The Art of Transformation workshop with Dina Ostrovsky - TERRApia School Of Transformation 11/21-11/22
For the past 2 days a small group of extraordinary women got together for the first time at the workshop offered by Dina Ostrovsky's school -Transformational couching.
I have a privilege to be a part of this group and experience first hand the practice of process-oriented psychology (Process Work) developed in 1970s by Arnold Mindell, an American Jungian analyst then living in Switzerland.
While other approaches view a problem as a symptom or a pathology to be eliminated, process work shares the assumption that all aspects of human experience, like all aspects of nature, move towards some meaningful purpose. No need of getting into the armory ammunition of Lancelot to succeed a dragon when the dragon can all of the sudden turn into a servant or even a good friend ( the idea is presented in "Shrek")
Problems have meaning and show us deeper parts we have not yet considered, leading us to greater richness, complexity, and fullness of expression.
Working with the body symptoms or dream landscape reviles a hidden world of treasure that could not be found otherwise. The challenging part is our usual habit to avoid exploration of what distresses us, but with curiosity and openness our distress can be met as potential for change and growth.
Curiosity, openness and desire for growth had helped us to get through painful realizations, painful body symptoms, tears, inner conflicts, relationship challenges with self and others, nightmares and lost of direction. But there were also a lot of laughter, tears of joy, the sense of relief from body symptoms, fun experience with movement and dance. The most important in my view, the process work gave us an ability to look at self through the mirror that the other had presented.
My own experience working with the body symptoms (cough) had reviled someone rather odd - an old small-framed Nazi doctor who was experimenting with people by installing glass tubes in their chests and creating a chaotic movement of small particles inside of those tubes, causing cough. When I was trying to negotiate with him all he could say that he doesn't understand my Russian nor English and that I should speak German to him. No way out! But behind this stubborn Nazi doctor was sitting a playful alien who had an aquarium of golden fishes inside of his belly. All he wanted is to come back to his planet. Go figure! The unexpected turn had brought the unexpected result. This cute purple alien, as he further reviled himself, had everything that I don't for the most part!
Then a powerful cure-all mystical medicine plant had suddenly appeared in my dream after the first day of workshop. This mystical plant showed up to ease up my 3 weeks long cough and running nose. In the dream I was trying to give it to someone who under appreciated it in the past but now recognized its value and ability to heal. Totally amazing!
At the end of the workshop we had drew mandalas to anchor what we had learned over this weekend.
What is next? There is much more to learn! If anybody is interested in attending please check out the course and see if "flirts" with you, as Mindell would say.
Once we go through the fundamentals of process work we will get a deep dive into Family Constellation and then we will move to the advance topic of combining various methods for achieving the best results.
Margarita S, Staten Island
