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Working with rediscovering spirit within counselling and psychotherapy

This conference will support practitioners to critically explore the concept of spirit and its relationship with counselling and psychotherapy. The content will consider how spirit might provide strength to support clients emerging out of difficult experiences and/or, aid in the existential wrestle of the uncertainty and perhaps lack of meaning in everyday life.Ìý

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9.40am – 10.40am

Evidence-based practice is (EBP) is the prevailing ideology for contemporary psychotherapy.Ìý But practice-based evidence suggests that there is a dimension to psychotherapy and counselling that is not fully captured by EBP.ÌýThis session will explore the ways in which counselling encompasses forms of secular spirituality.Ìý These include addressing existential issues of suffering, creativityÌý and loss; the counselling room as a sacred space; the ‘duet for one’ community represented by counsellor and client;Ìý awe as an antidote to narcissistic preoccupations; and the ultimate mysteriousness of the unconscious. This presentation will also outline a possible neuroscience underpinning for some ofÌý these ideas.Ìý

10.50am – 11.50am

This session will explore the relational, symbolic, emotional aspects of feeding ourselves, as a practical spiritual framework.ÌýÌýFinding a path from depth psychology to systemic and attachment theory,Ìýkitchen therapyÌýuses food as an embodied, inclusive vehicle of healing and discovery, accessible across human time and space.ÌýÌýAccepting that Nature doesn’t make mistakes in Her menu plans, we can turn to Sue Gerhardt’s ‘Why Love Matters’Ìýto understand theÌýkitchen therapyÌýapproach of ‘attachment nutrition’ - the sustenance of love.ÌýÌýEqually, as cooking defines our species through this initiating alchemical behaviour, ideas such as ‘community casseroles’ beckon our social nature.ÌýÌýThe various ingredients, skills, tools and ideas that create a recipe, require a coordination of collaborative effort that takes a meal from earth to plate.ÌýÌýFood provides an edible 3^rdÌýspace of connection, practical action and playful conversation – an empathic arena for understanding, growth and transformation.

In an increasingly mechanised world, attending the manual cooking process as our first technology, can offer a sense of meaning, mundane magic, purpose and potential – rewilding the human spirit.

12.00pm - 1.00pm

Without defining spiritual, most of us in this work know there is something more than just us as separate individuals.  Anthony de Mello says we are all looking for a more comfortable life within the prison (the isolated separate self) rather than getting out of the prison. A Course in Miracles puts it another way - that love is how we are, and the Course aims to remove the blocks to love’s presence. Whatever approach we take, all the spiritual works known ask us to question our belief systems, our conditioning, that keep us prisoner.  We will be increasingly seeing that whatever profession we choose and how we implement it is a reflection of our autobiographies and the more we know ourselves the easier it is to get out of the way and let what needs to happen come through us.Ìý