The newest episode of our university podcast, ‘Mindful U at Naropa University,’ is out on iTunes, Stitcher, and Fireside now! We are excited to announce this week’s episode features Naropa faculty Deborah Bowman, former Dean of the Graduate School of Counseling and founder of the Transpersonal Counseling Psychology and the Wilderness Therapy programs at Naropa.
Episode 28: Deborah Bowman: Naropa’s Transpersonal Therapy Program
“The work of Carl Jung and of Stanislav Grof – as well as many others – have been under an umbrella of “transpersonal psychology,” a field that was developed in the ’50s as an extension of humanistic psychology. Abraham Maslow first developed humanistic psychology – a framework around many other professionals who were developing that branch of psychology, such as Fritz Perls and Carl Rogers, but Maslow defined the field. However, when Maslow studied individuals who were exceptional, he found that they all described mystical experiences. All of his subjects described experiences beyond the “little self” or the ego that gave them a connection to everything. Experiences where they weren’t separate from others, and that helped them to understand that they were either not separate, or that we all share a unitive experience. When Maslow studied these people, he realized that there was a vast new field beyond humanistic psychology that included it, but went well beyond. This is the field of transpersonal psychology, and Naropa’s program is among the best in the world.”
Deborah Bowman, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and certified Gestalt therapist and also a trainer with the Boulder Psychotherapy Institute, offering postgraduate education and supervision. Deborah has served as president of Boulder Graduate School, worked for Boulder County Hospice and Boulder County Social Services, and instructed with the National Outdoor Leadership School. She is a meditation instructor with Nalandabodhi Boulder.
Deborah is author of The Female Buddha: Discovering the Heart of Liberation and Love, The Luminous Buddha: Images and Words and co-author of When Your Spouse Comes Out, published by the GLBT Family Series with Haworth Press.
See https://thefemalebuddha.wordpress.com/ for more information about her writing and presentations.
