Many Indians know about counseling as an intervention fi eld; but now the whole approach to counseling is changing into mentoring/coaching, etc., as the postmodern generation is emerging. Indian approach to counseling is a combination of therapy and life coaching. And the medium is spiritual teaching.
Globalization is not only affecting families and socio-cultural orientations; it is also having a profound effect on work culture and ethics. Integration with Western society is creating confl ict in the collective unconscious of the Indian people.
Working hours are longer, more work is expected of them, competition is very high as the number of skilled personnel is growing. For every person who does not perform up to the employer’s standards, there are many more alternatives. So
the margin of error allowed has dropped drastically. This has resulted in insecurity and anxiety. Work timings are very irregular (the BPOs work during the night to cater to the needs of the waking customers at the other end of the globe. The many challenges being faced are causing a lot of stress. Husbands and wives meet only during the weekends. That is the time they get to meet their children too. This causes tension and dissatisfaction on the home front. The standard of living has gone up exponentially and to deal with this people in India are working longer and harder than ever before, thus raising the stress levels.
Indians, who earlier took advice from worldly-wise elders who were the pillars of strength in a joint family system, have nowhere to turn to after its breakdown.
Thus it is alright to embrace coaching and all that coaching can offer. Life-coaching provides what is no longer being provided by family support and sharing. Coaches understand the world out there and are able to empathize and provide guidance.
With so many changes taking place simultaneously, people who do not have a direct experience of the outside world are unable to help effectively.
Essentially, coaching is about helping one to reach self-actualization, a point at which one not only truly knows oneself but within this knowledge possesses a feeling of comfort with and understanding of the person one discovers. With regard to the career options, these are many and varied. Approximately 25–30 percent of coaches trained go into coaching full-time. The rest add coaching to whatever they already do––such as counseling, therapy, training, management consultancy, business advising, human resources, personnel managers, etc.
In India, there are many retreats budding on the outskirts of big cities and towns providing design, aesthetics, and service and comfort levels, modeled after exclusive and luxurious small hotels. They have a small number of rooms spread across different plantations, gardens, and fi elds where a few people are unobtrusively tended to as they go about their daily agendas in complete privacy and quiet.
These are places where one can connect with the rich and vibrant spiritual tradition of India that encourages us to search for a meaning and purpose of our existence by looking into the depths of our souls. Numerous processes derived from the tradition of Yoga and a range of self-discovery modules allows guests to truly recharge their body and mind energies and set about resetting their priorities and goals. This is all provided in a private, serene, and spiritual environment.
In the Indian tradition, all round excellence is the manifestation of the purpose for which our lives have been given to us. This excellence is inherent within us [tat tvam asi – that (which you are moving towards) you are] and is to be achieved through harnessing, refi ning, and purifying our body/mind energies and spiritualizing our actions and emotions, thereby allowing the divine qualities within to shine forth.
The retreat centers help to achieve this by catalyzing the thinking process with inputs from the Indian spiritual tradition.
Apart from these retreat centers, there are many ashrams, or spiritual retreat centers that have existed for a long time, run by various trusts and cater to spiritual aspirants from various fi elds. These people get authentic spiritual guidance in these ashrams. Of late, more and more people seem to be fl ocking to these retreat centers that run various camps and workshops. With the stresses attributed to technological advances and the resultant mechanized lifestyles, people’s thirst for self-knowledge and self-discovery is increasing by leaps and bounds.
Coaching initiates and sustains the individual’s journey into self-discovery. As we have seen earlier, in India, life is considered to be a journey of experiences that leads us to discover the excellence inherent within us. People nowadays are looking to spend some time refl ecting and connecting with their inner selves, and the retreat centers provide a sacred space and structure their stay with dedicated yoga classes, rejuvenation and relaxing massages, light, but wholesome vegetarian food, guided meditation sessions, mouna (silence) and karma yoga (working with a selfl ess attitude) hours, and scriptural classes.
Yoga classes are based on classical hatha yoga and combined with pranayama (breathing related) and pratyahara (internalization) processes drawn from the Yoga sutras, an ancient yogic doctrine that aims to integrate our body, mind, heart and soul for complete living. The programs and yoga classes are dedicated to applying the wisdom of the Vedas and Indian spiritual tradition to enrich the professional and personal lives the people.
Some retreat centers also include nature-based activities that one can experience, for example, the opportunity to spend time in the herb and agricultural fi elds.
This seems to be an immensely therapeutic experience in itself with their stresses disappearing as they were working in the fi elds.
Yoga tells us that the laws governing external nature are identical to the laws governing our psychophysical personalities. Through the process of observation and mindfully participating in our carefully designed farming activities, one can learn a lot about the self.
