Essential Psychotherapy Institute
A Four Year Education in Essential Psychotherapy
The Four Year Essential Therapist Training consists of:
A. The Power of Light Basic Training: all four parts
B. The Second Year Training: learning the art of giving sessions
C. The Third Year Training: learning to lead groups
D. The Fourth Year Training: Elements include learning to lead the Power of Light Basic Training, undergoing supervision, studying the relevant aspects of psychology and deepening in the Essence work.
In this training, we are taught how to work with people therapeutically in a profound, sincere, respectful and constant way. We study various techniques and approaches, so we can assist the clients’ process of unfoldment and discovery of their potential. It is a process of undoing the conditioned personality, in order for our Essence to emerge. The training includes the following topics:
Working with presence
Bodywork and body-oriented psychotherapy
Voice dialogue
Elements of Gestalt
Primal and Inner Child work
Ego psychology
Couple work
Object relations theory
Attachment theory
Pathology
Neuropsychology
Basics of trauma work
Enneagram
Giving sessions
Leading groups
This training is structured around working with Essence, the qualities that comprise a person’s Self. Familiarization with Essence is far more important than all the techniques and knowledge that we acquire during the training. Through increasing the scope of our awareness, we can view and understand all the knowledge we receive in the right perspective. We extract the essence of the methods that are being taught and we find the healing agent in them. We learn in which situations and how to apply the above tools in the therapeutic setting.
With Essence as our compass, we can learn to navigate and apply the psychotherapeutic knowledge, in order to help people in an authentic way. Working with people entails great responsibility. The access to our own intuition as well as mastering effective therapeutic methods and techniques are equal prerequisites here. We are called to develop presence, constancy, containment and contentment, balance and inner harmony.
This training covers a wide spectrum of different therapeutic methods and intervention possibilities. At the same time, it is deep and continual process of self - transformation.
First Year – The Basic Power of Light Training
Part 1: Coming Back to the Body
Location: Wajid, Den Haag
Hours: 49
Study Load/Credits: 4.11
Instructors: Vedanta Aspioti, Ravi Pagnamenta
Course Description:
In this first part of four trainings, we explore our grounding, the way we relate to our bodies, feelings and emotions. Through channeling and bodywork, energy work, shamanism, meditation and other methods, we tap into the source of our inner wisdom. We will come to experience our body as the vehicle of our essential self. While opening up to sense our connection to our body, the earth, to ourselves and others, we learn to accept and embrace our most vulnerable feelings. This allows us to actualize the nature of our soul in our everyday life and start walking a path of true dignity.
Course Goal:
This course is aimed at helping the student to become grounded in his/her body and reality as a foundation for healing and wellbeing.
Learning Objectives:
After completing this course the students will be able to:
1. Evaluate their own and other’s grounding and energetic flow
2. Recognize the energetic and psychological content of the first and second chakras
3. Utilize their intuition in the format of an individual channeling session
4. Identify the central qualities of each archetype explored in the course and associate them with core resources
5. Illustrate the effect of abuse on the connection to the body
6. Select a meditation routine that supports their therapeutic process
Education Method: Lecture/Theory, Exercise, Meditation, Group therapy process,Practice
Required Literature:
Aspioti, Vedanta, POL Basic Training Manual for Part I, Unpublished, 2006
74 pages, 8 pages per hour pace, 9 hours
Lowen, Alexander, The Betrayal of the Body, The Alexander Lowen Foundation, 2012
302 pages, 6 pages per hour pace, 50 hours
Optional Literature:
Trobe, Krishnananda, Transforming Fear Into Love, Perfect Publishers Ltd, 2009
Part II: Empowerment to be your True Self
Location: Wajid, Den Haag
Hours: 49
Study Load/Credits: 3.93
Instructors: Vedanta Aspioti, Ravi Pagnamenta
Course Description:
This second part of the training is purely an empowerment in discovering and reconnecting with our true potential. When we begin to liberate ourselves from our conditioning and touch on the unique quality of our soul, we are faced with the challenge of how to move forward and embody that quality in the world. We explore the issues around our power and everything that holds us back from living life totally, as we deserve and according to our life vision. True power lies in reconnecting with our essence. We can then realize that we have the resources and the choice to take the reigns of our life in our hands and move toward self-mastery, instead of being trapped in a cycle of dependency, reactivity and resignation with the people and circumstances around us. This is the path of Empowerment.
Course Goal:
This course has the objective of helping the student learn about setting healthy boundaries and reaching the source of their empowerment.
