Embracing our authentic self

Derek McMillan is leading a trauma exploration workshop, Embracing our authentic self, at The Salisbury Centre on Tuesday 27 October. It runs from 7:15 to 8:45pm, and it's aimed at therapists, facilitators and other helping professionals. The session is part of a monthly series, with further workshops following on 17 November and 8 December.

McMillan is the first certified practitioner and mentor of Gabor Maté's Compassionate Inquiry in Scotland, and the evening draws on Maté's work, including his book The Myth of Normal. The aim is to help professionals understand their own triggers and the beliefs behind them, and to learn how to offer a compassionate presence to both their own and others' somatic experience. It's about noticing what comes up in the body when things get difficult, and figuring out how to sit with that without rushing to fix it.

McMillan brings a fair bit of ground to this. Along with the Compassionate Inquiry training, he has a background in philosophy, psychology and religious and moral studies, and three decades practising bodywork, martial arts, movement, meditation and music across Asia. That mix of the academic and the somatic is what informs the way he works with trauma.

The space is framed around confidentiality, and there's room to engage at your own pace: you can journal or sit with your breath and body if speaking out loud doesn't feel safe. It's a session for people who work with others, so the focus is as much on your own reactions as it is on the people you support. Tickets are between £13.70 and £22.38, and the venue is The Salisbury Centre, 2 Salisbury Road, Edinburgh EH16 5AB.