Excerpt from “Process Oriented Psychology: Finding the Effortless Path of Heart”
Process work investigates our known world and opens up to the unknown, the numinous and inexplicable elements of life that are the potential seeds of new life and creativity. It seeks to uncover the spiritual in our most mundane reality, in our most ordinary but spontaneous movements, in our greatest suffering through body symptoms or relationship problems, in the heat of an intense group conflict, or in the privacy of our internal dreams.
Arny Mindell
Process oriented psychology or “process work” is a form of awareness training that helps us to learn how to follow and deepen our and the world’s experience. It was founded by the Jungian therapist and physicist, Arny Mindell in the 1980’s. This awareness training can be used with individual problems, as well as relationship, organizational, and world issues. It can implement active imagination, expressive arts therapy, conflict resolution, group process, inner work, and altered/extreme states… to name a few. “Within what we call problems are paths we haven’t yet explored. The momentary awareness of signals and feelings, images, and motions, shows the way.” (Mindell, 2007, p. 6). It combines the perspectives of Taoism, Zen, Alchemy, the work of C.G. Jung, shamanism, NA traditions, and modern physics to create a way of working with people in a deep profound way. “Process work is not about going from one bank of the river to the other, i.e., from one figure to another. It is about getting in the river, following it and living in its dynamic flow. As we come in contact with the fluid process behind our experiences, we discover the dreaming process, the energy and creativity behind dream images, symptoms and problems” (Mindell, 1995, p. 143). Amy Mindell a co-founder and wife of the originator of process work, Arny Mindell writes that, “the Chinese Taoist was concerned with observing the natural patterns and movement of nature and adjusting himself or herself to this flow” (Mindell, 1995, p. 58).
Process Work utilizes signals and sensory channels, marginalization, roles, primary and secondary processes, and psychological edges to create an integrated deep democracy within our psyches and the world. The term “process” arose indicating the on-going flow of signals through various perceptual channels. These practices help the process worker to find the enchanted path of least action, with the most heart for the client, group or world (Mindell, 2007, p. 6). “Anyone who believes that what happens in a given moment is potentially meaningful- if we become conscious of it and allow it to unfold- will notice many of these attitudes arising as she or he is working. Therapists who are guided by the unique client-therapist situation rather than predetermined programs, base their work on Taoism, the belief in nature and its changes” (Mindell, 1995, p. 63).
Bibliography
(2007, January). Process Work Five-Week Intensive. Unpublished lecture presented at The Process Work Institute, Portland, OR.
Mindell, Amy (1995). Metaskills: The spiritual art of therapy. Las Vegas, NV: New Falcon Publishers.
Mindell, Arny (2007). Earth-based psychology. Portland, OR: Lao Tse Press.
Mindell, Arny (1992). The Leader as Marital Artist: An introduction to deep Democracy. San Francisco: Harper Collins.
Castaneda, C. (1991). The Fire from within. New York: Washington Square Press.
Merton, T. (1965). The way of Chuang Tzu. New York: New Directions.