Kamalamani - Therapist and mentor in Bishopston, Bristol
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“Dwelling in the gap”.
What can Buddhist meditation add to the therapeutic process?
Kamalamani (revised March 2008)
“…the best of modern therapy is much like a process of shared meditation, where therapist and client sit together, learning to pay close attention to those aspects and dimensions of the self that the client may be unable to touch on his or her own.” (Kornfield, 1994, pg 245).
In this article I explore the role Buddhist meditation can have in helping both the counsellor and the client in the counselling process. As an ordained, meditating Buddhist and counsellor, I am keen to deepen my understanding of how Buddhist meditation can support the learning and awareness of client and counsellor. By this, I mean how meditation interventions may be introduced to the client by the counsellor, as well as the ways in which the counsellor may find meditation techniques useful in developing their own awareness and reflective process outside of counselling sessions. In the second part of this exploration, I will use the late Petruska Clarkson’s seven level or seven domain model (Clarkson, 2001), to look at how specific meditation interventions may be helpful and relevant.
‘Try it and see’
Firstly, an important caveat. It may seem obvious, but Buddhist meditation will only be useful if both counsellor and client have in interest in Buddhism and are prepared to try some of these centuries old approaches to meditation. It is important to make this point, given that the Buddha himself was sure that you have to try Buddhism for yourself, seeing whether it has a beneficial influence upon your life. Buddhism is an experiential and esoteric system of faith. The other point that it seems important to make is that meditation can have a very powerful effect. For this reason, it’s probably a good idea to learn meditation in a group, with an experienced teacher, rather than alone at home.
Buddhist meditation v. meditation
In this context, I wish to explore Buddhist meditation, rather than meditation as a generic category. Why do I draw the distinction? Because there are a huge variety of techniques which fall under the category of meditation. It is also true that there are a wide variety of techniques which are collectively known as ‘Buddhist meditation’ (Pauling, 1990). What marks the difference is the individual’s intention for meditating. Many of those who have taught meditation in the west in the recent past have done so to promote relaxation, stress management and a sense of stillness in an otherwise frenetic world. These are excellent and beneficial reasons for teaching meditation. The reason many people pursue Buddhist meditation is to become more aware and transform their body-minds through working with their energy and habits. And of course, many wish to become happier people. So my interest here is to look at how meditation may be helpful when it is used as a more transformative tool.
The second point I would like to make is that in exploring the role of Buddhist meditation in the counselling process, I am not suggesting that Buddhism is a form of therapy, nor am I suggesting that all meditation teachers would make good psychotherapists and counsellors. I am also not trying to suggest that Buddhism has a monopoly on meditation techniques! I am simply keen to explore how meditation can be useful to both client and counsellor, to help my own learning.
The role of meditation in traditional Buddhist teachings
Buddhist meditation is one of the foundations of Buddhism. The traditional dharma teaching of the ‘three fold way’ consists of ethics, meditation and wisdom. In this schema, meditation is seen as the main way in which we can recognise and influence our mental states:
“meditation gives us a way of working on the mind with the mind, allowing us first of all to increase our overall awareness and positivity, and then to use this strengthened and purified awareness to see into the nature of things as they really are” (Pauling, 1990, pg 42).
Meditation is also an important element of the Buddha’s teaching of the ‘Noble Eight fold path’. This teaching consists of illuminating how, once we have glimpsed the truth of the Buddha’s teachings, we start to tread the path of living in a more authentic way, in line with reality. One important stage in this path is the development of samma samadhi or ‘right concentration’, which is developed through meditation. The reason why Buddhists aim to develop this ‘right concentration’ is because:
“the mind untrained in concentration moves in a scattered manner which the Buddha compares to the flapping about of a fish taken from the water and thrown onto dry land…it rushes from idea to idea, from thought to thought, without inner control. Such a distracted mind is also a deluded mind” (Bhikku Bodhi, 1984, pg 91).
What is meditation?
