what is therapy?
SPIRITUALITY AND THERAPY
There are many different ways that spirituality can be relevant in a person's experience of being in therapy. If clients are interested in talking about their experience of spirituality our therapists are trained and able to engage creatively with this exploration as it is meaningful to the client. Spirituality can also be something that is held in the background and may never be talked about in the course of therapy.
Mindfulness and Psychotherapy
Mindfulness is a naturally occurring state of mind best described as awareness of the present moment through attentiveness to direct experience. While mindful we are generally less caught up in moods and thoughts and more open to and accepting of ourselves as we are. Mindfulness can be momentary or sustained, and it can be developed in many ways, including practices like prayer, exercise, yoga or meditation that train the mind to a more sustained present awareness. Mindfulness is often most easily achieved through concentration on bodily perceptions and it is a direct avenue to awareness of emotions through bodily experience. Emotions that we don’t allow ourselves to experience can be stored in the body, and if intense enough can re-appear as emotional or physical suffering.
The aim of psychotherapy is to reduce suffering. Mindfulness can be thought of as the starting point and the ending point of psychotherapy. Through psychotherapy we learn to identify what is happening in the present moment. That learning can help us suffer less by becoming familiar with and less afraid of our emotional states. Rather than blaming ourselves for our emotional struggles, psychotherapy can help us discover how those emotional states developed as brilliant adaptations to the environment and relationships of early childhood. As we age we often begin to outgrow those early adaptations, struggling against behaviors that are becoming too restricting. Psychotherapy can help us identify those behaviors and learn new ones. Our mindfulness becomes broader, deeper, more sustained and more sustaining – we suffer less.
What is Transpersonal?
The dictionary definition of transpersonal is to reach across or beyond the personal aspect of the human experience. When the term transpersonal is used in reference to psychology it points to a model of psychology that affirms the existence of a universal aspect of the human experience that transcends the commonly held assumptions about who we are as individuals in the world. This universal aspect of our experience which transpersonal psychology addresses is pointed to by words such as soul, spirit, being, or non-dual consciousness. Transpersonal Psychology is a developing field that embraces the bulk of psychological theory that has come before.