Individual, Couples, Family Therapy

Those experiencing challenging life events who wish to restore a wholeness and balance that is more life affirming.

Clinical Supervision

Participants will be introduced to a Reflective Practice Model, the structure within which clinical practice is best provided and nurtured; increasing one’s capacity for self observation. The activities of reflection and contemplation are dynamic and when engaged thoughtfully, their by-product is new learning, cultivated from one’s direct experience.

Practitioner Group

For those interested in nurturing a contemplative foundation in their practice, participants are offered a milieu that values curiosity; in which they are encouraged to ask of themselves and each other the questions that are the central action to transformation and individuation.

Clinical Consultation Group

Thomas Merton considers liminal spaces as those moments we find ourselves “in-between”, passing through a kind of doorway to touch the eternal. The Imaginal realm titled by Near Eastern Islamic mystics, as Cynthia Bourgeault points out, does not mean “imaginary” –that is fictitious or subjective. It means the realm in which the images-the eternal prototypes- reveal themselves in their full authenticity. Experiencing these in-between spaces is where we might often find ourselves in the consulting room. Yet we might not be attuned to recognize and make full use of these real and subtle experiences of being.

Harnessing one’s “contemplative intelligence” is an authentic mode of knowing, a tapping into a deeper source that gives us entry into these liminal spaces. It is seeing the world from the position of a far-reaching inclusiveness. When one connects with oneself, truly knows oneself; the expression of that knowing to others opens up new possibilities for connection and relationship.

Through thoughtful, reflective and honest discourse, we can re-connect with our authentic selves, acknowledging a long history of kinship with each other; developing a spiritual and reflective discipline that interrupts our habitual way of thinking and creates a cultural awareness of who we are in relationship to each other, institutionally and within society. This stance serves to diminish our current discourse that creates a sense of separateness and estrangement from one another, the human condition and the deeper intelligence.

In a circle of one’s peers, we will cultivate our contemplative intelligence, re-engaging with a depth dimension of reality that has been lost in favor of an analytic mode of data collection and theory development. Through a contemplative process of touching into the state of your heart and body, we will engage with each other utilizing self reflection, contemplative practices, communal dialogue and gentle body work to increase your capacity to listen to your inner voice, develop compassionate intelligence and care for yourself, reflect on your clinical life and understand the interconnectedness amongst us all is present and dynamic in effecting lasting and transformational change.

This group is for licensed practitioners interested in deepening their practice through a contemplative process. It meets bi-weekly in a series of 8 sessions @$70.00 a session. To express an interest in the group, please contact Leslie at reedshield@gmail.com or by phone at (516) 624-0512.