Asher Lyman
The Listening Mystique: Meditative Listening as Primary Therapeutic Intervention
For most therapists, the inner disposition of therapeutic listening is merely a prelude to speaking, or prescribed, professional responses. However, listening can be the main therapeutic intervention.
Through guided body meditation and conversation, this workshop will present a thesis for analytic training on how to have real, as opposed to scripted, core-to-core contact (spiritual relationality) with clients.
As from the Gurdjieff tradition, participants will distinguish, and learn to bridge, one’s core character (listening body/being) from personality (linguistic mind). Our focus will be character development and its therapeutic amplification through:
– hearing from lower down in the core (Hara), the intent to hear the being of the person through the issue,
– “vibrational touch”, surrounding clients in a psychospiritual transmission
– “listening’s gaze”, holding client’s in a wider undercurrent of wordless communication,
– the “silent alter”, understanding that issues are not private property,
– trusting and bearing authentic (also painful) body responses.
Meditative listening is not a word fast but an inner discipline of the therapist to align the ego-Self axis. The deep and rich undertone of core listening can provide a way out of ruts in therapy, and a welcome note of contrast, for therapist and client alike, from more superficial or rote overtones (such as professional training). Many therapists and bodyworkers have discovered useful and creative interventions by presencing themselves not only through words, but from this inner listening posture.