MA Programme : MA in Core Process Psychotherapeutic Practice

This Professional Training in Core Process Psychotherapy combines depth mindfulness practice and joint enquiry with an embodied knowledge of the Core Process developmental model. This provides a psycho-spiritual ground for helping trainees to orient to the deeper intentionality of Core process work that is to awaken to truth through relationship.

The balance is 70% experiential to 30% written work in this MA Programme.

A spiral model of learning is implemented throughout the Training so that in years one to three, key basic paradigms for enquiry are repeated in new contexts, providing the opportunity for trainees to deepen and extend their contemplative and cognitive learning. The focus on clinical practice progressively deepens, enabling trainees when ready to start taking clients in Year Three and then to move into the Clinical Year. Trainees are required to have completed the given client hours before applying to graduate with anMA, and the training is completed at Accreditation stage for which further clinical hours are required.

Application Form (pdf)

Years One, Two, and Three are composed of 25 days, currently organised as ten residential weekends at the Institute and one five-day. The Clinical Year is currently composed of five residential three-day seminars.

After the completion of the Clinical Year there are a required number of client and supervision hours to be fulfilled for graduation, and a further number for accreditation. This, together with the writing of a dissertation for graduation is supported by the Clinical Tutor and the Trainee’s personal Supervisor.

Year One

Year One deepens trainees' understanding and practice of the key contemplative practices and relational skills introduced in the Foundation Course. This includes resourcing; establishing a relational field; contemplative practices including presence as a state of being and mindfulness as a joint practice. Basic Buddhist principles and frameworks for accessing suffering and its cessation are taught, as the basis for moving into an introduction to the depth psycho-spiritual Core Process model of personality development. This focuses on the presence of our being-nature, a most basic core of sentience and pristine awareness, and the subsequent emergence of self-structures and strategies that serve to facilitate our contact with others and the world. The first year introduces pre- and perinatal psychology, the work of Dr. Frank Lake and object relations concepts within the context of Buddhist psychology.

An introduction to working with shock and trauma is also given during this year. The framework of developmental cycles is also introduced, and the multi-layered, interdependent nature of our arising experience is explored through practising sustained attention and compassionate open-hearted enquiry. The entire year is held within the context of developing group coherency, and ethical grounds for practice.

Year Two

In Year Two the emphasis is on the nature, development and structure of the selfsystem. The intention is to clarify the territories of selfhood so that mindfulness practice can be refined and more clearly oriented to the arising of self-forms. The concept of object relations and other psychodynamic concepts deriving from Western psychological and developmental understanding, drawing on the work of William Emerson, Ronald Fairbairn, Frank Lake, DonaldWinnicott and Daniel Stern are integrated and further discussed in the context of specific dynamic selfprocesses. This ground allows trainees to enquire into the ways in which our earliest wounding can occur in relationship, and for that to be held in mindfulness practice and by practicing the deepening of personal connections to source and wellbeing.

Year Three

In Year Three the general ground of inquiry orients trainees to the emergence of subtle energetic and archetypal forms within the context of clinical practice. Challenge is provided through enquiring into de-pathologizing mental illness and exploring the boundaries between spiritual emergence and emergency.

This is essentially the year in which trainees, when ready, start their own clinical practice, and input enables them to establish confidence working in both private and public sectors. Professional practice issues, relevant Public Health Acts and an emphasis on collegiate support provide an important ground for the newly emerging psychotherapist.

Clinical Year

This is the final year of the four year Professional Training and an additional third year of the Post-Qualification MA Training in Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapeutic Practice for those trainees going forward to accreditation and registration with U.K.C.P. Members of different Trainings and Training years come together at this last stage. To enter this year trainees are required to have attained a minimum number of client hours. Active supervision, practiced using the Core Process Supervision Model, provides the basis for a learning process involving trainees, supervisors and tutors. Theoretical input is selected to meet the clinical practice needs of the group, and to provide key updates on nationally recognised models of good practice.

Karuna Institute

International Training and Retreat Centre

MA Programme : MA in Core Process Psychotherapeutic Practice

Year One

Year Two

Year Three

Clinical Year

course details