Since I began my private practice more than 13 years ago my area of focus is in innovative approaches to psychosis including diagnosis of bipolar and schizophrenia. I'm trained in Process Oriented Psychology, developed by Arnold Mindell, and in Open Dialogue, a family network approach to psychosis recovery. Both emphasize alternatives to medications and biological reductionism in their understandings of extreme states of consciousness that get called psychotic. Process Oriented Psychology is a here-and-now approach that sees symbolic meaning in difficult symptoms and conflicts and how they serve the unfolding of individual self actualization. Open Dialogue emphasizes communication-in-context and attending to the systemic meaning of disturbing experiences and marginalized states of consciousness.
I have more than 13 years experience with counseling and community development work around altered and extreme states of consciousness, including what gets labeled psychosis, bipolar, and schizophrenia, as well as having a background guiding and integrating psychedelics experiences. I work from a perspective outside the clinical gaze and diagnosis, and view altered states as natural pathways of personal trauma integration, spiritual initiation, and collective awakening. Like psychosis, psychedelics magnify emotionally charged and symbolic possibilities latent in the psyche, and render individual identity permeable to collective and ancestral forces. Visionary plant medicines and substances are useful tools but also have their shadow sides: shadow work with power and trauma is vital to integration. My work is dynamic, body oriented, and here-and-now present moment focused, and methods I use include roleplay, dreamwork, meditation, synchronicities, narrative tools, family dynamics, and conflict resolution. I have a certificate in Open Dialogue; a diploma in Process Oriented Psychology; am currently a PhD candidate at Maastricht University; am among the teachers for the annual Legacy of R.D. Laing Seminar at Esalen Institute, and am author of the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, translated into 14 languages. www.willhall.net www.outsidementalhealth.com.