Because meditation is essentially experiential, and a process, rather than a fixed ‘thing’ or entity, I find it hard to define. Rubin describes it as:
“the careful and detailed non-judgemental observation of proximate dimensions of consciousness” (Rubin, 1993).
Personally, I find this description rather convoluted, although technically accurate. I would describe meditation as ‘being with and attending fully to yourself, to find out who’s at home.’ Perhaps it is easier to explain the reason for using meditation, rather than trying to pin down exactly what it is, as this will be different for each different person engaged in meditation, meditation experiences are difficult to describe in words alone and will vary from day to day. A rather beautiful way of explaining meditation is as:
“ …a bridge that offers an escape from external demands and provides a passageway into the more peaceful territory of matters internal and eternal” (Carroll, 2001, pg 57).
My only disagreement with this description of meditation is that my own day to day experience of meditation is not always peaceful. Taking a long term view, I would argue that the consequence of meditating for several years can be greater inner peace and clarity, or at least, the ability to be less jolted by life’s events. In looking on a peacefully meditating Buddha figure, some understandably believe that meditation is all about becoming blissed out. Bliss is a very pleasant experience, and indicates that you have managed to become quite concentrated, integrating your energy. But it’s not the main point of Buddhist meditation! This is partly why I drew the distinction between Buddhist meditation and other forms of meditation earlier on.
The Buddha was keen to point out that although you can experience magical powers, and even the ability to levitate, as a result of meditating, it is important not to get too caught up in these things. Why? Because, our minds, constantly craving pleasure, as is their want, begin to get attached to, and crave these pleasurable experiences. Real freedom, according to the Buddha, is to enjoy the pleasure in the moment, then to go beyond such craving, so we can live and respond creatively, rather than always looking for our next pleasure fix, be it a better job, different lover, a bigger house, more money etc etc! I rather like Trungpa’s definition of meditation:
“meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss or tranquillity, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes” (Trungpa, 1976).
So in Jungian terms, what meditation can help us to do is to look at our shadow side. For me, this has been the main benefit of meditation, to help me explore the corners of myself which are out of awareness. Longer term therapy often means that sooner or later, we face our shadow and engage with the energy held there:
“the shadow is potentially both creative and destructive: creative in that it represents aspects of oneself that have been buried or that might yet be realised; destructive in the sense that its value system and motivations tend to undermine or disturb one’s conscious image of oneself” (Sharp, 1998, pg 27).
For me, meditating has meant that I have started to develop a greater self knowledge of my most positive and most negative habits. It’s hard to escape seeing these things about yourself when you sit still each day, and the sitting still helps us to develop ways of living more authentically. In summary, Buddhist meditation is about developing greater awareness and self knowledge, so that we can work more fluidly with our body-minds, becoming freer from the distraction of our own minds and living a more engaged life.
What benefits can Buddhist meditation bring to counsellor and client?
What has Buddhist meditation got to do with the counselling process? In this short space, it is impossible to list all the benefits Buddhist meditation may bring to counsellors and clients who decide to meditate, so I have selected some key benefits. For me, the development of greater awareness and the ability to relate more fully are both benefits of meditation and therapy. In the second part of this essay, I will use the seven level model to show specific interventions and their potential benefits.
The ability to stop and be. This sounds an obvious part of meditation. In fact, it can be very hard to stop (for some, almost impossible) to just sit. So for some, learning to sit still could be a lifelong benefit in itself. Hopefully, counsellors will have some ability to stop and be with themselves, as they will have begun the task of developing greater self awareness.
Awareness. In my mind, both Buddhism and counselling (particularly perhaps Gestalt and existential approaches) are concerned with increasing our personal awareness. It is impossible to meditate without acquiring greater self knowledge. As counsellors and clients with a regular meditation practise, we are likely to become more aware of:
·How we feel in the moment. Our hopes, fears, etc. In Gestalt terms, what’s in the ‘foreground’ and ‘background’ at any one time.
·Our habitual way of responding to life’s events.
