This exciting 1-day workshop is a joint venture between me (Allen Baird of Sensei Learning and Performance) and Rory O’Connor of The Creativity Hub.

In 2008, I designed and delivered the UK’s first university course teaching Jedi Skills. Held at Queen’s University, where I am a tutor, the 1-day workshop gained coverage in The Guardian Education Supplement, The Times Higher Education Supplement, The Times Online, The Daily Telegraph, The Irish News, The News Letter, and BBC News Online.    Called Feel the Force: How to Train the Jedi Way, we were also featured on international radio and local TV.

Our new event is timed to coincide with the Invasion Belfast II event held at W5 in the Odyssey in October this year.

Rory, creative thinking expert and creator of Rory’s Story Cubes, will join me to offer Northern Ireland’s most exciting/only Jedi training event of 2009.  Rory and I will explain the famous Jedi Mind-Trick by showing how to gain control over and from the minds of others.  Rory will explore the subjects of Energy Psychology and Subtle Energy fields to gain modern insight in the mystical Force.  I will then walk participants through the films to see those psychological skills Luke Skywalker gained in becoming a Jedi, and those Anakin lacked in his fall to the dark side.

Other special features of this workshop include a demonstration by Rory of the latest Jedi training technologies such as the Force Trainer.  Also, local instructors will give a talk and demonstration on Aikido and Iaido.   Aikido is a powerful martial art that emphasizes defence rather than attack, and means ‘the way of harmony with life force’.  Not known much in Ireland, Iaido is the Japanese art of drawing, striking with and sheathing the samurai sword.

As the highlight of the day, each participant will receive their own dueling lightsaber and have a chance to test what they have learned! This lightsabers are combat-durable – not the cheap, breakable one’s you had as a kid. Especially imported from the US, these lightsabers are the closest you can get to wielding the real thing!

Our Jedi Training Facility for the day is the Conference Suite of the Belfast Activity Centre, a personal development charity off the Malone Road in south Belfast. Ample, free car-parking space is available.  It will take place on Saturday 17th October 2009 from 9 am to 5 pm.

Cost for the day is £77.50.  This includes lunch, snacks, and tea/coffee throughout the day. Also included is the cost is a lightsaber, which every participant can take away with them.

Click here to book online and take your first step into a larger world.

If you book before 19th September, you can chose your lightsaber colour from blue, orange, green, red or silver. If you book after this, we will post your lightsaber out to you later.

To avoid disappointment, book early you must!

I’ve had the pleasure of some correspondence recently with a real celebrity and a real gentleman, Gerald Home.  Gerald was thoughtful enough to leave an encouraging comment under one of my previous blogs and we’ve emailed a bit since then.  Gerald is originally from Northern Ireland, and played a few characters in Return of the Jedi, which is fairly awesome as far as claims to fame go.  Heck, the guy even has his own entry in Wikipedia!  Visit his website here.

What Gerald told me was that there is due to be a sort of Star Wars convention at W5 in the Odyssey this weekend.  Actually, the event is called Knights of the Empire, and is run by a people who like to dress up as Star Wars characters.  It will be attended by Gerald and other actors, such as David Prowse (that’s the guy who played the physical form of Darth Vader, you idiot).  It’s on over Saturday and Sunday; I plan to be there on Saturday morning.

But somehow, despite the write-up by Belfast Media, I don’t think I’ll be signing too many autographs.  See you there?