Imago workshop for couples with John and Pia Mortensen in Tenerife

IMAGO WORKSHOP FOR COUPLES IN TENERIFE

This opportunity is so much more than just a super good quality couples workshop. It is a chance to take time off from your busy daily life, recharge and slow down in sunny Tenerife island with warm beaches and precious nature. Most importantly you take quality time for you and your partner! 

Besides all free time activites, you enjoy the valuable and fun four day workshop that does more for your relationship than half a year of couples therapy. The workshop yields results equivalent to at least half a year of therapy (10 to 12 sessions). Additionally, the workshop provides something more; perhaps because you work intensively over sevaral days, but likely also because Pia and John can better clarify some classic challenges that everyone can recognize. 

It's a very popular, secure (and fun) workshop where you only share private matters with your own partner. You will have your own space when practicing the "methods." This provides calmness and streamlines your learning process.

For many couples, the workshop is precisely the push they needed; other couples supplement with a bit of follow-up to stabilize the security and love they rediscovered at the workshop.

During the workshop, you will learn how to conduct an Imago Dialogue, ensuring that both partners are truly heard in a safe framework with respect for the differences you hold.

You will also learn about:

• What influences partner choice (and why we never fall in love with the wrong person).
• Stages of a relationship and what it takes to reach the last stage where love becomes sustaining, and the adventure returns. In reality, we don't need to learn this. We just need to know how to remove a few obstacles.
• What happens when we get stuck in exhausting patterns and how to break free. Some necessary knowledge about the brain.
• How to work with what can sometimes be perceived as incompatible differences.
• How to restore security and trust in each other.
• How to expand tolerance for both intense and less intense contact. Contact and intimacy are a rhythm.
• And much, much more.

The idea behind the workshop (and also Imago couples therapy) is to reach a point as quickly as possible where you can conduct an Imago Dialogue without the support of a therapist. It should work at home.

IMPORTANT:

During the workshop, you do not need to share anything about your own relationship with the other participants. The only ones who generously share stories from their own life as a couple are John and his partner Pia. They provide examples from their daily lives that most can recognize. When you, as a couple, need to practice and talk with each other, you get your own space.

It's a fun, touching, and educational workshop.

See information on the PROGRAM below.

Day 1

• 3:00 PM: Snack and drinks are served
• 3:15 PM: The course begins. About partner choice, building a sustaining bond, presentation and exercises, appreciative dialogue.
• 6:30 PM: See you tomorrow

Day 2 

• 9:00 AM: Snack and drinks are served
• 9:15 AM: The course continues. "The Power Struggle" about seeing and changing entrenched patterns, presentation and exercises, the full dialogue.
• 1:30 PM: See you tomorrow

Day 3 

• 9:00 AM: Snack and drinks are served
• 9:15 AM: The course continues. Frustration Dialogue. Presentation and exercises.
• 1:30 PM: See you tomorrow

Day 4

• 9:00 AM: Snack and drinks are served
• 9:15 AM: Getting motivated for new behavior. Re-romanticizing. Presentation and exercises.
• 01:30 PM: Thank you for this time.

REGISTRATION

The participation fee of the workshop is 1300 EUR per couple. Payment of 450 EUR (35% of the total fee) confirms the spot at the workshop and is non refundable.  The rest of the participation fee in sum of 850 EUR needs to be paid latest two weeks before our meeting. Please let us know about your interest as soon as possible as participation is on first come first serve :) and spots are filling out quickly. 

For registration please submit the registration form below or write directly to event organizer Terje Pällo, life@terjepallo.com. After receiving your interest we send you additional information and gladly answer all questions. 

You can choose your accomodation at the event venue or in near by beautiful hotels or apartments. We are pleased to share you recommendations and suggestions. 

Testimonials about the workshop:

"The best thing we have ever done. In two days, we achieved what we had been struggling for in the last 8 years."

Steen

"I would like to take this opportunity to say a heartfelt THANK YOU for an absolutely fantastic, insightful, instructive, and inspiring weekend, which was well worth both the journey and the money. I rediscovered feelings and an atmosphere between us that had been 'missing' for over 10 years. Thank you for sharing yourselves with us, and for creating a safe and caring atmosphere where we could share ourselves with you. You receive the warmest recommendations from us."

Sandra

"A thousand thanks for a fantastically inspiring, instructive, and delightful weekend workshop. You are wonderful to be with, and I appreciated that you are both professionally well-grounded and experienced, while also using yourselves and your own stories in teaching. Thank you for that. It provided a fantastic opportunity to understand the things presented and gave a fine opportunity to mirror ourselves in your stories. Such a weekend should be something all couples have the opportunity to attend. I wish we had known about this many years ago."

Inger

"Many thanks for an inspiring, rewarding, and well-executed couples weekend. A delightfully relaxing and informal learning environment. I have especially learned that it is wonderful and absolutely worth the journey to continually make an effort to become a better partner through openness and curiosity for new learning, for the benefit of both my partner and me."

Line

Testimonials about John:

"You are, without a doubt, one of the very best and most inspiring educators I have had in my life. Both the method and your way of holding space, conveying knowledge, providing feedback, and 'handling' all the personal stories and baggage that emerged have simply been mind-blowing for me. As a perpetual doubter like myself, I have the experience of having come home and landed on exactly the right shelf." 

Lea Sorgenfrei, therapist, and sexologist.

"For many years, I have worked both privately and professionally to ground language in the 'body' and to make language emanate from the actual experience in contact with each other—whether it's client-therapist or spouses. Without this, there is no deepening and development. The Imago Dialogue provides both the space, time, and place to be seen, heard, and understood, where both parties feel safe even in very difficult conversations and conflicts, with respect and acknowledgment of each other's differences. The couple's workshop (Imago training) provides insight and a method to achieve this." 

