My Approach
Three Main Perspectives
Depth Psychology
Unconscious, dreams, archetypes
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Somatic
Body-centered and mindful approach to therapy
Psycho-Spiritual
Transpersonal and Eco-psychology with Shamanic wisdom
This perspective focuses on the unconscious and building one's relationship with it. This occurs through the therapeutic relationship, identifying the roots of certain psychological patterns and conditioning, and dream-work.
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The emphasis from this perspective is placed on the wisdom of the body. In contrast from other modalities, with Hakomi, we are focused on the present moment and somatic experience – it drops us into a more felt experience, not just an intellectual one.
Here, the focus is on the Unseen – what is here supporting you that you might not yet know? This is the bigger-picture perspective that holds the rest, where we can wrestle with the mysteries of life.
I believe that we each have an innate wholeness. Our work is centered around connecting you to this wholeness. I do this by incorporating the three perspectives above. Health is not just being able to have positive experiences, but to be able to move through the range of human experiences without getting stuck in one over another. In this way, I view health as the ability for movement – whether that be psychologically, energetically, or within a system. The ability to move and adapt without getting stuck is essential for our well-being. It is my intention to help call forth your Unknown Self – so that you may move through life in your wholeness.
So much of what delights and troubles you
Happens on a surface
You take for ground.
Your mind thinks your life alone,
Your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor,
Yet it seems that a little below your heart
There houses in you an unknown self
Who prefers the patterns of the dark
And is not persuaded by the eye's affection
Or caught by the flash of thought.
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It is a self that enjoys contemplative patience
With all your unfolding expression,
Is never drawn to break into light
Though you entangle yourself in unworthiness
And misjudge what you do and who you are.
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It presides within like an evening freedom
That will often see you enchanted by twilight
Without ever recognizing the falling night,
It resembles the under-earth of your visible life:
All you do and say and think is fostered
Deep in its opaque and prevenient clay.
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It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease
That is not ruffled by disappointment;
It presides in a deeper current of time
Free from the force of cause and sequence
That otherwise shapes your life.
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Were it to break forth into day,
Its dark light might quench your mind,
For it knows how your primeval heart
Sisters every cell of your life
To all your known mind would avoid,
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Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,
Offering you only discrete glimpses
Of how you construct your life.
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At times, it will lead you strangely,
Magnetized by some resonance
That ambushes your vigilance.
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It works most resolutely at night
As the poet who draws your dreams,
Creating for you many secret doors,
Decorated with pictures of your hunger;
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It has the dignity of the angelic
That knows you to your roots,
Always awaiting your deeper befriending
To take you beyond the threshold of want,
Where all your diverse strainings
Can come to wholesome ease.
For the Unknown Self
John O'Donohue
