Process Work Institute

Home
United States
Portland, OR
Process Work Institute

Call Directions Website

We are awareness seekers exploring dreams, body wisdom, relationships and the world through Arnold Mindell's Processwork.

Following nature into the unknown for meaning & transformation. Nonprofit educational institute offering trainings online & in person The Process Work Institute is a non-profit educational institute devoted to research and training in Process-oriented Psychology, also known as Process Work. It is one of many centers worldwide dedicated to furthering our understanding of the fundamental problems facing individuals and groups today, using the methods and spirit of inquiry found in Process Work. The Process Work Institute continues the tradition of Process Work training and research begun in 1982 with the founding of the Research Society for Process-oriented Psychology in Zurich, Switzerland by Arnold Mindell and his associates. In 1989, the Process Work Center of Portland, later renamed the Process Work Institute, was incorporated in Oregon as a center for training and research in Process Work. It received authorization from the State of Oregon to offer a Master of Arts degree in Process Work in January, 1992. A second Master of Arts degree program in Conflict Facilitation and Organizational Change began in 2004. The Institute currently serves as a center for personal and professional growth, offering several degree and non-degree programs and courses in a wide variety of Process Work applications.

10/26/2026

Processwork is a way of following what is already happening. A symptom or a conflict, a movement, a dream, a relationship issue, a world problem. Instead of trying to fix it or make it stop, we get curious about where it wants to go.

The idea is to help the process unfold as fully as possible, because that is how it reveals its hidden message. Often the thing we most want to be rid of is carrying something we need. When we give it room, it can show us what it’s been trying to say all along.

We do this by following sensory grounded information. Signals that show up in the body language, speech or the structure of the subcommunication. Processwork has specialized tools for unfolding these signals and discovering deeper meaning.

10/23/2026

Worldwork is learned through practice!!

Starting this Monday, Dawn Menken leads Worldwork Lab 2026, a four-week case supervision and learning exchange.

Details and Register: https://experience.processwork.org/spaces/24445985/about

Present situations from your professional, organizational, or community life.
Explore them with community and Dawn’s supervision.

It’s a chance to see your own cases from a new angle and to learn from the cases others bring!

Mondays, Oct 26 to Nov 16
10:00 to 11:30am Pacific, online

Details and Register: Details and Register: https://experience.processwork.org/spaces/24445985/about

For a deeper foundation, you can pair the Lab with Worldwork 2024 for a Next Generation, a six-hour recorded course on the history, concepts, and current thinking in Worldwork, including how it meets today’s polarization.

Get the bundle: https://experience.processwork.org/plans/1993267

10/20/2026

The Dreaming is happening all the time. It moves underneath ordinary life. It shows up in the body, in your problems, in your night time dreams themselves.

Most of us grew up in a culture that doesn’t acknowledge this layer of reality. Arny said the biggest edge we all share is the edge to the Dreaming. That edge is for each of us and for the society we live in.

The thrust of Processwork is to start to tune into the Dreaming happening all the time. In Processwork we see again and again that when a person’s orientation to the Dreaming shifts, when they begin to notice it, unfold it, and follow where it leads, they align with their personal Tao. Their field comes into deeper alignement with with true nature. Patterns that wouldn’t budge through effort alone start to loosen.

What might you notice today if you treated it as part of the Dreaming?

10/19/2026

LEARN MORE & REGISTER: https://experience.processwork.org/spaces/24445985/aboutWorldwork can be lonely.
You're the one holding the room.
And afterwards there might be no one nearby who can help you process, debrief, learn and grow from your experiences.

Worldwork Lab 2026 is group case supervision with Dawn Menken.
LEARN MORE & REGISTER: https://experience.processwork.org/spaces/24445985/about

You bring situations from your professional, organizational or community life and we work on them in a community of practice.

You will get to learn from your cases and from everyone else's.
You will get to know people doing this work all over the world.

We start Monday, October 26.
There is still room to join.
Let's worldwork!

10/16/2026

"Conflict - whether a simple argument with a friend or an international dispute - has enormous power for positive transformation. An argument can bring new and creative thoughts to life. A good fight, conducted fairly with opponents of comparable strength, is a great way for two people or groups to get to know each other.

But this potential is seldom realised. A funny thing happens on our way to conflict- as often as not, we are submerged in the sea of emotions that threatens to defeat us before we ever face an actual opponent. Emotions when unprocessed cloud our minds and possess our hearts. They blind us to our own power and inflate the apparent power of our opponents. When conflict finally erupts, t takes place as if in a dream, autonomous and unstoppable. It may end in seemingly irretrievable acts of violence or cycle viciously for generations."

Joe Goodbread , Befriending Conflict

A well-facilitated conflict lets the feelings have their say, and the people in it start to wake up. They can finally meet. What comes out of that meeting is often something neither side could have planned.

10/14/2026

How Non-Ordinary Awareness Helps Us Meet World Problems | Dawn Menken: https://youtu.be/3q86BfrNP9Y

The problems facing the world are often approached with the same awareness that helped create them. In this conversation, Process Work Institute co-founder Dawn Menken explores what becomes possible when we step outside that everyday awareness.

