Robert Augustus Masters - Integral Leader

Robert Masters is one of the premier integral thinkers teaching today. He works as a psychotherapist (Ph.D. in Psychology), group leader, bodyworker, and teacher of spiritual deepening practices, integrating the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual in his practice.

I've been following his work for a while now, and I'm sure I've posted some stuff here in the past. I recently joined the Facebook group, which is also quite cool.

This is the introduction to his work.

My work is fundamentally about illuminating and working through whatever is obstructing well-being. Awareness, compassion, self-knowledge, emotional literacy, and spiritual deepening are the cornerstones of my practice, integrated in a manner as practical as it is life-enhancing.

My commitment is to create an optimally conducive environment for dealing with your difficulties or concerns. As such, I do not have a system in which to fit you, but rather an approach that is sufficiently flexible and creative to uniquely suit you.

I work not only with a very wide range of psychological and social issues, but also with the interface between psychology and spirituality. (By “spirituality,” I don’t necessarily mean religion, but rather the cultivation of intimacy with what one takes to be sacred.)

As such, I am at home with both conventional (cognitive, behavioral, and analytic) and alternative (humanistic, existential, and transpersonal) approaches to well-being, taking an integral approach to healing.

I emphasize factors that together constitute “emotional intelligence” -- adaptability, empathy, emotional awareness, interpersonal skills, and other related qualities that influence our ability to succeed in dealing with the demands and pressures of life. At the same time, I also emphasize practices that open us to depths beyond psychosocial functioning, practices centered around “full-blooded awaring” -- becoming more conscious without dissociating from our individuality and passion.

My primary intention is to inspire, catalyze, and support deep healing -- healing of body, healing of mind, healing of self -- through a dynamic, intuitively structured mix of psychotherapy, lifestyle coaching, bodywork, emotional release, dream exploration, and spiritual practices.

However focused on detail my work might be, it is conducted in the context of your inherent wholeness. My intent is not just to help you feel better, but also to help you journey into and through whatever may be troubling you.

This challenging yet remarkably nourishing journey -- exploring and awakening from the entrapping dreams we habitually animate -- is a passage from which we emerge more sane and more alive, ready to live a more authentic and fulfilling life.

At essence my work is about becoming more intimate with all that we are -- dark and light, high and low, shallow and deep, neurotic and transcendent, dying and undying. Such intimacy is at the very heart of the healing we need, bringing us into the intrinsic wisdom, compassion, humor, and joy of Being.

I highly recommend a deep look around his site and getting on the newsletter email list, an always interesting an informative piece of writing. Check out old newsletters here.

Tags: Robert Augustus Masters, Integral, Leader, Psychology, Philosophy, spirituality, personal growth, Awareness, compassion, self-knowledge, emotional literacy