·Our ‘script’, in narrative and transactional analysis terms and how we re-create our script through interpreting events in a particular way and repeating habits.
·Our highest values and vision of who we want to become.
·The overall ‘myth’ or ‘story’ of our lives, expressed as the ‘theoretical’ stage of the seven level model, and captured in Jungian archetypes.
·Our own process. This ability to self-monitor is vital for counsellors, particularly at moments when they are affected by the content of the client’s process.
Facing existential questions. The arising of existential questions is an inevitable result of meditation. I have found it difficult to sit with myself everyday, without noticing the ebbs and flows of my own emotions, life’s circumstantial changes and a need to create meaning and shape amidst the insubstantiality and impermanence of life.
Going beyond ourselves. Another potential benefits is that it may be that individuals develop greater perspective in practising meditation. This may result in individuals being more prepared to take responsibility for themselves, and see the universality of both suffering and metta (a universal sense of loving kindness).
How can we use meditation in the counselling process?
Having looked at some of the benefits to both counsellors and clients, in this section, I will move onto look at the benefits of meditation both within and outside the counselling process, linked to each of the stages of Clarkson’s seven level model (explained in Clarkson, 2001). I wish to use the seven level model framework for two reasons. Firstly, to help make sense of meditation and its benefits through seeing it’s holistic nature and secondly, as the seven level model is a useful framework in this context. Where there are specific examples of benefits to the counsellor and/or client, I have shown these.
1. The Physiological Level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·All meditation techniques can help increase body awareness, and help us to be with, understand and use our energy more effectively.
·Meditation has proven health benefits in reducing stress.
·Body awareness can also help us to identify where we feel ‘stuck’, with emotional blockages being experienced in or through the body. It can also help us access a greater sense of joy and freedom.
Benefits to the counsellor:
·Increased body awareness may help counsellors self-monitor their own process, during counselling sessions, and identify how they are affected by the content of a session.
·Increased body awareness, and ‘signals’ experienced in the body may also help counsellors to see transference and counter-transference more clearly.
·Meditating is likely to help develop, in NLP terms, the counsellor’s sensory acuity, and they may find they find it easier to ‘tune in’ to the client.
Benefits to the client:
·Meditation and body awareness may give clients a greater sense of vitality and potency in their lives, through being more physically present.
·Simple body awareness and breathing techniques can be used during a counselling session, particularly where the client is anxious, or wants to feel more grounded.
·The ‘mindfulness of breathing’ can be a useful technique that clients may wish to practise at home, having been taught the technique during the session. This is an ancient meditation, which can be very grounding, as it focuses on the breath.
2. The Emotional level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·Meditation and body awareness exercises can help those with a more developed rational faculty to experience their emotions more fully.
·The ‘metta bhavana’ or ‘development of loving kindness’ meditation practise is an excellent way of developing positive emotions towards self and others.
Benefits to the client:
·Any form of meditation and/or ongoing visualisation exercises can help clients experience their feelings more fully, particularly those with ‘don’t feel’ or ‘don’t exist’ drivers.
·Visualisation exercises can also help to bring greater emotional awareness, allowing the client to access greater energy.
3. The Nominative level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·Meditation can help us to ‘name’ our obstacles and those traditional hindrances that hold us back from living more authentically, “the naming of our experience is the first step in bringing them to a wakeful conscious attention” (Kornfield, 1994)
·Through meditating, we can also gain a clearer identity of who we are, and what we stand for; becoming more individual and sculpting and shaping ourselves.
·Benefits to client: ‘Naming’ demons or aspects of our shadow side in the course of a therapy session can help clients to come to terms with these.
4. The Normative level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·Meditation can help us to develop a very clear understanding of our own specific conditioning, helping us to see what we do, and help trace our steps back to why we do what we do. In transactional analysis terms, it helps us to see how we developed our early childhood scripts.
·Some individuals come from a set of very difficult conditions, causing substantial suffering. In such cases, the ‘metta bhavana’ meditation may be useful in helping individuals to develop positive emotions and to help them to heal their relationship with the past.
