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Intensive Journal® Workshops

Microcosmos Experiencing Techniques and Approaches for the Therapy Process

Learn Dr. Progoff’s process for individual growth through direct application and experience in your life. The workshops are an effective and practical way to understand the benefits of the Intensive Journal® method and obtain an experiential grounding in holistic depth psychology.

3 Core Workshops

Part I: Life Context (LC): Foundations of the Intensive Journal® Method.
Prerequisite: None. Length: 10-12 hours

  • Learn basic rules for using the Intensive Journal method and principles of holistic depth psychology that underlie the method.
  • Use Life Positioning exercises to gain a perspective on life.
  • Integrate diary techniques into the ongoing life process.
  • Apply Entrance Meditation ℠ techniques to access inner processes.
  • Utilize Progoff’s model of inner dialogue to deepen understanding of major areas of life.

Part II: Depth Contact (DC): Symbolic Images and Meaning.
Prereq. LC workshop. 10-12 hours

  • Learn additional applications of Progoff’s model of inner dialogue.
  • Apply non-analytical methods for using symbolic material.
  • Use depth techniques for connecting with inner process.
  • Recall and develop significant experiences of meaning.
  • Reappraise a meaningful event that can provide important lessons.
  • Learn advanced meditation techniques.
  • Define and organize issues to synthesize beliefs and priorities.Part III: Life Integration/Journal Feedback™ Process: Integrating the Life Process.

Part III: Life Integration/Journal Feedback™ Process: Integrating the Life Process.
Prereq: LC & DC workshops. 10-12 hours

  • Explain and define the principles for using the Journal Feedback process.
  • Use the daily log function as a tool to stimulate the Journal Feedback process.
  • Apply the  Journal Feedback process to the Life/Time Dimension.
  • Apply the  Journal Feedback process to the Dialogue Dimension.
  • Use dreams and imagery as leads to other sections using the Journal Feedback process.
  • Apply the Journal Feedback process to the Meaning Dimension.

 

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Implementing the Progoff™ Methodology

 

Process Definition MagnifierImplementing the Progoff™ Methodology Through the Intensive Journal® Method

The Intensive Journal® method, based upon Dr. Progoff’s unqiue approaches for self-development, has a solid foundation in theory and approach. Here are some of the method’s major features.

Intensive Journal® Workbook: Mirroring the Growth Process

The structure of sections and corresponding writing exercises in the Intensive Journal® workbook mirror the subjective process of perceptions and thoughts taking place inside yourself. Designed with minimal terminology, these procedures provide the means for moving directly into your inner process and drawing forth emotions and experiences to make them accessible and tangible for further development.

Journal Feedback™ Technique: An Active Dynamic Process

Through the Journal Feedback™ process, you avoid self-conscious analysis and preconceived ways of thinking to overcome blockages and foster breakthroughs. Issues are viewed from different angles to realize connections and to create integrations of awareness. Structured as an active and evocative instrument, the Intensive Journal® workbook helps you generate energy and momentum to move forward through cumulative ongoing entries.

Inner Development: Evoking Your Potential

Focusing on inner development, where the most penetrating insights are generated, the Intensive Journal® method provides you with an integrated system for dealing with issues through a direct experience in your life. Certified leaders guide you step-by-step through the method in a contemplative atmosphere.Non-judgmental and non-analytical approaches further the psyche-evoking process. You become immersed in your own growth, drawing forth your unique potential and unfolding life process.

Whole-Life Process: Greater Perspective and Safety

Progoff’s “whole-life” approach provides important benefits of perspective and safety. Greater awareness about a wide range of life experiences creates a foundation for making decisions. Issues can be viewed in a larger context and become more manageable. Using Progoff™ techniques allows for issues to develop, protecting you from premature judgments.

 

Enhance Your Retirement

 

New Life Or Old LifeRetirement is one of the big transitions in life. Being retired is perhaps now a reality for you, no longer a distant situation in your future.

Many aspects of our life change: daily routine, priorities, how we think of ourselves, and how others relate to us. Major financial adjustments and planning may be necessary. We may need to reassess where we live. Family concerns may be especially relevant.

Our emotions and thought process are stirring during this time of change. We realize that we are entering another distinct phase of life that offers reat promise and possibilities, but is filled with challenges and uncertainty.

We want our retirement to be special and meaningful, but how do we decide what to do? How do we get a handle on all of the different aspects of our life?

Created by psychotherapist Ira Progoff, PhD, the Intensive Journal® program is an integrated system using writing exercises to give your life greater direction, clarity and purpose. At our workshops, certified leaders guide participants step-by-step through the exercises with the protections of total privacy.

