Welcome to the growing international community of “EASEL people”. You will become even more competent and successful at what you do – Be a specialist in demanding interpersonal work and a ChangeMaker!

EASEL®, is a method for increasing well-being and success at work and in private life through strengthening Social Emotional Skills. EASEL® benefits any work with people and should be in every interaction as a parent.

The EASEL®Facilitator training program is for everyone who works with people and wants to become better at it. Our target groups are professionals whose job is to lead, teach, motivate, coach, support, counsel, serve or heal others. The EASEL®Facilitator training program also adds to your professional toolbox an effective facilitation methodology for experiential social emotional learning or therapy (depending on your background education).

If you want to be well and successful both at work and in your personal life, EASEL® coaching sessions help you re-calibrate your Social Emotional Skills to better match the demands of your work and today’s world.

Why EASEL®?

EASEL®, is a method for strengthening Social Emotional Skills as part of any work, in every interaction, and not as a separate lesson or activity. EASEL®Facilitator training program is designed for everyone who works with people and wants to become better at it. Our target group, however, are professionals whose job is to lead, teach, motivate, coach, support, counsel, or heal others. The training program helps them re-calibrate their Social Emotional Skills to better match the demands of their work and today’s world. The training also adds to their professional toolbox an effective facilitation method for experiential social emotional learning or therapy (depending on background education).

Maybe 40% of our customers are also interested in EASEL – style Animal Assisted Therapy and Social Emotional Learning with own dog or horses and EASEL Facilitator training is easily tailored to answer those needs, too. (A video about that is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SxG4xOflI0 )

Strong Social Emotional Skills (Emotional Intelligence EI, Emotional Competence EC etc.) separate great professionals from the average. But based on countless studies in different fields involving working with and leading people, in families, at schools etc. social emotional skills are central to everyone’s well-being, success in studies and work, and efficacy in e.g. therapy, education, leading others, social and health care services. However, there are only few evidence-based training programs. EASEL®Facilitator training is one.

A quantitative study (at Unversity of Jyväskylä Department of Psychology) has shown statistically significant rise in the participants’ Emotional Intelligence (the results are currently being written for publishing). During the second half of the training year the participants integrate EASEL® into their own work. Consequently the training and its benefits for the participant’s own work have been field-tested across many sectors by over 200 professionals. EASEL®Facilitators in Finland and abroad have integrated EASEL into own work and own professional framework e.g. in the fields of HR and leadership, training, coaching, mental health, social work, education, Green Care services etc. You can read about some of their experiences in EASEL Facilitator training in the Appendix.

According to research, social emotional skills can be strengthened in any age but they aren’t really “taught”. Instead they are learned and strengthened all the time, throughout our lives, in every meaningful interaction and relationship. Therefore EASEL is designed to strengthen the teacher’s, trainer’s, leader’s or therapist’s own skills and to teach how to model and guide social emotional learning in every interaction in own work. So instead of teaching Math in one lesson and SEL in another, EASEL – trained teachers help children strengthen their social emotional skills while studying Math! The key is HOW they teach and facilitate the learning of Math. The facilitation method, psycho-educative tools, and the experiential activities make it possible to have individual facilitation also in a group and to tailor the facilitation according to each client’s personal needs and goals.

What ever the context of your session, your EASEL Facilitator will help you strengthen your Social Emotional skills in four specific ways:

with open dialog because, to know what you think and feel or what to do, you need to put it into words
sharing with you general psychological information and research-based “brain-technicalities” about the human mind and what often happens in interactions at work /school / home, when we are under too much stress, when a kid is repeatedly miss-behaving, when “good leadership” isn’t getting the expected results etc.
coaching you through tailored experiential activities that allow you to decide for yourself what makes sense and is useful for you, and what isn’t
coaching you in processing what you learned and want to put into use at work / home

EASEL® Facilitator:

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EASEL Facilitator – Program is a year-long course comprising of 18 contact days divided into several workshops. They are filled with discussions, theory and psychoeducation, experiential exercises, and individual coaching. You experience EASEL first as a client, then the focus is switched to your work. Part of the required reading material you pick out to suit your specific learning needs. During the second half you spend several months taking what you have learned to work and write a report which is also the course exam. The final workshop is about a year after starting the course, and is a chance to share with the rest of the group what you have learned and how you have integrated it into your own work.

