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14a Park St, Brunswick Heads NSW 2483
Our Approach
The SoulScapes Transpersonal Psychology approach effectively offers you a therapeutic alliance that is based on compassion, equality and respect. We offer whole-person, deep listening and a perspective that symptoms may arise as language. We hold the possibility that you may experience not only symptom relief, but personal growth and deepened self-awareness.
What it means to us to be offering transpersonal work with the hat on of a Registered Psych:
As Registered Psychologists, we operate in accordance with evidence-based theory, practice, and techniques. This gives us the ability to bring to our clients sound, grounded approaches that are backed by research for effective reduction of mental health symptoms, and in the case of a clinical psychologist, to also offer assessment. As Registered Psychologists we can offer our clients the benefit of rebates offered through Medicare or private health funds if they so choose (and qualify). The combination of these capabilities, are of course, in common with any Psychologist.
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As practitioners of the transpersonal, we understand that there is a range of human experience that falls outside of what scientific or evidence based perspective acknowledges, or, may even pathologize. We bring transpersonal awareness and listening ears to feet that are the same time, grounded in the regulation-compliance and science.
There are a range of transpersonal therapies and techniques that fall outside of our role of Psychologists, just to be clear. Whilst we may fully understand their benefits, we cannot offer them ourselves due to the parameters of what it is to be registered with AHPRA. For example, transpersonal approaches such as Jungian Sandplay, Art Therapy, and Transpersonal Breathwork as stand-alone modalities, would fall outside evidence-based practice that attracts a Medicare rebate at this point in time.
So what we can offer as Registered Psychologists that is also “transpersonal” includes, but is not limited to, is the following: A way of deep listening; a depth of perspective for our place in the cosmos; a deep respect for (and lived knowledge of) ancient wisdom traditions; and an embodied understanding of the range of consciousness and how to integrate non-ordinary experiences. The transpersonal quality of the space that we hold for clients, outside of technique, may be described as “loving,” “sacred,” “equal,” “attuned,” and “accepting.”
Further, we support clients to deepen their own sense of Self beyond the personality and sub-personalities, deepen their sense of belonging and connection to the natural world, and to the intelligence and mystery of their unfolding life journey and of the living universe in a way that, at the same time, often addresses anxiety and depression. When relevant, for example, we may find ourselves working backwards from the language of symptoms, listen to the function of those symptoms and the calling, longing, and/or hidden inner resource/power contained within them.
Our deep listening says not that clients are to be fixed or symptoms merely reduced, but a spirit of not-knowing, non-expert, curiosity towards the unique and mysterious being incarnate who comes before us. We set up the listening container in the aim of it being experienced by clients as respectful and accepting, thereby inviting forward the stories, experiences, and inner world material that ordinarily get tucked away until safe enough to emerge. Beyond the aim of reducing clients’ symptoms and resolving issues, respect is given to how underpinning life themes, sense of personal myth or narration, and challenges can serve as potential gateways for growth, healing, and psycho-spiritual development.
Some clients might be familiar with the work of Stan Grof and the term “spiritual emergence,” and we can cater to those who identity as going through that experience. Likewise, some may be familiar with Bill Plotkin’s stages of soul-centric human development and what he terms as Stages 4 and 5, and likewise, we can cater to those leaving “Stage 3” or are in “Stage 4” or “Stage 5,” and moving into “Stage 6.” Still, others are seeking to make sense of their experience with entheogens and other consciousness-expanding medicines and need to support the movement of their states of consciousness into actual stages of consciousness for overall mental health and optimal development, and we can support you towards psycho-spiritual growth and psychological stabilisation.
Note that whilst Transpersonal Psychology is an established field of research and practice outside of Australia, and is an interest group of the APS, it is not an area of endorsement with AHPRA, on par with Counselling Psychology, Health Psychology, etc., The term is not put forward on this site or in our practice to suggest an area of AHPRA endorsement, but as a way of conveying our backgrounds, training, and approach whilst maintaining evidence-based compliance.