PSYCHOTHERAPY TODAY Many Kinds and Types

" The Journey Itself

 IS the Destination! " 

PSYCHOTHERAPY TODAY Many Kinds and Types
Much in contemporary transpersonal approaches are derived from Buddhist teaching because Buddhist thought tends to be focused largely on internal experience -- and in this way transcends the context of the organized  ‘religion’ per se, recommending we explore our very ‘selves’ --directly-- through the Buddhist approach to psychotherapy which is simply based on the experiencial core awareness teachings of the Buddha.

We will start with our own Beginner’s Mind -- with Buddha nature, the core ethics, mindfulness, perception and karmic will, dhyana, compassion, love, wisdom and letting go.

Mark Epstein

“Going to Pieces

Without Falling Apart”

be mindFULLY within

short excerpts from --
Psychotherapy Overview -- as it is Today
Contemporary Psycho/Spiritual Counseling

Insight Sees 

from the Inside
Vi’pass-ana Meditation:
SANSKRIT -- Ana’pana-sati

or Mindfulness with Breathing.
Vipassana means INSIGHT--

Seeing from the INSIDE.
Very, very gently keep turning
your ‘attention’ fully around -- 

Do a 180 and bring the attention --

again and again mindFULLY within,

to watch quietly from the INSIDE --

to ‘See’ consciously

from within -- with INSIGHT.

THE JOB OF THE PSYCHOTHERAPIST is to provide a safe and sacred space for healing, to listen skillfully and respectfully, to help clients become aware of their own patterns and belief systems, to offer support that helps each client grow in their unique, individual way, and to facilitate change. THE CLIENT'S JOB is to come as you are, bringing all of your joy, pain, beauty, awkwardness, sanity and neurosis to each session with a willingness to work with what is painful and difficult. A skillful therapist recognizes that you are the expert on your life and is not there to "fix" you but to offer guidance and protective accompaniment as you make the journey to your own healing.
mindfulness   

~Sati.

 be mindFULLY within

Contemplative Psychotherapy

encourages us to be present,

mindful and curious about

ourselves, just as we are.

As we befriend our own

humanness, we develop

compassion for ourselves

and others, and opening

the door to healing and change.

--- ‘Cuz…

 If Nothing Changes,

 Nothing Changes ! ...

and that's a really Radical Acceptance type of OK too

Personal Psycho/Spiritual Counseling - For the many people who come to do the program a majority go through various mental and emotional changes while doing the fast. Most ask for some counseling. Counseling is given according to Buddhist principles which guide the individual into themselves. Buddhist counseling helps the individual let go of attachments by focusing on the present moment. A peaceful environment is conducive for this work, providing the opportunity for reflection, for individual meditation and for aspiring affirmations and visualizations that assist each person to let go of a hindering past and unsure future realities.

Psychotherapy / Counseling

Psychotherapy today is as much about wholeness and wellness as it is about relieving psychological distress. Many people come to psychotherapy with a desire to function more effectively in daily life, to develop greater self-understanding and to build satisfying relationships.

Vi’pass-ana Meditation-based Therapy:
SANSKRIT and PALI  -- Ana’pana-sati or Mindfulness with Breathing.
Vipassana means INSIGHT-- Seeing from the inside. Very, very gently keep turning your ‘attention’ fully around --  Do a 180 and bring the attention -- again and again mindFULLY within, to watch quietly from the INSIDE -- to ‘See’ consciously from within -- INSIGHT.

Psychotherapy is about relieving unnecessary suffering,
healing from trauma and working through life's challenges.

Contemplative Psychotherapy

Contemplative Psychotherapy is based on the 2500-year-old wisdom teachings of Buddhist psychology as applied to Western psychotherapy. In this tradition, what is most important is cultivating the ability to make friends with oneself and one's own experience - with the fear, anger, hatred and confusion that are inevitable parts of life as well as the brilliance, wisdom and clarity. Rather than continuing in patterns of pushing away or ignoring what is painful and unpleasant or grasping after what is lacking, contemplative psychotherapy encourages us to be present, mindful and curious about ourselves, just as we are. As we befriend our own humanness, we develop compassion for ourselves and others, opening the door to healing and change.

