2025 Spirituality & Psychotherapy Conference

The 27th Annual Spirituality & Psychotherapy Conference at Christian Theological Seminary featuring Nora Swan-Foster

 

Overview:

Join us for the 2025 Spirituality & Psychotherapy Conference at Christian Theological Seminary on Friday, February 28 and Saturday, March 1, 2025! Nora Swan-Foster will be speaking on “Creative Living Through Jungian Art Therapy.”

CEUs (6.5 hours) will be available after the conference for attendees who are eligible.

Registration closes on Friday, February 21.

 

Session Details:

Friday Keynote – February 28
7:00-9:00 pm
Living a Creative Life: An Introduction to Jungian Art Therapy
What does it mean to live a creative life? When C. G. Jung wrote “everything of which we are conscious is an image, and that image is psyche” he highlighted the importance of the imaginal and creative processes that draw us into the sacred and transpersonal moments, and move us towards psychological and spiritual wholeness. His model of the psyche encourages us to move through gateways to attend to the personal shadow and human suffering until there is enough vitality to open the passage towards a new attitude or consciousness. In this lecture, we will consider Jung’s initiatory journey into the spirit of the depths, from which he returned with a psychological perspective that has influenced many areas of learning, including the expressive arts therapies. Jungian art therapy offers us a sacred vessel for the process of inner work that Nora Swan-Foster has conceptualized using a three-part initiation model based on the archetype of the pregnant woman. The spontaneous and mysteriously conceived and incubated images can often awaken a devotional understanding for what it means to live a creative life.

Saturday Sessions – March 1
9:00-11:30 am
Image Becoming Symbol: Basic Theory and Clinical Application of Jungian Art Therapy
In this first portion of the workshop we will gather key foundational concepts and see how an image may become a healing symbol through the support of psychic energy. We will discover ways in which we can experience small but meaningful moments documented through spontaneous image-making.
Supplies: Some art materials and paper will be provided. Please feel free to bring your own, especially watercolor and oil crayons and a 12x 8 or larger blank sketchbook or journal. No need to be an artist or familiar with materials—just a willingness to play and experiment.

11:30 am-12:00 pm
Book Signing by Nora Swan-Foster
Author books will be available for purchase.

11:30 am-1:00 pm
Lunch Break with Buffet

1:00-3:00 pm
Self-Supervision: Lived Experiences of Being and Becoming Through Jungian Art Therapy
In this second portion of the workshop, we will consider what it means to include self-supervision as part of your professional identity, how Jungian art therapy can nurture the development of your professional self while offering insight and clarity on clinical challenges, countertransference/transference questions, or other professional dilemmas. Using some of the tools from the morning, we will deepen this process by choosing one particular situation to explore in more depth from various perspectives.

 

 

Speaker Bio:

Nora Swan-Foster, MA, ATR-BC, LPC, NCPsyA is a Jungian analyst and board certified art therapist. A graduate of the Expressive Arts Therapy Program at Lesley University in 1986 in Cambridge MA, her training was oriented towards early intervention for mothers and children and pre- and perinatal psychology with an emphasis on developmental/attachment theories and complications arising from trauma, including medical trauma. Her art therapy research with the pregnant woman was undertaken at a Denver Hospital while on the faculty for the graduate art therapy program at Naropa University. Nora is a training and supervising analyst with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (IRSJA) and faculty member of the affiliated Memphis Atlanta Jung Seminar (MAJS). She has also served as the North American editor for the Journal of Analytical Psychology, the premiere clinical journal for Analytical Psychology. Along with several chapters and clinical papers, she has presented and taught internationally and published two books: Jungian Art Therapy: Images, Dreams and Analytical Psychology (also published in China) and Art Therapy and Childbearing Issues: Birth, Death and Rebirth. Nora has had a private practice in Boulder, Colorado for over 30 years where she’s made use of the healing aspects of dreams, imagination, play and creativity held within an analytic container.