Transpersonal Psychotherapy & Healing the Soul Wound

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Transpersonal Psychotherapy Healing the Soul
Wound

• Concepts

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Chiron the Wounded Healer
Cognitive processes (e.g., "How are you thinking
about yourself vis-à-vis the problem and
environment?") Affective processes (e.g., "How
do you feel about the problem, people concerned,
and your relationship to them?") Action
processes (e.g., "How is your behaviour blocking
problem resolution in your life?") Spiritual
processes (e.g. ("How does your spiritual
emptiness distance you from your connections
with the cosmos and all living things).
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Wholeness, Processing and Transforming the Wound

• "And what would your Wise Mind like to tell you
  about your situation?"
• "What is it like? What is happening? Tell us as
  much as you can."
• What meaning do you make of this situation? We
  understand that whatever is taking place is a
  necessary experience on our path.
• Tell me about the darkness and what it says to
  you? What is the meaning.
• Where do you feel the darkness in your body and
  tell me about it?
• How can you transform the situation? It's
  really about even more than forgiveness. It's
  about reframing the entire experience of our
  challenges by seeing the perfection in them,
  seeing that they are necessary steps toward
  transformation and wholeness.

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3 fundamental assumptions underlying the
Transpersonal approach

• our mind is clouded
• the untrained mind can be trained
• training focuses the consciousness moves us to
  action.

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Elements for Achieving Wellness

• Developing Awareness
• Becoming Compassionate
• Emotional Transformation
• Ethical Training
• Meditation and Re-focusing
• Understanding Motivation
• Wisdom

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World Collapse and the wound Gary
Nixon says that bringing out the fundamental
dualism of being and nothingness, which has not
been worked out fully in the Western
humanistic-existential perspective (Wilber).this
moment of world collapse a conversation it
represents a change from our typical
self-centered mode of being in which we ask what
use things have been to us (Nishitani).I
look for opportunities to facilitate the journey
of clients from emptiness to the roaring silence
of the present. The challenge is to accept and
embrace the emptiness because the supernatural
and the mundane are the same.
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Traditional Model of Treatment

• According to Duran, the traditional way of
  healing encompasses symbol, myth, and ritual
  (p.141). Different ways of accessing these are
  through the use of art, stories, dreams, use of
  peyote, sweat lodge, singing/dancing, ceremony,
  role play, sculpting, and relaxation/meditation
  to name a few. Duran outlines a model of
  treatment in which traditional Indigenous
  thinking and practice are utilized in conjunction
  with Western practice. Essentially, an effective
  program for Indigenous people would have
  traditional Native psychology at its core.

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Colonialism

• It is the practice, theory, and attitudes of the
  dominating cultural center (p.117). Colonial
  discourse is the apparatus of power that
  strategically creates a space for a subject
  people through the production of knowledge by
  the colonizerwhich are stereotypical...Its
  mechanism is the scientificwritingetc. which
  create the foundation and rationale for the
  colonialagenda (p.117). These concepts
  together create the foundation for racism.
• QUESTIONS How do we deconstruction our racist
  socialization?

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Postcolonial Paradigm

• A way of thinking, discussing, and writing about
  reality that not only acknowledges and
  encompasses non-dominant ways of being and doing,
  but explicitly uncovers the stereotypes,
  prejudice, and racism inherent in the colonial
  way of framing reality. This framework
  legitimizes the colonized experience and
  critiques the colonizers assumption that theirs
  is the only or primary way of knowing and being.
  

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Soul Wound

• A term that describes the deep inter/trans
  generational sorrow that Indigenous communities
  experience as a result of the historical
  injustice, conquest, and destruction that was
  (and is) perpetrated upon them. The suffering
  experienced by Indigenous communities is, at its
  core, spiritual because it involved a raping of
  the most meaningful aspects of their culture
  family, language, traditions, connection to
  Spirit, Nature, and each other.

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Internalized Oppression

• Colonialism creates an oppressive environment
  whereby people are disallowed or unable (because
  its too dangerous or risky) to express anger and
  frustration. These feelings are turned inward
  and directed at ones self and/or
  family/community. This anger can be expressed in
  violence, for example, through domestic violence,
  sexual abuse, suicide, or murder (of ones own
  people). It can also be expressed more subtly
  through depression, low self (or community)
  esteem, apathy, substance abuse, or mental
  illness.

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Intergenerational Trauma (PTSD)

• Studies have shown that PTSD is generationally
  cumulative thus, as each generation of
  childrens normal development tasks are unmet and
  traumas are unresolved, the pattern of
  dysfunctional behaviour modeled to their children
  intensifies. Indigenous people experienced the
  same sudden separation from their loved ones as
  well as a disconnection from the Earth their
  Mother. Furthermore, acculturation stress is a
  continuing factor in the perpetration
  ofsymptomatology that isPTSD (p.32).
  Effective therapy with families would start with
  the validation of the externally imposed
  craziness (p.159) in order to acknowledge the
  trauma perpetrated on the family before focusing
  on the continuing trauma cycle within the family.
  

