NEW YEAR
Awaken
I lay at 3 am
Seeking
answers in my head
None
came
I
waited that night
Only
shadows greeted me.
New
Year has arrived
Quietly,
softly on this sunny day
Birds
sing and trees growing mute
In
this circular grassy place
Where
the houses stand alone
All
is the same except the New Year
All
is different in my soul
Longing
for home, I sit with a book
Reading
“The Fall of Light”
Sadly
I think of my life;
How
brilliantly in shone
And
slowly has dimmed
Falling
in a dark place
Like
a hollow tree burned inside
By
the fire of yesteryears.
Now,
the New Year
Like
many more, hold some promise
Of
better times and happiness
The
rising sun shines on me
And
my sadness disappears
Like
this full moon from the dark-night sky.
The old year has gone and the new one is upon us
with more uncertainties and surprises. So, this ‘reflection’ is taking a new
path towards making us think. This path may not be so ‘new’ after all, to some, but
perhaps a refreshing one.
The last blog was about the way some therapists could
reflect about seeking ways of broadening their practice. One way was to look at
the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky and his research about Psychomagic. He clearly opened a door to the ancient
practices of shamans and he uses the TAROT card symbolism as a way to offer the
client a way towards self-regulation in the healing process. Just like Dr.
Fritz Perls opened the door to existential and humanistic therapy, Jodorowsky
opened the doors to Psychomagic therapy. A therapy based on his experiences
with teachers like Zen masters and Mexican spiritual healers.
Stanley Krippner, director of the Saybrook Institute in San
Francisco CA, states the following in an
article about shams as the first
healers: “Shamans have not been taken seriously by most allopathic physicians despite the fact that many
shamanic traditions have developed sophisticated models of healing over the
centuries. Furthermore, the models have been flexible enough to survive their
contact with allopathic medicine and even to be incorporated in its practice".
One such practitioner is Dr. Stan Grof. Grof and his wife
Christina, studied the relationship between altered states of consciousness and
Shamanic healing for the past 30 years. Grof begun exploring psychedelics (LSD,
Mushrooms, etc) and then spent the last ten years experimenting and writing
about powerful non-drug alternatives. His method of therapy is called
Holotropic Therapy. This is a method that closely parallels many of the
recorded Shamanic healing practices. It combines controlled breathing,
evocative music, focused body work and
art therapy (like Mandala drawing).
As we have already explored in the past blog posts, the
current ‘verbal’ psychotherapies have not given any positive or conclusive evidence
that they work as a way of healing the body, mind and spirit. By using Grof’s
holistic approach we transform ‘ordinary’ experience of being into
transcendental deep work. (See article
on Holotropic therapy).
The other interesting alternative to the ‘talking therapies’ is is described in
the work of Dr. Arnold Mindell and Amy Mindell. Some of this work (process
work) has been mentioned in the previous post but here is a more specific
commentary for your reflection.
In Process Work, the authors encourage us to become aware of
the more subtle states of consciousness. Often the therapy is not effective
because the therapist is not recognizing (not aware) nor interested in the
client’s states of consciousness.
It is well documented today that a person can experience a
number of different states of consciousness. The first aspect is called
“meta-communication”. Here the person can ‘talk about’ and describe clearly
their current state of being in the here and now. That means that the client is
aware of his or her current state. If a person is not able to describe the
state of consciousness, then he or she may be having an inner identification
with that state but unable to express it. This then becomes a portal where the
Shaman can enter (using various rituals) into this fluid state of consciousness
without the need to have a verbal explanation or description.
Many altered states are culturally conditioned. What is
considered ‘normal’ in one culture is not so in another. A person with a certain
behaviors may be considered ‘abnormal’ in one culture and totally well in
another. This is called a “consensus reality”. That is a reality or “truth”
based on what most people in that culture define and agree as being real. The
Holotropic methods devised by Stan Grof and the many Shamanic healing rituals
are designed to enter the non-
consensual reality of the client(or participant) to be able to find the roots
of illnesses that are based mainly on
cultural consensus and reverse the mental structures and connect with the
clients self- healing ability.
If a person spends a lot of time (which is often) in the
consensual state, he or she may find themselves in a split between the inner
non-consensual awareness and the cultural belief states thus leading to serious
psychotic break down.
Another very interesting state of consciousness is called
“extreme state” and is often manifested in a comatose situation. Here the person is
not talking, not aware, nor communicating in any way. The person is completely
inside of the experience. Amy and Arny Mindell describe the work they do with
clients in coma in the book: “Coma: a healing journey” Laotse pub. 1989.
In summary, here is a list of skills to work with a client’s
state of consciousness:
· -Pay attention how consensus reality is influencing
the client’s behavior and beliefs.
· - Pay attention to the client’s Inner Child
persona.
