Core Process psychotherapy is a contemplative approach to psychotherapy, seeking a deep understanding of our human potential. It invites the possibility of resting in this present moment - to see, not through the lens of conditioning, but to bring awareness to how things actually are. The core is an unconditioned state of open awareness, compassion and wisdom. It is our inner health and clarity, inherent in all of us, and potentially present in every moment.
Our 'core process' is the movement away from this core state - towards a sense of separateness and personality formation. As character strategies develop, and conditioning takes hold, we begin to identify ourselves with a self-construct, a 'me'. Obscuring issues limit our aliveness, and it becomes increasingly hard to hold open the possibility of sensing oneself as an arising process, with the potential to make fresh responses in each unfolding moment.
Core Process psychotherapy is an exploration of how we are in our present experience, and how this is an expression of our past conditioning. It brings into awareness this shaping process, in which we hold the form of our past experience in the present moment. The focus of the work is an exploration and enquiry into both the sense of this personality-shape and the suffering that arises through attachment and identification with it.
The intention behind this enquiry is to see more clearly how we relate to our experience; and in the possibility of transforming our relationship to suffering. Contact with the deepest parts of ourselves affords us perhaps our greatest opportunities for creativity, learning and growing - and facilitates greater and more conscious choice in our everyday lives.
Within an environment of warmth and respect, I aim to support and honour the uniqueness of each individual's process: to work with one's issues and moment-by-moment experience, to encourage the movement towards increasing one's resources, self-understanding, and awareness.
The work varies with every client. I aim to respect you as an individual: to meet your uniqueness without judgement or a prescribed agenda, and support you in finding your own way of working. As therapist it is my role to be a reflector and facilitator of awareness, a companion and guide.
Psychotherapy helps one to go about deepening one's attention and awareness. Awareness is a powerful resource for working with life's challenges. Awareness includes both the capacity to penetrate situations by zeroing in on their subtleties, and the ability to move back from states of mind or emotion (so we can gain a clearer perception of what is happening). A depth awareness - encompassing our body, our feelings and our states of mind - is used to explore process.
No matter how much our thoughts or story lines carry us away at any given moment, we can return to being present and simply notice what is happening, now.
Life is unfolding, moment by moment, and what happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next. My aim is to help you work with what is arising, encouraging you to truly listen to your moment-by-moment experience: to be as present to your experience as is.
Whatever can be brought into awareness enables a movement towards integration and greater wholeness. And to begin to look into oneself with the intention of contemplative enquiry is to take a step - towards that inherent wellbeing, of feeling more fully alive.