Holistic Counseling

Holistic Counselors merge many fields of study into their therapeutic approach. While Louisiana, in particular, does not have a designation for Holistic Practitioners, many Psychotherapists have expanded their boundaries to incorporate other disciplines into their practices in an effort to treat the whole "Self." Licensed Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Social Workers and Counselors are progressively blending their practices with Movement Therapies, Yoga, Massage Therapy, Breath-work and a variety of other bodywork therapies, such as Reiki, Healing Touch and Rolfing. Other practitioners have focused more on the sensory information and have combined their work with Neurolinguistic Programming, EMDR, Thought Field Therapy, Sound Therapy, Light Therapy, Art Therapy and Color Therapy.

Additionally, Psychotherapists may use Aromatherapy, Nutritional therapy, Feng Shui, Meditation and Spirituality to augment their practices to better meet the individual needs of the client. As the therapeutic journey is about growth and healing, the blending of disciplines allows clients to have more choices in their quest toward wholeness..

There are many styles and schools of psychotherapy, some of the most common traditional styles being psychodynamic, Jungian, Gestalt, Ericksonion, cognitive, behavioral and family systems. Additionally, many psychotherapists practice in an eclectic way that allows them to draw from many schools of thought as seems most fitting for each client.

Studies of the efficacy of psychotherapy have shown that no one school of psychotherapy is more effective than another. What is most important is the relationship that is formed between therapist and client and the client's willingness and ability to change.

Some common issues for which
psychotherapy is helpful are as follows:

• Relationships – Marriage, Parenting Or Work
• Trauma And Loss – Death, Divorce, Illness, Violence Or Abuse
• Identity – Personal, Career Or Sexuality
• Psychological Pain – Depression, Anxiety, Grief Or Stress
• Personal Development – Love, Intimacy, Creativity Or Spirituality
• Sports Psychology – Performance, Teamwork Or Motivation
• Physical Illness – Particularly Chronic And Life-Threatening

The length of psychotherapy varies greatly depending on the issues being dealt with and the goals of the client. Frequently people are able to make substantial changes and feel better in a relatively short period of time. Deeper, long-standing issues, particularly when there has been much loss or trauma, or a serious commitment to a personal growth process, may take months and even years. A skilled psychotherapist will guide you in setting realistic goals for therapy and respect your own judgment in determining when to end therapy.

When choosing a psychotherapist, it is helpful to find a therapist whom you feel comfortable with and respected by. Most therapists will offer you an opportunity to interview them by phone or in person. Psychotherapists come from many different backgrounds in training and theory but generally have a master's or doctorate degree in psychology, counseling, pastoral counseling or social work. In Colorado, all psychotherapists are required to be registered in a state-wide database.

eTherapy Online

eTherapy is a relatively new, rapidly expanding and powerful mode of providing excellent therapeutic help online, using the Internet. The therapists are experts with verifiable credentials who can give guidance and advice from most of the therapeutic modalities that face-to-face therapists use. The means used to facilitate the therapy are e-mails, chat rooms and video conferencing. eTherapy can stand alone or be used in combination with many other healing techniques and tools.

For people who, because of physical challenge, remote location, phobias, busy life-styles, need of specific expertise not found locally or other reasons, cannot or do not wish to see a conventional therapist in a traditional setting, eTherapy can make the difference between receiving expert support, advice and guidance or living in isolation, with a feeling of being trapped. eTherapy can be the saving grace which unlocks doors of ignorance and fear with which many people view psychotherapy and other healing modalities. Many people think traditional psychotherapy is too costly, too personal, too invasive, and takes up too much time. eTherapy can be a means of getting help for those with these considerations. eTherapy can be seen as having an expert available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. It is an effective and highly valuable form of healing which can reach and aid many people to live fuller and richer lives.

EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is one of the exciting new "power therapies" taking the field of psychotherapy into the 21st century. During EMDR, the client concentrates on the feelings, body sensations, negative thoughts, and a visual representation of the problem while following a back and forth motion of the therapist's fingers, watching a series of moving lights, or hearing alternating tones through a set of headphones. These methods bilaterally stimulate the brain, bringing the resources of the left and right brain equally to focus on solving the problem.

Brief interchanges between client and therapist are woven into the work until the disturbing situation no longer elicits distress. That situation is then reprocessed, this time with positive thoughts, feelings and associations. In effect, the trauma or disturbance is reframed, and although still remembered, does not continue to cause distress or drive addictive or other unhealthy behaviors. In addition, EMDR often results in powerful new insights, information and understanding.

A typical course of therapy lasts three to ten 90-minute sessions. EMDR can stand alone as a treatment modality or be effectively incorporated into many other psychotherapeutic approaches.

Journal Therapy ~ Reflective Writing

Journal writing can be a powerful additional tool in the therapeutic process. It is one of the most effective ways to stay in touch with what is going on in the present, to clarify intentions and goals, and to work through difficult emotional issues. Journal Therapy is the purposeful and intentional use of reflective writing to facilitate healing. A trained Journal Therapist provides structure and facilitates self-knowledge by guiding the writing process and offering appropriate journal interventions. Journal Therapy is effective for clients with a wide range of diagnoses and life issues. One of the important tasks for persons in difficulty or transition is to tell their Story, and Journal Therapy can provide a safe place to tell even the most painful story.

Spiritual Counseling

Spiritual counseling provides a context within which clients are able to explore their true identity and purpose in life. An experienced counselor is able to help the client see difficult situations and events in life as spiritual opportunities for growth and purification. As spiritual knowledge increases, the qualities of the higher self become more accessible, qualities such as joy, authenticity and insight. The spiritual counselor is able to explain such concepts as the soul, karma, reincarnation and self-realization, and utilize these ideas in the counseling relationship. Many techniques are used, such as visualization, prayer and ritual to help the client go deeply into present experience and find the seeds of transformation.

 Alternative therapies are increasingly being recognized as valuable resources in wholistic health care by health care providers, accrediting agencies and by insurance companies for third party payments. On a global scale, more persons are being cared for by these alternative therapies than what has been called "Western" therapies. A review of the more significant alternative therapies will increase student's familiarity with therapy functions and assumptions in non-Western cultures and provide models of health care which may be relevant to Western cultural contexts.

Sources: Caroline Constantine, MA, Denver CO; Jan Foster Miiller, MA.

 

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Mark Epstein

Going to Pieces

without Falling Apart

 

Reviews

In the era of self-empowerment and the relentless glorification of self-esteem, Mark Epstein is questioning whether we have it all backward. As a psychiatrist and practicing Buddhist for 25 years, Epstein has come to believe that the self-help movement has encouraged us to spend enormous amounts of time, money, and mental energy on patching up our egos, rather than pursuing true self-awareness. Instead, Epstein suggests we carefully shatter the ego, as if it were a fat piggy bank, to see what's inside--a scary prospect for those who spend their lives in fear of falling apart. But fear not. Epstein artfully shows readers how to patch the pieces together again into a far richer and more meaningful mosaic. --Gail Hudson

From the New England Journal of Medicine
Mark Epstein recounts the story of a smart and eager professor who sought wisdom from an old Zen master. The master offered him tea and, on the professor's acceptance, poured the tea into a cup. To the professor's dismay, however, the master kept pouring the tea into an overflowing cup, even as the tea spread across the floor. ``A mind that is full cannot take in anything new,'' the master explained. ``Like this cup, you are full of opinions and preconceptions.'' Wisdom and happiness are to be found only by emptying one's cup.

