Certification
Programme Leader: Marilyn Schlitz, PhD, MA
Transformational Ageing: The Grateful Ageing Programme (GAP)
GAP offers a new and innovative approach to the changing needs of our elders and those who care for them
The global population is growing older and living longer than ever before. With that comes unnecessary fear and anxiety as ageing can often be seen as a negative or a period of decline.
The Grateful Aging Programme – GAP – is designed to give people the skills and ability to bring hope and positive change to their elders and future generations. It does this by empowering:
- Caregivers
- Health professionals
- Gerontologists
- Policymakers
- Organisations
- Community leaders
- Lifelong learners
The Grateful Ageing Programme
- Is a rigorous and transformative educational experience for advancing conscious, transformative, and grateful ageing
- Offers evidence-based professional tools, skills, and life experiences for those who serve, or wish to serve, the ageing population in living healthy, meaningful and active lives well into their “third act”
- Invites participants to advance the realisation of each person’s unique potentials and self–fulfilment through a whole-person model that supports self-actualisation, self-transcendence, and collective transformation
The GAPs intention is to give practical advice on how to grow old in health, within a society that respects elders as wisdom keepers.
Programme Overview
Our one-year certificate programme provides a collaborative environment where you can explore your own and others’ worldviews on ageing.
At the same time, you will gain evidence-based skills and resources to help support the social and psychological needs of elders and those who care about them.
- Consider diverse worldviews on ageing, what shapes them, and how they impact all aspects of human experience
- Apply insights from transpersonal studies to grateful ageing
- Discover the ways in which worldviews on ageing are both conscious and unconscious
- Investigate various evidence-based practices for Grateful Ageing
- Explore tools for collaborative dialogues about diverse worldviews and beliefs about ageing
- Engage in skillful forms of communication in challenging conversations about ageing
- Develop competencies for supporting your own and others’ psychological and spiritual development and transformation
- Examine the transformative practices that can improve relationships and enhance people’s lived experience throughout the lifespan
- Learn skills of self-care and how it applies to yourself and your clients
- Adopt skills of grateful ageing to professional work and personal development
Discover more about the value of earning your certificate in the Grateful Ageing Programme in this short video from programme leader, Marilyn Schlitz, PhD, MA.
How can I benefit from attending the Grateful Ageing Programme?
Whether you are starting out, approaching mid-career, switching careers, seeking to engage your retirement communities, or looking to advance your own personal growth and development, this programme is for you.
The Grateful Ageing Programme will provide you with:
- Needed educational tools
- Enriching engagement practices
- Rigorous and inspirational content
- Networks to promote a shared identity that advances elder care to wisdom care
What are the unique skills gained from the Grateful Ageing Programme?
The Grateful Ageing Programme:
- Addresses the quality of life as we grow older
- Helps elders and their caregivers cultivate growth mindsets and question assumptions
- Fosters tools for reflection and engagement in healthy ageing, based on self-efficacy, self-actualization and self-transcendence
- Encourages human flourishing throughout the life span
- Builds on the developmental models of Maslow, Erikson, and Schlitz
A truly client centred approach
GAP uniquely offers an integral philosophy that includes:
- The fullness of lived experiences
- Expanded states of consciousness that reveal our unique qualities
- Fundamental points of interconnection
This guides us to develop resilience and agility in the face of rapidly changing circumstances and helps move us from surviving to thriving in our complex world.
How will my clients benefit from the Grateful Ageing Programme?
- GAP facilitates the concept that living with meaning and purpose is a basic need and motivation, throughout the lifespan.
- GAP takes a transpersonal perspective which can enhance self-actualisation and transcendence through self-awareness, engaged practice, and real-world applications.
- In addition, GAP focuses on the social and emotional competencies that offer useful skillsets for addressing complex issues and represent literacies that can be learned and shared.
Programme Tutor:
Marilyn Schlitz
(PhD, MA)
Social anthropologist, master teacher, and accomplished author.
Testimonials
“The gift of Dr Schlitz’s expertise, teachings and research is to bring to the fore the essential inquiry and the essence of the topic at hand. In this case a journey through the worldviews on aging. Through meticulous, scientifically based and intuitively led examination she observes and shares her research in personally applicable and relevant ways for improving quality of life and supporting transformation. From DMLP to Dr Schlitz’s research on grief and aging she has provided a journey rich with tools and transformative applications for my work as a practitioner, teacher and researcher.”
“I’ve worked with Marilyn for nearly 10 years across numerous research projects and in the development of transformative education programs. As an educator in the field of personal transformation, and as a researcher in psychology, the mind-body connection, and human potential, she has contributed to a deeper evidence-based understanding of what it means to be human and how to successfully navigate that journey from beginning to end. I am certain the Grateful Aging Program will be just as transformative for her students as it will be for the elders for whom those students will serve.”
“I am grateful for the many gifts that Dr Schlitz brings to our world. Her love of teaching, her deep insights, her groundbreaking research, and her amazing communication skills are truely inspirational. She is a trusted guide on the path to personal and collective transformation. What she offers us is a rare and highly polished jewel.”
“In crafting this important program, Dr. Schlitz has drawn upon decades of rigorous academic research and a thoughtful, personal connection to the people this program is meant to ultimately benefit. Like all of her other work, it will surely result in life-changing impact on both its participants and the people they serve.”
“The fear of aging causes as much suffering as all the diseases combined. Thus Marilyn Schlitz is performing an immensely valuable service with the Grateful Aging program, which is helping remind of the joys that come through the wisdom that lies in our third act.”
“Dr. Schlitz brings so many interpersonal and professional transformative tools of growth to her workshops and classes. From her connections in this field, her ability to apply the materials and present it in ways that resonate with the changing times of culture and society, all make for intriguing courses. Her ability to invite us to engage, process and integrate these materials both personally and professionally is deeply transformative for months and years to come.”
