Educational programs
Ivan Lyamzin – trainer. Professional experience since 1996. Runs a private psychotherapy practice and has delivered numerous training courses.
Body-oriented psychotherapist, associate member of the EABP (European Association for Body-Oriented Psychotherapy), member of the USP (Ukrainian Union of Psychotherapists), member of the UPL (Ukrainian Psychotherapeutic League), Master of Philosophy (diploma from the UNESCO Department of ‘Philosophy of Human Communication’), trainer at the Kharkiv Foundation for Psychological Research, author of therapeutic and educational training programmes. Areas of interest: body-oriented work, working with acute trauma, the use of metaphors and shamanic myths in psychotherapy.
Author of therapeutic training programmes: "It’s Never Too Late", "Healing the Wounded Soul: Working with Acute Trauma", "The Circle of Power: Using Shamanic Myth in Psychotherapy", "Living Dreams", "Breathe Life In", "Let Go to Breathe Deeply. Bodywork with Therapeutic Metaphors", "Bodily Strategies for Overcoming Stress", and the training programme for psychotherapists "How to Deal with Bodily Processes. Supporting Bodily Processes and Tools for Working with Manifestations of Shock Reactions"
1993: Kharkiv State University. Biology
2001: UNESCO Chair “Philosophy of Human Communication. Master of Philosophy
1995–1996: Course on breathwork and transpersonal psychology. Moscow Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.
2001–2002: ‘Body-Oriented Psychotherapy’ course as part of the International Body Culture Programme. Author: V. Baskakov
2001–2004: Training programme in Thanatotherapy. Author: V. Baskakov
2003: Training programme: ‘Reflective-Diagnostic Constellations: Psychodrama with Toys’. Institute of Integral Family Therapy, Moscow. Author: I. Lyubitov
2006: The Basic Breathwork and Breath Therapy Training. Dan Brule, USA
2007: Certification programme in “Systemic Family Constellations according to B. Hellinger and Psychodrama”, IIST, Moscow.
2006–2010: Trainer at the Institute of Thanatotherapy, Moscow
2009: Bodynamic Foundation Training. Bodynamic International ApS, Denmark
2010: Bodynamic Shock, Trauma and PTSD Training. Bodynamic International ApS, Denmark
2013: Bodynamic Practitioner Training. Bodynamic International’s 4-year Psychotherapy Education, Denmark
2017: The Specialist Training Reorienting Birth. Bodynamic International ApS, Denmark
2018: Introduction in System Centered Training. Peter Bernhardt, MFT, Denmark
2022: Psychological First Aid for People in Crisis. MASHAV, Israel
‘It’s never too late’
As they grow up, everyone encounters various psychological issues that they need to come to terms with (recognising emotions, getting in touch with their needs, setting boundaries, interacting with peers, and so on). At each stage of development, a child needs different forms of support and different types of interaction. Our parents did not always have the opportunity or the ability to provide the support we needed. Without receiving the necessary experience, the soul becomes stuck in its development.
As a result, we often react to difficult situations like children, teenagers or even babies. Bodywork techniques help to create the conditions for making up for the lack of care, support and love we received, and for undergoing a kind of ‘re-parenting’. The soul gains the necessary experience and becomes more mature, possessing greater resources, the ability to support itself and to solve complex life challenges.
The course consists of eight three-day modules, during which you will be able to resolve internal conflicts by revisiting the stages of development from adolescence back to birth and the perinatal period. You will work through traumatic experiences from the pre-verbal period (from birth to two years of age). You will develop skills for regulating your emotional states. You will establish clearer emotional and intellectual boundaries.
You will have a clearer understanding of what you want and will be able to take steps to meet your needs. You will learn about the stages of ego development and the support you need to provide your children so that they develop a healthy sense of self and a wealth of inner resources. You will have the opportunity to develop skills that will enable you to better understand your relationships with loved ones and partners.
Modules of the "It's Never Too Late" curriculum
1. Group dynamics: solidarity, competition and one’s place within the group
2. Being heard: forming your own opinions and personal rules
The first two modules are devoted to group dynamics. During these modules, the group is formed as a single entity, as a unified whole. Group physical games and team-building activities are used. Particular attention is paid to getting to know one another through engagement with the physical, individual and role-based self. The level of bodily reflection is also enhanced. Participants learn to present themselves and their opinions. They become familiar with personal norms and rules. They learn to coordinate/align their actions with those of other participants. They find their place within the group.
3. Love and relationships: striking a balance between affection and sexuality
The third module is devoted to relationships between men and women, and the themes of love, friendship and sexuality. Here, through physical exercises, participants explore their emotional depth and sexuality and seek their own sense of balance. They explore strategies for interacting with a partner and their place within the family system. They learn to maintain contact and remain connected without losing their dignity or sense of self. In this module, alongside body-oriented approaches, art therapy, ideas from Jungian analysis and systemic family constellations are utilised.