5. The Rational level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·Meditation can help to bring greater clarity of mind, as we stop and recollect and re-own scattered parts of ourselves. Any meditation practise is likely to have this benefit. The ‘mindfulness of breathing’, mentioned above is likely to be useful. ‘Just sitting’ and ‘open awareness’ meditation is useful, where one literally just sits, developing both a breadth and depth of focus. This could be taught in the course of a therapy session.
·For those who tend to be more rational, at the expense of having a richer emotional life, the ‘metta bhavana’ meditation is likely to help develop positive emotions.
6. The Theoretical level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·Through greater awareness gained in meditation, we can become aware of the ‘stories’ we tell ourselves, perhaps based on childhood scripts. Through identifying these habitual scripts, we can decide how we can begin to live more creatively.
·Through meditating, the counsellor and client may both become aware of the myths, symbols and stories with which they resonate, opening up a different dimension in their lives.
7. The Transpersonal level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
The ultimate aim of Buddhist meditation is the attainment of enlightenment, a sort of super-human state achieved by going beyond and seeing the pointlessness of the craving, hatred and delusion of our own minds. It’s hard to be prescriptive about the ‘transpersonal’ benefits of meditation, but some examples of what people may experience as a result of meditating are as follows:
·sky like mind’ - meditators often get a feeling of more perspective, and expansiveness
·the opening up of the spiritual dimension for the individual
·seeing more clearly the interdependence of things and living beings, through seeing the affect we have on those around us, and the universality of pleasure and pain.
Conclusion
“The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism, but to study ourselves” (Suzuki, 1993, pg 76).
In many ways, there is a strong likeness between some psychotherapeutic approaches and Buddhism. Both offer ‘tools’ such as meditation, visualisation, and techniques to develop greater self awareness of how we live and relate. Psychotherapy and counselling can help us to reach a point where we are clearer of who we are as human beings, tackling deep problems which hold us back from living how we would like to live. Buddhism also encourages us to become more fully human, so we can beyond the limits of our own fixed ego, being receptive to a transcendental perspective. The two approaches are complimentary. I sometimes feel frustrated when I hear spiritual practitioners (not just Buddhists) saying things like ‘we shouldn’t need therapy if we have strong enough faith and/or good enough friends’. In my mind, the counselling relationship can be invaluable in helping the client learn to love, trust and live life more fully again, whatever that may mean to them. For me, counselling and psychotherapy offer excellent tools, and Buddhism offers a system of faith and practice:
“the aim of Buddhist meditation is not only to resolve psychological problems, but also to open doors to states of consciousness which are beyond the imagination of Western psychology. Buddhism offers a spiritual and transcendental perspective, and its vision of what a human being can become takes us far beyond the province of psychology” (Pauling, 1990).
In conclusion, I am also aware of the fact that the Buddha himself taught that the dharma, his teachings, are just a raft to reach the further shore of insight. So it’s useful to bear in mind that all teachings and tools are a means to an end, rather than an end in themselves.
Bibliography
Bhikku Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path, Way to the End of Suffering (Buddhist Publication Society, 1984).
S.E. Carroll, The Therapist’s Toolbox (Sage Publications, 2001).
P. Clarkson, Psychotherapy and Counselling: Clarkson on Psychotherapy: v. 2, Wiley Blackwell, 2001.
J. Kornfield, A Path With Heart, A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life (Rider Books, 1994).
C. Pauling, Introducing Buddhism (Windhorse Publications, 1990).
J.B. Rubin, ‘Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: Towards an Integration’, in G. Stricker and J. Golds (eds) Comprehensive Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (New York, Plenum Press, 1993) p. 249-266.
D. Sharp, Jungian Psychology Unplugged, My Life as an Elephant (Inner City Books, 1998).
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Weatherhill Press, 1993) p. 76.
C. Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation (Shambhala Dragon Editions, 1976).
