The shape of these two days

Four in-person weekends in a row, each over a Friday and Saturday, starting in Perth January 22-23, then Sydney Jan 29-30, Melbourne Feb 5-6 and finishing up in Auckland Feb 12-13.

Day one will be a refresher on the ai-EMDR model itself, its discipline and judgement calls, but shading already into the deeper work of Mark’s well-established Unleash Your EMDR Part 2, with its extended interweaves for intergenerational narrative, working with parts of self/the Transfer of Perspective, and dreamwork, all with longer protected time for paired practice. Everything we’ll be covering on Saturday rests on what we re-laid down on Friday.

Who this workshop is for

The workshops are for EMDR therapists who have ideally trained previously in attachment-informed EMDR, whether at a 2026 Australasian weekend, an earlier UK or US workshop, or an online module. They are both refresher and deepening, and with pairwork a priority, dyad pairings will be matched where possible by experience.

Attachment as the organising lens

The approach rests on a single clinical instinct: much of what presents as trauma is in fact attachment organisation. The trauma track and the attachment-and-meaning track run in parallel, like those two ruts under a Roman cart, and both need attention. 

Maternal attachment is often (actually, almost always) the key reference point for the younger ego state to make sense of what’s happening. This informs centrally how we target, how we interweave, and how we judge each session’s tipping point. Each weekend is built around this lens, and everything we teach returns to it.

Day one — refreshing the fundamentals

Day one is a clean walk back through the core of the approach. We revisit the resource team — nurturing, protective and wise figures, and the special place — and the reasons for treating it as scaffolding rather than the primary agent of change. We re-cover the modified protocol and how it complements Shapiro’s standard protocol and EMDR’s core eight phases.

We spend careful time on bridging and how to do it as the central methodology for moving from present activation to childhood memory: distress, image, emotion, body location, negative belief, and the drop back in time to the first place the client lands. We re-walk Phase 4 as Reveal, Repair, Rewire, and the tipping point between letting the story show itself and moving proactively to repair.

Day two — going deeper

Day two moves into the territory that makes ai-EMDR seriously distinctive.

We work through the intergenerational extended interweave in detail — the imaginal session-within-a-session on the parent’s childhood, conducted through the client as interpreter, illuminating the parallel architecture of the story rather than fully resolving it.

We spend time on parts of self and on the difference between rescuing a younger part and recalibrating the adult’s relationship with it: the drama triangle avoided, vulnerability, power and responsibility in its place. We work with dreams as both puzzles and gateways, capturing them in the present tense word-for-word, treating all parts of the dream as parts of self, and using ToP to let the dream show what it is pointing at.

How we’ll work — pacing, dyads, interweaves

The clearest piece of feedback from the 2026 weekends was the request for more time in pairs. We have heard you!

So, each day has protected time for paired practice, with feedback and the option to pause and ask questions. We’ll be encouraging pacing and prosody, focusing on set length and speed, the just-right Goldilocks principle, the question of when to return to target, not as rules but as judgement calls where judgement is learned by doing and reviewing.

Interweaves will of course be the parallel focus: curiosity, relational, truth, non-dual, educational, the WTF, the video, the iPad, split-screen, rescue, and the direct proactive repair. We demonstrate, we practise, and we discuss.

Perth · Friday 22 and Saturday 23 January 2027

Fremantle Sailing Club, Marine Terrace, Fremantle WA — the same venue as the 2026 workshop, with the same friendly catering team and the view of the harbour. Mark and Jutta are joined by Graham Taylor, Perth-based clinical psychologist, EMDR trainer and cherished colleague. Both days run 09.00 to 17.00. Lunch is included.

Sydney · Friday 29 and Saturday 30 January 2027

Rydges Camperdown, 9 Missenden Road, Camperdown NSW — close to Sydney University and a short ride from the city centre. Both days run 09.00 to 17.00. Lunch is included.

Melbourne · Friday 5 and Saturday 6 February 2027

The Abbotsford Convent again, Melbourne’s heritage arts and community precinct just north-east of the CBD on the banks of the Yarra. Again, both days run 09.00 to 17.00, and while the breaks will be covered, lunch from the excellent eateries on site will be down to individuals. 

Auckland · Friday 12 and Saturday 13 February 2027

The Parnell Conference Centre, Endeavour Room, 10–20 Gladstone Road, Parnell, Auckland, same friendly venue as 2026, and a quiet, well-appointed space for two days of focused work. Lunch individual. 

Pricing and CPD

See the dates for the cost, between NZ$625 and A$795. We’re applying for the same 12 EMDRIA CE points we had in 2026 for each workshop. 

About Mark, Jutta, Graham and Lorraine

Mark Brayne is an EMDR Europe-accredited and EMDRIA-approved consultant, a UKCP-registered psychotherapist, and a former BBC foreign correspondent. He has taught attachment-informed EMDR across the UK, Europe, the US, Australia and New Zealand, and is the author of Unleash Your EMDR -Release the Magic. Like Mark, Jutta Brayne is transpersonally-trained psychotherapist and was for many years an EMDR Europe Accredited Consultant.

We’re also looking forward to the now traditional support and enthusiasm of legendary Perth-based EMDR trainer Graham Taylor, of Lorraine Wright from Sydney and of others still to be named, as team that brings to the room lifetimes of clinical, supervisory and teaching experience.