects of consciousness, and are more able to accept others’ movement and growth as expressions of the Divine, even if their beliefs or consciousness do not appear to match our own.

Program Design

Gauden's Renewal and reflection programs are designed by Amy Skezas, J.D., D.D. and S. Joseph Hiller, M.Div., both certified as supervisors and trainers of supervision, and members of the postgraduate Institute for Reflective Practice. Amy and Joseph trained at the Center for Supervision and Team Development, a leading training organisation for supervision across all the helping professions. Since 1979, CSTD has trained supervisors internationally and has been involved in extensive research and publications in the field, including the highly respected, best-selling book Supervision in the Helping Professions.

Updated August 23, 2010