At its essence transpersonal psychotherapy means to go beyond the personal that is to say, the ego - but what does this look like in a session with a transpersonal psychotherapist?

A transpersonal therapist is attuned and open to their client's essence, including more indistinct elements, such as the client's spiritual nature. A transpersonal therapist is conscious of their client's innate potential. This potential may be masked under their limiting beliefs, and the impact of life experiences that may have influenced how free they feel to express themselves in the world.

As a client you might view something as needing to be 'fixed'; from a transpersonal perspective, challenging experiences can offer an opportunity for dormant qualities within us to emerge, allowing a fuller sense of ourselves to find expression. Our inherent nature is so much more profound than our adapted selves from which we may hold ourselves back or limit our potential.

As an integrative therapeutic approach, transpersonal psychotherapy combines a range of approaches to therapy. Transpersonal therapy draws from varied psychological models and considers what it means to be human on many levels: psychologically, physically, behaviourally, cognitively, and spiritually.

• Psychologically is traversing our psychological make up
• Physiologically is our mind and body synergy, the impact the mind has on the body and vice versa, with the view that the body is an energetic system as well as a physical one
• Behavioural elements can incorporate aspects of cognitive behavioural therapy CBT , that is to say how your core beliefs influence your perspective and view of the world and how you respond to people around you
• Cognitively offers an exploration of your thoughts and feelings and reactions. Looking a little deeper into what has led to the core beliefs we can then explore what is under the surface, and the client and therapist can be together in the session with feelings that perhaps have been under the surface for a while!
• Spirituality allows for experiences deep within ourselves to become more available to us, such as increased connection to one's intuition, the sacred and awakened consciousness