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Core Process Psychotherapy

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Core Process was pioneered by Maura and Franklyn Sills, and is now taught at the Karuna Instutute, Devon.

In Core Process work, a depth awareness of what is happening in the present moment is used to explore our inner process. This awareness encompasses our energies, sensations, feelings, mental processes and their expressions in the body. The aim is not to alter our experience, but to sense how we relate to it, so that it becomes possible to move with greater creativity and flexibility in our lives. Core Process work is based on the understanding that within the conscious mind there is a deeper wisdom that moves naturally towards healing. Integration and healing come from insight into the ways in which we hold onto our suffering, and from a deeper connection with the openness, compassion and wisdom at the heart of our human condition.

Core Process Psychotherapy is based on a depth understanding of human personality process and of human potential. The ‘Core’ is that unconditioned state inherent in every human being. It is the potential for pure, open, awareness in the present whose qualities manifest as peace, compassion, loving kindness and joy. It is sometimes called the ‘luminous’ or already enlightened mind. Our ‘Core Process’ is the movement from this inherent core state towards a sense of separateness and personality formation. Core Process Psychotherapy facilitates an awareness of this shaping process in which we hold the shape of our past experience in the present moment. The focus of the work is an exploration and enquiry into both the sense of this personality shape and the suffering that arises in attachment and identification with it. It also holds the possibility open that there is in each of us the potential to rest in the present moment, truly seeing things as they are. In this state of awareness, there is a natural arising of compassion and love with the possibility of expressing greater spontaneity and joy. Buddhist psychology and awareness practice has greatly influenced the foundations of this work and western personality theory and psychotherapeutic skills are used to support and expand this understanding.

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