About the workshop
"It's My Choice: A Workshop in Which I Choose for Myself"
"At any moment I could start being a better person, but which moment
should I choose?"
Ashley Brilliant
People who choose to experience the IMC workshop ("It's My Choice") are giving themselves a very special opportunity: to start, by choice, the process of making a significant change in their lives in the process of a single weekend. True, the road doesn't end there, but, looking back, for the vast majority of the participants the workshop became the first and most important weekend of the rest of their lives… It is a one-time opportunity to experience once again, at 100 percent, our magnificence as human beings, the way we experienced it as children, before all kinds of negative events decreased our power, our vitality and our joy of life.
The workshop helps overcome personal limitations that prevent us from being our most complete "I", as it is manifested, for example in our ability to express ourselves freely, to fulfill our goals and dreams, to increase our self-confidence and self-esteem, to improve our relationships, to enable us to connect to people both close and less close on a deep and satisfying level (including spouses, children, friends, relatives and work associates). The workshop allows us to see a world that rarely in our everyday lives we have an opportunity to meet and deal with — the world of our internal feelings.
It's not by chance that many of the workshop's graduates return to experience it again and again, as assistants, helping others take the path that they themselves took as a result of the workshop
What is the workshop?
"It's My Choice", or IMC for short, is an international workshop/course that takes place over a condensed 30 hour period (from late afternoon on Thursday until Saturday night), and which is given by expert instructors from Israel and the USA who have special training and certification. It is intended to enable us to experience ourselves, our lives and our relationships in new ways and with renewed intensity.
Who is the workshop for?
The IMC workshop is intended for anyone wanting to make a positive and significant change in any or all aspects of life, as well as for people who feel that all is fine in their lives but who want to learn new ways to understand themselves and others, and to deepen the experiences of their lives. People come to the workshop either on their own, or with their spouses, siblings, parents, work associates, etc.
What is the theory behind the IMC workshop?
The workshop is an experience-oriented one, and does not belong exclusively to any of the particular therapeutic schools. Nonetheless, parts of it follow certain Adlerian aspects (named after Alfred Adler, 1870-1937).
During the first years of our lives, each of us formed a system of beliefs that is related to the world inwhich we live. This belief system was formed as a result of important events in our lives (positive and negative), of the environment in which we live, of the way our parents responded to us, and of the messages we received from our surroundings. As a result, sometimes without our noticing, we made decisions about who we are, what we deserve and what we are capable of, and we also formedbeliefs about men, women, parents, money, happiness, life, death and more. These beliefs turned into the "instruction manual" for our life. The manual is meant to guide us, to help us understand the world around us and to take care of us within the world. And indeed, until some point in time it might have done its job faithfully.
The issue is that this instruction manual was "written" by the child we used to be, and not by the adult we are today. Sometimes the old rules written in it are fitting for our current life, but very often they get us "stuck", leaving us helpless and lacking appropriate answers to the questions posed by the reality of our adult life.
Today, as adults, we are able to better understand the world, ourselves and those around us, and to take responsibility of our lives. We have the ability and the right to choose what and who we want to be and the ways to achieve our most lofty goals. The workshop is designed to strengthen these abilities in us, and to help us to bring them out in the best possible ways.
What happens in the workshop?
Each workshop is limited to 21 new participants, the "students", and is adapted to help each participant achieve his/her goals. In addition, there are about 45 "assistants" in the room, who have previously participated in the workshop themselves. Each student is associated with 2-3 "personal" assistants for the duration of the weekend. The assistants come to the workshop for two reasons: to continue their own learning process and to help new students get through this special experience in the best possible way.
The basic structure of the weekend is fixed for all workshops. However, since the workshop is a function of those participating in it and on the personal needs and goals of each of them, no two workshops are alike. During the workshop all the participants get ample opportunities to take part in a variety of activities designed to enable people to experience themselves in new ways. The energyduring the weekend can move from total seriousness to total joy of life, and all in an atmosphere of free choice and mutual respect.
The workshop starts at 19:00 on Thursday. The evening begins with an interactive discussion, intended to help the students enter a "learning state", that is, to start the experience of the weekend in the "right" spirit. This first evening continues until the students have finished setting down their goals for the workshop. The rest of the weekend is devoted to individual and group work, aimed at helping each student achieve his/her goals. On Thursday and Friday the work continues until around 22:30, and on Friday and Saturday we start exactly at 9:00.
On Saturday night, around 20:00, we celebrate the end of the workshop. Students are encouraged to invite family and friends to participate in the special graduation party.
About two weeks after the workshop there is a "feedback" session for all the people who took part in the workshop. This is an exciting and pleasant opportunity to meet again and to share with everyone what we went through during the two weeks following the workshop, and the attempts we made inorder to apply what was learnt in the workshop in one's own personal life.
The workshop's graduates are invited to return and participate in the IMC workshops as assistants for their entire life, free of charge (with the exception of a small fee to help cover the cost of refreshments). There are people who say that this is really a "lifelong subscription for the Club of Self-Fulfillment".
Policy of privacy and confidentiality
The students are identified in the workshop only by their first names. The additional details about each student are given only to the organizers, the instructors and the student's two personal assistants. All the people taking part in the workshop are committed to full confidentiality, and everything said in the room remains only there.
Who runs the IMC workshops?
The Amuta: The IMC workshops have been offered in Israel for about 15 years and in the USA (under a different name) for over 25 years. The workshops in Israel are run by a non-profit organization, an "amuta", called MAL'E, which in Hebrew is an acronym for the Center for Self-Awareness.
The committee: Heading the amuta is a managing committee consisting of members of the amuta. All members of the committee, as well as those of additional teams, are volunteers whose work is done to help continue the tradition of offering self-awareness workshops in Israel.
The organizers: Each workshop is run and managed by two volunteer "organizers", who accompany the workshop from two months before it starts until after the feedback session, about two weeks following its end. The organizers are responsible for making sure the workshop runs smoothly, and they are also the ones who are in continuous contact with the new students and the assistants from the moment they register for the workshop.
The instructors: The workshops are given by professional instructors, who have been trained especially to lead the IMC workshop. In each workshop there is one instructor from the USA and one from Israel. There is at all times a continuous two-way simultaneous translation, which ensures that each student can express him/herself in the language most convenient to him/her and understand everything that is said in the room at any time.
You are invited to take part in a special moving and rare experience, reconnecting to the life and the love inside of you!
The Committee of the Center for Self-Awareness