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:
inner world
The world of
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:
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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
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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, autosuggestion, 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!!!