You will learn a unique way to take stock of the many facets of your unique life: family relationships, accomplishments, interests, concerns, and priorities. From this foundation, you can take steps
to develop a cohesive plan for developing your retirement.

Practical Ways to Develop Your Retirement

The Intensive Journal® method provides specific techniques through our integrated system of writing exercises to help you:

Describe your tranisition to retirement

  • Deal creatively with change. Retirement can bring great change in your life in many ways such as: your daily routine, how you relate to and impact others; financial implications; and priorities and interests.
  • Describe each of these areas that comprise this new phase of your life as you connect with your new reality.

Explore and develop interests

  • Review the rich history of your life to discover missed or deferred opportunities. Uncover and explore interests, talents and possible projects that may be ripe for development now that you are retired.

Define and clarify your priorities and values

  • Define your priorities and values. Notice how they may have changed and the implications for each area of your life.
  • Answer the question: what brings you meaning?

Connect with Body and Health Issues 

  • Develop a deeper understanding of the aging process. The body can be a rich source of wisdom in many areas of our life, that can lead to changes in our behavior and life style.

Deepen your connection to personal relationships

  • Explore and perhaps enhance family relationships, which can be an important part of a meaningful retirement.

Define your life style

  • Adapt your daily routines and activities in response to the sea change of retirement. What life style do you want to achieve the objectives of your retirement?

Printable PDF
Try a sample Intensive Journal® Exercise

Techniques and Approaches for Therapists

Serenity w creditAn integrated system for ongoing psychological growth
using Dr. Ira Progoff’s principles of holistic depth psychology

Dr. Ira Progoff’s Intensive Journal® method has helped over 175,000 people of different backgrounds to develop more meaningful lives.

The method’s carefully designed writing exercises are based upon Dr. Progoff’s theories and approaches for psychological growth.

Dr. Progoff states the purpose of the method:The Intensive Journal method is not journal keeping, not introspective diary keeping, and it isn’t writing therapy…it is the full scale active method of personal life integration for continuous and cumulative work.

 

Enhance the Therapy Process and Deal with Managed Care

Both therapists and clients can benefit from attending Intensive Journal workshops.

Therapists: Potential Increased Effectiveness

  • Learn fresh processes for human growth to develop and integrate life experiences
  • Broaden perspectives and intuitive abilities

Clients: Greater Participation Possible

  • Uncover and develop issues and experiences
  • Integrate selected exercises into sessions

Therapy Sessions: Help Lower Cost and Duration

  • Sessions can be more productive
  • Clients can work through issues faster

Post-Therapy: A Life-Long Tool for Self-Growth

 

Key Principles of the Progoff™ Approach

As a psychotherapist and university-based research professor, Dr. Progoff formulated his theories of psychological growth that he termed “holistic depth psychology” by which persons are able to: 1

Develop Resources within Individuals for Growth

  • Progoff focused on understanding the processes by which growth takes place and devised procedures to facilitate that growth.

Reconnect with Inner Strengths and Capacities

  • Holistic depth psychology supports the integrative unfolding principle taking place within a person.
  • Focus is on what each life is trying to become, its unique seed potential or inherent nature.
  • Therapy and healing are by-products of the growth process.

Employ the “Whole Life” Approach

  • Working through issues within the context of an entire life provides important benefits of perspective and safety.
  • Greater awareness about a wide range of experiences creates a foundation for more sound decision-making.
  • Viewed in a wider context, issues become more manageable.

Utilize an Evocative / Non-Analytical Methodology

  • The inner integrative process comes forth from an individual’s inner self rather than from an externally imposed method.

Focus on Inner Development

  • The most direct and penetrating insights come from the depths of the psyche and not from intellectualization at the surface.
  • The crucial question is neither what, nor how, but where the work takes place. “Where” means at what depth in the psyche the personality is focused.

Integrate Symbolic Material, the Source of Potential

  • Human personality unfolds by way of images. Participating in the movement of deeper-thanconscious material can provide a rich resource from which ideas and actions unfold.

Offer a Means for Direct Inner Experience

  • Individuals require ways of experience to discover meaning for themselves.

A major part of the meaning of life is contained in the very process of discovering it….The meaning of life cannot be told; it has to happen to a person…”2

 Printable PDF

 

1 The books of Ira Progoff, Ph.D. that discuss the principles of holistic depth psychology are: Death Depth Psychology and Modern Man, The Symbolic and the Real, and The Dynamics of Hope.
2 The Symbolic and the Real, by Ira Progoff, PhD., McGraw-Hill Paperback Edition, pp. 13-14.