Humanology, a Center which promotes Transpersonal Psychotherapy Application and Training, in collaboration with world-class professors specializing in the transpersonal model of psychotherapy, is promoting and launching for the first time for Greek and European data a certified training from the Hellenic Counseling Society and the International Organization for Transpersonal Psychotherapy on the Transpersonal model of Counseling & Psychotherapy.
What is Transpersonal Psychotherapy?
In the late 1960s in California (U.S.A.), Maslow and other leading humanistic
psychologists, such as Charles Tart, Tony Suttez, Stan Groff, Ken Wilber laid the foundations of transpersonal psychology, founded the first transpersonal scientific society and published the first scientific journal of transpersonal psychology. In the context of transpersonal psychotherapy, beyond the purely scientific perspective of modern discoveries of quantum physics and psychotherapeutic and psychological approaches, emphasis is placed on ancient and new spiritual paths from around the world.
The spiritual paths of transpersonal psychotherapy have been followed and taught by enlightened masters from every culture, complete human beings who have left an indelible mark on the history of self-awareness – a fact that creates an extremely strong basis for “seeing far because we stand on the shoulders of giants”.
Why should I choose this training?
The Transpersonal approach differs from any other type of psychotherapy as it is a holistic and existential method, based on which the person is perceived as a set of mental, physical, psychological, spiritual functions and needs. The ultimate goal of transpersonal psychotherapy is to connect the person with his/her spiritual self.
In the transpersonal approach the concept of treatment goes beyond symptomatology. The standard of mental health is no longer the average, neurotically socially adjusted person. This person is full of dependency anxiety and hostility, further reducing his freedom and having to conform to the wishes, rules and whims of the system for fear of undermining his resources and feeling alone. In the Transpersonal approach, fitting into a sick social system is not a sign of a healthy psyche. The standard of mental health is the self-actualized and complete person, this kind of person has activated and developed his spiritual dimension and has harmonized with the universe. Healing means finding your place within the divine plan of Existence. When this is achieved the person is in the flow. So without much effort everything falls into place when you are on the path of spontaneous perfection. As a person approaches this ideal state, he becomes less dependent and more autonomous and self-directed. The determinants that govern it are primarily internal, rather than social. It is the laws of his own deeper nature that go along with the laws of the universe, he is in the natural flow of things, he does not swim against the current of existence, he chooses to go along and join forces with it. This new direction provides an authentic meaning and purpose to person’s life, organizes his psychicpowers, and leads him out of the existential emptiness and repetitive mechanistic attitude of life.
The Transpersonal approach studies the qualities and characteristics of self-actualized people who are perceived as the ideal mental model. Studying great figures in human history such as Buddha, Jesus, Socrates, Lao Tzu and many others can teach us a lot. The complete man whom the transpersonal direction wants to approach has expanded the boundaries of his individual consciousness so as to identify with the “Universal Consciousness”. The core of this Nature is sensitive and fragile and is easily clouded by habit, social pressure and mistaken beliefs, but it is governed by wisdom, and if we allow it to guide our lives, we will become healthy in mind, body and soul. Historically there are many testimonies in every culture and civilizations that confirm that such type of experience or knowledge lies beyond conventional space-time, and is at the basis of that behavior that drives a person to seek Wholeness, especially through metaphysical ways. The Transpersonal direction considers that human consciousness is not limited only to the processes of the brain and its ordinary state of operation, but that it can bend the space- time, physical limitations and move into much wider fields, such as alternative states of consciousness, the collective unconscious, racial and perinatal memories, psychotic phenomena, etc.
Modern physics & Transpersonal psychotherapy
Modern physics is rapidly revising the stereotypical image people hold of the nature of reality. Quantum consciousness is the unity of everything. At the same time, the catalytic effect on Western culture of numerous spiritual traditions has given birth to new ways of looking at life and the human condition. The amazing thing is that both of these factors quantum physics and spiritual traditions converge to build a new model for man and the universe.
Transpersonal psychotherapy delves into the secrets of esoteric traditions and the latest discoveries on the structure and treatment of the human psyche, as well as the principles and findings of modern physics.
It is a marriage of psychotherapy and spirituality as ancient wisdom is rekindled through the accumulation of modern scientific discoveries on the nature of reality and how it interacts with the human psyche. This – in an original and impressive way – creates the extremely strong basis for spiritual development and mental health. The potential benefits of a modern approach to mental health treatment based on nature’s ancient quantum know-how are enormous. This quantum know-how creates biochemical phenomena in all flora and fauna, and above all in humans.
Man affects the quantum field through thoughts and emotions, which create the corresponding biochemistry in his body and the quantum field in turn responds, creating spatiotemporal events that simulate the inner dimension of the individual. After the person is structured and composed mentally then the center of gravity is placed on his spiritual self. In this way, the common unity we all share is recognized. Although common psychology emphasizes the foreground only, Transpersonal Counseling & Psychotherapy emphasizes both the foreground and the background. The therapeutic purpose extends beyond the completion of the individualized self and includes the conditions for establishing a relationship with the universe. This is achieved through a methodology that is two-way and directed from the cell to the nervous system, body organs, muscle tissues, thought, emotions, energy and spirit. And from spirit, to energy, thought, emotions, muscle tissue, body organs, central nervous system and cell. This approach makes the difference, as it emphasizes the global treatment of man, that is, treating him as a whole and not in pieces..