Learning Objectives:
After completing this course the students will be able to:
1. Recognize the energetic and psychological content of the third chakra
2. Distinguish their own projections and judgments
3. Identify their armoring, defensive strategies, self-image, shadow side and core wound underneath
4. Describe the state of shock, how it affects a person’s energy flow and how one may come out of it
5. Illustrate how to experience the hara center in the belly as the energetic center and source of true empowerment
6. Utilize touch, hands on energy healing, psychic surgery and other interventions to free the energetic blockages in themselves and others
Education Method: Lecture/Theory, Exercise, Meditation, Group therapy process, Practice
Required Literature:
Aspioti, Vedanta, POL Basic Training Manual for Part II, Unpublished, 2006
46 pages, 8 pages per hour pace, 6 hours
Levine, Peter, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, North Atlantic Books, 1997
288 pages, 6 pages per hour pace, 48 hours
Optional Literature:
Van der Kolk M.D., Bessel, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Penguin Books,2015
Part III: The Body Types of Alexander Lowen
Location: Pearl Center, Thymena
Hours: 70
Study Load/Credits: 4.5
Instructors: Vedanta Aspioti, Nikolaos Athanassakis
Course Description:
In the third part of the training, we reach a deep experiential understanding of the defensive structures within the personality. We uncover the way in which our conditioning appears on a physical level, as powerful armoring which encases our body and keeps us imprisoned in a cage of tension. As we are enclosed in our ego shell, our life energy shrinks, our senses and emotions are deadened and we are cut off from our Essence. During this training, we experience the five body types of defense of Alexander Lowen and their psychic and psychological dimensions. We acquire contemporary and applicable knowledge about the different types, for ourselves and for working with people therapeutically. We also learn body reading as a tool for channeling.
Course Goal:
The course aims at teaching the student about the Bioenergetic Body types of Alexander Lowen in order to reach an understanding of how character structure is expressed in the body and restricts the life energy.
Learning Objectives:
After completing this course the students will be able to:
1. Name Alexander Lowen’s body types, the physical and behavioral characteristics of each type and corresponding developmental phase in childhood
2. Apply specific bioenergetic exercises and psychic surgery for each body type in order to release the tension and charge held in the body and enhance the capacity to let go
3. Assess their own predominant body type
4. Recognize each body type of defense in themselves
5. Indicate what is the essential resource beneath the defenses of each body type
6. Create a basic treatment plan for each body type
Education Method: Lecture/Theory, Exercise, Meditation, Group therapy process,Practice
Required Literature:
Aspioti, Vedanta, The Five Body Types of Defense According to Alexander Lowen, Unpublished, 2000
94 pages, 5 pages per hour pace, 19 hours
Lowen, Alexander and Leslie, The Way to Vibrant Health, The Alexander Lowen Foundation, 2012
180 pages, 6 pages per hour pace, 30 hours
Optional Literature:
Lowen, Alexander, Bioenergetics: The Revolutionary Therapy That Uses the Language of the Body to Heal the Problems of the Mind, Penguin/Arkana, 1994
Reich, Wilhelm, Character Analysis, Third Edition, Enlarged, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980
Part IV: Exploring your Beliefs and Conquering the Superego
Location: Wajid, Den Haag
Hours: 49
Study Load/Credits: 3.64
Instructors: Vedanta Aspioti, Nikolaos Athanassakis
Course Description:
In this fourth part of the Power of Light training, we identify and clean out all that stands in the way of us connecting to our true inner voice and guidance, so we can see beyond our conditioning, our projections and our false ideas of who we are. In this group, we take an in-depth look at our psychological structure and specifically at the ego-superego constellation. Through experiential work and exercises we will see how the superego – which is the internalized toxic voices of our parents – still controls us and takes away our inner regulation and our autonomy. Eventually, we will gather the tools to become aware of and minimize the effect that these judgmental and criticizing toxic inner voices have on us and our life.
Course Goal:
The course aims at teaching the students how to gain touch with their own inner guidance as a compass for working with oneself and others
Learning Objectives:
After completing this course the students will be able to:
1. Recognize the energetic and psychological content of the fifth chakra
2. Identify their personal beliefs that block authentic self-expression
3. Distinguish the makeup and content of their toxic superego
4. Apply interventions to resolve the toxic aspects of the superego
5. Revise their life vision, intent and direction to align with their authentic inner values through manifestation
6. Employ their own inner guidance as a source of information and a compass in therapeutic work
Education Method: Lecture/Theory, Exercise, Meditation, Group therapy process, Practice
Required Literature:
Aspioti, Vedanta, POL Basic Training Manual for Part IV: Exploring the Beliefs and Conquering the Toxic Superego, Unpublished, 2018
71 pages, 8 pages per hour pace, 9 hours
Stone, Hal and Sidra, Embracing Your Inner Critic: Turning Self-Criticism into a Creative Asset, Harper One, 1993
224 pages, 6 pages per hour pace, 37 hours
Optional Literature:
Brown, Byron, Soul without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within, Shambhala, 1998