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Warrior Psyche

• Many of the problems that Indigenous men
  experience are ramifications of the colonization
  of warriors. The colonizers mythology and
  practices were so diametrically opposed to those
  held in sacred trust to the warriors psyche of
  Indigenous men. They were unable to protect
  their families and communities and furthermore,
  their role in the traditional economy was lost.
  The result a deep psychological trauma of
  identity loss (p.36).

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Therapist-Centered Therapy

• This is a different perspective from Rogers
  client-centered therapy. Instead of giving up
  power (empowering) and orienting oneself to the
  client (person-centered empathy), the onus is on
  the therapist to be centered, knowledgeable about
  oneself, and comfortable with the power of ones
  role as healer. This perspective acknowledges
  and embraces the directive, seemingly mystical,
  and powerful abilities of the healer. The belief
  is that if the therapist is grounded and strong,
  the greater effect s/he will have on the client.

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Dream Work

• Dreams are also seen as expressing the innermost
  (inborn), hidden parts of us thus, exploring our
  dreams is exploring our destiny and purpose.
  Also, dreams can be a vehicle for information,
  messages, and processing either within ourselves,
  or between ourselves and the spirit world.

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Archetypes

• Duran Duran states that issues of the psyche
  can best be understood using Jungs Archetypal
  Psychology combined with Indigenous cosmology.
  Jung made a connection between the myths and
  images/symbols of the New and Old World. This
  convinced him that these same motifs emerged out
  of some deep human source that is common to all
  people (p.66) thus, there is a common thread
  that weaves the human psyche (p.66).

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Alcohol Spirits

• In a traditional Indigenous worldview, alcohol is
  seen as a destructive spiritual entity that is
  confronted as if in spiritual warfare (p.139).
  Thus, alcohol use and abuse is as much a
  spiritual matter as a health issue moreover,
  these are not considered as separate. Because
  alcohol transcends individual/personal boundaries
  (being a spiritual entity/issue), its use and
  misuse affects the whole community. Thus, the
  methods of healing encompass community, ritual,
  symbol, myth, and spirit (p.141).

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Sandtray

• This is a non-intrusive and non-verbal way for
  children and/or families to express themselves.
  They can make a story, dream, or free-play. If a
  child has experienced trauma, these traumatic
  events will be revealed in a non-traumatic,
  symbolic fashion (p.164). Furthermore, the
  sandtray provides the child with a vehicle that
  allows for symbolic ideomotor responses that
  have cathartic and therapeutic qualities
  (p.164). The sandtray gives the child control at
  a conscious and unconscious level. Consciously,
  s/he can create a world in the sand that is
  healthy and ideal. Unconsciously, the symbolic
  play begins to resolve the trauma through the
  idio-motor memory (p.164).

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Indigenization

• This term refers to the replacement of
  Eurocentric models with local, native idioms
  (p.125). Essentially, it is FN people making
  sense of their world in their way for their
  people instead of the dominant society (that
  colonized them) interpreting their world for
  them. It is validating, legitimizing, and
  utilizing the worldview and knowledge that was
  already there, but may have been dormant, hidden,
  or almost forgotten through the colonization
  process. For a woman, it is like rediscovering
  the ancient traditions of midwifery after
  experiencing a traumatic hospital birth. For a
  person who was shuffled through countless foster
  homes, it is like coming home to your birth
  parents that have been searching for you all
  these years. It is finding yourself and
  realizing you were always there.

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A Transpersonal Therapist
1. Openness to the transpersonal dimension,
including the belief that contacts with
transpersonal realms may be Transformative and of
greatest healing potential 2. The ability to
sense the presence of, or a report of numinous
experience, whether it should appear in a dream,
a vision, a synchronous event or a contact with a
spiritual teacher 3. Some knowledge of a variety
of spiritual paths 4. Activate pursuit of your
own spiritual development 5. Degree of openness
about him/herself, his/her own spiritual
orientation, and experience 6.A firm grounding
in psychotherapy (Scotton, in Hutton, l993, p.
141).
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• Tonglen
• sending and taking
• Listening at a deep level
• Engenders compassion
• Process preparation, regulating breathing,
  transforming, accepting
• Tonglen does not allow us to just sit there and
  reflect, we become engaged with our client on the
  human level, sharing in what we as humans have in
  commonTonglen keeps us in the room, firmly
  planted in our chair, listening and feeling with
  great curiosity and sincere caring.