Last night I ran my first transpersonal art therapy group. I felt honoured to have an incredible bunch of curious, brave and present men and women and I’m so excited about the next month of Wednesday workshops! We spent two hours together and I guided the group through various processes that take us deep in our unconscious minds. My participants were leaving their rational minds and the world of their ego and journeying deep within their inner world of intuition and inner wisdom. The images that came to them whilst deep in a guided meditation or that tumbled out onto their art paper came from their unconscious. Journeying into the unconscious in a supported and therapeutic setting is a powerful experience. It’s like dreaming whilst awake and the images we receive can tell us so much about what we need to know. Carl Jung might say these images came from deep within their soul. 
Carl Jung said we lived in a time of radical materialism where the only the material aspects of life are acknowledged;
“Under the influence of scientific materialism, everything that could not be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands was held in doubt; such things were even laughed at because of their supposed affinity with metaphysics. Nothing was considered “scientific” or admitted to be true unless it could be perceived by the senses or traced back to physical causes.”
You can see how modern day psychology sees the world through this material and rational paradigm without a thought to the care of the soul. The word psychology originates from the word ‘psyche’ which means the human soul or spirit. Psychology originally meant the care of the human soul. Jung talks about how we have created a new “soul-less” psychology.
“It was universally believed in the Middle Ages as well as in the Greco-Roman world that the soul is a substance. Indeed, mankind as a whole has held this belief from its earliest beginnings, and it was left for the second half of the nineteenth century to develop a “psychology without the soul.”
We have moved so far away from soul informed psychology that we hardly understand what a soul is anymore. The soul is not as complicated as New Age theories would have us believe. The soul is the archetypal life of the imagination and can be glimpsed when stepping outside of the materialistic perceptions of the world. Jung spoke of everything that happens in the physical and material world first originates from the soul. Healing occurs in the soul and then manifests in the body. 
In last night’s guided art therapy group my clients were using creativity to delve deeply into their unconscious to bring back archetypal truths and symbols from different levels of their psyche. Jung said that the transpersonal unconscious has at its disposal “all the subliminal psychic contents, all those things which have been forgotten and overlooked, as well as all the experience of uncounted centuries laid down in it’s archetypal organs.”
Creativity and hypnosis like exercises can access these hidden parts of us that hold the insights we so desperately seek. A good way to understand it is to imagine yourself standing at a well. When you are standing at the well you are in your conscious mind. However most of our decisions are not made from our conscious mind. Freud said we made most of our decisions from unconscious urges and recent scientific studies have confirmed that. Deep down in the well is the river of your unconsious mind or your inner world; the world of your dreams, nightmares, your deepest fears, memories, repressed emotions and desires.. Accessing this part of our life is life changing and can “unblock” unhealthy patterns we have been repeating for years.
My next workshop is on this Wednesday the 15th of April.. “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.. balancing our sexual and creative energy with our dark destructive and self sabotaging death drive!”
Fill out the contact form here to book your place. Places are limited to ten so hurry to avoid disappointment.
I look forward to seeing you soon!
