In collaboration with the FAMILY CAREGIVERS of BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA, the first online delivery of the INTENSIVE JOURNAL is underway with a group of 12 front-line Family Caregivers.
Two more successful public INTENSIVE JOURNAL® workshops were completed in Victoria, B.C. in 2019. A total of 12 participants spent the weekend of June 28-29, in a meditative writing and reflective writing process titled LIFE CONTEXT. On October 11 and 12, seven participants completed the second I J workshop titled DEPTH CONTACT.
SAMPLE QUOTES from six anonymous participants:
“Powerful process.”
“The workshop was profound. Enabled me to see promising means of next steps in my life.”
“Thank you! This process has become a catalyst for a book that is gestating inside me for a very long time. I am truly grateful”
“Powerful and transformative. Excellent structure for depth work and opening up.”
“Thank you. Well facilitated and new revelations”
“I Very much appreciated the meditations and twilight imagery process”
2019 marked the sixth year of INTENSIVE JOURNAL® workshops in Victoria, B.C. In that time we have complete 17 separate public workshops in the same serene confines of the Church of Truth in Victoria, B.C., including one on Salt Spring, Island, BC at the Centre for Yoga. That includes nearly 140 workshop participants from Canada and the USA.
The COVID-19 VIRUS PANDEMIC has halted all of our “in-person” INTENSIVE JOURNAL® workshops, in Canada and worldwide for the time being. However, we are prepared to do a world premiere presentation of the I J workshop LIFE CONTEXT online via ZOOM at the end of May 2020.
As a certified INTENSIVE JOURNAL® Facilitator /Consultant, Bill Israel also conducts the I J program for inmates at William Head Institution on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. This I J process is offered as a “course” to inmates housed at this minimum-security penitentiary for those who volunteer for the 12 session workshop process. Prison facilities and schedule routines will allow for only one 3 hour workshop per week for as many as 10 inmates at a time. Resident inmates must complete all 12 workshop sessions to qualify for a “certificate” for their files.
As of December 2019, 70 inmates successfully completed the course, having participated in one or another of the 12-week “FOUNDATIONS COURSE” sessions since 2016. An eighth I J course is planned for early 2020, with the positive support of prison administration and Inside Parole Officers.
SAMPLE QUOTES from three anonymous prison participants:
The program was wonderful and helpful. I have rediscovered my love of art. Looking at past decisions (I made) helped me see them in a different light – from a different perspective. The Spiritual Steppingstones section and the Re-Openings of Road Taken and Not Taken were VERY helpful. (Quote from a LIFER, in for 20 + years)
The most helpful part was the continued informal writing expressing oneself on paper – good or bad. Gave me meaningful thought that in my past I was lazy in my thinking and always felt negative. Being true to myself opens the door to spiritual steppingstones that I had lost when I was young. Re-opening this part of my life greatly improves my communication with others. (Quote from a LIFER in for 20 + years)
This course has helped me to re-cap everything (prison programs) I participated in throughout my sentence. The difference, from another perspective, is the non-judgmental, positive energy of the good bunch of guys in our group. I am free from my negative intensity. (Quote from a LIFER in for 20 + years).
End of the report – December 2017