Post-graduate Diploma
Mindfulness-based Core Process PsychotherapyThis is an opportunity to join a well respected, leading edge UKCP accredited psychotherapy training which integrates ancient and current contemplative understandings with modern psychotherapeutic theories.
We have many years of experience of supporting students through our trainings and providing nurturing and dynamic spaces for personal and professional development.
Our course leads to full UKCP Accreditation and can open the way into a profession filled with meaning and depth.
Following the Foundation Year, the Post Graduate Diploma continues over three full years of nine weekend modules and one five-day residential module. The modules will either be on a weekend, or a Thursday and Friday and are held in Bristol. The five-day residential is held on Dartmoor in the old home of Karuna Institute.
The course will normally run from about 9.30am – 5.30pm and are currently held at our training centre – Suite 8, Fenton Court, Fenton Road, Bristol, BS7 8ND.
On the main training we deepen into the territories covered in the Foundation Year. The course deepens the enquiry into the nature of suffering and developing our understanding of both the processes of this and the shapes of experience that suffering tends to take. Throughout the training the centrality of the therapist’s capacity to know and work deeply in process remains at the forefront of our model. These understandings are grounded in, and rest on the teachings that come to us from 2,500 years of Buddhist teachers and practitioners as well as current teachings on trauma, neuro physiology and attachment theories. Alongside this we explore our understanding of relational process through psychodynamics and object relations theories. Special attention is also placed on working deeply in conditioned processes that emerge from the forces of culture, race, gender and class and the imprints of cultural mind. Finally, we explore the wider grounds of archetypal and mythological territories and the nature of transpersonal mind and the spiritual potential available to us all.
At the heart of the training is your group. Groups are no larger than 18 strong and we work hard to ensure that you stay with the same group throughout the course. Students therefore develop deep and often life-long friendships in our trainings and at the core of this is the work we do in groups during the modules. Here we make space to enquire together at depth into the process of the group as it emerges. Students often find that it is these group spaces in which so much of the embodied learning of the course really takes place. We are committed at Karuna Institute to depth, and to opening ourselves at depth to process, to understanding and to the potential for transformation. It is our intention that your training is life changing and nourishing. We want to offer you support on your journey not just to becoming a psychotherapist, but also in the evolution of your journey as a human being.
💡 Work with clients begins in the first year and the training orientates around the lived experience of your clinical practice. We work towards the dissertation via the academic requirements of the training such as essays, case studies and assessment writing. The dissertation can be begun in the third year of the course as we seek to support students on their path towards Graduation and Accreditation with UKCP.
Training Pathway
Year One
Year One Pre-requisites
- Successful completion of the Foundation Year Training
- Application form
- End of Foundation Year meeting to apply to Year 1
Year One Structure
-
Nine 2-day modules
Modules will either be on a weekend, or a Thursday and Friday and are held in Bristol.
-
One 5-day Residential Retreat
Held on Dartmoor in the old home of Karuna Institute.
Outline
In this year students begin the journey of working with clients. We support you to move into clinical practice either in private practice or agency work, or a combination of both. Students need to continue to be in one to one psychotherapy and also in supervision as they move into clinical work.
The year continues to be focused around integrating Dharmic understanding with the theories and practices of psychotherapy. We focus in particular on the therapeutic relationship and on the beginning of the journey of working with clients in our practices.
To support this, we ground the year in the teachings of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and the central Buddhist teaching of Dependent Origination. We look at the nature of self as conditioned process and the way that early experience is perpetuated as a conditioning force and activity, often with painful and difficult self-experience arising as a result.
We support this enquiry with theories that come from the understandings of psychodynamics, object relations and inter-subjective theories. We spend time in the year with the embodied qualities of these processes in the nervous system and work at depth with trauma theory. We look at the developmental processes of attachment theory and Reichian character strategies. We spend time exploring the more difficult processes of splitting, of complex trauma and narcissistic and borderline adaptions.
Theory is presented via lectures and through experiential learning. Our learning style always attempts to maintain this balance of academic and experiential learning, and throughout the year the group remains central to your learning and we ground our teaching through your experience of the group, as well as in your emerging psychotherapy practices.
Year 1 Completion Requirements
- It is a requirement to be in weekly Core Process Psychotherapy throughout Years 1-3 of the PG Dip MBCPP (there is a minimum of 160 hours to graduate)
-
Successful completion of permission to practice protocol
-
External Supervision for those beginning to practice
-
Two 3,000 word essays
-
One 3,000 word Personal Project
-
Ten practice sessions (between modules)
-
Self and Peer Assessments
-
Completing the Mental Health Familiarisation Portfolio
Year Two
Year Two Pre-requisites
-
Successful completion of all requirements from Year 1
Year Two Structure
-
Nine 2-day modules
Modules will either be on a weekend, or a Thursday and Friday and are held in Bristol.
-
One 5-day Residential Retreat
Held on Dartmoor in the old home of Karuna Institute.
Outline
In this year we continue to support students in their clinical work with clients, as we also deepen and widen our understanding of conditioning from developmental and systemic territories.
