Choosing to talk to someone about what you are carrying is a big
step, and it helps to know how a counsellor actually works before you
walk through the door. At Holistic Counselling, the approach is called
Process Work, also known as Process-Oriented Psychology. It is a gentle,
awareness-based way of working that takes the whole of you seriously,
your body and your feelings as much as your thoughts.
What Process Work is
Process Work is a client-centred awareness method. Instead of
starting from a fixed theory about what is wrong with you, it pays close
attention to what is actually happening in the moment. That might be a
feeling, a recurring dream, a tension in the body, or the way a
relationship keeps playing out. The counsellor follows that thread with
you, gently, to see where it wants to go.
One idea sits at the heart of it. The difficulties people bring to
counselling are treated as meaningful rather than as faults to be
stamped out. A symptom, a worry, or a stuck pattern is approached as
something that may be carrying information, a signal pointing toward
growth and a fuller sense of yourself. This does not mean the discomfort
is pleasant or welcome. It means the work is curious about it rather
than only trying to make it disappear, and that curiosity is often where
change quietly begins.
Where it comes from
Process Work was founded by Arnold Mindell (1940 to 2024). He trained
first as a physicist, then qualified as a Jungian analyst at the C.G.
Jung Institute in Zurich around 1970. Working with clients there through
the 1970s, he noticed something striking. People’s night-time dream
images often mirrored what was happening in their bodies, a pain or a
tension showing up in sleep as well as in waking life. He came to call
this mind-body connection the dreambody, the single field where
psychological and physical experience meet.
From those foundations the method grew into an established field. The
first formal organisation was founded in Zurich in 1982, and the Process
Work Institute opened in Portland, Oregon, in 1989. Today the work
continues through a global community of practitioners, with training
institutes internationally and a professional body, the International
Association of Process Oriented Psychology, formed in 2010.
The thinking draws on three main roots. Jungian psychology is the
primary one, and Process Work extends Jung’s dream work into the body
and into everyday life. Taoism is the second, with its idea of following
the natural flow and working with what is happening rather than against
it. The third is a lighter influence than the others. Mindell’s physics
background shaped how he thought about awareness and connection, and
Process Work borrows language and analogies from physics, including
quantum ideas, as inspiration and metaphor rather than as a literal
mechanism.
What a session can involve
No two sessions look the same, because the work is led by what shows
up rather than by a rigid script. A session is a collaboration, and the
counsellor follows your own experience rather than imposing an
interpretation on it.
Depending on what is present for you, a session might involve staying
with a body sensation and noticing what it seems to be doing, exploring
a dream or a recurring image, or working through a relationship dynamic
or an inner conflict. Sometimes movement or sound is part of it, not
only talking. Often it is simply about bringing gentle awareness to
feelings and subtle states as they arise, and following them a little
further than you might on your own. Throughout, the pace is yours.
Why it is a holistic
approach
Process Work fits the idea of holistic counselling closely because it
treats mind, body, feelings, relationships and the wider world as one
connected whole rather than as separate problems to be sorted into
boxes. You are not reduced to a single symptom or a diagnosis.
It is also broad. The same awareness skills apply across personal
struggles, relationship difficulties, body symptoms and inner conflict,
which makes it a flexible companion for a wide range of personal and
relational difficulties. And because it follows your own unfolding
experience rather than fitting you to a fixed model, it supports you to
grow your own awareness, something you can carry well beyond the
counselling room.
A gentle next step
If this way of working speaks to you, you are warmly invited to get
in touch with Holistic Counselling to ask a question or book a first
session. There is no need to have it all worked out beforehand. Bringing
whatever is present, just as it is, is enough to begin.
Further reading
These external resources offer a fuller picture of Process Work for
anyone who wants to read more.