4. Heroes and victims. Willpower, control and personal strength
The fourth module is devoted to freedom, the ability to act, and the theme of choice. Here, participants learn to express and assert their power. Physical models are created in which they will experience the joyful encounter of their power with that of others. They work with their own aggression. Here, the work focuses not so much on expressing aggression as on appropriating the power behind it, which enables them to manage their aggression. They also explore what prevents them from making choices. In this module, in addition to body-oriented work, breathing exercises and a shamanic drum are used (a constellation of aggression in the image of animal power).
5. Attachment, autonomy and boundaries: discovering the world and our place in it
The fifth module is devoted to Finding a balance between attachment and independence. We work through traumatic experiences from the period when the child was learning to crawl and walk. Here, participants explore the boundaries of their personal space, as well as territorial and social boundaries. They connect with their impulses and awaken a keen interest in life. They explore their self-image. They explore their capacity for connection and their fears of intimacy. This module involves a great deal of work on motor development and physical dramatisation.
6. A child’s needs and their impact on adult life, or Mothers and Children: How to Rediscover Lost Love. The right to feel one’s own needs and to express them
The sixth module is devoted to the period of breastfeeding and connecting with one’s own needs. Here, participants learn to connect with what they truly need. They learn to distinguish between needs and desires (in our culture, these are often expressed by the same word). They explore their capacity to experience deep attachment. They explore the theme of support and learn self-support. They practise the ability to express their needs and insist on their fulfilment, as well as the ability to delay gratification. This module uses physical dramatisation and physical modelling, regression work and ideal parental messages. By this module, most participants have learnt to experience their traumatic experiences without losing contact with this reality, in which there is support and connection. They learn to exist in two realities simultaneously: not to go there, but to bring the difficult experiences here.
7. Basic trust in the world: the right to exist and to safe contact
The seventh module is devoted to the perinatal period and existential questions. Here, participants experience the ‘good womb’ and unconditional acceptance. They explore their right to be loved and ways of existing in the world that are characteristic of mental and emotional people. In this training, regressive states and work with ideal parental messages are used even more frequently. Emotional people learn to experience and accept energetic contact, whilst mental people learn to tolerate emotions.
8. The ‘Born Again’ integrated module
This is a comprehensive synthesis of all the experience gained throughout the cycle – to step out into the wider world with it. This is a continuation of the work on issues relating to the perinatal period. It offers the opportunity to integrate the full experience of the cycle and be reborn into a new world in a new capacity – and to earn the right to step out with all one’s strength and be accepted.
Whilst performing the exercises, participants sometimes experience setbacks or lapses in their narrative. In such situations, short one-to-one sessions are held, drawing on the support of the whole group.
Presenter:
Ivan Lyamzin is a body-oriented psychotherapist (Kharkiv), an associate member of the EABP (European Association for Body-Oriented Psychotherapy). He has completed a full training course in Bodynamic and a training programme in working with acute trauma (certificates from Bodynamic International).
Physical coping strategies
The training session focuses on physical techniques for managing stress, preventing emotional burnout and building resilience to deal with the effects of acute trauma and PTSD.
Connection with oneself and connection with Reality.
Alignment – the ability to stay true to oneself and not lose one’s bearings in difficult, emotionally charged situations. The awakening of the body’s resources and muscles, upon which the ego and one’s sense of self are based.
Grounding – the ability to stay in touch with reality, to base one’s understanding on facts and events rather than on interpretations of them. The ability to test reality, to assess to what extent one’s feelings relate to the present moment and current relationships, and to what extent they relate to one’s personal history and past traumatic experiences.
Interconnection and Borders
The training is dedicated to basic ego skills: to be in mutual connection and deep contact whilst, at the same time, maintaining one’s own boundaries and dignity, and not losing oneself in the other. The awakening of bodily resources on which an individual can rely when working on the theme of personal space, emotional, social and territorial boundaries. Tools for regulating the depth and quality of contact.
Containerisation and energy management
Physical techniques for regulating emotional energy levels. Expanding one’s emotional capacity and the ability to experience feelings and emotions without suppression or overreaction. A greater capacity allows one to choose to what extent to express emotions and to what extent to contain them; to experience powerful feelings without damaging oneself or one’s relationships. Awakening bodily resources to manage shock energies – building and developing a shock container.
Circle of Power
Ethno-cultural approaches in psychotherapy. Using shamanic myths to tap into resources.
These are four three-day periods spent in communion not only with dreams, but with Myth. Connecting with that part of our soul which is greater than the ‘I’. It is an ancient, primal soul. It has not yet lost its connection with Nature, with the Elements, with the Spirit. This part of the soul can be a source of strength and inspiration, and a resource for tackling life’s complex challenges and ‘problems’.
