OUR TRANSPERSONAL APPROACH
Our transpersonal approach respects and encompasses historical/traditional culture and multicultural perspectives on body, soul and spirit. Key to our training is the awareness of how art and the human encounter can transform self and others in personal, cultural and spiritual ways.
We recognise each individual’s search for meaning and are respectful of the views and belief systems of our students. Tobias students explore cognitive approaches to psychotherapy, as well as to experiential modes of healing engaging the full spectrum of human consciousness.
Our programme presents counselling approaches that emphasise the integration of body, mind, spirit, and environment within the context of one’s society. This unique training offers students a holistic, client centred approach to counselling and therapy. It provides a humanistic approach to mental and spiritual health and well-being.
What is Transpersonal Arts in Therapy?
Through a deep engagement with the visual arts our students are enabled to enter ‘an educated co-operation with image intelligences’ (Angelo 2003), whilst through the art of counselling they are enabled to bring this co-operation as facilitation of the transformation of others. In the tradition that Robert Lawlor calls anthropocosmic, ‘restated in our time by Rudolf Steiner, RA Schwaller de Lubicz and others’ (Lawlor 1982), we believe that an imaginal engagement with the Muses or the arts and their archetypal language, facilitates individual expression and improves health.
Transpersonal Arts in Therapy Training is a challenging and enriching journey towards greater self-awareness and life management, leading to personal confidence and practical therapeutic skills. Each Unit deepens the theory and practice of working holistically with clients, and how to case manage their journey, using a client-centred methodology.
The training provides the skills and knowledge essential for counselling practice including working with clients, working with groups, life transformation, grief, loss, risk management, children and life transitions and case management.
The most fascinating aspect of this training is the gradual and surprising discovery of the sources of health in the worlds near and far from nature to the stars…
In Arts in Therapy, clients are offered hands on image making activities and dialogue. The therapist/counsellor initiates or supports a process of recovery, improvement or acceptance of the client’s condition. There is communication between the counsellor and the client throughout the processes with regard to the counselling/therapy itself and the impact on the client. A therapist works with either a group or in a one-to-one setting and provides a safe and secure environment for clients’ engagement in a creative personal process.