With this story, Epstein illustrates what he believes is an important problem for modern Western culture. Trained to approach life in the same way as the professor in the parable, Westerners tend to fill their lives with things and knowledge the way the master filled the cup with tea. In the psychological arena, this gives rise to a sort of psychological acquisitiveness, whereby we attempt to beef ourselves up with self-esteem, self-confidence, self-expression, or self-control. The message of Buddhism, Epstein argues, is that this Western tendency to build and strengthen the ego toward the ideal of a strong, individuated self will not work. We come to wisdom and peace of mind only by acknowledging the difficulties that are created by the ego's blind need to control and by allowing emptiness to be present as an inevitable and often valuable state.

Beginning with his own sense of emptiness as a boy in high school and then presenting a variety of Buddhist parables, clinical anecdotes, and personal examples, Epstein recounts what he has learned so far in his lifelong journey to understand the mind. Observations of his undergraduate classmates at Harvard, his contacts with the Dalai Lama, his deepening ability to understand and live in both Eastern and Western worlds during medical school and residency, and his subsequent contact with several schools of psychoanalysis, Gestalt therapy, and especially the writings of Winnicott -- this very personal journey reflects Epstein's growing conviction that the Western psychological notion of what it means to have a self is flawed. Western thought tends to pathologize what is understood in Buddhism as a universally human starting point for wisdom and self-understanding.

The “Deficiencies'' Of Childhood
and The ``Errors'' Of Adult Life
often do not represent darkness or void, as they initially seem to, but rather, are occasions that create the possibility of life and freedom. Human urges and conflicts are not necessarily pathologic; instead, they reflect the movement of life as it attempts to become manifest within us. The point is to allow the conflicts to surface and become visible.

In response to the Western proclivity for knowledge, Epstein offers wisdom from the ancient texts of Buddhism; in response to the Western bias toward individuation, he offers connection; in response to the emphasis on rational mind, he offers mind-in-the-heart. In response to the warring of our cultural dualisms, whether between mind and body, individual and community, or men and women, he offers unity and reciprocity.

All of this becomes possible through a ``middle way'' of nonjudgmental awareness that avoids either ``attachment'' or ``aversion'' to any of these polarities and, in so doing, transforms experience. Then, says Epstein, one can live in the lion's den of life with honesty and authenticity. In sizing up the possible relevance of Eastern mysticism to Western postindustrial cultures, it is important to understand that both Western science and Christianity were born in what we now call the East and that many modern problems revolve around ways in which intellectual categories have been reshaped since then. In the emergence of the intellectual basis of Western culture, science and values developed in reaction to each other and, in so doing, became somewhat falsified and alienated from the way in which people actually lived their lives.  

The most extreme separation occurred in Descartes's sharp isolation of the worlds of mind and matter. Since then, medicine has come to view the body as a machine with parts that could be manipulated. Personhood came to be understood as an increasingly large and fragmented number of components and functions, and academic inquiry was cordoned off into disciplinary ghettos. It is only with growing recognition of the limits of the Cartesian-Newtonian framework for solving human problems, the development of quantum mechanics, general-systems theory, and brain science, and the increasing contact between the West and the East that these old separations are breaking down.

 In general, Epstein's discussion is balanced, and he is aware of the paradoxical nature of his topic. In his efforts to explicate the Buddhist worldview, however, he occasionally parodies Western psychology and its notion of the self. Self-esteem, self-confidence, the building of a strong self -- these are not the problem, although some of his statements could lead readers to believe otherwise. Instead, the problem arises when selfhood becomes the only goal. To become oneself, one must also lose oneself. In the expression of an idea so dialectical, one statement immediately implies its opposite.