· - Notice client’s projections on the therapist –
using “you”, “they” words
· - Use indirect methods of working like collage,
painting ,drama.
· -Give prescriptions or ‘homework’ for the client
to do at home. (see the Psychomagic post).
· - Joining the client’s reality as is presented
here and now and designing rituals that
connect with that reality.
· -Working on dreams.
In conclusion, I recommend that you reflect on the various
interesting non-ordinary interventions and develop your own style and methods
of healing. Practice becoming a Shaman or use Psychomagic tools.
Stanley Krippner, again states: “ There are shamanic healing processes that closely parallel
contemporary behavior therapies, chemotherapy, dream work, family therapy,
hypnotherapy, milieu therapy, and psychodrama. It is clear that Shamans,
psychiatrists, psychologists and physicians have more in common than is
generally suspected. (acknowledged). For the Shaman, however, the spiritual
dimension of healing is extremely important whereas contemporary therapists
and physicians ignore it".
In Art Therapy and Gestalt Therapy we consciously include
the spiritual work as essential to wellness. We do not separate the various
services that claim the ownership of much consensus reality. The priests claim the soul, the psychologists claim the mind and the physicians claim the body. We
explore and include ALL of the dimensions of the human being.
Some day we will include in our therapeutic work the old Shamanic ‘tools’ of soul
retrieval, spirit communication, community connection and group healing,
explain the meaning of dreams, vision quests and so on. WE must stress the
importance of sharing life purpose, service to community, society and caring
for Nature.
As a 'bonus' here is an article about Stan Grof and Holotropic therapy:
Healing and Transformation:
The Use of Non-Ordinary States of
Consciousness - With special
reference to the work of Stanislav and Christina Grof.
By
Martin Boroson, Martin Duffy and Barbara Egan
Psychological
illness, or neurosis, can be defined simply as a restriction of consciousness
or – to borrow a Hopi Indian idea – a way of living that calls for a new way of
living. Psychotherapy, self-exploration and spiritual questing can all be seen
as attempts to gain access to the “foreign” realms of the psyche, the territory
that transcends the tight, limited boundaries of the ego. Healing begins when
the individual finds some way to reach across the divide between ego and
non-ego, and acknowledges some of the material as his/her own. The individual
dies to his/her former self-image and world-view, and is reborn at a higher
(more expanded) level of awareness.
Psychotherapists
call this realm beyond ego, the unconscious. In discovering a collective aspect
or layer of the unconscious, Jung suggested that the content of our mind is not
limited to what we have experienced since birth. Our normal, everyday
state-of-consciousness, dominated by the ego, can be called “ordinary reality”,
and all other realms of the psyche or states-of-consciousncss can be called
“non-ordinary”. In a non-ordinary state of consciousness, the universe can
appear fluid and non-mechanical, space and time are relative, moral absolutes
vanish, death is but a transition and life exists in a variety of forms.
Stanislav Grof, one of the world’s foremost researchers into the healing
properties of non-ordinary states of consciousness, calls ordinary reality
“hylotropic”, meaning matter-orientated, and the latter, non-ordinary reality,
“holotropic”, meaning wholeness-orientated.
Grof
observed that the phenomena experienced in a non-ordinary state are
thematically linked to one another, and to issues in one’s conscious life or
“ordinary” reality. He calls these thematic links “systems of condensed experience” (COEX). An example of a COEX in
one individual might be:
Personality:
Fear
of intimacy, claustrophobia
Psychosomatic:
Asthma
or tightness in the chest
Biography:
Near
death experience of drowning or lack of oxygen. Smothering family life;
repressive environment
Perinatal:
Experience
of being suffocated (swallowing mucous or being strangled by the umbilical
cord).
Transpersonal:
Symbolic
(or past-life) experience of being buried alive, hanged, etc.
According
to Grof’s model, everyone has several different COEX’s operative at one time,
and each would have a positive and a negative charge. By experiencing each
aspect of the COEX, an individual can clear its negative influence from
ordinary life. Using the example above, one could have the full emotional and
physical response appropriate to the experiences of drowning, choking,
repression (e.g. screaming, fighting, crying, giving up). This would free up
the psychological and/or physical pattern, rather than perpetuate the
experience in a locked, frozen or jammed form in the unconscious. Each
experience of one level of a COEX would subsume major changes of perception and
philosophy of life, as well as concrete changes in everyday life. In the above
example, the individual might find him/herself able to break free of
restricting situations, such as a relationship or job, and find improvements in
his/her breathing, self-expression and emotional life. The individual would
feel free within, and know that, in the final analysis, the constriction was
internal, i.e. maintained in his or her own state of consciousness.
As
one goes deeper into the psyche, into the transpersonal realms, it becomes
impossible to sustain a belief in simple cause and effect. What one develops
instead in a non-causal, more mystical world view that everything the
individual has suffered is in some way necessary. Individuals who complete a process
of death and rebirth will say that their suffering – no matter how painful or
“wrong” from the point of view of ordinary reality – advanced their growth.
