John Rowan: ‘What is Integral Psychotherapy?’

In his paper ‘What is Integral Psychotherapy?’, leading Integral/Transpersonal psychotherapist, Dr John Rowan, offers a rich and wide-ranging account of the model he uses in psychotherapy.

Dr Rowan challenges therapists to reach up and include realms even beyond the ‘Subtle’ level, and also to include not just the left-hand quadrants, but also the right-hand, in their work.

“This integral approach seems to me to open up an exciting prospect for the future of psychotherapy”, concludes John.

Dr Rowan is a founder member of Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute, and is a renowned pioneer in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology (and therapy). He is also the author of The Transpersonal: Spirituality in Psychotherapy and Counselling. Ken Wilber was one of the contributors to John Rowan’s festschrift, along with Tom Greening, Ian Gordon-Brown, Peter Reason, Petruska Clarkson and others.

John gave a presentation – ‘Extensions to AQAL’ – based on the ideas in this paper to the London Integral Circle in February 2006.

(A 3,000-word version of this 8,000-word paper appeared in Drew, J and Lorimer, D (eds.) Ways Through the Wall: Approaches to citizenship in an Interconnected World.)

How to run an ‘AQAL workshop’

Here are the basic instructions to run your own ‘All Quadrants, All Levels’/Integral workshop in your organisation (or Integral salon).

An AQAL workshop is an invaluable tool to enable a group to take a holistic assessment of a problem/issue using all of Ken Wilber’s Quadrants (and Levels too, if you choose).

It can similarly be used to brainstorm about comprehensive – and Integral – solutions to your problem/issue.

We used it successfully a number of times in the early days of the London Integral Circle (an Integral/Ken Wilber ’salon’ based in London).

It was kindly sent in by Amiel Handelsman, ‘Counsel to the Curious’.

* If you’ve seen any successful Integral workshop formats in use that can be added to the Integral Strategies website, please e-mail Matthew Kalman *

Integral Architecture – Integral Organisation

In ‘An Architectural Practice as an Integral Organisation’ award-winning architects Anna Cowen and Vernon Collis describe how their practice is deeply informed by Ken Wilber’s Integral/AQAL model, as well as by Brian Robertson’s “Holacracy” model, Dee Hock’s Chaordic design process, A.H. Almaas’s Diamond Heart Inquiry process and more.

For more about one of Cowen and Collis’ innovative developments, the Mbekweni housing development, see ‘Waste gets to work’, Financial Mail (2006), by Sasha Planting. The articles describes how the project uses “local rock and ‘waste’ building material destined for the dump”.
“Expecting communities to accept and adopt our way of building beacuse it’s a ‘clever idea’ or the ‘right thing to do’ is naive,” says Collis.
“The ideas has to be supported by its cultural context. For instance, using waste from industry for construction needs to be framed within localised belief systems otherwise it remains an imposed idea and will not endure.”

* If you have an integral-related, or developmentally-aware, real-world project or strategy which can be include on the Integral Strategies website, please e-mail Matthew Kalman. *

Integral salons: best practices

Dennis Wittrock has gathered together this valuable list of best practices for running exciting  ‘Integral salons’ – from the numerous such groups in Germany.

The Integral Strategies website also offers a listing of Integral salons and groups – from Australia to the US and UK.

Join in, or set up your own! (There’s also advice on how to do that).

Don’t forget to e-mail me info about other integral groups around the world, and any activities or outputs they would like to share.

Climate action: ‘West of England’ project fosters behaviour change

A case study of an ongoing UK project to foster climate-friendly behaviour change in groups that are particularly hard to reach – using the Maslow-based ‘Values Modes’ model.

You’ll also learn about the do’s and don’ts of talking to ‘Now People’, the perils of the ‘Too Worthy’ trap, the Carbon Footprint fallacy, the vital difference between population-wide behaviour change vs strategic campaigns, and why ‘Settler’ lady wanted solar power on her house.

Has anyone told Al Gore all this…?

Matthew

Integral responses to AIDS

‘Integral approaches to AIDS’ looks at how Ken Wilber’s Integral approach has been used in AIDS-related work by the UN Development Program and UNICEF.

On the same page, ‘Dr Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics approach to AIDS’ looks at some of the insights the Spiral Dynamics model of values development can offer about AIDS.

* As with the whole Integral Strategies website, if you have further info, further projects, to add – then do let me know…

Matthew

Ethical living – Smart Living – Safe Living: environmental communication

This article shows how using ‘Values Modes’ helps to target effective environmental communications. It’s an introduction to the Maslow-based ‘Psychographic’ segmentation that has been so effectively used by businesses, NGOs, political parties and beyond.

‘Ethical living – Smart Living – Safe Living’: how to target environmental communications’ tells you how to ensure your message works for ‘Inner-directeds’, ‘Outer-directed’ or ‘Security-driven’ individuals.

Welcome to Integral Strategies blog

I’ve launched this blog as a companion to my Integral Strategies website.

The blog will highlight major new additions to that website – for instance real-world integral-related projects and strategies, or workshops to try out in your local integral salon.

The blog also offers a space for discussion of the site’s content.