Rituals in psychotherapy Umberta Telfener

utelfener@gmail.com

www.systemics.eu

A common ritual: creating your safe place

Lets stand up, imagine the last time you felt very very well in situation in which you were alone. Where were you? Put words to how you felt.

Go back to the situation, what did you see, hear and feel. Which was your posture, try and replicate it.

Connect a symbol to this feeling of wellness

We will try and anchor it

A way of finding connections

A ceremony with magical intent

A way to connect to the extra dimensional world, to a higher self

A shift to the right brain hemisphere and to a higher attention (going in ϐ and ϑ state)

A basic means to enter an inner world, where normal limitations of time and place don’t apply.

There are spontaneous and intentional rituals

To follow a ritual means to use certain gestures, sounds, words, prayers, visualizations…

Some intentional and repetitive ‘moves’ to work on some theme/ problems alerting the extra dimensional/ subconscious world.

To create a link, to bridge the boundaries between many worlds

The sacred journey of rituals

The spiritual/magical dimension Insights, connections, Psychic domain: The world of inner world others: social outer world of relationships

The aim is to center oneself

and to reach a unitary

state, a connection

Rites of passage

Are culturally shared steps through a door to a higher level of consciousness . A ‘trip’ as an appropriate way to enter `hidden’ knowledge, to share the `knowing’ and to be part of the group that `knows’.

It is important to experience something out of the ordinary, that impresses the initiate and makes him/her aware that it has reached a `higher’ level.

Awareness

Awareness is the means not the purpose

Becoming aware is not only a psychic event but allows the individual to

inscribe into the universal. Allows the integration of the universal order, the

contract between singular and universal

Rituals allow to:

• Create a cybernetic brain: many hearts and minds together

• Access to emotions through doing

• Introduce oneself as a participant observer

• Reflect of implicit premises

• Make distinctions and give words to instinctive actions

• Accept/touch with hand complexity

• Enhance/learn a double positioning: be within and outside

• Transform structure in a process and make possible new narratives emerge

• Change lexicon

• Look for the relational configuration, identify the dance

• Look for the local coherence

• Trace resources

• ………………………………………..

• …………………………………………..

Look for an object that can represent your pain/problem or yourself

A ritual doesn't offer a structured goal/concept/

chore but acts as a mirror that reflects the

awareness level of the subject.

Utilizing active practices allows to make every

happening a shared experience and to create

new order/disorder/interaction/organization

It offers an opportunity to improvise

Rituals allow for new narratives to emerge: from the people

involved,, from the therapeutic encounter, from the encounter

in the here and now. Allow to speculate the future, to connect

the past with the present.

Meanings emerge from the coordination of the coordination of

actions and meanings since every understanding process has a

constructive and social nature

We need to act reflexively

Make a protective object for yourself

Embodiment

Physical actions, steps, postures, dances, help to ‘anchor’ resolutions and belief system’s

changes (embodied cognition). Repeating gestures helps to connect body and mind

Rituals can also be seen as a support to structure the chaos around, to deal with

disorder (order from noise, from disorder)

Especially if repeated often, they provide a structure and thus safety

Repetition and rhythm

With the repetition of certain mudras (gestures), visualization, special breathing, auto-suggestion, mantras (specific words that have a deeper significance), symbols, patterns, in a ritual we develop a whole repertoire of tools for what we can call “the communication with the self”.

Affirming and anchoring

Rituals are not rational but help making connections. They function as communal memory, containing culture and cosmology. They were the vault, the carrier of shared memories, probably long before there was symbolic language.

They help anchoring experiences and insights and bringing them back to reminiscence in an automatic mode

There are many ways to perform a ritual: some are very specific to a special culture, others are more universal.

There is no all-in-one layout. All ritual formats are intended as solemn ways to come into contact with the hidden, inside and outside yourself. A ritual allows to perform repetition, to enter an altered state of mind and to center oneself as a support for one’s own intuitive and sacred mind. How do you choose which ritual to perform?

Many rituals contain the same elements. These are: purification, transformation, healing, the creation of a structure and a connection, making a link …

It is important to separate from daily reality (habits), to create a division between daily routine and the place of the ritual, by actively organizing it, but also by some extra relax, fasting or by seeking out a quiet place in nature, in company of a few significant others or on one’s own.

Phases • Dedication, making clear for what reason and

purpose the ritual is and who is addressed to

• Preparation, creating the sacred space

• Purification - physical and psychological cleansing, asking for mercy and forgiveness

• Celebration, what are the modalities we have decided for honoring and performing

• Devotion, making oneself small, letting go of the ego

• Petition, making an offering, a proposition and maybe ‘a deal’ (asking for Grace / Healing / Blessing)

• Transformation: the liminality phase that seeds within

Thank you for your attention!!!