In Daoud’s Method, the term Formation is used in its fullest sense. It refers to the lifelong shaping of the whole person—ethically, creatively, professionally, and humanly—and therefore extends far beyond what is commonly understood as training.
Forming the Person Who Will Serve Others
In Daoud’s Method, formation is understood as a lifelong process that shapes the whole person. It goes far beyond the acquisition of professional techniques or theoretical knowledge. It seeks to cultivate the ethical, relational, creative, and human qualities that enable professionals to accompany others with competence, responsibility, and authenticity.
For Daoud, one cannot facilitate another person’s growth without remaining engaged in one’s own process of formation.
Whether in therapy, education, or the performing arts, formation aims to develop professionals whose knowledge, values, presence, and practice form a coherent whole.
Three Branches, Three Professional Communities
Formation is offered across the three complementary branches of Daoud’s Method, each addressing a distinct professional field while sharing the same humanistic philosophy.
Play, Art, and Creativity Therapy
Designed for professionals working in mental health and healthcare, including:
- psychologists
- psychotherapists
- counsellors
- psychiatrists
- occupational therapists
- rehabilitation professionals
- professionals working with children, families, older adults, and vulnerable populations
Creative Education
Designed for professionals committed to education, learning, and human development, including:
- teachers
- university instructors
- school counsellors
- educational leaders
- curriculum developers
- school administrators
- trainers
- youth workers
- educational psychologists
- social workers
- professionals working in lifelong learning and community education
The branch equips educators with creative, relational, and experiential approaches that foster learning, personal growth, resilience, and healthy social development.
Performance Professionals: The Sufi Method
This branch serves a broad community of performance professionals, including:
- actors
- directors
- playwrights
- scriptwriters
- dramaturgs
- performers
- dancers
- choreographers
- storytellers
- theatre educators
- theatre trainers
- filmmakers and performance creators
More than a complementary artistic approach, this branch offers a self-sufficient professional formation in the performing arts. It equips participants—particularly actors—with the creative, technical, and dramaturgical competencies required to perform, devise, and create original theatrical works.
The branch is also grounded in Daoud’s distinctive aesthetic vision, developed through his extensive body of work in theatre, dramaturgy, directing, poetry, and playwriting. Artistic excellence is understood as emerging from authenticity, creative freedom, ethical responsibility, and a profound understanding of the human condition.
Formation Through Experience
Formation is primarily experiential.
Participants learn by engaging directly in creative processes, group dynamics, embodied exploration, reflection, and artistic practice.
Knowledge is progressively constructed through lived experience rather than transmitted through lectures alone.
This pedagogical approach reflects one of the central principles of Daoud’s Method: genuine understanding emerges when experience, reflection, and theory develop together.
Theory as Living Reflection
Although the method possesses a rich theoretical foundation, theory is rarely presented as a conventional academic course detached from practice.
Instead, theoretical understanding gradually develops through:
- post-session reflective writing
- dialogue during formation sessions
- collective theoretical discussions emerging from lived experience
- personal reading
- research projects
- academic master’s dissertations
- doctoral research
- other academic research
Theory, therefore, remains closely connected to practice, continually illuminating and being enriched by lived experience.
Formation of Ethics and Professional Values
Professional competence alone is insufficient.
Formation also seeks to cultivate the ethical foundations that guide professional practice.
Participants are invited to develop values, including:
- respect for human dignity
- responsibility
- authenticity
- humility
- confidentiality
- non-utilitarian relationships
- creativity in the service of human growth
- commitment to lifelong formation
A distinctive ethical principle within Daoud’s Method is Civil Sanctity.
Closely linked to the method’s principle of non-utilitarianism, Civil Sanctity calls therapists, educators, and all practitioners to enter into relationships that are never governed by personal gain, influence, dependence, or instrumental interests. It affirms that the professional relationship is a space of trust and responsibility in which the dignity and freedom of the other person remain paramount.
For therapists and educators in particular, Civil Sanctity expresses a lifelong commitment to preserving the psychological safety, autonomy, and intrinsic worth of those they serve. It is therefore not simply an ethical guideline but a way of inhabiting one’s professional vocation.
Ethics is not taught as a code of conduct alone; it is progressively embodied through formation and indirect learning from the trainer’s conduct.
Personal Formation as the Foundation of Professional Practice
Because practitioners inevitably work through their own presence, Daoud considers personal formation indispensable.
The initial level of formation focuses primarily on the personal development of the future practitioner while introducing the philosophical and methodological foundations of the approach.
Participants cultivate:
- self-awareness
- emotional regulation and management
- creativity
- empathy
- reflective capacity
- ethical responsibility
- authentic communication
- psychological resilience
- the Dramaturgy of the Actor, understood in Daoud’s original sense as the conscious development and orchestration of one’s inner, relational, and expressive presence in life and professional practice
Professional competence grows from this continuing work on oneself aw well as being directly addressed as learning goals.
A Progressive Path of Formation
Formation follows a progressive pathway.
The first level is devoted principally to the personal formation of the participant and serves as an introduction to Daoud’s Method.
Subsequent levels progressively deepen professional competencies according to the participant’s field of practice.
Advanced participants may continue toward:
- professional specialization
- supervised practice
- research
- trainer formation
- practical and theoretical research contributing to the ongoing development of the method
Formation is therefore understood as an evolving journey rather than a fixed curriculum.
Supervision
Professional supervision forms an integral part of advanced formation.
Psychotherapists, educators, and other practitioners receive supervision from Professor Jean Daoud together with doctoral-level practitioners formed within the method.
Supervision supports professionals working across diverse clinical, educational, artistic, non-violence, and community development contexts, helping them deepen both their practice and their personal formation.
Research and Academic Development
Daoud’s Method encourages practitioners to become reflective researchers and researchers through their entire selves.
Formation naturally extends into scholarly inquiry, with participants frequently undertaking academic research ranging from master’s dissertations to doctoral theses and other academic publications that explore the theoretical, practical, educational, artistic, and therapeutic dimensions of the method.
Research is viewed as another form of formation, allowing practice and theory to continually enrich one another while contributing to the continuing evolution of Daoud’s Method.
Continuing Formation
Professionals are encouraged to return periodically for continued formation throughout their careers.
These returns allow participants to revisit personal issues and professional challenges that may have emerged over time, to recover and deepen the state of Safaa that underpins authentic therapeutic, educational, and artistic presence, and to refine their professional capacities in light of new experiences.
In Daoud’s Method, continuing formation is considered an ethical responsibility toward oneself, one’s profession, and the people one serves.
Where Formation Is Offered
Formation in Daoud’s Method is currently offered through several complementary settings.
Within higher education, it is taught through courses in the Psychology Program at the Lebanese University. It has also been taught through a course offered to Master’s students in Art Sciences.
Independent formation is also offered through the collaboration between Theater for Life, the non-profit organization dedicated to disseminating Daoud’s Method, and Holistic Studio, the principal space for formation, practice, and professional development in Lebanon.
Participants who successfully complete the requirements of each level receive a certificate issued by Theater for Life and signed by Professor Jean Daoud.