Central to this again are Dharmic understandings on the nature of conditioning. In the year we approach conditioning though wider systemic exploration. We explore the importance of examining conditioning through the lens of cultural, historical, racial, class and gender lenses. We look at understanding inter-sectionality both as depth conditioned process and as active distortions within the perceptual processes of the therapist. We explore conditioning in the territories of sexuality and sexual orientation and gender identities. We look at the importance of historical and evolutionary perspectives, of ideas about the self that come to us through our culture and political and economic systems.
From here we turn to our relationship to the planet, to the non-human and nature and explore the centrality of these relationships to depth well-being. We work with how it is to live in this time of climate emergency and the relevance of psychotherapy to this impending possibility of catastrophe or perhaps transformation. We then deepen again to exploring themes of meaning and the archetypal journey of the human. We look at transpersonal territories and the relationship to the sacred. We also dive into the deeply powerful and important territories of our prenatal experience, working experientially in this experience which is so formative in much of our sense of arrival and belonging. We end the year looking at the centrality of connection as health, both from Buddhist perspectives of inter-being and through an exploration of Eros and open-hearted being.
Year 2 Completion Requirements
- It is a requirement to be in weekly Core Process Psychotherapy throughout Years 1-3 of the PG Dip MBCPP (there is a minimum of 160 hours to graduate)
-
Successful completion of permission to practice protocol
-
External Supervision for those beginning to practice
-
One 3,000 word essay
-
One 3,000 word Case Study
-
One 3,000 word reflective learning project
-
Ten practice sessions (between modules)
-
Self and Peer Assessments
-
Case Presentation
Year Three
Year Three Pre-requisites
- Successful completion of all requirements from Year 2
Year Three Structure
-
Nine 2-day modules
Modules will either be on a weekend, or a Thursday and Friday and are held in Bristol.
-
One 5-day Residential Retreat
Held on Dartmoor in the old home of Karuna Institute.
Outline
Year three is your final year of the taught part of the training. Much of the year’s activities will focus around the group completing together and working towards an ending. This is reflected in teaching on death and dying, on endings and on Buddhist understanding of subtle energies. The year pays attention to ideas and embodiments of genuine health and well-being. We explore Buddhist teachings on Emptiness, awakening, love and freedom and their relevance to therapy. With this we explore transformation and healing on collective levels by working with the territory of sustainable health for ourselves both individually and as a species.
Year three is also the year that we begin work on the dissertation. Emphasis is placed on integrating theory through your writing and grounding it into your client work. We revisit the curriculum to support this, touching in particular into trauma theory, attachment theory and psychodynamics as well as working through ethical frameworks to support clinical work. Throughout we integrate all that we have learned through our Dharmic framework, so that learning can be felt at embodied and depth levels. The year allows us to focus all of our learning through this depth integration as we work in this combination of dissertation writing, client work and the processes of completion and ending of the group.
Year 3 Completion Requirements
- It is a requirement to be in weekly Core Process Psychotherapy throughout Years 1-3 of the PG Dip MBCPP (there is a minimum of 160 hours to graduate)
-
Successful completion of permission to practice protocol
-
External Supervision
-
Group supervision as part of the course
-
Submission of Dissertation Proposal by 1st February
-
One 3,000 word Case Study
-
One 3,000 word reflective learning project
-
Practice sessions (between modules)
-
Self and Peer Assessments
-
Case Presentation
The Pathway to Graduation and Accreditation.
Following your completion of Year 3 you enter the pathway towards Graduation and Accreditation. You will be assigned a Clinical Tutor whose job it is to help guide and hold you through this process. It is possible to Graduate in the year after your fourth year of training (Year 3) and accredit the following year.
The time spent working towards Graduation and Accreditation can be a rich period of your practice as you move beyond the formal taught content of the course and build your practice as a psychotherapist. We support your movement from student to colleague and the process of joining the wider profession of being a psychotherapist.
Graduation
Central to the process of Graduation is the successful completion of your dissertation. The dissertation can be the chance to really explore territories of interest to you and we have our own unique style of dissertation writing which includes self-reflection and writing about your own process, as well as your experience of client work. Students also need to have at least 150 hours of work with clients as well as completing all other relevant course requirements. There is a Graduation interview by a panel.
We have many years of experience in guiding students to the point of Graduation and the process can often be deeply rewarding for us all. It as at this point that you have completed the Diploma in Mindfulness Based Core Process Psychotherapy.
Accreditation
After Graduation you enter the path towards full Accreditation with UKCP. The final total of hours working with clients required for accreditation is 450. As with graduation you are supported by your clinical tutor and helped to meet all of the requirements necessary. There is also a final interview by a panel at this last stage of the training. Following a successful interview you are put onto the UKCP register as an accredited UKCP psychotherapist.
Beyond Accreditation.
Many of our accredited colleges join our professional association which is called the Association of Core Process Psychotherapists (ACPP). ACPP holds processes of re-accreditation with UKCP and is our community in the world of psychotherapy. ACPP conducts its own courses and holds conferences.