They are connected to a deeper sense of spirituality, or feel that their
existence is part of a greater whole.
Non-Ordinary
States for Self-Exploration and Healing
One
method through which a non-ordinary state of consciousness can safely be
experienced is Holotropic Breathwork, devised by Stanislav and Christina
Grof. Deep breathing and carefully selected music are used to induce a
non-ordinary state, and focused bodywork is used to finish a session. This work
is typically done in a group setting, although everyone’s process is
individual. Maximum attention is paid to the safety (both physical and emotional)
of the setting. Generally, workshops are residential, in a place removed from
ordinary reality, to enable participants to “let go”. A great deal of
preparation and integration is done around the sessions, as in any sacred,
transforming ritual. Participants are urged to go fully towards any experience
that emerges and to suspend judgement until after the experience is completed.
One
of the advantages of this work is that the unconscious selects the most
important or relevant issue. No ideology is imposed on the client, and the
facilitator is not in the role of all-knowing interpreter. The unconscious is
completely trusted to provide the necessary healing experience, without
therapeutic intervention or prediction. For some people, healing may come in a
completely calm and quiet way. For others, it may involve a huge emotional or
bioenergetic release. And it can come from any part of the mind or body. As an
adjunct to ongoing therapy – particularly for a client who is blocked, has a
traumatic history or is very emotionally charged – a holotropic workshop can be
invaluable. The preparation for such an experience, and the continued
exploration and integration of what emerges, can be done effectively in
individual or group therapy.
Holotropic
work can often provide a “breakthrough” experience for people whose personal
therapy is stuck. A holotropic session encourages and allows the unseen
unconscious factor to emerge without any theoretical programme, and
gives people a powerful tool for overcoming resistance.
Spiritual
Emergence and Non-ordinary States
Research
into non-ordinary states of consciousness indicates that many experiences that
have been labelled psychotic are actually mystical, and potentially healing, if
they are allowed to occur in a safe and supportive environment and if they are
properly integrated. The traditional therapeutic situation tries to explore
symptoms while ensuring that they do not get too big or unmanageable. The
psychiatric model actually tries to suppress symptoms altogether and mistakes
that for a cure. In the holotropic model, symptoms are facilitated, i.e. they
are helped and encouraged to get as big as they need to until they are
resolved. From a holotropic point of view, the problem is not the appearance of
the symptom, but the ego’s attempt to control it. In many cases, we have seen
longstanding, intense anxiety conditions and psychosomatic disorders resolve,
once the client was given permission to allow the non-ordinary experience
implicit in the symptoms to emerge fully (i.e. with its visual, emotional and
physical components).
It
must be stressed that experience with non-ordinary states should be undertaken
only in very carefully constructed situations, and that this technique of
self-exploration is not suitable for everyone. But for the vast majority of
ordinary seekers – people whose pain and confusion has led them to get help, to
question who they are – this method of self-exploration holds great rewards and
the possibility of profound transformation.
Our
culture is certainly one of the most spiritually impoverished of all time.
Going about our ordinary lives, obsessed with what Grof calls the nine-to-five
“hamburger stand” consciousness, we fail to see the vast, meaningful dimensions
of the human soul that await just behind a thin veil. As a culture we have lost
the means, and the belief in the importance of gaining access to our deeper
selves. It is a skill that most other cultures in the world have considered not
just sacred, not just special or exalted, but vital to life itself.
Bibliography
Grof,
Stanislav, The Holotropic Mind, 1992, Harper San Francisco Beyond the
Brain, 1985,
Grof,
Stanislav and Christina, The Stormy Search for the Self: Understanding
and Living with Spiritual Emergency, 1991, London.
Spiritual
Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis, 1989, Los Angeles.
Jung,
C.G., Memories, Dreams and Reflections.
Barbara Egan, Martin Duffy and Martin Boroson
together form the Transpersonal Psychotherapy Group. They are currently
training in Holotropic Breathwork with the Grofs. They run three-day, one-day
and week-long holotropic workshops in Ireland.
Stanislav Grof MD
Grof received his M.D. from Charles University in Prague in 1957 and then
completed his Ph.D. in medicine at the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences in
1965, training as a Freudian psychoanalyst at this time. In 1967 he
was invited to be as an Assistant
Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
in Baltimore, United States, and went on to become
Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center
where he worked with Walter Pahnke and Bill Richards
among others. In 1973 he was invited to the Esalen
Institute in Big Sur, California, and lived there until 1987 as a
scholar-in-residence, developing his ideas.
As founding president of the International Transpersonal
Association (founded in 1977), he went on to become distinguished
adjunct faculty member of the Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and
Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral
Studies, a position he remains in as of 2015.