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General outline of the year long program:
1. Four days : The first workshop gives you an overview of the EASEL® – model, theory, processes and tools, and how they feel. You experience EASEL as a client starting from the first steps of psy-cho-education and experiential activities and get an idea of how you can use EASEL in your own work.
2. Four days : You will deepen your self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and your ability to feel and understand messages behind emotions and other people’s reactions through the-ory, psychoeducational tools and experiential activities.

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3. Four days : You will deepen your social awareness and social skills, and how to assess dynamics in interactions through theory and group activities. You will learn about stress and how to build psy-chological safety into teams and facilitate groups. If you want to work with horses or dogs, in this workshop you will learn how to select, train and care for your EASEL-horses and/dogs. To certify, you need to practice and make a video of you with one own horse/dog through certain activities. EASEL has been designed to be equally effective with or without animal assisted work, but social emotional learning with EASEL – horses and dogs does offer powerful learning experiences, joy and help in staying in the window of tolerance when addressing difficult topics. A video about EASEL and Friendship-based horsemanship can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SxG4xOflI0 It will also give you an idea of what experienced and “talkative” EASEL horses are like.
4. Four days : deepens your knowledge of the theoretical background, facilitation methods and principles, ethics, and process descriptions of programs for various client groups.

Working with own clients and writing the course paper, personal coaching via Skype.

5. Two days : presentations of the course papers and graduation party.

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EASEL’s theoretical framework integrates key elements of evidence-based facilitation, coaching and therapy methods, as well as the known core elements of effective social emotional learning programs. The theoretical framework builds on social constructivism, SDT – motivation theory and social neurosciences. The facilitation principles integrate open dialog, sociodynamic counseling, solution-focused coaching, systemic family therapy, attachment focused developmental psychotherapy DDP, DBT and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ACT, mindfulness, Montessori and experiential education. Each EASEL session includes the elements known to be effective in Social Emotional Learning: individual feedback, group process, psychoeducation, and experiential learning.EASEL’s theoretical framework integrates key elements of evidence-based facilitation, coaching and therapy methods, as well as the known core elements of effective social emotional learning programs. The theoretical framework builds on social constructivism, SDT – motivation theory and social neurosciences. The facilitation principles integrate open dialog, sociodynamic counseling, solution-focused coaching, systemic family therapy, attachment focused developmental psychotherapy DDP, DBT and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ACT, mindfulness, Montessori and experiential education. Each EASEL session includes the elements known to be effective in Social Emotional Learning: individual feedback, group process, psychoeducation, and experiential learning.

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EASEL’s fundamental question is “who am I and what happens when I interact with others?” Social emotional skills are in the core of being human. In our training you create your personal models of EASEL® by integrating it into your own professional background and theoretical framework, work, and personal interests. Every EASEL Facilitator makes EASEL his or her own but all models are recognizable as EASEL from certain elements, processes, tools and principles.

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Maybe 40% of our customers are also interested in EASEL – style Animal Assisted Therapy and Social Emotional Learning with own dog or horses and EASEL Facilitator training is easily tailored to answer those needs, too. (A video about that can be found here)

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EASEL^® Coach – Program

EASEL®Facilitators can continue their training at ET for a second year. The two years together qualify Finnish professionals to apply for membership with the Finnish Association for Supervisors and they can participate in calls for proposals by municipalities etc. which require the training of supervisors to be minimum of 2 years.

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If you are interested in the training, please, email us your CV and a letter explaining why you would like to become EASEL®Facilitator and how you think you could integrate it into your work with people (and animals).

Request an offer of a program for your company, or sign up for the next open course!

If you want to be well and successful both at work and in your personal life, EASEL® helps you re-calibrate your Social Emotional Skills to better match the demands of your work and today’s world.

