My Research

The academic portion of my research was contained between the years 1996-98 – as the dissertation component of a two year MSc in counselling psychology. As an example of participative action research, however, it stretched between the period 1990 – 2001. This was a time that an intentional learning community met, sometimes up to 10 or more times a year, in beautiful rural settings – mainly in Somerset overlooking Glastonbury Tor, but also some times on walking  retreats in the Black Mountains. In 1990, a friend and colleague – Jacob Jones, and I began “Passages to Awareness” – later to become known simply as “Passages”. It was a personal growth endeavour – inspired by the ‘human potential movement’ as well as “the summer camps scene”. Our aim was to integrate the talking therapies approach with the meditative approach through an annual series of camps and gatherings living close to the earth – in retreat from the urban environment & routines – and incorporating music, dance, shamanic ceremony and ritual, and play. The camps became very popular with members of the London co-counselling community – with whom I was very active at that time.

When considering the research component for my Masters in Counselling Psychology – it dawned on me that in this decade of experience I had an opportunity for the integration of themes of exploration which had been personally important for a long time. I  chose “Co-operative inquiry” – a form of participative qualitative research, as my method and some participants of my research group came from the Passages community. Others, long-standing meditators who were also active participants in the co-counselling community (CCI) . We came together over 3 full experiential weekends in 1997-98 to explore the topic: “Towards an integration of clienting, counselling and meditation”

You can click on  “Towards an integration of clienting, counselling and meditation” to browse a fully linked and navigable web publication of my dissertation

And on “The Co-Med contract” to view, and download, the RESULTS – which were published in the form of a ‘How to’ pamphlet