VM™ FACILITATOR TRAINING

TEACH VISUAL MEDICINE™

TEACH VISUAL MEDICINE™

 

The VM™ Facilitator Training programme offers a way of adding to your existent skill set. The training is designed to enhance and deepen your own creativity as well as your work with clients. It will catalyze a shift in your own creative exploration by becoming a ground for profound personal, professional and social transformation.

Creativity is not a luxury or an add-on. It is the code by which we change. 
Creativity holds an essential key to our planetary and personal change. Current Neuroscientific research shows that creativity elevates brain patterning and alters perceptions allowing us to quite literally see differently. This may be a new perspective on an old emotional pattern, a new relationship, a new job or a whole new perceptual ecology. Visual Medicine™ ignites a new way of seeing.


The training will enable you to take a creative leap from wherever you are and help you guide others in the emergent field of transformational spiritual creativity. 

WHO IS THE TRAINING FOR?


Art Therapists, Artists, Psychotherapists, Yoga & Tai Chi Teachers, Life Coaches, Business Coaches, Teachers, Complementary Health Practitioners, Counselors, Healers - and people from other disciplines who want to use creativity in their working lives.


The training will provide a supportive experiential learning environment that fosters your creative resilience and confidence. You will learn from the inside out to dive deep by creating your own paintings and gain hands-on experience of facilitating VM™ groups and as well as how to work with individual clients.


WHAT DOES THE TRAINING COVER?


The training will emphasize the archetypal idea of a Journey without a Map as a way of traveling into new territory and new thinking. Creative Mind and its particular farsighted intelligence can be a compass when our logic seeking left-brain cannot understand or direct us in the unknown. This is an exceptionally important skill set in these times of personal, cultural and global change.

 

The training will give a conceptual framework via the lens of Visual Medicine™ for understanding the multidimensional ways in which our unconscious right-brain communicates. VM™ images allow us an embodied insight into the vastness of our own Being as images speak in the same visual, shape-shifting energetic language as our psyche – the soul’s imagination and consciousness.

I am thrilled and honoured to offer VM™ as a teaching practice to you.

Suzette X

 

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

HOW CAN I INCORPORATE VM™ IN THE WORK I ALREADY DO?

Here are just a few possibilities of how you might use Visual Medicine™ in the work you already do.


Art Therapists: VM™ can leapfrog over the blocks to self-expression through the simplicity of the technique. It can give clients an experience of emotional flow, creative potency as well as trigger a cascade of insightful free associations. VM™ allows clients to enter the realm of their unconscious, unfettered by their own negative judgments. Everyone can create freely and authentically. VM™ is an ideal way of helping children and adults gain confidence in an otherwise daunting medium.


Visual Artists: This is an obvious marriage of possibility. VM™ is a dynamic encounter with the pure energy of Creation itself. It will allow you to help people get over the biggest barrier to creating with paint; which is the level of skill required to make paintings that people actually like. VM™ lifts the veil of self-criticism and judgment that so many wounded or untutored creators feel when they look at a blank sheet of paper.


Psychotherapists: VM™ has an innate capacity to uncover the unconscious, both intrapsychically and relationally. It allows you to track the present and conceive of prescient transformational change with your client. When things get stuck it can provide a meta-level through which to understand the unspoken unconscious relationship. VM™ can be used with your client in sessions, or as an inner supervisory tool with your own painting practice. It offers a luminous window into the emergent relational field of transformational possibility. Or very simply, VM™ is a healing activity to share when a nonverbal technique may be needed.


Business Coaches and Life Coaches: Clients often come with issues and desires that are not quite conscious. VM™ can help articulate through the language of the right brain what is unknown, emergent and desired in their life, work or business as well as the blocks to achieving this. VM™ is at the cutting edge of creative thinking and its application within the field of business and life coaching.


Health and Healing PractitionersVM™ offers a profound additional form of creative healing. Using VM™ images can help clients articulate unconscious information, body thoughts, and feelings including fears, blocks and hidden resources. It can give a visual anchor in the subtle realm of energy healing. Using your own VM™ images or having a simple painting set-up for clients to create their own images can provide an insightful addition to your healing practice. VM™ can be practiced with Homeopathy, Acupuncture, Reiki, Sound Healing, and other energy healing modalities.


Teachers: VM™ is a powerful ally in helping children (and adults) feel more empowered in their own creativity. The visual immediacy and simplicity of the technique are a dynamic way to allow children to experience their innate natural creativity. We know the knock-on effect of free-flowing accessible creativity on children’s learning is synergistic and exponential. A mind that can be creative, can create anything. You could host a Professional Development Day using VM™ as a workshop for teachers so they too can experience free-flowing natural creativity.