The great gap between psychology and soul.
If one looks up the meaning of soul in the dictionary, one will find that the word soul (from the verb “to cool”, i.e. “to blow”, “to breathe”) literally means “cold breath”, that is, the (ultimate) indication of life in the body. The soul is the intangible essence of a living being. If, then, one looks up the meaning of psychology in the dictionary, one will find that it is defined as the science of mind and behavior. Something similar happens with conventional psychotherapy methods as the soul defines the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of the person.
The science of psychology, however, considers that the human soul is only thought, feelings and chemical processes in the body: if something cannot be proven and measured experimentally, for science it does not exist. This approach is a very restrictive model of understanding life and the human condition. How is it possible, after all, to measure absolute emptiness, as the Buddha claimed, or absolute fullness, as Jesus said? The answer to this question is that these transcendent states can only be experienced.
Psychotherapeutic systems are based on the medical model of disease and focus on psychopathology by investigating the person’s past and seeking to identify the dysfunctional cognitive and emotional patterns that lie at the core of psychological problems. However, with new information about the fuctioning of the brain and nervous system, traditional psychological methods are being called into question. Today, it is realized that the once-held view that if one knows what has gone wrong in a person’s life, one can also know how to help them resolve their difficulties, is incorrect. When one focuses on pain one runs the risk of strengthening it and becoming addicted to it, enhancing one’s ability to feel lack.
The analytical process that science advocates, dividing reality into smaller and smaller pieces and trying to find the truth through this orientation, may have results for tangible things, but not for the human condition and the solution of the riddle of self-awareness. It’s like someone deconstructing the television and looking for the TV presenter inside the device.
And certainly for the answer to the questions “Who am I?”, “Who is my authentic self?” no psychotherapeutic system can give a comprehensive answer. And this is because psychotherapeutic systems focus on the mind and emotions. The solution to who I really am lies in overcoming analytical thinking and replacing it with a holistic perspective that derives from a sense of the inner presence of that which never changes and is always present in the here and now.
Classic psychotherapy can help – to a certain extent – a person to understand some dynamics, to perceive some emotions and to make some changes in his character, such as to set boundaries, to improve his interaction with his environment. The concept of self in psychotherapy stops, however, at the history of the individual which the therapist tries to repair in some way. It stops at thought and what is known as mind.
This becomes noticeable if one simulates the human being as a puzzle that has been disconnected in some of its parts. What psychotherapy tries to do is to connect the pieces of this puzzle to the original form and thus make the image of the individual Ego. In other words, this is what elementary school and high school are like. However, if one wants to go to university one needs to transcend the Mind. Approaches, of course, from the East do not give any importance to the Ego. All they care about is the creator of the human Ego.
Both of these paths are limiting. A comprehensive view on this matter is the harmonious marriage of the two seemingly opposite approaches – as mentioned above – which shed a lot of light through the view of modern physics (Quantum Physics), which brings new data and has confirmed the ancient wisdom born in Greece , India and China, that everything is one, that we live in an ocean of energy and that we are all connected to each other so that everything
influences each other “David Bohm”. The fluttering of a butterfly in China for example may be associated with a large earthquake in America.
Summarizing: Transpersonal psychotherapy is not for everyone, it is for people who realize that there is some meaning in life that perhaps they have not yet found, that is, that there is something more to this life beyond thoughts and feelings. At the same time, however, it expands the concept of therapy by answering essential existential questions about human nature, such as “Who am I”, “What am I doing on thisplanet?”, “How can I give my life more meaning?”
If you have doubts about what you read, it means that you may not have been satisfied in the past with what the self-help methods and training programs you have attended have promised you. And this suggests that you should know and discover the advantages of this holistic and existential approach.
It is an innovative combination of psychotherapeutic, psychological and scientific knowledge with super-individual practices that affect the unconscious and many have been based on a knowledge that has been hermetically sealed for thousands of years. Just think, if we could use these highly effective techniques to improve the lives of others and ourselves, if we changed the way people think about their mental and physical health, giving greater importance to the knowledge and development of spirit!
Influences and theories that synthesize the Transpersonal Counseling-psychotherapy model.
Psychoanalytic- psychodynamic psychotherapy / Somatic Psychotherapy / Systemic Representation / Humanistic / Person-centered psychotherapy / Gestalt psychotherapy / Drama therapy / Developmental Trauma Therapy NARM / Peter Levine on Somatic Experiencing / Psychogenic / N.L.P / E.M.D.R / Taoism / Zen / Yoga / Shamanism / Dzogchen Buddhism / Platonic philosophy / Existentialism / Chinese Medicine / Phenomenology.
For more info please contact us at: info@humanology.gr.
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