Return to the main homepage. Return to Kamalamani's page of articles. Go to the page about spiritual counselling.
What can Buddhist meditation add to the therapeutic process?
Kamalamani (revised March 2008)
“…the best of modern therapy is much like a process of shared meditation, where therapist and client sit together, learning to pay close attention to those aspects and dimensions of the self that the client may be unable to touch on his or her own.” (Kornfield, 1994, pg 245).
In this article I explore the role Buddhist meditation can have in helping both the counsellor and the client in the counselling process. As an ordained, meditating Buddhist and counsellor, I am keen to deepen my understanding of how Buddhist meditation can support the learning and awareness of client and counsellor. By this, I mean how meditation interventions may be introduced to the client by the counsellor, as well as the ways in which the counsellor may find meditation techniques useful in developing their own awareness and reflective process outside of counselling sessions. In the second part of this exploration, I will use the late Petruska Clarkson’s seven level or seven domain model (Clarkson, 2001), to look at how specific meditation interventions may be helpful and relevant.
‘Try it and see’
Firstly, an important caveat. It may seem obvious, but Buddhist meditation will only be useful if both counsellor and client have in interest in Buddhism and are prepared to try some of these centuries old approaches to meditation. It is important to make this point, given that the Buddha himself was sure that you have to try Buddhism for yourself, seeing whether it has a beneficial influence upon your life. Buddhism is an experiential and esoteric system of faith. The other point that it seems important to make is that meditation can have a very powerful effect. For this reason, it’s probably a good idea to learn meditation in a group, with an experienced teacher, rather than alone at home.
Buddhist meditation v. meditation
In this context, I wish to explore Buddhist meditation, rather than meditation as a generic category. Why do I draw the distinction? Because there are a huge variety of techniques which fall under the category of meditation. It is also true that there are a wide variety of techniques which are collectively known as ‘Buddhist meditation’ (Pauling, 1990). What marks the difference is the individual’s intention for meditating. Many of those who have taught meditation in the west in the recent past have done so to promote relaxation, stress management and a sense of stillness in an otherwise frenetic world. These are excellent and beneficial reasons for teaching meditation. The reason many people pursue Buddhist meditation is to become more aware and transform their body-minds through working with their energy and habits. And of course, many wish to become happier people. So my interest here is to look at how meditation may be helpful when it is used as a more transformative tool.
The second point I would like to make is that in exploring the role of Buddhist meditation in the counselling process, I am not suggesting that Buddhism is a form of therapy, nor am I suggesting that all meditation teachers would make good psychotherapists and counsellors. I am also not trying to suggest that Buddhism has a monopoly on meditation techniques! I am simply keen to explore how meditation can be useful to both client and counsellor, to help my own learning.
The role of meditation in traditional Buddhist teachings
Buddhist meditation is one of the foundations of Buddhism. The traditional dharma teaching of the ‘three fold way’ consists of ethics, meditation and wisdom. In this schema, meditation is seen as the main way in which we can recognise and influence our mental states:
“meditation gives us a way of working on the mind with the mind, allowing us first of all to increase our overall awareness and positivity, and then to use this strengthened and purified awareness to see into the nature of things as they really are” (Pauling, 1990, pg 42).
Meditation is also an important element of the Buddha’s teaching of the ‘Noble Eight fold path’. This teaching consists of illuminating how, once we have glimpsed the truth of the Buddha’s teachings, we start to tread the path of living in a more authentic way, in line with reality. One important stage in this path is the development of samma samadhi or ‘right concentration’, which is developed through meditation. The reason why Buddhists aim to develop this ‘right concentration’ is because:
“the mind untrained in concentration moves in a scattered manner which the Buddha compares to the flapping about of a fish taken from the water and thrown onto dry land…it rushes from idea to idea, from thought to thought, without inner control. Such a distracted mind is also a deluded mind” (Bhikku Bodhi, 1984, pg 91).
What is meditation?
