Personal and Professional Growth. The Joys and the Surprises

Next week the 12th class of the Pantarei Approach will commence. When we think about the development of our school, we notice just how much our personal and professional growth are interlinked. Just last week a student of ours mentioned that we as teachers and co-founders have changed in recent months. “For the better,” she quickly added, so as not to leave any doubt in our minds.

In the world of Pantarei, we accompany our clients toward their goals which include elements of their personal and professional lives. Together, we enjoy exploring how their challenges and difficulties are also an expression of the things they love and care for. We often witness just how surprising it is for our clients when they successfully accomplish their goals. It fills our hearts with joy to notice that their path toward their desired aims is often a surprising one. We simply cannot predict the future or how to get there, but we can enjoy the journey and stay curious about what we will learn from our experiences along the way.

New steps and a new teacher

Merav Gur Arie is going to start teaching with us next week. Until now it has been Claudia and me who have been teaching every class since we founded our approach in 2016. We have been fortunate enough to get to know every one of our 311 registered students, teaching and accompanying them all over a significant period of time.

However, growing as a school also means expanding our capacity to teach, and this encouraged us to look for additional teachers to train and bring on board. Both Claudia and I have known Merav both personally and professionally for over 25 years. Merav shares our profession and over the last few years, in particular, our connection and trust in each other have grown. We trust her generous heart, her aspiration for growth, her professionalism, as well as her love for her clients and the people she works with.

What comes first, personal or professional growth?

When we teach our modules, it is clear that learning happens through personal growth. In a sense, a student cannot become a good practitioner if they don’t invest in themselves. As practitioners, we have to experience what our clients go through in their processes with us. The knowledge of how challenging it is to face difficulties helps us as practitioners to be genuine, empathic, and supportive when our clients are struggling. Similarly, knowing how it feels to be successful, helps us to connect to the achievements of our clients and be able to celebrate their wins with them.

There is no separation between growing professionally and growing personally in this career. In every module we teach, students give each other sessions as part of their learning. However, this also means that they receive sessions. They hear stories of their classmates and find ways to tap into the strength of their clients. They also express their life stories and allow their classmates to explore their resources with them.

Growing as a school and community

Entering the sixth year of Pantarei is an interesting experience for us. We felt that opening our own school was the right thing to do from the very start. Life agreed with us quickly, and students registered for our first training program in 2016 even before we were 100% sure about how we would teach this profession. We took it as a sign, and it gave us the energy to further develop the concepts into a professional training course of 6 modules.

There were many surprises along the way. One of the most recent ones was dealing with teaching a hands-on approach during Covid times. Nothing could prepare us for that, but somehow, we kept our community strong. And we continued to grow through online meetings, and in-person workshops and courses, whenever possible.

Motivation

People sometimes ask us about what inspires us and keeps us going. We are lucky enough to connect to this drive and motivation in our day-to-day. We find it in the growing community of Pantarei. It is in the transformation we see in our clients during and after every session. It is in the gratitude we get from our students and how we see their personal and professional growth accelerate during their studies with us. And it is from the certified practitioners who continue learning and sharing with us.

We are blessed with the amazing community around us and with the positive change this brings into this world.

Personal and professional development

The Pantarei Approach took a significant step forward this year. It all started with the opening of our very own Pantarei school in Kreuzberg, Berlin. It is a light and spacious space that we know will help us realize many of our dreams. We felt at home there from the very start, yet, the space feels better with every class we teach. And having our space allows us the freedom of opening as many classes as we wish, filling the room with the Pantarei spirit.

Adding Merav as a teacher is another step that allows us to breathe more deeply and feel the sea of possibilities that lies before us. Besides the obvious advantage of freeing up some of our time, that we can use to create even more for our students, we feel that the roots of our approach are really taking hold.

Thank you

We feel a tremendous amount of gratitude for life. We know that we were the ones who co-founded the Pantarei Approach and the school. Yet at the same time, we feel as if we only walked down a path that invited us to follow. We are grateful that this path has opened up for us and we are curious about where it will lead.