PS.

The general goals of EASEL are to strengthen
• Self-awareness, noticing and understanding own emotions, thought patterns, triggers, emotional reactions, strengths, motives and causes of happiness etc.
• Self-management, regulating stress and managing own emotions, controlling own reactions and behavior
• Social awareness and empathy, understanding others and feeling with them, being aware of underlying dynamics in social situations and how oneself influences others
• Social skills
• Making responsible decisions even in stressful situations

Our Thinking

When your job is to help, guide, teach, heal or lead others, ET’s programs help you do your job more professionally, more effectively, with heart and less fatigue.

EASEL®, is a method for increasing well-being and success at work and in private life through strengthening Social Emotional Skills. EASEL® benefits any work with people and should be in every interaction as a parent.

EASEL®Facilitator training program is for everyone who works with people and wants to become better at it. Our target groups are professionals whose job is to lead, teach, motivate, coach, support, counsel, serve or heal others.

If you want to be well and successful both at work and in your personal life, EASEL® helps you re-calibrate your Social Emotional Skills to better match the demands of your work and today’s world. EASEL®Facilitator training program also adds to your professional toolbox an effective facilitation methodology for experiential social emotional learning or therapy (depending on your background education)

Our Mission

EASEL Training’s mission is to help you stay happy, balanced, successful and creative in both your personal and professional life through helping you strengthen your Emotional Competence.

Our Vision

In our vision, social emotional skills are consistently strengthened as part of all education and training, personal development, and professional continuing education. Children’s social emotional skills and all-round well-being depend on the social emotional skills and balance of the adults around them.

Our Values

Open dialogue
Honesty and transparency
Professionalism
Community

Participants to our workshop listed the following examples of important new insights:

How to recognize own emotions and distinguish them from the emotion contagion from others in social situations.
How enhancing emotion regulation and the awareness of the influences of “a chemical cocktail” (of an emotion) in the body are important keys to personal development.
It is possible to learn to better regulate own emotions and reactions once you understand the process in the human brain and body.
The ability to feel empathy and compassion towards others starts from the experience of compassion towards self.
The importance of setting own boundaries and how to deal with “boundary violations” (conflicts) in a constructive way. Strengthening own social emotional skills to be more sensitive of other people’s boundaries when interacting with them. On the other hand, widening own understanding to not automatically take someone’s behavior as deliberate boundary violation if I haven’t expressed my boundaries clearly.
Own responsibility in social situations. Strengthening own social emotional skills and accepting that there are two responsible parties in every interaction.
Letting go of preconceptions and unhelpful attitudes and beliefs.
Own behavior and attitude may be a lock but also a gate to something new.

"Mari Louhi-Lehtiö has successfully combined to each training day a strong foundation in science (social neurosciences, education, psychology etc.) that, thanks to the every-day-examples, participants are able to understand and integrate into a meaningful working framework for own work. The insights gained invariably influence peoples’ private lives, too. I warmly recommend both EASEL® as a facilitation methodology and Mari as an outstanding coach, trainer, and lecturer."

“Social emotional skills are essential in our work when we train corporate leaders, executives and teams. The trainer’s own healthy self-awareness and ability for empathy (without being swallowed by it) are key elements for success in our work. EASEL® offers us as leadership trainers a solid framework for learning and analyzing our work. I have spent a year in EASEL Facilitator training but even in just one training day to my colleagues Mari increased their understanding about human behavior in an interesting way with the perspective of social neurosciences. Mari Louhi-Lehtiö has an exceptional ability to bridge evidence-based theories and scientific knowledge to every-day situations making her trainings engaging and convincing.

Many of our corporate clients struggle with constant changes caused by markets. Their work requires flexibility and ability to change but at the same time persistence to reach the goals with selected strategies. In our own trainings we have seen how the perspectives borrowed from EASEL® have generated new insights among our corporate clients and, in turn, helped them improve their work."

EASEL Training helps those, who want success working with people, and combine their careers and personal life.

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