Because meditation is essentially experiential, and a process, rather than a fixed ‘thing’ or entity, I find it hard to define. Rubin describes it as:
“the careful and detailed non-judgemental observation of proximate dimensions of consciousness” (Rubin, 1993).
Personally, I find this description rather convoluted, although technically accurate. I would describe meditation as ‘being with and attending fully to yourself, to find out who’s at home.’ Perhaps it is easier to explain the reason for using meditation, rather than trying to pin down exactly what it is, as this will be different for each different person engaged in meditation, meditation experiences are difficult to describe in words alone and will vary from day to day. A rather beautiful way of explaining meditation is as:
“ …a bridge that offers an escape from external demands and provides a passageway into the more peaceful territory of matters internal and eternal” (Carroll, 2001, pg 57).
My only disagreement with this description of meditation is that my own day to day experience of meditation is not always peaceful. Taking a long term view, I would argue that the consequence of meditating for several years can be greater inner peace and clarity, or at least, the ability to be less jolted by life’s events. In looking on a peacefully meditating Buddha figure, some understandably believe that meditation is all about becoming blissed out. Bliss is a very pleasant experience, and indicates that you have managed to become quite concentrated, integrating your energy. But it’s not the main point of Buddhist meditation! This is partly why I drew the distinction between Buddhist meditation and other forms of meditation earlier on.
The Buddha was keen to point out that although you can experience magical powers, and even the ability to levitate, as a result of meditating, it is important not to get too caught up in these things. Why? Because, our minds, constantly craving pleasure, as is their want, begin to get attached to, and crave these pleasurable experiences. Real freedom, according to the Buddha, is to enjoy the pleasure in the moment, then to go beyond such craving, so we can live and respond creatively, rather than always looking for our next pleasure fix, be it a better job, different lover, a bigger house, more money etc etc! I rather like Trungpa’s definition of meditation:
“meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss or tranquillity, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes” (Trungpa, 1976).
So in Jungian terms, what meditation can help us to do is to look at our shadow side. For me, this has been the main benefit of meditation, to help me explore the corners of myself which are out of awareness. Longer term therapy often means that sooner or later, we face our shadow and engage with the energy held there:
“the shadow is potentially both creative and destructive: creative in that it represents aspects of oneself that have been buried or that might yet be realised; destructive in the sense that its value system and motivations tend to undermine or disturb one’s conscious image of oneself” (Sharp, 1998, pg 27).
For me, meditating has meant that I have started to develop a greater self knowledge of my most positive and most negative habits. It’s hard to escape seeing these things about yourself when you sit still each day, and the sitting still helps us to develop ways of living more authentically. In summary, Buddhist meditation is about developing greater awareness and self knowledge, so that we can work more fluidly with our body-minds, becoming freer from the distraction of our own minds and living a more engaged life.
What benefits can Buddhist meditation bring to counsellor and client?
What has Buddhist meditation got to do with the counselling process? In this short space, it is impossible to list all the benefits Buddhist meditation may bring to counsellors and clients who decide to meditate, so I have selected some key benefits. For me, the development of greater awareness and the ability to relate more fully are both benefits of meditation and therapy. In the second part of this essay, I will use the seven level model to show specific interventions and their potential benefits.
The ability to stop and be. This sounds an obvious part of meditation. In fact, it can be very hard to stop (for some, almost impossible) to just sit. So for some, learning to sit still could be a lifelong benefit in itself. Hopefully, counsellors will have some ability to stop and be with themselves, as they will have begun the task of developing greater self awareness.
Awareness. In my mind, both Buddhism and counselling (particularly perhaps Gestalt and existential approaches) are concerned with increasing our personal awareness. It is impossible to meditate without acquiring greater self knowledge. As counsellors and clients with a regular meditation practise, we are likely to become more aware of:
·How we feel in the moment. Our hopes, fears, etc. In Gestalt terms, what’s in the ‘foreground’ and ‘background’ at any one time.
·Our habitual way of responding to life’s events.
