Written by Niek | 08 November 2011

The Dutch CCI community, as an official acknowledged entity, named 'Co-Counseling Nederland' founded in 1986, celebrated its 25th anniversary last weekend at a special meeting at the center for personal development 'Oostraven' at Epe, the Netherlands. Item of the meeting is: 'the art of living'. The meeting was attended by 28 members. Most of them came in on Friday evening after 5PM and left on Sunday 4PM.

By arrival there was for all a well designed and printed program booklet, a name tack and a ball pen for immediate use! The three members of the board of this CCI community memories in this booklet how the times of growth, like the 1980ies, has gone. They acknowledge for now the need to advocate strongly this approach in 'the public market' of to day. The editors of this booklet, Eveline and Marjan, even call the phenomenon of 'personal growth' a booming business today! This booklet contains also a 'time line', memorizing events in the years since 1973, starting with John Heron teaching (RC) co-counseling in the Netherlands. Later it turns out that this also might have been after founding Co-Counseling International in 1974 together with Dency and Tom Sargent in the USA and the first CCI Europe meeting (1975) in the UK. At that time (1974) are already in the Netherlands at least two (RC) co-counseling trainers active. Possibly they went to England to be trained by John Heron after 1971. The time line further indicates typically Dutch CCI events since than.

inspiring CCI meeting

This inspiring CCI meeting starts with, as usual, an opening circle at 8.30 PM on Friday evening, followed by a 'dance movie' for elderly people of Pina Bausch, showing how to overcome imprisoning patterns by movements! Early morning activities are scheduled before breakfast the next two mornings, breakfast at 8 AM, opening circle at 9.30 AM, workshops from 10 till 12 and Saturday afternoon arrival of quests like past members. And at the Saturday evening a celebration meeting facilitated by Corrie and Peter. Sunday, after opening circle, there is again time for workshops and a closing ceremony at 2PM.

The offer of workshops on Saturday morning are: a 'bubop' creative workshop by Eveline with balloons, a 'forgiveness' one by Corrie and an individual session one by Marlies. On Sunday morning the offers are: 'living in peace with your past, present and future' by Niek, 'gratefulness' by Wytske and 'co-counselen and drawing' by Gertje. The early morning offers came from Eveline, Rita, Marlies and Jen.

personal impressions

Impressive for me was the suggestion on Friday evening, to pay – for five minutes each – attention to the first impressive experience at my basic CCI course. And I just realized, how that has started to 'open my eyes'! Impressive for me was also, 'to contribute' too to the meeting in general, by arriving in time to stick on the wall the different sign language signs and their translations in 9 languages.

That Saturday afternoon Anja Blom facilitated a 'co-counseling and voice' workshop bringing greetings from the CCI-USA community, after attending a community meeting in Angels' rest at Leyden USA. Meeting CCI co counselors I had not met for years brought back happy times as well!

 

 

 

 

 

 

And definitely impressive was the singing together 'happy birthday' to the Dutch CCI community while Peter Koekebakker, who was 'president of CCN' for more than ten years (while 6 years is the max!) sliced the special 'birthday cake' on Saturday afternoon. Together with Corrie he facilitated a festivity program that evening. More than 10 members contributed to this entertaining event, by singing other ones or self composed songs etc. , by presenting their vision in a sketch about the future of CCI while living in an elderly home etc!

John Heron

As one of the entertainers I payed attention how John Heron in October 1974 started his history of co-counseling in Europe. He wrote: ' Tom Scheff, Professor of Sociology in the University of California at Santa Barbara, came over to England in the summer of 1970 and again in 1971, on each occasion running a series of Re-evaluation Counselling introductory workshops and classes. Before he returned to the USA in September 1971 he asked John Heron, who had attended workshops that summer, to take on the job of acting Area Reference Person for London and suggested he might try his hand at teaching and seek authorisation from Harvey Jackins'.

I quoted John, and said doing so, because of his huge contribution in awakening our self responsibility. And I mentioned how in the second edition of the 'CO-COUNSELLING INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER' issue 1976, in the Netherlands were already the following contact persons: Amsterdam: Tom Pothof; Groningen: Hans Lap; The Hague: Joyce de Gier; Heerlen: Hieke Spaans; Utrecht: Aat de Bruyn, with their addresses and phone numbers. And so there was already a long time a CCI community in the Netherlands and it took more than ten years to finalize that! As it took about ten years before the Dutch CCI trainers finalized their contract with that community! And so I memorized that Tom Scheff now also publishes his views in CCI World News Service, free from RC.

living in peace

The answer on the question 'why we do this all', all our activities in this CCI approach, is a continuing question! At the CCI meeting in Hungary - on the last day - (almost) nobody was interested in it. And this Sunday morning, at this event were three doubts! Nevertheless with four people we shared that morning experiences and made a kind of a start to some answer. Questions about 'on what kind of items did you work since your basic training?; do they have something in common and so what?; what are for you the 'preconditions' to run that (CCI) process successfully?, is it respect or is it more?, are still actual.

And possibly these answers are the key to open the door to the knowledge: how to bring this approach to the public! Because it became the more clear to me that ' something' in a special personal situation, withhold us to live 'in peace' with that situation. And peace seems to me to be a key word for whatever item we want and need to connect. To create a satisfying environment for all of us to live in.

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