Make sure to apply before Tuesday 25th November!
As part of our efforts to nourish and invigorate our community through education and training, we are supporting the development and offering of a new course, Participatory Sense-Making in Practice: The Enactive Approach to HealthCare Interactions, developed and led by MLE Member and scientific advisor, Dr Hanne De Jaegher. Designed for healthcare professionals — including therapists, nurses, medical doctors, and those still in training — this course explores how caring interactions shape both patient outcomes and practitioner wellbeing.
Rationale & Objectives
Despite considerable evidence that interaction and communication between healthcare personnel and their patients are fundamental to health outcomes, healthcare contexts often restrict the very human ways of knowing and caring that practitioners instinctively bring. When such capacities are curtailed, this can lead to moral injury and eventually burnout. The question of how to engage in caring interactions is not often part of healthcarers’ education, and several constraints can limit how much human knowing and relating healthcare professionals can engage in in their workplaces.
This programme introduces the enactive approach to intersubjectivity, a rich conceptual and experiential framework supporting practitioners to better ground, understand, and navigate interactions and communication in their practice. Participants can expect to: understand the core concepts of sense-making, autonomy, relationship, agency, loving, and care; recognise their applications to therapy and healthcare; develop practical skills to enhance relational dynamics in professional settings; reflect on their own embodied and interactive roles in medical, caregiving, and therapeutic processes; bring what they have learned into their practice and improve patient health outcomes and professional wellbeing; and continually apply this teaching within a community of practice.
Practical Details
The programme will take place over 10 weeks from January to March 2026, with 10 weekly Zoom meetings and an in-person weekend, offering participants both online and embodied, experiential learning. It will be available to a small cohort of 20 participants at a cost of €2,650 (including accommodations and meals during the in-person weekend), with a sliding scale option available. Accreditation is in development.
Please note the deadline for applications is Tuesday 25th November.
Sessions
Zoom
Tuesdays 6th January – 10th March 2026, 18:00–21:00 CET.
In person
Friday 16th January (evening) – Sunday 18th January (lunchtime)
Domaine Le Fréchet, Le Reposoir, France.
If you have questions, please write to hanne.de.jaegher@mindandlife-europe.org.
Teacher: Dr Hanne De Jaegher
Philosopher and cognitive scientist, Dr Hanne De Jaegher is a leading thinker in the enactive approach. She has been developing and teaching participatory sense-making and loving and knowing for over 20 years. Her framework has been developed in close interaction with many colleagues, and it is influential across academic and applied disciplines ranging from psychiatry, over neuroscience, psychology, sociology, to education, various forms of therapy and the arts. Find out more via her website here.