Finding the Therapist Within

 My ex and I may have given up on couples therapy, but that didn't mean there wasn't still hope for me!

One day I discovered the work of Arnold Mindell, a Jungian analyst who developed a method called Process Oriented Psychology. Taking Jung's dream work in a radical direction he explored how  unconscious body signals could be interpreted to bring greater understanding to our physical and mental states. I found his book Working With The Dreaming Body particularly interesting.  Using a method of amplification he would encourage the client to exaggerate their body signals as he helped them to extract the underlying message. This appealed to my sense of the theatrical and I joined the Sydney community to attend lectures and seminars run by local practitioners.  They were an interesting bunch of practicing psychotherapists, buddhists, artists, dancers and other creatives. Sometimes the meetings were held in the huge old warehouse where the sculptor Tom Bass ran his sculpture school. It seemed somehow fitting to be surrounded by armless torsos and modernist nude forms as we discussed Mindell's methods and how to apply them.  

 

One weekend seminar was held at a rambling old hotel at Robertson in the Southern Highlands not far from Sydney. The workshops were led by Julie Diamond, one of the international facilitators spreading Process Work around the world.  Arny and Amy Mindell were coming on their first trip to Oz later in the year and everyone was already booking their places. 

The sessions varied between individual floor work where we all observed Julie as she worked with a volunteer in the centre of the room, or world work where as a group we tackled a more global isssue. It was so interesting and envigorating. I remember feeling quite euphoric after one of the workshops —  as if I could almost take off and fly. The fact that I was having a weekend off from the kids may have had something to do with it, but the techniques gave me a great sense of hope. 

If my memory serves me right it was the same weekend I met Colin McPhedran whose memoir, White Butterflies tells of his gruelling escape at the age of 11, from the Japanese advance on Burma in WW Two. Fleeing on foot with his mother and two siblings and thousands of others, he was the only member of his family to survive the tortuous 450 km journey. He kept the story to himself for 40 years until he finally wrote it down to give to his children who sent it on to a publisher in Canberra. 

 

Colin's account of how he came to settle in the Southern Highlands always impressed me. Nine years on from his horiffic ordeal he arrived in Sydney and after working in a menial job, he decided to take a train trip to Canberra. The train stopped at small stations along the way and entranced by the hilly green landscape around Bowral he got off to buy a newspaper. Noticing a quarried hill similar to his home town in Burma he wondered if this was an Australian hill town. When he turned around the train had already left the platform taking his belongings with it.  After a bit of a shock he didn't mind. This looked like a good place to make a new life. And so he did, living the rest of his life there.  

 

 I was also at a crossroads. After twenty something years working in the creative arts industry I was looking for a change. I wanted to embark on a new field of study and I was seriously considering a getting qualified in Process Work. They had a certified study program which involved attending numbers of seminars, written work, assessments and supervised practice. It was quite costly and would take some time but I was seriously considering it.

However there was another contender competing for my attention. 

When the kids were little I had a homeopathic first aid kit that I used quite successfully to treat their childhood ailments. For more complex issues I found an excellent couple of homeopaths who could deal with all sorts of problems. I found the science and methods behind the medicines fascinating. Again it was all about symptoms. In homeopathy you match the patient's symptom picture with the symptoms a highly potentised substance (plant, mineral, metal etc) produces in a healthy person. It's the principal of 'like cures like'.  Collecting the symptom picture was not unlike collecting clues to the patient's story and had some similarites to Process Work.

So at the same time I was hanging out with POP people I was attending a seminar or two on homeopathy. There was also a college that ran a program of study three nights a week, for three years at the end of which you would have a Diploma of Homeopathic Medicine.

Homeopathy won the toss. It was more convenient, more structured, perhaps a little cheaper. And secretly I hoped I would find the cure for all my maladies. 

But that's another story.

(c)Jan Cornall

Photos from Unsplash, from the top by:

1. Rux Centea

3.Jisun Han

4. Matt Briney