Integrating Body and Mind: a Psychospiritual Approach to Therapy
Integrating body and mind: a psychospiritual approach to therapy
Dr Bronwen Rees, Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK
In the West there are unprecedented numbers of people presenting themselves as depressed, addicted or over-anxious. Our understanding is that this is as much a social, existential and spiritual crisis as much as medical. In such conditions traditional medical models do not always work, indeed, they may often contribute to the crisis. This article argues that we need to take account of both the spiritual and the psychological in the therapy room. It goes on to describe some of the fundamental principles of Core Process Psychotherapy, a psychotherapy developed by Maura Sills at the Karuna Institute in Devon which is underpinning by an understanding that the spiritual and the psychological ‘co-arise’. One of the key differentiating features of this approach is the Buddhist understanding of personality – such that the therapist is not engaged with developing a higher, or more integrated self, but is engaged in a process of joint inquiry into what is arising in the moment. It goes on to explore the notion of therapy as a spiritual journey, and finally suggests some meditative approaches which underpin CPP training.
'… we are kept there [ in the psychotherapeutic session] by that sense of wanting something deeply important, which is never identifiable with what we believe we want. Moreover, this inarticulate desire makes us feel a woeful inferiority. We feel inferior because we simply can't grasp why we are engaged in psychotherapy, what it is, whether it is going well or even going on at all, or when it is over. And since we know so little, we rely so much on positivisms, the positive sciences, the positivities of spiritual teachings, the moral positions of ideologies. We clutch at these bright and rigid straws because the base on which we stand, the soul, is endless and unfathomable.
Dr Bronwen Rees, Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK
In the West there are unprecedented numbers of people presenting themselves as depressed, addicted or over-anxious. Our understanding is that this is as much a social, existential and spiritual crisis as much as medical. In such conditions traditional medical models do not always work, indeed, they may often contribute to the crisis. This article argues that we need to take account of both the spiritual and the psychological in the therapy room. It goes on to describe some of the fundamental principles of Core Process Psychotherapy, a psychotherapy developed by Maura Sills at the Karuna Institute in Devon which is underpinning by an understanding that the spiritual and the psychological ‘co-arise’. One of the key differentiating features of this approach is the Buddhist understanding of personality – such that the therapist is not engaged with developing a higher, or more integrated self, but is engaged in a process of joint inquiry into what is arising in the moment. It goes on to explore the notion of therapy as a spiritual journey, and finally suggests some meditative approaches which underpin CPP training.
'… we are kept there [ in the psychotherapeutic session] by that sense of wanting something deeply important, which is never identifiable with what we believe we want. Moreover, this inarticulate desire makes us feel a woeful inferiority. We feel inferior because we simply can't grasp why we are engaged in psychotherapy, what it is, whether it is going well or even going on at all, or when it is over. And since we know so little, we rely so much on positivisms, the positive sciences, the positivities of spiritual teachings, the moral positions of ideologies. We clutch at these bright and rigid straws because the base on which we stand, the soul, is endless and unfathomable.