·Our ‘script’, in narrative and transactional analysis terms and how we re-create our script through interpreting events in a particular way and repeating habits.
·Our highest values and vision of who we want to become.
·The overall ‘myth’ or ‘story’ of our lives, expressed as the ‘theoretical’ stage of the seven level model, and captured in Jungian archetypes.
·Our own process. This ability to self-monitor is vital for counsellors, particularly at moments when they are affected by the content of the client’s process.
Facing existential questions. The arising of existential questions is an inevitable result of meditation. I have found it difficult to sit with myself everyday, without noticing the ebbs and flows of my own emotions, life’s circumstantial changes and a need to create meaning and shape amidst the insubstantiality and impermanence of life.
Going beyond ourselves. Another potential benefits is that it may be that individuals develop greater perspective in practising meditation. This may result in individuals being more prepared to take responsibility for themselves, and see the universality of both suffering and metta (a universal sense of loving kindness).
How can we use meditation in the counselling process?
Having looked at some of the benefits to both counsellors and clients, in this section, I will move onto look at the benefits of meditation both within and outside the counselling process, linked to each of the stages of Clarkson’s seven level model (explained in Clarkson, 2001). I wish to use the seven level model framework for two reasons. Firstly, to help make sense of meditation and its benefits through seeing it’s holistic nature and secondly, as the seven level model is a useful framework in this context. Where there are specific examples of benefits to the counsellor and/or client, I have shown these.
1. The Physiological Level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·All meditation techniques can help increase body awareness, and help us to be with, understand and use our energy more effectively.
·Meditation has proven health benefits in reducing stress.
·Body awareness can also help us to identify where we feel ‘stuck’, with emotional blockages being experienced in or through the body. It can also help us access a greater sense of joy and freedom.
Benefits to the counsellor:
·Increased body awareness may help counsellors self-monitor their own process, during counselling sessions, and identify how they are affected by the content of a session.
·Increased body awareness, and ‘signals’ experienced in the body may also help counsellors to see transference and counter-transference more clearly.
·Meditating is likely to help develop, in NLP terms, the counsellor’s sensory acuity, and they may find they find it easier to ‘tune in’ to the client.
Benefits to the client:
·Meditation and body awareness may give clients a greater sense of vitality and potency in their lives, through being more physically present.
·Simple body awareness and breathing techniques can be used during a counselling session, particularly where the client is anxious, or wants to feel more grounded.
·The ‘mindfulness of breathing’ can be a useful technique that clients may wish to practise at home, having been taught the technique during the session. This is an ancient meditation, which can be very grounding, as it focuses on the breath.
2. The Emotional level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·Meditation and body awareness exercises can help those with a more developed rational faculty to experience their emotions more fully.
·The ‘metta bhavana’ or ‘development of loving kindness’ meditation practise is an excellent way of developing positive emotions towards self and others.
Benefits to the client:
·Any form of meditation and/or ongoing visualisation exercises can help clients experience their feelings more fully, particularly those with ‘don’t feel’ or ‘don’t exist’ drivers.
·Visualisation exercises can also help to bring greater emotional awareness, allowing the client to access greater energy.
3. The Nominative level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·Meditation can help us to ‘name’ our obstacles and those traditional hindrances that hold us back from living more authentically, “the naming of our experience is the first step in bringing them to a wakeful conscious attention” (Kornfield, 1994)
·Through meditating, we can also gain a clearer identity of who we are, and what we stand for; becoming more individual and sculpting and shaping ourselves.
·Benefits to client: ‘Naming’ demons or aspects of our shadow side in the course of a therapy session can help clients to come to terms with these.
4. The Normative level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·Meditation can help us to develop a very clear understanding of our own specific conditioning, helping us to see what we do, and help trace our steps back to why we do what we do. In transactional analysis terms, it helps us to see how we developed our early childhood scripts.
·Some individuals come from a set of very difficult conditions, causing substantial suffering. In such cases, the ‘metta bhavana’ meditation may be useful in helping individuals to develop positive emotions and to help them to heal their relationship with the past.
