transpersonal psychotherapy
Transpersonal Psychotherapy and neo-shamanic ceremonial work are based on the insight that all human conflicts are driven by the psyche’s innate attempt to heal itself. Therefore these approaches attempt to induce, reinforce, and support processes of transformation in all their facets instead of pathologizing or marginalizing certain forms that do not fit the cultural agenda.
TP acknowledges that, beyond the biographical history of a person – the area usually dealt with in conventional psychotherapy – human beings are profoundly influenced by perinatal and transpersonal patterns of experience.
The specific circumstances of a persons birth informs her ability or disability to respond to later life situations. The same is true of the way a person holds transpersonal experiences transcending the boundaries of everyday awareness, such as mystical states etc.
TP has demonstrated that the transformation and healing of biographical issues, while important, can in many cases not sufficiently address a person’s internal and external conflicts. What is required to fully come to terms with the bigger questions in life is a close look at perinatal imprints as well as opening up to an appreciation of the transpersonal realms of the psyche.
All ancient and contemporary healing traditions have honored and passed on the sacred knowledge how to achieve healing and wholeness by inducing states of consciousness beyond everyday reality. These states foster the transformation of mythological and collective strata of the human soul. What eventually breaks forth in this process is the deep human longing for the divine, for the experience of belonging to a larger whole.
The methods to induce such states of consciousness vary between cultures, historical times, and races. Most common are fasting, meditation, the modulation of the breath, the use of entheogens, music etc.
personal therapy concept
The first step is an initial talk during which we will establish together which format and method will serve you best. This helps to understand how a crisis emerged and how best to ease it over into a birthing phase for something new in life. I offer counseling for individuals, couples, groups, and families.
Knowing another is scholarship,
Knowing oneself is wisdom.
Overcoming another is power,
Overcoming oneself is strength.
methods of transpersonal psychotherapy
Shamanic Rituals
There are many forms of holding shamanic ceremonies. Most of them are informed by indigenous traditions and by the wisdom that shamanesses and shamans have passed on to their disciples. It is only in the past few decades that people from industrial countries are discovering the enormous healing potential of such ritual work.
Learn more
The main factors that shamanic rituals typically consist of in most ancient and modern traditions (such as the Native American Church or the various Amazonian Ayahuasca groups) are: A ritual set and setting, the use of smudging, prayers, chanting and singing, the setting of intentions for the ritual journey or vision quest, drumming, and frequently the ingestion of entheogens.
Shamanic rituals usually put practitioners in touch with their longing for the divine and everything that obstructs this longing from being fulfilled. As these obstructions usually stem from our individual conditioning and upbringing as well as from cultural and collective value systems, the shamanic practitioner during her or his journeys is frequently confronted with these psychological imprints.
The difference between confronting one’s conditioning in a therapy session and in a shamanic ritual is that during the latter the confrontation typically happens in an archetypal, collective and/or mythological manner. This means that practitioners frequently experience visions, voices, demons and angels etc. While traditional therapy allows for cognitive control and incremental cognitive understanding of one’s inner process, shamanic ritual work can be extremely challenging in that it profoundly immerses the practitioner in mythological visions symbolizing deep and often unexpected roots of personal conflicts. It usually takes time to incorporate these processes and understand their healing quality.
Shamanic rituals, on the other hand, also have an unparalleled power to put the practitioner in touch with the divine source of all being. The more a practitioner learns to navigate the challenging waters of the visionary experience the more she or he will be empowered to access a place where the longing for deep meaning, for being one with the whole, and for being at peace with what life presents each moment is fulfilled.
Eventually, shamanic practitioners find that the truth of their being is comparable to the particular and individual sound of a flute: Each flute has its own sound and yet, if played with love and reverence for life, each flute expresses one facet of the divine. The art, then, is to become like a hollow bamboo, through which the divine can play its tune to the world for the healing and benefit of all beings.
Mark is available for lectures and workshops on shamanism.
Holotropic Breathwork
HB was developed by Stanislav Grof and his wife Christina. A longtime researcher of expanded states of consciousness, Stan Grof, after LSD became illegal, was seeking for legally accepted methods to alter every day consciousness. He designed a format of using the breath that would help people move deeper into an understanding of their character structure.
Learn more
HB is a powerful experiential method to access states of consciousness empowering the inner healer. Accelerated and deepened breathing is used in a group setting or in an individual session to detect emotionally incomplete material lying dormant beneath our everyday personality. HB can help resolve this material and support a more complete understanding of who we really are. The atmosphere in an HB group is deep, intense, and usually very accepting and healing.
For general information on Breathwork check Stan Grof’s webpage <holotropic.com> and the AHBI webpage <breathwork.com>.
Mark is available for lectures about Holotropic Breathwork as well as for individual sessions and for group facilitation.
Archetypal Astrology
Astrology is a symbolic language speaking of the energies that carry life. The individual astrological birth chart or horoscope depicts a person’s fundamental character traits, strengths and weaknesses, tasks and challenges, interests and potentials. An astrological reading of the birth chart is a valuable and very informative tool for deeper insights into oneself.
Learn more
The so called ‘astrological transits’ are current movements of the planets as they relate to points and planetary positions in the birth chart. The astrological perspective on transits offers a deep understanding of present life issues and their meaning. A transit reading is not concretely predictive in the sense of predicting life events. But transits are archetypally predictive in that they speak of current and future growth challenges and potentials.
The archetypal perspective offers insights that include transpersonal, mythological, pre- and perinatal, shamanic, and transformative aspects of the human soul in search of itself, of the divine, and of the meaning of life.
Mark’s astrological perspective is closely affiliated with the archetypal astrological research and work advanced by Rick Tarnas, Stan Grof, and Matthew Stelzner at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco.
If you are interested in an astrological consultation contact Mark.
Offer
I offer a working concept that is tailored to your individual needs and capacities
Sign up for my irregular newsletter:
Get updates about music projects, CD releases, ecstatic aging, and other news from transpersonal work.