Therapy Group
Soul Work for Healing and Vision

These groups are a powerful way for people interested in personal healing and realizing their vision for their life work. The group's format will include aspects of traditional group therapy and experiential processes that work at deeper levels than verbal communication. There will be personal sharing with the common purpose of fostering greater self awareness and interpersonal skills. However, unlike traditional group psychotherapy, there will be a spiritual focus that includes teachings from both Eastern and Western meditation and contemplative traditions.

Features of the group:

+ Facilitated interpersonal dialogue.

We will engage with each other in creating a safe atmosphere for honest communication and feedback to each other. Groups can provide multiple mirrors for each member of the group to better learn about themselves, as well as a warm and caring context in which to share the struggles of life.

Our group will provide a context for respectful feedback from which we learn how we come across, how we impact other people and how others see us. Participants learn to be in touch with feelings that arise in relationship with others in the group that parallel experiences with family, friends and associates. By having a supportive group context to explore and share these feelings, thoughts and perceptions, changes of a healing nature are brought about.

+ Training in methods of meditation and support for cultivating your own daily spiritual practice.

Many people were raised with a religious orientation or have studied one or more forms of spirituality. While they may believe that their deepest concerns are essentially spiritual questions, most find it difficult to sustain the practice and integration of their spirituality in daily life. It is rare that we find a place to talk honestly about these concerns, beliefs and questions.

In our culture, spirituality is often seen as an individual, private matter. Yet, it is helpful to understand that we are not alone in our longing for a connection to deeper meaning, transcendent experience or spiritual awakening. Likewise, it is important to recognize that awareness of our interconnectedness with others is part of the realization of spiritual growth. Most teachers of transformation have encouraged being with a group of like-minded seekers. Together, we will explore a number of approaches to ongoing inner work, give support to each member in finding what works for them, and encouragement in sustaining their practice.

+ Guided inner process work for healing emotional wounds.

Each of us has experienced painful episodes in our life journey, some as drawn out experiences of emotional neglect, some as very intense and traumatic loss or abuse. These events may hold us in chronic anxiety or depression or keep us stuck in repetitive patterns of self-denying and self-destructive behavior. We will work with guided experiential practices that facilitate the resolution and healing of the past, bringing a fuller sense of presence into the here and now of life experience.

There are a number of models and methods for healing that take us beneath or beyond what is accessed through talk-therapy. Some of these experiential approaches include deep body awareness practices, breath-work, guided imagery and regression, conscious movement, therapeutic touch and healing energy meditation. All exercises done in group will be carefully explained and prepared for, and no one will be pushed or pressured to participate in anything with which they are not comfortable.

+ Opening to the vision of your Soul's calling and the courage and strength to follow it through.

We will work with the view that our lives have meaning and purpose and that each of us has a way that best expresses and fulfills this. In a highly competitive and materialistic society, it is difficult to keep attention on this truth. Our group meetings, through discussion and experiential exploration, will help each person get more deeply in touch with the intuitive knowing of inner direction. Likewise, the group will encourage the embodiment and exploration of living this vision in the real world.

Our discussions will include telling the real life story of each member and the current challenges we each face. Each personÆs journey will be honored as a mythic encounter with the timeless forces of the universe, facing the dark and light, opening to the sacred in every human encounter. Each personÆs relationships, livelihood, creative work and play, will be held explored as a myth of encountering and embodying their true nature.

Logistics:

Groups have from 6 - 8 members. Prospective participants will need to meet with Alan individually to clarify individual intentions and explore the appropriateness of the group work. There will be no charge for this initial meeting. The fee for group sessions will be $40.

Background of Facilitator:

Alan Levin has been a licensed psychotherapist since 1985, and has been leading groups for 25 years. He taught postgraduate psychology classes in Group Process at John F Kennedy University, in California. He continues to work with individuals in therapy, but recognizes that groups can help facilitate personal growth in different ways than individual therapy, particularly in terms of offering a direct encounter with personal relationship dynamics. Groups also foster the building of support systems, especially important for people on a spiritual path.

Alan has studied and taught practices of deep meditation for the past 35 years. He has focused on how such "inner work" relates to healing the wounds of the past and the difficult challenges of the present. He places a strong focus on the importance of the body and the cultivation of sensory awareness, both in terms of our total health and as an instrument for developing greater awareness of the psyche and higher self. Likewise, he holds an awareness of the important relationship we have with planet Earth and the natural world.

"I enjoy the experience of being with people interested in developing their inner potentials and being more compassionate human beings."