tara rokpa therapy

Back to Beginnings

Back to Beginnings is a psychotherapeutic approach with an approximate 18 months to two year commitment. It involves an in-depth and systematic review of one's personal life story with a view to understanding its deeper implications for our ways of being and acting in the world. In the process, habitual tendencies and patterns of mind are thoroughly investigated providing possibilities for moving beyond limiting ways of seeing and experiencing self and others. The main therapeutic tools used in the recollection of the life story are writing and the use of art materials, massage and relaxation and meditative visualisation exercises. 

The word ‘therapy’ is used as the closest available translation of the Tibetan word Sowa which means to prevent damage and to repair it simultaneously.

For our purposes here the word ‘mind’ is used in a way which includes all the functions of consciousness. The splits of head and heart, body and soul, conscious and unconsciousness are considered together as Mind.

Why do this process?
One of the continuing aims of this approach is to help people cultivate and achieve a sense of openness and relaxation in their lives. Few would dispute the benefits of happier and calmer states of mind when approaching everyday situations. Yet the question of how this is achieved is likely to vary according to individual experience and outlook. We may hold the view that happiness is located in external circumstances or in what is happening around us. Generally we feel more relaxed and happy when things go our way, when our expectations are met. Much of modern life is spent in the pursuit of happiness through chasing an ideal. Yet this kind of happiness is usually temporary. We all know the feeling which comes with an inevitable change in mood when things begin to go awry because the external world has not met our perceived needs or what we hoped for.

Finding Relaxation and Happiness Within
Another view is to see that happiness is located in the mind and this is one of the main premises of the Back to Beginnings approach. While there may be situations in life which are infinitely more difficult than others to face, it is our response to any circumstance which determines how things are experienced. If we can learn to relax the mind and loosen our grip on what we anticipate should happen next then we can be more open. Waking up to the recognition that each moment holds the potential for many possibilities gives space for new territories to be explored. 

back to beginnings

Exploring Habits of Mind
Many of us are unaware of how rigidly our hopes are defined. This is because we learn to expect how life should be from a very young age within the context of family and culture. It is as if the mind develops habits of expectation which we repeat again and again often with little awareness that things could be different.

Back to Beginnings gives an opportunity to explore all of these habitual patterns we take for granted. The methods used facilitate a very thorough investigation allowing greater awareness of patterns of thinking, feeling and acting. In turn this awareness allows greater choice and freedom to leave behind those habits that limit our capacity to face whatever comes our way. Developing this kind of flexibility in the mind is not easy. This approach does not assume that the completion of Back to Beginnings is the remedy for all our difficulties; yet it can provide us with a better foundation to support ourselves accommodate life’s ups and downs.

Broader Understandings of Self and Other
Discovering a less solid way of experiencing and defining ourselves also leads to a more open way of seeing others. Part of the challenge of this work is beginning to explore the motivation behind how we look at and experience others. In Back to Beginnings we are challenged to open up to other ways of looking at the events which have shaped who we believe ourselves to be. This can be especially relevant when it comes to situations of blame. This blame is most likely a narrative in our life story that is already familiar to us. If however, for example we step into the shoes of the other and attempt to understand an event through their experience and perspective then glimpses of a reality as yet undiscovered may become available to us.

Cultivating Compassion
From its earliest beginnings, Akong Rinpoche, the founder of this method, identified the development of compassion as core to this approach. Within Back to Beginnings a compassionate approach towards self and other is encouraged in all aspects of this exploration.

The Structure of the Process
The Group
This process mostly happens within a group context with the group meeting with a Tara Rokpa therapist at regular intervals. During these workshops the therapist will introduce the different methods and components that make up the Back to Beginnings process. In between the workshops participants are strongly encouraged to meet in smaller groups to carry on with the work and practice the methods together on a weekly or at least monthly basis. 

The approach could be described as reflective. Individuals within the group are not especially encouraged to talk about themselves or their private feelings. Rather it is recommended that participants use the structure of the methods provided to work through difficulties encountered. This allows participants to engage in the work with a greater sense of personal space and freedom without feeling concern that what is happening for them is going to be impinged upon by another. There is a sense that, by being together and sharing the activities of the group, support at another level occurs. Where participants do feel the need to speak about a specific problem then this happens quite naturally over time between group members as they come to know and trust each other. This happens within the safety of the ethos that has already been established, what one participant called disciplined intimacy. There is also the possibility of speaking with a therapist both during workshops and in between them if this becomes necessary. All matters discussed and shared within the group are by their nature confidential.

There is an aim that groups will become self organising after a period of time during the process, taking responsibility for practical arrangements.

The Methods:

  • practicing the visualisation and relaxation exercises (an audio version of these exercises delivered by Edie Irwin is available)
  • using art materials to create visual images with colour, texture and shape as a freeing form of non verbal expression
  • simple clothed massage exchanging with another participant and also self massage. Through simple human touch we have the potential to help ourselves and others.
  • physical movement and stretching exercises

back to beginnings

The Remembering: 
This is detailed in the Back to Beginnings booklet and is the main component that runs throughout the process. It is introduced and practiced during the workshops. It is also encouraged that this component is continued by participants at local group meetings and individually at home.

At the workshops different components are also introduced to encourage participants to view themselves and their histories through different lenses, from different vantage points and with less solidity and more openness.

Other Components Include:

The Elements Contemplations: 
through this often playful exploration of the elements earth, water, fire, air and space participants are supported to appreciate the interdependence of inner and outer phenomena and learn to balance body and mind with our environment. (Working with the Elements booklet is available)

The Mirror Exercise: 
the purpose of the exercise is to help us become more aware of the process of projection and begin to take responsibility for it in our lives. Through an understanding of the processes involved we become more able to see ourselves, our life situations, other people and our histories in a less fixed and solid way. (The Mirror exercise can be found in Taming the Tiger)

The Family:
we learn to expect how life should be from a very young age within the context of family and culture. We use various exercises including genograms to investigate how the contexts in our earlier and current lives have created the habits and patterns which influence our present experiencing.

Clarifying Blame:
if we only look through the eyes of blame there will be plenty of evidence to support what we believe to be true whether this relates to self blame or blame of another. This method of clarifying encourages us to develop broader understandings so that we allow ourselves the possibility of alternative ways of viewing events.


At the end of Back to Beginnings there is a short optional retreat which allows participants to review the time from conception to birth. This retreat also provides the chance to leave behind our involvement with the past. It also gives the opportunity for a fresh start and is a celebration of the time spent together.  Visualisation exercises are used to stabilise one's understandings of the whole process during the three month period following the completion of Back to Beginnings.

There is a Post Retreat Weekend, this is the final weekend of the Back to Beginnings process. Some participants will choose to end the Tara Rokpa process here. Others will choose to continue on to the next stage of the process which is introduced at this weekend, Taming the Tiger.

The structure for all of the subsequent stages follows a similar format with themes, exercises and meditations being introduces by Tara Rokpa therapists during weekend workshops. Small group meetings continue with the same emphasis.


Resources:

Working with the Elements booklet

Back to Beginnings booklet

available from your workshop therapist or from Lesley: admin@tararokpa.org

Also books:

Healing Relaxation Edie Irwin

Taming the Tiger Akong Tulku Rinpoche