Core Process Psychotherapy (CPP) is a mindfulness-based approach founded on an integration of western psychotherapeutic theory and Buddhist psychology. You do not have to be a Buddhist or have any particular belief system to have CPP or to train in it, however.
For many of us, thinking, talking and making a narrative about our life experience is the way we get in touch with ourselves and make sense of our experience. This is completely valid and often extremely useful. In Core Process we also work with body sensations, subtle energies - feelings and sensations that we can't necessarily put into words easily - and the imaginal - images and dreams. The intention is to welcome whatever comes up, even if it does not seem to make sense from a cognitive point of view.
We all develop habits, defences and ways of thinking in response to past trauma/difficulty in order to cope with life. These defences were useful once, but if they are still in use long after the initial difficulty or trauma has passed, they can be limiting and destructive, preventing the forming of satisfying relationships and perpetuating self-defeating ways of being.
In this model we aim to develop awareness of how we 'do ourselves'. With increased awareness there is more choice about how we respond to events and situations rather than simply repeating the habits of thought, belief and behaviour we have always been in.
Core Process work is underpinned by the idea that we are all inherently healthy and that however much it has been obscured, our health is always available to us (in Tibetan Buddhism this inherent health is called 'Brilliant Sanity'). By looking deeply at suffering we can change our relationship to it and acknowledge that as well as pain it can also bring strength.
