[question] counseling, energy work, spirituality, career path

[wispfox]

I've been idly trying to determine if there is already some sort of counseling type around which is willing to consider the possibility of energy work as valid, and which is completely aware of people's spirituality as a factor.

It's mildly amusing, but I do seem to be having a draw towards a counseling-type career path, presuming I can figure out a way to only be dealing with people who actively want to be there and to figure things out about themselves and their lives.

Amusing because I have a mother who is a school psych, and an older sister who I'd swear just finished a masters (? or further) in counseling. Runs in the family, just a bit. (Or, as I think they'd both say, people go into it because they, themselves, need or have needed healing, so understand. Or maybe it was that only crazy people want to try to help out the rest of the crazy people. Something like that. I'm not remembering the exact words, but they were amusing)

And... I _want_ to include energy work and such types of healing in with any counseling I do, so if I can manage to find a school with that intentionally a part of it (or at least with spirituality as an understood part of it), all the better. I wish I had better words for what I'm trying to say here...

And I wish I didn't feel an awful lot like what I'm looking for has tended to go along with organized religions, and probably doesn't really exist outside that category. *sigh* I don't _like_ having to create my own category! I do it too much...

Anyone have any idea? Note that I do _not_ want to go to a school with specifically catholic or christian leanings, because I got tired of that as a kid. Unless they are very _quiet_ leanings. Not with the trying to convert me...

Ok. I babble. And I really _should_ try to sleep, even if my brain is all being annoying.

Comments

Transpersonal Psychology

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

You definitely want to check out Transpersonal Psychology. I googled for a few good links and thought I'd share.

this one (http://www.paradigm-sys.com/cttart/sci-docs/ctt96-sotai.html) from Charles Tart looks pretty good. A nice excerpt from there says

To put it in a way that I think would fit most spiritual traditions, I think we would like to live in a world where the majority of people had direct, experiential knowledge of deep spiritual realities, rather than just ideas or beliefs about them. To put it another way, a world where the majority of people were transpersonally oriented not through theory but as a result of direct experiences of transcending their ordinary biological, psychological and cultural identities and contacting/being that larger "something" - words fail us here, as we know - that Source of Intelligence and Love that is our true nature.

Some other good links that I found include one on Stanislov Grof (http://spiritdimension.com/transpersonal-psychology.htm), he of the Holotropic Mind and Beyond the Brain.

Some good indices on Transpersonal Psychology include Google's Directory (http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Social_Sciences/Psychology/Transpersonal/) and this one (http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/psi/trperson.htm) from the "WWW Virtual Library".

Finally, there was this page (http://www.ahpweb.org/rowan_bibliography/chapter14.html) which looks interesting but I couldn't fit it in above.

I expect to be writing a post about all this later...