Yoga and Tai Chi Instructors: Yoga, Tai Chi & VM™ go together perfectly. VM™ is not only a deeply spiritual painting and writing practice but also an energy system that opens the bodymind to deep healing and expansion. Meditate with VM™ images to intuitively feel how they impact your natural energy system. Breathe + Connect + Create


Dance and Movement Therapists: Move with VM™ – dance your painting. Find meaning in how your body and soul communicate through emergent images. These are oracular images - you can literally dance your way into meaning and transformation through the holistic intelligence of the creative bodymind.


Spiritual Practitioners and Counsellors: VM™ is a spiritual creative practice. It came into being with the words Spirit longs to be made material. The soul naturally finds direct expression through the radical simplicity of this spiritually transformative creative practice.

WHAT WILL THE TRAINING COVER?

You will learn:

  • How to use VM™ with individual clients and groups
  • How to integrate VM™ in your own working practice
  • Create guided Meditations & Visual Meditations
  • How to mix paint
  • How to set the frame for a session by practically laying out paints, paper, and other materials
  • How Free Association works with VM™ images and Focusing Words
  • How to write inner dialogue
  • A beginner’s look at the theory of Quantum Entanglement, Biomimicry, and Field Theory as principles involved in the theoretical ecology of VM™
  • How to explore the hidden language within VM™ paintings
  • To expand your visual lexicon through appreciation of cultural images and symbols and their archetypal associations and meanings

Some distinct phases that are covered in the VM™ training are:

  • The catalysts of creative change often appear in our lives through a sense of loss of direction, longing, emotional pain, injury, inertia, illness, bereavement, depression, trauma, despair, shame, irritation, breakdown, burnout, unfulfilled or unlived desire. How can we heed the call?
  • Leaving the Shore of the known 
  • Stepping out with a question
  • Finding your way in the Unknown
  • Gathering your directional tools i.e. your Inner Compass
  • Meeting your Inner Teacher
  • Learning to both hear and listen to the Oracle voice within yourself - what I call 'Oracle Mind'
  • Understanding mutual reciprocity and the principle of co-participation/co-creation through the lens of the VM™ painting technique
  • Unfolding your own inner narrative
  • Transforming past experiences
  • Instilling creativity as a practice that can heal

WILL I BE ABLE TO TEACH VM™ AFTER COMPLETING LEVEL ONE?

Yes. Your own level of experience will influence how ready you feel to work with clients using VM™. In the training you will look at how to incorporate the process within the frame of your own work practice. As part of your coursework, you will have a choice to either run a small VM™ group for several sessions or individual client work. The group could even be for friends or family.  

You will hold a VM™ Facilitator certificate and be able to use the title - Certified VM™ Facilitator. There will be a Facilitator section on my website that will introduce you as a certified VM™ Facilitator with a link to your own website - if you choose.

WILL THERE BE HOMEWORK BETWEEN SESSIONS?

Yes. Having a personal VM™ practice is essential to becoming a VM™ facilitator. A successful practice with others is dependant on how you come to understand both the painting practice and your own process by learning from your own experience. Whilst you are training you will need to make time for at least one hands-on painting session a week and use VM™ paintings with Focusing Words as part of a daily journal practice. VM™ is a practice that you learn from the inside out. There are 8 additional between group sessions held online.

WILL THERE BE AN ONLINE COMPONENT TO THE TRAINING?

Yes. You will join a closed Facebook group for the duration of the training where you can ask questions and share your own experiences. I will be online for 8 live sessions on Skype or another platform between the weekend groups. The sessions will be approximately every 2 weeks. The dates will be sent in advance at the beginning of the training. These can be watched live or at a time that works for you. The online sessions will be a way of continuing the teaching support by addressing topics and questions that come up through the weekend groups and on Facebook.​

    HOW LONG IS THE TRAINING?

    The initial Level One VM™ Facilitator Training is 9 days spaced over 3 workshops. There will be additional training and support sessions via a closed Facebook group and Facebook Live videos, which can be watched in your own time. In addition, there will be eight 90-minute sessions held on Skype (or another platform) to develop your practice and ask questions. In time there will be other advanced levels or workshop modules that will be offered as optional additional training.

    DO I NEED TO BE IN A VM™ GROUP TO APPLY?

    No. You may have used my book Visual Medicine - the Art of the Unknown to develop an individual painting practice. You will, however, need to have had an experience of making VM™ paintings and have used some with the VM™ journaling process.

    DO YOU OFFER SUPERVISION AFTER THE TRAINING?

    When you start the training you will join a small home group. The purpose of the home group is to be supportive and will allow you to discuss issues that come up in your own practice and your work with clients. There will be a private Facebook group that all facilitators join in order to share your work and ask questions. I will participate in the FB group and offer bi-monthly live – 8 sessions. Other support needs can be discussed in the group. You will also be able to consult with experienced VM™ practitioners, Jane Slemeck and Natacha Ledwidge. I am also available to offer some personal consultations. 