5. The Rational level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·Meditation can help to bring greater clarity of mind, as we stop and recollect and re-own scattered parts of ourselves. Any meditation practise is likely to have this benefit. The ‘mindfulness of breathing’, mentioned above is likely to be useful. ‘Just sitting’ and ‘open awareness’ meditation is useful, where one literally just sits, developing both a breadth and depth of focus. This could be taught in the course of a therapy session.
·For those who tend to be more rational, at the expense of having a richer emotional life, the ‘metta bhavana’ meditation is likely to help develop positive emotions.
6. The Theoretical level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
·Through greater awareness gained in meditation, we can become aware of the ‘stories’ we tell ourselves, perhaps based on childhood scripts. Through identifying these habitual scripts, we can decide how we can begin to live more creatively.
·Through meditating, the counsellor and client may both become aware of the myths, symbols and stories with which they resonate, opening up a different dimension in their lives.
7. The Transpersonal level
Benefits to both counsellor and client:
The ultimate aim of Buddhist meditation is the attainment of enlightenment, a sort of super-human state achieved by going beyond and seeing the pointlessness of the craving, hatred and delusion of our own minds. It’s hard to be prescriptive about the ‘transpersonal’ benefits of meditation, but some examples of what people may experience as a result of meditating are as follows:
·sky like mind’ - meditators often get a feeling of more perspective, and expansiveness
·the opening up of the spiritual dimension for the individual
·seeing more clearly the interdependence of things and living beings, through seeing the affect we have on those around us, and the universality of pleasure and pain.
Conclusion
“The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism, but to study ourselves” (Suzuki, 1993, pg 76).
In many ways, there is a strong likeness between some psychotherapeutic approaches and Buddhism. Both offer ‘tools’ such as meditation, visualisation, and techniques to develop greater self awareness of how we live and relate. Psychotherapy and counselling can help us to reach a point where we are clearer of who we are as human beings, tackling deep problems which hold us back from living how we would like to live. Buddhism also encourages us to become more fully human, so we can beyond the limits of our own fixed ego, being receptive to a transcendental perspective. The two approaches are complimentary. I sometimes feel frustrated when I hear spiritual practitioners (not just Buddhists) saying things like ‘we shouldn’t need therapy if we have strong enough faith and/or good enough friends’. In my mind, the counselling relationship can be invaluable in helping the client learn to love, trust and live life more fully again, whatever that may mean to them. For me, counselling and psychotherapy offer excellent tools, and Buddhism offers a system of faith and practice:
“the aim of Buddhist meditation is not only to resolve psychological problems, but also to open doors to states of consciousness which are beyond the imagination of Western psychology. Buddhism offers a spiritual and transcendental perspective, and its vision of what a human being can become takes us far beyond the province of psychology” (Pauling, 1990).
In conclusion, I am also aware of the fact that the Buddha himself taught that the dharma, his teachings, are just a raft to reach the further shore of insight. So it’s useful to bear in mind that all teachings and tools are a means to an end, rather than an end in themselves.
Bibliography
Bhikku Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path, Way to the End of Suffering (Buddhist Publication Society, 1984).
S.E. Carroll, The Therapist’s Toolbox (Sage Publications, 2001).
P. Clarkson, Psychotherapy and Counselling: Clarkson on Psychotherapy: v. 2, Wiley Blackwell, 2001.
J. Kornfield, A Path With Heart, A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life (Rider Books, 1994).
C. Pauling, Introducing Buddhism (Windhorse Publications, 1990).
J.B. Rubin, ‘Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: Towards an Integration’, in G. Stricker and J. Golds (eds) Comprehensive Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration (New York, Plenum Press, 1993) p. 249-266.
D. Sharp, Jungian Psychology Unplugged, My Life as an Elephant (Inner City Books, 1998).
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Weatherhill Press, 1993) p. 76.
C. Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation (Shambhala Dragon Editions, 1976).
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