Workshop #01 — Personal & Spiritual Growth
The evolution of the soul, met through therapeutic and spiritual practice.
Life is a journey involving the evolution of our soul. Spirituality and psychotherapy each offer support in this process — but what is the difference between them, and how does spiritual growth relate to the personal growth achieved through therapy? This workshop examines those questions through principles, practices, and lived experience.
Orientation
Clarity, rather than esoterica.
Because it is so easy to get lost in abstraction, the emphasis here is on heightened self-awareness and movement into dialogue on the topic of spirituality. Transformative experiences hold the key to a personal understanding, so these are shared and explored in small groups, with a safe container supporting the intimacy of self-revelation and the building of an I–Thou meeting.
Participants are guided to examine their own belief systems in regard to personal and spiritual evolution. Core values and experiences reveal the deepest parts of ourselves, and often lead to conflict or misunderstanding when shared. The workshop creates a supportive atmosphere in which each person’s deepest questions and reflections can be examined.
Abstract ideas are grounded through application; the aim is to energise practical action in participants’ lives. Each person’s practices for transformation are identified, and spiritual and therapeutic practices are compared and contrasted — then linked back to personal belief and experience.
On Religious Wounding
Religious wounding occurs when the spiritual realm is contaminated with oppressive and hurtful experiences, often stemming from the abuse of power in relationship. People come to therapy to deal with their pain, but rarely consider religious wounding to be a subject for therapeutic work.
By using therapeutic tools to address spiritual issues, blocks to both personal and spiritual growth can be cleared. Done in a group context, this creates a setting for profound healing and transformation — and a clear template for work with clients, based on a Gestalt approach to unfinished business and dialogue.
Areas of Exploration
Nine territories, worked through didactic teaching, demonstration, and small-group enquiry.
The workshop combines didactic presentation, group discussion, experiential demonstration, and small group exploration across the following domains.
- 01
Spirituality and field context
How the surrounding field shapes a client’s spiritual life, and how to work with it therapeutically.
- 02
The core nature of spiritual experience
Spiritual experience as a marker, considered through personal story, research on transcendence, and therapeutic theory.
- 03
A safe setting for belief systems
Holding belief without judgement, so that core values may be examined rather than defended.
- 04
The place of spiritual practices
Identifying the practices each person uses for transformation, and what they offer.
- 05
Spiritual versus personal growth
Where the two domains differ, where they overlap, and where they ask different things of us.
- 06
Religious wounding
Sources of trauma in religious settings, and demonstration of therapeutic work that addresses them.
- 07
Therapeutic process applied to spirituality
How the standard therapeutic toolkit translates into work with spiritual material.
- 08
Focused awareness, dialogue, creative experiment
The Gestalt instruments brought to bear on spiritually-related issues.
- 09
Supporting the client’s own path
Empowering each client to develop a unique and personal spirituality, rather than adopting the therapist’s.
Seminar Arc
How the days unfold.
Each movement begins with a personal story, opens into small-group enquiry, returns to the larger circle, and finally lands in demonstration of therapeutic work.
- Introduction to the meta model, and personal story as an example of field context.
- Small-group exploration of the field context of spirituality, followed by larger discussion of how to work with it therapeutically.
- Spiritual experience as a core marker — personal story, small-group sharing, larger reflection.
- Definitional perspectives on spirituality, drawing on impressionistic approaches, research on transcendence, and therapeutic theory.
- Spiritual belief systems: personal exploration, small-group sharing, large-group reflection, and application to clinical work.
- Spiritual practices: the same arc, ending in therapeutic application.
- Demonstration of therapeutic work across the four areas introduced so far.
- Spiritual growth and personal growth: where they differ, and the role of support in each.
- Contrasting spiritual and therapeutic concepts and practices: places of conflict and choice.
- Religious wounding: definition and sources of trauma.
- Demonstration of therapeutic work with religious wounding, with deconstruction of the principles and practices used.
Learning Outcomes
By the close of the seminar, participants will be able to:
- Understand the interface between the transpersonal and the personal domain of development and growth.
- Explore and work with a client’s spiritual field context.
- Dialogue with a client’s spiritual belief system within the frame of a therapeutic session.
- Understand the role of spiritual practices in a client’s growth, and support them therapeutically.
- Recognise religious wounds and address the accompanying trauma.
- Hold a basic grasp of one’s own spiritual ground, and identify personal issues of religious wounding.
- Apply therapeutic technique to spiritually related issues.
What Participants Take Away
A clearer ground — for themselves, and for their clients.
- Clarification of your own ground of spirituality, as defined by practice, experience, context, and belief.
- Practical ways to work with clients’ spirituality through therapeutic process.
- An understanding of the points of difference and similarity between spirituality and psychotherapy, and the implications for both fields.
- An extensive set of reflective questions for ongoing self-exploration and for use with clients.
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