About Transformational Practice Groups

Transformational Practice Groups are based on the premise that people who combine their spiritual practice with job and family rather than remaining in isolation can make a significant positive impact on their community and on the world at large.

These groups help to heal psychological pain from the past and foster self support and spiritual insight, but more importantly they aim at developing the higher human faculties: creativity, love, wisdom, spiritual opening, life purpose, and the ability to serve as an agent of planetary healing. In the group, we examine the great-unexplored depth of our psyches, evoke the hidden potential, enhance the conscious connections, and empower people to live and act from their expanded capacities. The group also fosters a heartfelt sense of bonding and community among members, supporting each person's growth and serving as a model for the greater sense of connection our world so desperately needs.

What they're not

TPG's are not therapy groups. But they do have commonalities with some other processes you may be aware of:

• The growth potential of a weekend workshop, but without the cost and the reliance on one leader
• The regular commitment of a 12-step group, but with each commitment limited to a six-week cycle
• The entry into sacred space of a house church, but without the dogma
• The clarifying of intention of a Mastermind group, but with emphasis on expression in the world
• The integral worldview of  Integral Life Practices with the intention to integrate our lives and to transform them supported by an intentional community.
  

Why they're "Integral"

For this particular model for TPGs, I drew originally from the seven families of practices identified by Roger Walsh in his highly regarded Essential Spirituality (with his permission). I organized these practices  in a developmental sequence that reflects the Integral Theory of Ken Wilber.  I then created group structures to contain these ideas based on my 30 years work as a facilitator in both organizational and spiritual settings. And finally I tested the structure extensively in the setting of spiritual and social action communities. The sum of these influences and inputs permit an Integral TPG to uniquely offer:

• integration through the potency of group exercises;
• integration of a variety of different modes of exploration;
• integration of healing with the growth and transcendent orientation of spiritual practice;
• and integration of the inner world of these approaches with the outer world of social and planetary concerns.