"Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel."
"This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." Both quotations by Polonius in Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
“ Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans - that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too ... Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic and power in it. Begin it now! ” - Goethe
"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit." Aristotle
The previous posts in this sequence are 'Psychedelics: a group retreat - initial thoughts' and 'Psychedelics: a group retreat - meeting up, orientation & the ceremony'.
“ Who will prefer the jingle of jade pendants if he once has heard stone growing in a cliff? ” - Lao Tzu
“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.” Albert Einstein
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” Aldous Huxley
“ Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. ” - Gandhi
"And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been." Rainer Maria Rilke
“ In good time we shall see God and his light, you say - Fool, you shall never see what you not see today! ” - Angelus Silesius
"Today we can walk around together, talk, eat, and be silent together. Later I believe we'll have the opportunity to act and suffer together. All that is necessary to 'make someone's acquaintance' as they say." Pierre Sogol, professor of mountaineering, speaking in Rene Daumal's book "Mount Analogue".
'Breaking Convention' - the fifth biennial international conference on psychedelics - took place at Greenwich University in London from 16th-18th August. There were apparently 1,200 or so attendees for the 6 concurrent programmes - academic, workshop, performance, cinema, entertainment & installations - as well as an art exhibition. I went primarily because it allowed me to hear pretty much all the relevant research groups in the UK present on their current findings. As you can see from the other quite extensive writing about psychedelics on this website, I'm very interested in the encouraging emerging research highlighting potential therapeutic value of psychedelics. Although I focussed on the academic programme, there was much too much even here to manage an ove
“ Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. ” - Dalai Lama
the social identity model highlights the value of group membership (more & less formal) for both psychological & physical wellbeing - are there groups you would like to join (or initiate) and are there helpful ways you can increase the sense of the importance to you of some of the groups you're a member of (for example by increasing your involvement with them).
I run an annual five day training for counselling psychology students on facilitating groups. I'm using this blog post to upload some of the slides. For example here's a collection on the current state of psychotherapy & some suggestions on potentially helpful ways of moving forward.
More to follow! ...
(this blog post is freely downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)
I wrote a post recently called "Truly excellent therapists have 'grace under interpersonal pressure - Fascinating new research".