Jim Toft, Ph.D. in psychology, external lecturer at the University of Copenhagen Institute of Psychology.

"You inspire me so much, and I truly appreciate that in your approach, you are so kind, warm-hearted, and welcoming! I have been in the academic and therapeutic environment for many years, and it is very rare to encounter a person like you who is so professionally engaged and competent while conveying with such enthusiasm and empathy that even the most complicated things become sensory, understandable, and manageable. You are a star that lights up the dark therapeutic landscape." 

Danny Fogsgaard, lecturer in psychology.

"John, you are a master of Imago, a role model for me. You are personally present with everyone in the group and can engage with all our stories, transforming them into points of development and therapeutic art." 

Henrik Milting, family therapist.

"It is difficult to capture in words how much I have gained from the encounter with Imago and John. I have found a professional home, that's truly how it feels. I highly recommend the couple's therapy training with John to anyone who wants to develop both therapeutically and personally, under the expert guidance of the most skilled communicator and practitioner I have yet met." 

Lea Juul, Psychologist.

"Last but not least, the teaching is of very high quality and provides a comprehensive insight into the dynamics of relationships, as well as tools for all conceivable challenges that couples may face." 

Lea Haderup, psychotherapist.

"The Imago training has opened up entirely new avenues for all my work with people. I use the dialogue individually one-on-one, in supervision, and in conflict management processes in groups, and I have gained a foundation for couples therapy that really works." 

Jacqueline Amholt, Psychotherapist, process consultant, supervisor

ABOUT PIA:

I hold a Master's degree in Psychology (cand. Psych) from the University of Copenhagen and have been licensed since. I work as a psychologist three days a week in a municipality (PPR) and part-time at the Danish Imago Center.

I have diverse specialized experience in the field of child psychology and family dynamics, with my primary focus on relationships, collaboration, and communication.

I am certified as an Imago therapist and Imago supervisor, and, together with my partner John, I run the Danish Imago Center. I conduct individual therapeutic sessions with children and young people, provide guidance on family-related issues, and offer couples therapy.

In couples therapy, I base my approach on the Imago method and am also inspired by narrative psychology and mentalization-oriented approaches. I have considerable experience in interventions related to trauma and crises.

I am a certified Cool Kids practitioner and offer Cool Kids programs at the Danish Imago Center.

Currently, I am pursuing a specialist education in Educational Psychology/Clinical Child Psychology.

Publications:

I, along with a former colleague, am the author of the book "When Food Makes Sense," published by Hans Reitzels forlag. The book is part of a larger socio-pedagogical project involving developmentally disabled users.

ABOUT JOHN:

I hold a Master's degree in Psychology (cand. psych.aut) from the University of Copenhagen and am employed as an external lecturer at the Department of Psychology (University of Copenhagen), where I am responsible for teaching on the advanced module "Psychology of Relationships."

I have a Ph.D. in the training of psychotherapists and couples therapists.

Additionally, I serve as a Clinical Professor at Daybreak University in Los Angeles, California.

I bring diverse and extensive experience in therapeutic processes, consulting, and teaching. Currently, I am translating this experience into a Ph.D. project that examines how to develop relational competencies in therapists undergoing specialized training as couples therapists.

My areas of expertise include individual therapy, couples therapy, Imago couples therapy, education, and continuing education for therapists, leadership development, executive education, team building, competence development, and conflict resolution.

As a lecturer, I handle educational and teaching tasks at the University of Copenhagen (Department of Psychology and the Medical School). I previously worked at the National Board of Social Services as a course leader for adoption preparation courses and as a family consultant for adoptive families.

For an extended period, I was responsible for organizing and implementing the three basic modules of the leadership diploma program at the University College Zealand.

I serve on the board of IRW (Imago Relationship Worldwide), Imago's global organization, which works to develop and promote awareness of Imago as a method to enhance communication, collaboration, and connection among individuals in organizations, families, and relationships.

I am a clinical instructor within Imago and serve as the dean in Imago's International Training Institute (IITI) faculty, responsible for training Imagotherapists and developing workshops and educational programs. I train Imagotherapists in Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Romania and Turkey.

Locally, I am on the board of the Danish Imago Association, a professional community for certified Imago Couples Therapists and Imago Facilitators.

I have supplementary postgraduate training in the following therapeutic traditions:

• Object Relations Framework (a branch of psychoanalysis)
• Imago Relationship Therapist, Imago Workshop Presenter, Imago Supervisor, Clinical Instructor
• Systemic Therapist and Consultant
• Narrative Therapist
• IFS Therapist (Internal Family System Therapy)
• Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (EFT)
• Somatic Experience, Trauma Healing.

NILS LIND Imagotherapist about John:

John Hjarsø Mortensen is incredibly inspiring to observe when practicing therapy. John possesses the blend of deep empathy and strong expertise. Moreover, he is likely the most knowledgeable therapist I have come across in this field of work. He is extensively read, with shelves of academic books adorning his new, spacious office by the Lakes in Copenhagen. Imagine spending a couple of days with unrestricted access to that library of knowledge, primarily focused on relationship psychology...

John exudes a unique authenticity and demonstrates a vibrant, non-judgmental interest in what one has on their mind. He is married to psychologist colleague Pia Hjarsø, who is also a trained IMAGO therapist and collaborates with John on various couples' workshops they conduct together. In his free time, John is an Elvis impersonator, seizing any fair opportunity to perform as The King.