As biological beings, we have evolved under the influence of the solar and lunar cycles. Consequently, the sun’s daily and annual rhythms affect us. Depressive tendencies intensify in autumn, whereas in spring, on the contrary, our mood improves. We will discover our inner rhythms and attune them to external rhythms. Resonance will be a source of strength and inspiration.
In Module 1, we will establish contact with the forces of the cardinal directions: East (morning, spring, waxing moon), South (day, summer, full moon), West (evening, autumn, waning moon), North (night, winter, new moon). Their qualities and energies are quite different. The energy of the East is better suited to beginnings, whilst the energy of the West is better suited to endings. Let’s identify which energies and qualities we are accustomed to relying on, and which ones we need to develop in order to feel more strength and inspiration.
The Shamanic Circle will serve as a tool to help make the reality of dreams less chaotic. In it the Shamanic Circle will serve as a tool to help make the reality of dreams less chaotic. In it
Module 2 will focus on the influence of lunar rhythms and ancestral support.
Module 3 – this involves working with the Elements.
Module 4 – A heroic shamanic journey, the Hero’s journey
Experiencing dreams in reality is not merely a matter of fantasy; it enables us to learn how to make better use of our inner resources, because have enormous healing and transformative potential. Such dreams become a source of personal strength and inner wisdom by establishing contact with the deep archetypal layers of the psyche.
‘Breathe life into it!’
This is a therapeutic group that uses body dynamics and body-breathwork therapy. Through proper breathing, our body is able to cope with very intense emotions. Just as it is capable of holding its breath, not letting difficult feelings and emotions out, and stabilising tension and potential blockages within the body.
- Life begins with our first breath and ends with our last. Breathing is with us at all times – and it is closely linked to our emotions. Think of the sayings: ‘hold one’s breath with fear’, ‘puff with anger’, ‘he’s breathing unevenly around her’, ‘breathe deeper – you’re agitated’, and so on.
- As soon as our emotional state changes, our breathing changes too. Its rate, depth and pattern all change. Breathing supplies our body with energy. And we intuitively use it to influence our emotional state.
- Breathing is an involuntary process. The respiratory centre is located in the medulla oblongata.
- At the same time, breathing can be controlled at will. And it can act as a bridge between the conscious and the unconscious. The quality of our lives depends on how we breathe.
- Through our breathing, we can either suppress our feelings and emotions or allow them to flow freely. This is particularly true of feelings that are difficult to deal with: fear, anger, shame and guilt. Unwilling or unable to process them, we use our breathing to suppress and repress them. And these unprocessed feelings remain a burden on the soul, draining our resources and creating a negative background.
In our group, we will breathe, and learn to use breathing as a tool for managing our emotions and the release of pent-up emotions. It is important not only that the emotion is experienced, but also that it is met without judgement from others. Only then can the experience be brought to a close. This allows us to free ourselves from the emotional burden weighing on our hearts. The ability to experience complex feelings gives us greater freedom and choice. We do not necessarily have to avoid situations in which these emotions arise.
Physical support for the breathing process provides valuable experience of a deep emotional connection with a partner, the experience of intimacy. The freer and deeper we can breathe, the more intense emotions we are able to experience without harming ourselves or those around us.
Participants in the therapeutic group will learn to let go of their problems, rather than clinging to them, to allow what has served its purpose to fade away, and to make room for something new. They will also have the opportunity to learn how to relax deeply and place greater trust in the flow of life and in other people.
Presenter:
Ivan Lyamzin is a body-oriented psychotherapist and an associate member of the EABP (European Association for Body-Oriented Psychotherapy). He has completed a full training course in Bodynamic and a training programme in working with acute trauma (certificates from Bodynamic International).
Experience in bodywork and breathing techniques — since 1996.
Healing a wounded soul
Dealing with the effects of traumatic shock.
Traumatic stress is the result of an event that is experienced as a threat to one’s life. At the same time, the body undergoes a total mobilisation in order to survive. And decisions are made by the reptilian brain, that is, at the level of instinct.
We will build a ‘transformer’ to channel instinctive energies onto the emotional level, and work through this experience step by step. Emotional experiences can be integrated into one’s life.
The course consists of four modules:
1 – updating resources
2 – An introduction to a shocking story
3 – creating conditions for the resolution of the core of the traumatic shock
4 – continuing to release the core and redirecting energy towards the future
Organisers' contact details
Kyiv and Lviv: +380660702257 Yevgen
+380663650269 Svitlana
Kharkiv: +380635607412 Anastasia
Odessa: +380661305354 Iryna
Chernivtsi: +380959080909 Nadiya