sies or psychotic episodes. It also places religious experiences within these alternative ways to experience consciousness.
More specifically, transpersonal psychology legitimizes the existence of human experience that is beyond the physical. It is a sound, holistic platform that focuses on positive elements of human faith and spirit as they affect moral motivation, behavior, self-identity, states of higher consciousness, and the concerns of the human soul.
Treatments and Therapies
Transpersonal therapy employs the full range of standard psychological evaluative methodologies and treatments. The success of the transpersonal approach, however, depends on the patient's interaction with the transpersonal realm. Supporting the psychological work of a spiritually active patient requires a therapist to believe - without judgment - that what the patient is experiencing is possible.
The transpersonal therapist also understands and is prepared to work with a variety of spiritual concepts from shamanism and indigenous beliefs to less common constructs such as eco-feminism, paganism, belief systems based in quantum physics, and even atheism. Many of these traditions have their own methods of transcendence that the therapist may induce and use to help the patient gain personal insight.
The following are a few of the therapeutic tools with which the therapist helps patients heal the rifts within themselves, deal with mental and spiritual crises, and proceed with a process of self-actualization.
Ordinary and Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness
The value of states of non-ordinary consciousness is in the therapeutic release they provide from the confines of personality. Taking patients beyond their personal, self-limiting beliefs and egos often opens up new dimensions in their minds. The process allows them to gain insights, new perspectives, a greater sense of potential, or attain heightened states of spirituality.
The transpersonal therapist understands that individuals access this alternative realm through meditation, prayer, hypnosis, guided imagery, dance, chanting, drumming, sweat lodges, shamanic journeying, martial arts, or other rituals. Patients often find it helpful to study or practice methods of mindfulness that lead to these states so they can regularly access their transpersonal consciousness in order to work on particular issues.
Transcendent experiences often provide the patient with a great sense of joy or profound peace. The ability to access these states is a life-changing tool that often becomes part of the patient's daily regimen. The regular use of meditation, a martial art form such as Tai Chi or a spiritual ritual such as drumming - or any of the other methods used to access heightened consciousness - often reduces neurosis, bringing greater calmness and stability.
Mindfulness is the goal of many of these meditative techniques for accessing non-ordinary states of consciousness. It is the process of self-observation that allows patients to gently stop their minds from processing distractions and brings them back into the present moment. The ability of patients to self-observe is diagnostically helpful, allowing them to discover their own cognitive habits and traps - or disruptive thoughts that contribute to unconscious and dysfunctional motivations.
Meditation & Prayer
Meditation and prayer are mindfulness spiritual practices. For over 2000 years, Eastern philosophies and religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Zen have used meditative techniques to control the mind and reach transcendent states. In the West, meditation is becoming a more accepted method of therapy. The process of sitting quietly for an extended period of uninterrupted time - focused on clearing and quieting the mind - distances the patient from the pressures of life, providing a new perspective, and diminishing stress.
Prayer connotes Western practices - although it is certainly present in Eastern religions as well. As a general methodology in both the East and West, it is more active – chanting or a perceived communication - with int