This course will provide an opportunity to explore historical and contemporary influences of transpersonal psychotherapy and counselling and consider how such approaches inform current psychotherapeutic understanding and practice. Viewed through a transpersonal lens, this will include exploring practitioner awareness and sensibility, ethical and professional considerations, how context influences practice and the challenges faced, transpersonal perspectives and supervision, and ‘care of the soul’ in terms of practitioner care and wellbeing.
Consideration will be given to the types of transpersonal experiences and aspirations for growth and healing that might arise within a therapeutic setting, including transformative experiences that can be inspirational, expansive, and numinous, but also challenging in terms of where spiritual ‘emergence’ intensifies to the point of becoming an ‘emergency’, and what might help to alleviate and facilitate such experiences, or when the darker side of spirituality manifests in terms of manipulation and abuses of power and the impact this might have.
The course will provide opportunities to explore a range of techniques and exercises relevant to transpersonal psychotherapy and counselling, the therapeutic use of presence and the relevance of connectedness, and therapy as a facilitator of integration, wholeness and the search for meaning. Many of the areas explored are relevant on an individual, group and global scale, and this will also be considered in terms of crises, integration and healing.
Whether wishing to explore how transpersonal psychotherapy and counselling theory and techniques might be integrated into practice, if already trained as a therapist, or consider how transpersonal perspectives might inform understanding and involvement in wider contexts, this course will encourage creative and critical engagement with the material covered in order to gain a deeper understanding of its relevance to each students’ unique situation, interests, and transformative journey.
