, 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 intentions that vary from changing vibrational states to speaking with divine beings.
Mind-body healing is foundational to a sense of wholeness. Creating a harmonious connection between the calmness of the mind and the activity of the body has had remarkable results on human physical performance. As a process, mind-body therapy has been widely adopted by professional and Olympic athletes.
The blending of a calm, focused mind with the movement of the body helps to create an optimal experience and is foundational to most martial arts. Visualization of the activity in a meditative state has been shown to initiate the same neural activity as the actual experience, reinforcing neural pathways as if the activity had been actually practiced. This technique is regularly used before each game by the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team.
Many people report having peak experiences. These are elevated states of consciousness achieved when a person is so absorbed in an activity that he or she looses track of time. It doesn't seem to matter what the activity is - writing, running, working a crossword puzzle, playing a musical instrument, working at a hobby, staring through a telescope, or even figuring out a physics problem.
Typically during peak experiences, the sense of self is expanded beyond ordinary definitions and the person has insights or episodes of increased awareness. While the experience is typically not
”other worldly,” it is a non-ordinary state of consciousness that gives the patient clues about fulfilling experiences. The pleasing sensation – the feeling of connectedness or the sense of being in “the flow” - is encouraging and sustaining. And while peak experiences are fairly common and help psychologists as they counsel patients toward new careers, they are also positive mental health indicators that the patient is moving toward self-actualization.
The Goal of Transpersonal Psychology
Transpersonal therapy considers self-actualization as an ongoing process of self-fulfillment. Renown consciousness researcher and Ps