Transpersonal psychotherapy
The focus of transpersonal psychotherapy is to help clients achieve psycho-spiritual healing and growth through the teaching and coaching of transformative knowledge and practices.
Research in psychopharmacology is now well advanced in using microdoses of psychedelics to bring about psycho-spiritual transformative experiences chemically. It seems to be a case of back to the sixties and seventies for both psychopharmacology and psychotherapy. Transpersonal psychology has been around far longer than that: its tradition includes the work of William James and Carl Jung at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Knowledge and practices
Transpersonal psychology applies knowledge from exceptional human experiences and the transformative capacities of psycho-spiritual practices. These include, but are not limited to, meditation, holotropic breathing, hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis, creative imagination, and art as therapy. Transpersonal psychotherapy leans towards action and towards developing ways of living that reflect the full complexity of the human being.
These creative practices and rituals help people reach levels of wellbeing beyond standard therapies, often in surprisingly short periods of time. The transformative experiences and psycho-spiritual wellbeing they bring are not accounted for by mainstream cognitive behavioural, emotion-focused, humanistic or psychoanalytic therapies.
Transpersonal psychology draws its power from its position at the intersection where psychology and the wisdom traditions of humanity meet. Transpersonal psychologists study knowledge, ideas and practices from any spiritual discipline, from east, west or pre-modern shamanic traditions around the world. They study any practice that may help people grow, without getting bogged down in religious or psychological dogma or narrow, literal readings of texts.
A number of transpersonal practices have been incorporated into psychotherapies such as cognitive, behavioural and dialectical behavioural therapy, and particularly Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and positive psychology. Chief among them is mindfulness, a very effective practice that is now a component of physical as well as psychological therapies. Transpersonal psychologists, however, use this knowledge with the intention of bringing healing and growth well beyond the remediation of symptoms.
Where I stand
As a clinician I have ample experience working within the parameters of standard psychological therapies. I also have a lifelong interest and experience in working from a perspective that helps clients understand themselves as beings that are much more than a collection of cells, and to understand their experiences as something broader than a chemical imbalance.
A central value of mine is being client-centred, so your needs and preferences come first. I am just as committed to helping clients with a symptom-based therapy such as CBT if that is what they need and want. Those therapies are supported by Medicare, unlike transpersonal therapy, and they are often very helpful and sufficient to help you regain psychological wellbeing.