The sweetness of the ``middle way'' is not learned easily or quickly, and fictions abound on both sides of the discussion. Plato's Socrates once wondered whether he should be a politician or a physician -- that is, whether he should try to serve the existing tastes and interests of his fellow citizens or continually work to improve their minds and souls. Going to Pieces without Falling Apart will appeal to physicians, therapists, and patients who, like Socrates, opt for the latter. Reviewed by Jeffrey Rediger, M.D., M.Div. -- Copyright 1999, The Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.

An intimate guide to self-acceptance and discovery that offers a Buddhist perspective on wholeness within the framework of a Western understanding of self. For decades, Western psychology has promised fulfillment through building and strengthening the ego. We are taught that the ideal is a strong, individuated self, constructed and reinforced over a lifetime. But Buddhist psychiatrist Mark Epstein has found a different way. Based on the premise that the Western notion of self is deeply flawed, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart shows us that happiness doesn't come from any kind of acquisitiveness, be it material or psychological. Happiness comes from letting go.

Weaving together the accumulated wisdom of his two worlds--Buddhism and Western psychotherapy--Epstein shows how "the happiness that we seek depends on our ability to balance the ego's need to do with our inherent capacity to be." He encourages us to relax the ever-vigilant mind in order to experience the freedom that comes only from relinquishing control.  

Drawing on events in his own life and stories from his patients, Epstein leads us through a series of intimate and emotionally resonant chapters that explore key psychological and spiritual experiences such as emptiness, connection, passion, and relief. Highly personal and engaging, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart teaches us that only by letting go can we start on the path to a more peaceful and spiritually satisfying life.

Combining lessons from meditation and psychotherapy, the bestselling author of "Thoughts Without a Thinker" defies the rigid Western prescription for happiness and presents an intimate guide to discovering the spiritual in the midst of everyday life.

The curious but very reasonable integration of Buddhist thought and Western psychotherapy form the methodology behind Epstein's psychiatric practice in New York City. Writing with an inviting ease and considerable clarity, Epstein first establishes Buddhist fundamentals--the "wheel of life" and the "four noble truths"--then goes on to demonstrate interconnections between these spiritual precepts and pertinent psychological concepts, such as neurosis, narcissism, and ego.

Epstein devotes the book's midsection to an engaging look at the practice and the paradox of meditation, following this up with a summary of how therapy and meditation together may serve the individual most effectively. Eloquent yet down-to-earth, this gem offers an exhilarating and expansive perspective on the therapeutic process. Alice Joyce

Traditional distinctions between matters of the mind and matters of the spirit are increasingly being questioned, and people are searching for alternate perspectives on these issues. Here, Epstein argues that the contemplative traditions of the East can be extremely beneficial to patients, not just in helping them recognize their problems, but by giving them the strength to heal.

Drawing upon his own experience as therapist, meditator and patient, Mark Epstein, a New York-based psychiatrist trained in classical Freudian methods, attempts to integrate Western psychotherapy and the teachings of Buddhism. Repressed memories, painful emotions, narcissism and destructive energies can all be uprooted through Buddha's teaching on suffering, delusion, wisdom and non-attachment. Epstein argues that in recognizing his or her self-created mental suffering, a patient can overcome neurotic behaviors and even overcome a deeply ingrained negative sense of self. ~Alice Joyce

The Spirits are increasingly being questioned, and people are searching for alternate perspectives on these issues. Here, Epstein argues that the contemplative traditions of the East can be extremely beneficial to patients, not just in helping them recognize their problems, but by giving them the strength to heal.

Much in contemporary transpersonal approaches is derived from Buddhist teaching because Buddhist thought tends to be focused largely on internal experience and in this way transcends the context of the religion per se. In this lesson we will explore directly the Buddhist approach to psychotherapy which is simply based on the core teachings of the Buddha.  In a 6 - 8 page paper, discuss, Buddha nature, the core ethics, mindfulness, perception and will, association, karma, dhyana, compassion, love, wisdom and letting go.

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