Here is a 6 minute excerpt from a 90 minute DVD with Jeffrey Mishlove in the early 1990s. Here you’ll find the essence of process work.
What Is Process Work?
Processwork is the art, science, and the psychology of following the nature of individuals, communities, and eco-systems. What is this nature exactly? It is the “great medicine” for most suffering–that is, the way and meaning of change as it appears in everyday reality and in dreaming, in our bodies, relationships, communities and environment.
Process work or “pw” (often called “process oriented psychology” or “POP” in Europe and Asia) is a multicultural, multi-leveled awareness practice including people and their natural environment.
Process work is an evolving, trans-disciplinary approach supporting individuals, relationships and organizations to discover themselves. PW uses awareness to track “real” and “imaginary” psychological and physical processes that illuminate and possibly resolve inner, relationship, team, and world issues. Process Work theories and methods are available for anyone to experience, and can be tested. There are three levels of focus which incorporate just about every possible experience of reality:
1. Consensus Reality. Process Work deals with so called “real” events, problems, and issues connected with the development of individuals, couples, businesses and cities. Groups and individuals use feelings and facts, to describe conflicts, issues or problems.
2. At the level of dreamland, process work employs dreams, deep feelings, unspoken truths, “double” or unin
tentional body signals, “ghosts” (unrepresented figures) and ghost roles in the stories and myths of individuals and organizations. History, visions and transgenerational events are important.
3. At the deepest non-dualistic or “essence” level, process work deals with tendencies that can be sentiently felt to move us, “dreamlike” tendencies that are not yet easily expressed in words. This area of life can sometimes be felt as a subtle atmosphere around people, events and areas of our planet earth. The essence level has quantum-like blurry overlapping states, and cosmological, space-time or gravity like experiences.
a. Taoism speaks of the essence level in terms of the “the Tao which cannot be said.”
b. In quantum physics, Heisenberg spoke of “tendencies” of the quantum wave function. David Bohm spoke of this area in terms of a system’s quantum waves or “pilot waves”.
c. This level seems to manifest a non-dualistic intelligence, we call, the “system mind” or “”processmind”. It’s analogy in physics might be Bohm’s pilot wave or Hawking’s “Mind of God.” Spiritual and religious traditions speak of the omnipresence of the gods.
Every time you ignore sentient, that is generally unrecognized, dreamlike perceptions, something inside you goes into a mild form of shock because you have overlooked the spirit of life, your greatest potential power. (Arnold Mindell, “Dreaming While Awake”)
- AN INTERVIEW WITH ARNY BY THE UNITED STATES BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY ASSOCIATION
Arny was recently interviewed by Serge Prengel for the United States Body Psychotherapy Association. To hear this interview, which is a good introduction to the idea of process and Arny’s development of Process oriented Psychology, click here.
Process work is an idea, a community, theory and practice.
The Idea
The above sketch is meant to show some of the many aspects of process work. They are centered around the idea of awareness of change, process and the Tao. In following nature, an individual’s process moves into many realms, including the inner world and aspects of the universe around her. Process workers try to follow their own and the individual’s and group’s process. The Sun and the Moon in the middle of the sketch above are meant to imply the use of various forms of awareness. The sun “of daytime” is focused upon signals and parts, while the moon “of nighttime” focuses upon the larger interconnections between individuals, parts, and worlds.
Community
The process work community is a network of individuals and institutions which are formally or informally connected to process work training centers around the world. Some call themselves process work students, teachers, therapists, facilitators, scientists, activists, politicians or simply friends of process work.
Theory.
Processwork theory is based upon a multidimensional view of nature, as “consensus” reality, as dream like images and feelings, and at the deepest essence level, as a “processmind”. This holistic processmind is modeled after quantum wave thinking, mythology and spiritual experience (see Arny’s book, “ProcessMind.” for more, or else three page Excerpt of ProcessMind thanks to the Institute of Noetic Sciences and Quest Publisher.)
Practice
Processwork practice has a wide spectrum goal. What is that goal? To develop theory and methods applicable to any situation involving human beings, including ecology, psychology, medicine, organizational change, political activity, diversity issues, severe conflict and trauma .…
A flower with many petals
Our view on learning is that no one “petal” of the flower can be looked at without remembering the other “petals”. Thus, politics for example can not be studied without dreamwork, Comawork can not be understood without family or small group work, extreme states must be studied with politics, worldwork needs dream and body work, physics makes sense only with psychology, and psychology should be studied with cosmology, that is the study of the whole universe etc.
The applications of process work form a kind of “flower”, with many petals, some of which are seen in the picture. The center of the flower is “awareness work”, that is, noticing what is happening and following it. Some of the applications include dream and bodywork, relationships, inner work, coma and near death work, extreme state (or psychiatric) work, relationships, movement, and small and large group work (Worldwork). Worldwork applications include organizational development, diversity issues, social action, world planning and conflict management. There are also applications to research in politics, integration of the sciences as well as exploration of religious and mystical traditions, theater, creativity, and performance.