Process Work and Transpersonal Psychology
As you may know transpersonal psychology is a school of psychology that studies the transcendent or spiritual dimensions of psychology and humanity. It is concerned with the study of humanity’s highest potential and with the recognition of spiritual and transcendent states of consciousness. It emphasizes the “transegoic” elements of human existence such as altered states of consciousness, trance, and spirituality from an academic perspective, striving to combine modern psychology with the world’s contemplative traditions, both East and West.
Transpersonal Psychology serves as an umbrella for many psychological approaches which embody its ideas and perspectives, such as Jungian psychology, Archetypal psychology, Sardello’s spiritual psychology, psychosynthesis, and the work of many others such as Maslow, Grof, Wilber and Tart. Process Work would fall under this umbrella as well as it embodies many of the same principles of spirituality, and emphasis on deep states of consciousness and expanded awareness. Transpersonal psychology is a philosophically based approach incorporating many paradigms which offer varying techniques for working with individuals and groups.
However, Process Work offers many tools and techniques for expanding awareness in a very practical way. Its methods are applied in many fields such as extreme states of consciousness; coma, death and dying; movement; dreams and inner work; relationship issues; group work and conflict facilitation; body symptoms and illness. It explores disturbance as a gateway to enhanced understanding of little known parts of oneself, cultivating deeper insight into individual process and global and universal tendencies. Below is an extract from my own writing which may define further the work and how it is applied.
“The dreambody begins with a subtle feeling or sentient experience, which manifests in the body in terms of symptoms and uncontrolled movements, in dreams, in synchronicities, and the like” (Mindell, 2000, p. 509). The dreambody communicates through body symptoms and experiences, dreams, relationship issues and world events. Mindell gives an example of an individual who had a dream about a hammer, and while telling the dream taps his foot on the floor. In following the tapping of the foot, one follows the dreaming process, just as one might follow an aspect of the night-time dream. In allowing the movement of the foot to guide one, one enters through a “dreamdoor” into another reality or altered experience, in which the meaning of the tapping foot is accessed for the individual through a process of amplification and unfolding of the initial signal. In entering the dreaming field, one drops one’s usual viewpoint in order to get the meaning brought by the dreambody. In integrating this message into everyday consensus reality, one can begin to change one’s relationship to oneself, to others, and to the world, enlivening an awareness process that enriches life.
The dreambody is your personal, individual experience of the Tao that cannot be said in consensual terms, while dreams and body experiences are like the Tao that can be said. The dreambody is analogous to the quantum wave function in physics. Just as the quantum wave function cannot be seen in consensus reality but can be understood as a tendency for things to happen, the dreambody is a non-consensus reality, sentient, pre-signal experience manifesting in terms of symptoms and unpredictable motions. (p. 510).
Process-oriented dreambody work provides a methodology by which identified aspects of individuals, relationships, groups and systems can be unraveled in order to gain insight into the deeper meaning of what is calling to be discovered, enhancing awareness of these usually unknown or unfamiliar aspects of existence. In order to embark on this journey, modalities such as vision, audition, proprioception (inner body feeling), and movement are used to enter behind the “dreamdoors”; to travel toward deep sentient experiences to re-emerge with new knowledge and awareness.