    WHAT ABOUT MATERIALS?

    All your painting materials, including all paint and paper and your first work journal, are part of the course fee. You will also receive two signed copies of my book Visual Medicine – the Art of the Unknown.

    HOW DO I APPLY?

    You can fill out the submission form below or email me at suzetteclough@msn.com and we will send you the application form. We can then arrange a conversation over the phone. If you live in London it may be possible to meet face to face.

    WHERE IS THE TRAINING HELD?

    We will meet in my studio in North West London, NW10 8UR. The studio is located opposite Harlesden Tube station on the Bakerloo Line. You will receive detailed joining instructions in your welcome pack. 

    WHAT ARE THE DATES FOR THE 2018 TRAINING?

    29th, 30th June & July 1st - 2018
    28th, 29th, 30th September - 2018
    30th November, 1st, 2nd December - 2018

     

    WHAT IS MY FINANCIAL INVESTMENT?

    Your investment is £2,150. You will receive an early bird booking discount of £200 if you pay in full by May 15th, 2018 – which is £1,950. There is an installment plan available for three equal payments of £716 (by arrangement). If you are undecided and would like to have a conversation about the training before applying I am happy to have a check-in call to talk. You can email me at suzetteclough@msn.com to arrange a time.

    DO I NEED TO BE THERAPEUTICALLY TRAINED?

    No, but I imagine that you will have had experience of personal psychotherapy, counselling or other emotional or spiritual growth work. Visual Medicine™ is a creative psychospiritual practice, which will require you to be emotionally self-reflective, able to give thoughtful feedback with skill and compassion and be emotionally available to yourself and others.

    WHAT HAPPENS IF I MISS SOME TRAINING DATES?

    It is obviously important to be at each session. However, if you have to miss for whatever reason you will be sent a précis of the work covered. You can also consult with your home group about the missed sessions. 

    WHEN WILL YOU BE OFFERING THE TRAINING AGAIN?

    This will be the only face-to-face VM™ facilitator training for 2018. Dates for the 2019 training are yet to be finalized. If you are unable to attend this 2018 training but would like to be kept updated - use the submission form below and we will let you know the next application dates.

    ABOUT SUZETTE CLOUGH

    Creating images has been my way of tapping into a world that is invisible, interconnected and vibrantly alive. It is a way of entering into communicative collaboration with creative energy allowing it to reveal what is not yet known but longing to show itself. Unfolding Visual Medicine has been a life-defining experience.

    The continual evolution, gorgeous precision and sheer beauty of the paintings is my spiritual practice. It has been born out of my own need to find answers beyond the rational and the seen. I believe in the deepest level of my being that creativity is both a pattern and a code that shows us that we are not alone. 

    Visual Medicine revealed itself to me over sixteen years ago just as my art-to-wear business was coming to a natural end. By the time it closed, I had handprinted over five thousand metres of fabric. Each centimetre painted with a unique unrepeatable print. I had hand printed, hand washed, overprinted, reprocessed and delicately dried fabric for many thousands of hours of solo work. 

    This was part of my apprenticeship in Visual Medicine™. I had seen and experienced paint, dyes, and inks moving in exquisite flowing conversation with such intimate encounter that I could no longer be blind or deaf to the unfolding reality that the material world is alive with energy and ready to speak to us - when we create the right circumstances for it to communicate.

    I have a degree in Painting from my birthplace Sydney, Australia. I trained in Body-Orientated Psychotherapy at the Chiron Centre, London. I am an ordained Interfaith Minister through OneSpirit, UK. I have worked in private practice and primary care as an Addiction Counsellor, in a radical hospice working with massage with people with HIV and AIDS, and various projects with women in recovery from mental illness or encounters with the criminal justice system. My work is collaborative and deeply informed by my training as an artist, psychotherapist, and my own spiritual searching.
    I love teaching Visual Medicine™!

     

    CREATIVE ETHICS

    I believe that creativity changes lives. Creativity and entrepreneurship are an alchemical match. A portion of every workshop and product that you buy goes to a selected charity. At the moment I am supporting KIVA. Many Kiva small loans go directly to women to fund their entrepreneurial dreams enabling them to support themselves and their families. YAY! Kiva’s mission is simple: they connect people through lending money to alleviate poverty. Anyone can help a borrower start or grow a business, go to school, access clean energy or make their dreams a reality. Kiva’s model is unique, in that it’s all about loans, not donations to borrowers. This allows you to reinvest your money over and over again as borrowers pay you back www.kiva.com
    If you have a suggestion about another ethical charity that you would like me to invest in, particularly one that works with creativity, women or young people and happens in the UK please contact me. I would be very happy to consider your charity as my next project.  

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