Module 2: (completed)
Working with the Subtle Layers in
Transpersonal Psychology
With Rainer Pervoeltz and Markus Hohmann
Seminar 3:
Inner Radiance: An Essential Element in
Transpersonal Psychotherapy
(Feb. 19-22, 2010)
To live from your inner radiance does not mean in the first place to do your best, but to allow and feel joy when you express the most wonderful aspects of yourself. There is quite a difference between the two. Many people try constantly to do their best and often end up in a state of exhaustion. They make enormous efforts to make an excellent job of what they are doing, and then, it’s never good enough. This can lead to resignation or depression – and not, because they are not able, but because they cannot fulfil their outrageous expectations.
To get in contact with our inner radiance is, for most of us, more difficult than doing our best. To feel this radiance inside implies – more than anything else – not to be afraid of joy: the joy of my strength, of my wisdom of the beauty of my expression, or the joy of celebrating my own way of being. For many people, this seems to be more dangerous than showing their deficiencies and their shortfalls. It requires courage to allow the delight of your brilliance to shine. But, by allowing this process there is always a deep satisfaction at the end. And it is healing; it repairs something which has long since been broken.
We all carry this radiance inside ourselves. Unfortunately, radiance and reason are often almost irretrievably separated from each other by old beliefs. Religious education and also ancient inherited family rules which are deeply seated in ourselves, both play influential roles in prohibiting unclouded pleasure of our own being. So. In order to live from our inner radiance our first step would be to look at our learned strategies of denying pleasure; understanding how we cut ourselves off from our own joy.
As mentioned, to tackle this process we might need a little courage from time to time, but, no doubt, it’s worthwhile.
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Seminar 2:
Recognising The Here And Now: Presence and Essence
(Dec. 4-7, 2009)
Even though we might be long familiar with this point, we might still stumble over it: “The Helper Syndrome”. Few of us are free of it, few pay enough attention to it: our desire to change the client.
It is somewhat absurd and yet always necessary to ask the client about their goals in therapy; but the Essence has different plans than the “repetition-consciousness” of the small self / ego. The process of self-discovery is paramount. When we can experience ourselves exactly and implicitly as we are, a natural change occurs. This being an old and proven Gestalt-philosophy, it is still overshadowed by the desire to help – this, of course, in a subtle way.
Something strange happens in almost every psychotherapeutic process: If the client wants to truly recognise his or her self damaging behaviour aspects, the therapist has to “go into their trap” for a while in order to experience the whole pattern (e.g. client says: “I am no good in anything”, therapist says: “Ah, but what about your creative capacities as far as (pottery) is concerned…”). The client invites into the pattern, and the therapist falls for it. This pattern occurs in one way or another at any moment of therapy. Some therapies go on forever, and both parties might feel relatively satisfied. The client gets what he/she seems to want (feeling worthless. e.g., and getting “built up” by the therapist).
But at some point, these clients just leave because they feel, without understanding, that something essential is missing.
In order to challenge this pattern, the therapist’s intervention very often has to be (saying or doing) something, which appears to be taboo, the most forbidden, the most hurting to the client. This is an art to learn, a delicate and emotional procedure, which we will focus on in this seminar.
It is no easy topic, but it certainly is the key to many therapeutic processes which seem to be “relatively fine” and at the same time caught in some endless circle which client and therapist don’t understand. To be with what is present in the moment is an art that needs re- and re-learning.
To live with what is, means to not just comprehend it rationally but experience it in the now in all three parts of our being: rationally, emotionally and physically.
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Seminar 1:
The Energy-body:
Integrating Concepts And Skills Into The Therapeutic Work
(Sept. 4-7, 2009)
In this seminar we will explore the “Energy-body”: a simplified term, meaning simple work with the energies of the body. There are plain and effective ways in which the therapist can recognise and intervene with the energies of the client, without needing to see ‘Auras’.
By offering ways to improve the awareness of the energies in the body and supporting the client to contact them, the therapist can facilitate a self-healing process in the client, who will experience an improved well-being in the body. This is an area that some therapists avoid because they don’t want to enter into the role of a teacher. [Continued on inside page]
However, the role of the therapist has significantly changed over the last 50 years and Rainer stresses the importance of entering this role as an integral part of the therapy. Should the client have a need for learning, e.g. how to send warmth to the kidneys, how to breath in a healthy rhythm or how to send more energy into the legs, it is necessary that the therapist can enter this role temporarily.
We will explore how we can develop such techniques and offer them to clients in an effective and enjoyable manner.
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