For anyone working with conflict, community, or change, starting Oct 26 will be teaching Worldwork Lab 2026: A Learning Exchange:
https://experience.processwork.org/spaces/24445985/about

Worldwork is learned through practice. This Lab offers a rare opportunity to receive expert supervision on your own facilitation cases while learning alongside fellow practitioners.
What will I learn?

Join this class to:

🌍 Be part of a rich learning community in which we can share and celebrate our work
🌍 Deepen our understanding of Worldwork in its varied applications
🌍 Engage with global and local issues as they emerge in case presentations
🌍 Share our ideas and experience in a highly motivated group exchange

Logistics: where, when, how?

Six hours of expert supervision and coaching over four interactive sessions.
Live participation is recommended, but classes will be recorded and available for catch up on demand, for three months after the live course ends (February 20, 2027).

Date and Time:
Oct 26, Nov 2, 9, & 16, 10am-11:30am Pacific

🌍 Worldwork Lab with Dawn Menken: https://experience.processwork.org/spaces/24445985/about

10/12/2026

"What the therapist feels and how she uses these feelings in her work defines who she is and how she responds to life. Her deepest beliefs and feelings are the earth from which all techniques spring.

The therapist's world view and attitudes make a direct statement about human interactions. Her feeling interactions in turn create lasting effects on the people she works with and their subsequent relationships. We must ask ourselves: "What kind of world do we want?" and "How do we manifest this world view in practice?"

Without conscious awareness of her changing feeling attitudes, the therapist may act depressed or superior. She may get attached to one particular feeling mode and subsequently complaint of "burn out."

A therapist may act wise, for example, when she feels like a fool. She might sit back in a detached way when something inside her would like to be more active. How can she hope that her client will become more free if she herself is not?"

~Amy Mindell, Metaskills: The Spiritual Art of Therapy

10/11/2026

What is your unconscious trying to make conscious?
Cultivating the Inner Witness:
Authentic Movement and the Body's Hidden Wisdom
Making Meaning From Mess Series: October 2026
with

REGISTER HERE: https://experience.processwork.org/spaces/23914108/about

A slower practice space for people who do this work every day,
or those who are just getting started.

In this month’s Making Meaning from Mess workshop, you’ll use Authentic Movement and simple awareness practices to slow down and track those signals as they arise.

The practice is noticing, and letting the body show you what your thinking hasn’t caught up to yet.

Think of it as scuba diving below the neck.

Cathy Bernatt will be leading you through it. She has a way of making this kind of exploratory innerwork feel easy to step into. People leave her classes feeling more at home in themselves.

3 Meeting Options!

Online Options (Streaming Only, No Recording Available):
Oct 12, 4pm-6pm PDT
Oct 13, 8am-10am PDT

In Person Option at PWI:
Oct 15, 6:30pm-8:30pm

Level: All Levels Welcome. No previous Processwork experience required.
Details and Register: https://experience.processwork.org/spaces/23914108/about

10/11/2026

Dear friends, our beloved mentor, teacher, colleague, muse and treasured friend Ingrid Rose passed away a few days ago.

Those of you who knew Ingrid know that she was a unique blend of seeming opposites. A yoga teacher devoted to social justice, A dreamer and a realist. Calmly loving and inspiringly fierce. She could go as deep as the process was capable and still end perfectly on time.

On a personal note, she was my advisor during my 5 years studying at PWI. I was able to drink from her wisdom and rest in her warmth.

I used to joke that she had the best fashion sense in the building. Or that she used her witchy powers to put us in a trance that made her inner works go the deepest. It always felt like a major achievement to make her laugh.

She held me through all the usual troubles of becoming a new therapist. She would pat my hand and call me honey and give some brilliant advice that tied my current issue back to my over arching mythic process and all would feel manageable again.

She lived an incredible, full, rich life. Inspiring on so many levels. As she is surely dancing down the rainbow bridge, released into oneness and joy, I grieve for the loss to us all. For the space her passing leaves. And I fill it with gratitude to have been able to know her and be gifted with so many moments, enjoying her essence, learning from her brilliant mind receiving the depths of her heart.

And I grieve with all of you who may have been touched by her or her work in some way.

We love you Ingrid.
And wish you good passage,
maraya

10/05/2026

There's a group process in our field about Processwork and trauma.

One voice says Processwork, as a training and a modality, falls short when it comes to working with trauma safely and skillfully. Another says that following subtle signals makes Processwork trauma-informed by its very nature. And a third keeps asking what we even mean by trauma, now that the word is used for so much.

What's your take? We'd like to know in the comments!

The Processwork Trauma Symposium is a place to have this conversation out loud. It runs online November 14 and 15, 9AM–12PM Pacific, with a keynote by Arlene Audergon and breakout streams for clinical and group/worldwork practice. Recordings are available.

REGISTER HERE: https://experience.processwork.org/landing/2026traumasymposium

- Connect with others navigating these same questions
- Hear how advanced practitioners who work with trauma are using Processwork tools
-Discover how others are bridging Processwork with diverse trauma-informed approaches
- Share how you are working at this intersection

Address

2049 NW Hoyt Street
Portland, OR
97209

Telephone

+15032238188

Website

http://www.processwork.org/, https://experience.processwork.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Process Work Institute posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Want your university to be the top-listed university in Portland?