Threshold of the New

The creation of this blog coincides with starting my training in Psychosynthesis psychology, with the Institute of Psychosynthesis in London. This is an experiential training, and despite having a theoretical component, by far the most important aspect for me is this element of deep inner work which forms the basis of the training. I expect that as I make my journey through this training there will be much to write about, and this blog is intended as a repository for my musings as I explore my ancestral, social, and personal context through the lens of Psychosynthesis, and other related ideas. In this introductory blog, I will briefly describe how Psychosynthesis came into my life, and my first impressions of the training.

I first came across Psychosynthesis about twelve months ago, during a week at work where everything was coming to a head. I was quickly realising that I could no longer tolerate the status quo—between the stresses of directing a rapidly growing construction company, working away from home, and somehow trying to find time to spend with my wife and child, let alone undertake any creative endeavours, the quality of my life was deteriorating quickly. Sleepless nights provided small respite from days populated by an aching and tired body. Something had to give, and it soon became clear that if I didn't change my work, my work would be the end of me.

The decision to make a career change came as something of a revelation. The moment of decision began with tension in my long aching hips, tension which became agony as they locked up one evening after work, seemingly out of nowhere. During meditation the following morning came visions of a burning body severed from a head in the clouds, and the sudden realisation that this pain, which I had always treated physically, was a stress response—the burden of buried emotions. I traced memories of this pain back through my life, through difficult relationships, emotional isolation, performance induced stress at school. It had always been there, always worse when I was struggling. Finally I seemed to understand what it was telling me.

I started to do some research, and an intensive phase of reading was triggered by The Body Keeps the Score, which opened me up to a whole world of trauma and complex physical symptoms. Aspects of my experience which I had long ignored suddenly started clicking into place. Long interested in psychology, this was fascinating to me, and with these discoveries came the growing feeling that I would like to work in this milieu. I explored modalities and options for training, coming up against a wall where my lack of an undergraduate degree left me with fewer options that I would have liked.

Out of all these explorations, it was Psychosynthesis which occupied the most space in my mind. There were several things that resonated with me about it as a psychological model, but what struck me most was that it seemed to provide the link between the spiritual and psychological aspects of my experience in a way that I had been looking for in Jung, but was still not yet properly satisfied with. And whilst the model itself provides a framework which is more closely aligned with certain spiritual frameworks than others, on the whole it does not seem dogmatic, and is very open to interpretation. 

I began to explore what training in this modality would look like, and was happy to discover that I would be able to access an MA with the Institute. A prerequisite was to complete their Fundamentals of Psychosynthesis workshop, which I duly signed up for. During the workshop, I was deeply impressed by the manner in which the space was held for us to be able to engage in the exercises, and explore aspects of our personality and social or ancestral histories, coming out of deep guided meditations and sharing the contents with other members of the group. The technical content was fascinating, and the manner in which it was delivered felt extremely human. Over the three days we shared together, it felt like our mutual stories became deeply intertwined, and the compassion and mutual respect that grew between me and my companions was deeply reassuring that this was a path I wanted to explore. Beyond any career aspirations that might come from opening this door, I was extremely interested in what would emerge within me as a consequence of undertaking such a training.

The Training:

The MA in Psychosynthesis is part time, with the formal training held over 20 three days weekends spanning two years. During each of these weekends, we are encouraged to explore an aspect of the model within our own lives, drawing on experience and reflecting in groups on how we have been pulled in different directions by conflicting forces in our lives. The technical content on the actual training weekends is barely considered, with the experiential and emotional element taking precedence over rational or technical discussions. For someone like me, who tends towards intellectualising growth, this is an enormously valuable aspect of the course.

As with the Fundamentals workshop, the typical delivery of the exercises consists in entering guided meditations, which begin with a process of inhabiting but also disidentifying from the the three basic cornerstones of experience—body, feelings, and mind. This process of disidentification is a central tenet of Psychosynthesis, which holds that the centre of consciousness and will at the heart of our experience is distinct, though not entirely separate, from the more tangible characteristics of the ego. As a transpersonal psychology, disidentification is a vital first step towards inhabiting what might be called a deeper or spiritual aspect of the human experience.

Following the disidentification exercises, we are then encouraged to explore particular aspects of our experience and context. The focus this weekend was on our cultural and ancestral histories, with a view to exploring where we came from and how this was received in the environments we were raised in, and how this then forms the context for our experience of the world.

As a Yorkshire born son of a Welsh mother and French father, this was fascinating for me to explore. I have never really managed to identify with any one of these cultural roots, often feeling like an outsider—an Englishman in France, a Frenchman in England. Despite having eventually settled in Wales, this aspect of my heritage feels very distant, my nana having chastised my grandad for expressing his Welshness in a way which still feels like a relic of Victorian colonialism. 

I’ve known for some time that this feeling of being an outsider was related to having moved from France to England when I was small, but until now I've not considered the links to this feeling within my own family systems. The family unit mirrors cultural and social expectations, and on both sides of my family my grandmothers played this out quite clearly. The way the Welsh language was repressed in my mother’s household, the resentment in my father's household towards my mother, who was not the French woman my grandma would have preferred. These were the sort of dynamics that fed into an early feeling of otherness and incompleteness, even within my own household, and seeded the ground for the bullying which would come to dominate many of my school years. 

There has been so much shame in my life around this feeling of not belonging, which has prevented me from exploring some of the more positive aspects of my cultural heritage. In some ways the French aspects of this come more easily—the emphasis on meal times, the coming together of family, even in a household as turbulent as the farm where my father was raised. The Welsh doesn’t come quite so easily, but as we were encouraged to bring an image to mind which represented our cultural milieu, the Red Dragon of Wales came to the fore—an image which symbolises the mythological substrate which forms the basis of Welsh culture. Having never had the opportunity to speak Welsh with my grandad, I feel highly motivated to learn the language, to feel the way in which the landscape I have chosen to live amongst is rooted in the native tongue.

It was an interesting (and exhausting!) weekend, and I made a few links like the ones described above. But having spent quite a lot of time already exploring this material in therapy, I found that by far the most interesting aspect of the weekend was the relational aspect—the way the space was held, the way I brought my voice into the group and how the dynamics evolved between us all. As a highly introverted person who has also historically suffered a lot of social anxiety, the difference was night and day between a one on one conversation in the breakout rooms, and how it felt to bring something very personal to a large group of people who I immediately respected. Going forwards, it is this aspect of the learning which perhaps interests me most, and the course is very much designed to encourage awareness and experimentation with these sorts of social dynamics, and I look forward to seeing what it brings, and how I might grow alongside that experimentation.

In closing the weekend, it was interesting to hear how people had found it—where expectations had interfered with abilities to enter deeply into the work, what other people were coming up against, and also shared feelings of gratitude for being in a space which encouraged such vulnerability. Having crossed the threshold, I find myself extremely pleased to have made this step, and for once there is very little doubt in my mind that this is the way for me. I'm really excited to see where this journey brings us all over the coming years.