Working on Your Own Relationship

This is part of a series of posts inspired by my students who are studying “working on your own relationship”.  For the past years I have been intensively teaching this topic to various groups either in person or on Skype. This challenging aspect of relationship work in Processwork asks the facilitator to facilitate a relationship in which they are involved and most often those where there is a conflict. Read more ›

— Here’s a short introduction to Processwork Movement work. It refers to some technical aspects of the work, if they don’t make sense don’t worry, just enjoy the case examples, in any case they will be more useful. This post is one slice of the movement work pie which is rich and diverse. I hope you enjoy!

The Nature of Movement

Every channel that we work with in Processwork offers an important element to the tapestry of the approach and to unfolding experience. The movement channel’s special contribution Read more ›

It is with great pleasure that we, Hellene Gronda, Mikolaj Czyz and I, announce the republishing of the Journal of Process Oriented Psychology. It will appear at the following link one issue per month until we get all 9 issues up.
Index of JPOP ›

We are beginning with the issue on Extreme States which has been sold out for a considerable amount of time. We are excited about these works and how they reflect the research of the time. There are many folks who worked hard to publish the original journal and we feel it should be available to all of us. Please check out the short history and credits on the page. Read more ›

Arny Mindell talks about different levels of experience:

• Consensus reality occupies most of our time. It is the experience of the world around us that we generally call real. We agree or have a consensus about rules of the road, for instance. We can rely on the rain to go down.
• Dreamtime or dreamland, the dreaming, dream level, are names for the aspect of reality that is more variable and dream-like. When I say, “The rain comes down like a gentle kiss on my cheek”, I use an image metaphor to describe an experience. It takes on more of a dream-like character. Images and fantasies belong to this level of experience.
• Essence or sentience The most subtle is essence. This is experience for which we have no words or for which it is hard to find words. This is the realm of moods, atmospheres, the sense that there is something there but it has not yet emerged into consciousness.

Read more ›

Introduction

Chernobyl power plant today

One of humanities greatest troubles and mysteries is power: who has it, who does not? One of the biggest difficulties I see in therapy is if you have it how do you use it? It is unusual for someone to identify with being powerful without the fear of abusing that power. This fear is problematic. It creates a denial of power that banishes it. It makes power inaccessible when needed. Most people have power. Think of someone you know who says they are weak but has the power to make you change your plans, even your life, without asking directly for what they want.

Power can show up in your relationships through conflicts, either implicit conflicts or explicit ones. It can show up in blocks and impedances to hoped-for outcomes in life. While working with physical symptoms I have seen a lot of power emerge. While this sounds unlikely read on and see how Andri transformed the power of his symptom into vitality and hope in life. Read more ›

I have had a writing block for most of my life. I can’t count the times that I’ve had an impulse, even the need to write about the learning and ideas that fascinate me. Countless people have said to me, “You have to write, you are doing such interesting stuff.” I’ve worked on it numerous times, yet I am still plagued with something like a faulty gene that won’t let me write.

Recently a friend told me that she remembered Arny Mindell saying that if you have a depression take on an impossible task. Read more ›

Rank is earned and unearned. It comes from the situation you were born into, like being supported by parents, the country you were born into the economic situation and so on. Earned rank comes from things you have worked for: education, professional or personal accomplishments.
Rank is related to power.

There are different kinds of rank: Read more ›

Our move to Switzerland continues to develop. We have all of our permissions from the Swiss government. This step makes it possible to rent an apartment and get our belongings into the country. The movers are coming tomorrow to get our stuff. Read more ›

Moving and a not-so-friendly attitude toward aging are surprisingly linked. This anti aging attitude shows up in various ways as a sort of background fog or a constant and annoying underlying tone.  There is a sense of being undermined by thoughts about diminishing faculties or a preoccupation with checking for symptoms and uncertainty about the future. This became clear to me one day last week as I was vacuum packing some nuts. Read more ›