Another signifi cant therapeutic experience that these retreat centers provide the guests is an opportunity to participate in many community-based activities organized by them like serving meals to village school children, renovating the village school or other essential structures, reading to the villagers, or organizing recreational programs for the villagers. This gives them the chance to interact and experience the real India. This exercise which is known as seva or service, changes negative emotions into positive ones such as arrogance into humility, sympathy and indifference into empathy and compassion, and anger into love. The Indian tradition believes that selfi sh ego personality is just maya or illusion. And beneath it we all have a genuine desire to give—for the sake of giving, and not for the sake of personal aggrandizement. This aspect of our personality when harnessed and employed in our daily work and personal life gives a lot of peace and satisfaction.
Nature walks and agricultural and medicinal herb gardens farming provide the necessary physical stress relief. Yoga classes, wellness and stress management modules, regular yoga retreats where individuals can learn from the physical, physiological, and therapeutic benefi ts of a simple yoga practice, stress management packages, and retreats for psychosomatic ailments like asthma, high blood pressure, back, neck and hand pain etc., seem to be the order of the day in these places. Meals served are vegetarian, and thoughtfully planned to complement the lifestyle one will be experiencing at the retreats.
According to yoga, “stress,” causes many emotional disorders through an inability of the body/mind system to cope with the demands made on it both professionally and in personal life. While Western medicine and psychiatry deals with stress with medicine that induces the release of “feel good” hormones, this does not eliminate the problem. Vedanta says that the root cause of stress lies in our inability to see the world as one unbroken stream of consciousness fl owing through everything and everyone. When the realization that we are not separate from the world, and hence we need not compete with the world for our happiness is the one that will save us all from this meaningless, competition and rat race.
Yoga encourages one to deal with stress at the physical (with proper diet and asanas [physical postures]), physiological (with pranayama-breathing practices), mental and intellectual level (with meditation) and is therefore referred to as a holistic healing science.
Many retreat centers offer massages, which are designed to remove knots of stress out of the muscles. Insomnia can be tackled with yoga nidra or deep yogic sleep practices, light meals at night, avoiding intoxicants, and meditation. Back pain can be helped with various yoga postures that help stretch, relax, and strengthen the spine as well breathing and meditation practices.
v Summary v
The discussion on counseling cannot be complete without making it relevant to the Indian setting. With the world around us changing so fast, families in India are caught up amongst many developments for which they were not prepared. The difference in the pace of life, in values and ethics, and in the capacity to adapt, which differs between the parents and their children, the family, society, and culture changing to adapt itself to globalization, work, and career issues expanding to herald in the capitalized world, issues relating to personal, and social and professional insecurity are looming large. As a result, there is a great need for some kind of intervention and help.
Attention in counseling should be drawn towards culture-specifi c issues as they determine clients’ attitudes and perceptions, which in turn contribute to their problems. Also, spiritual and religious values play a major part in
the clients’ problems in India. Having acknowledged this fact, counselors must understand the potency of pursuing them as a focal point in their resolution. Only then will healing be wholesome. Especially now, with growing epidemics of physical and mental illnesses, there is much more need for properly focused intervention. Even the government is looking out for workable models of intervention and the counselors need to wake up and equip themselves if they want to impact the country in a very signifi cant way.
Mental health care is receiving increased attention in developing countries at a time when a wide range of treatments for acute and chronic mental disorders is available (6). Availability of these treatments enables the use of a variety of levels of care for mentally ill patients with different needs (5) and makes it feasible to consider issues of quality assurance for treatment approaches that go beyond institutionalization.
Life coaching and spiritual retreats, which have existed for thousands of years, have picked up popularity again, whether it is for commercial or spiritual purpose.
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Counseling through the Lifespan
Chapter Overview
v Developmental psychology
v Counseling and developmental psychology v Theories of human development
� Theories from mechanistic worldview perspective
� Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
� Theories from the organismic worldview perspective
� Theories from the contextualistic worldview perspective v The Indian focus: Philosophy of Indian counseling
� Four types of human goals
W
hy are humans the way they are? Why do abilities of children seem to be so different from those of adults? What can one do to help children become fully developed adults? These are the kinds of questions that theorists of human development try to answer.Over the course of the 20th century, counseling grew from supplementing vocational guidance in education to a full blown profession in its own right. The foundation of the profession included a heavy commitment to preventing problems, promoting development, and resolving concerns of non-psychotic people of all ages.
Many counselors feel frustrated that most counselor training programs place a greater emphasis on diagnosing and treating psychopathology. The result is the loss of attention to prevention of and treating life adjustment problems and the promoting of healthy development. They say that the reality is that everyone faces adjustment problems, while only a relatively small minority of individuals qualifi es for DSM diagnosis. There is also a growing concern that counselors, counseling psychologists, social workers, and other mental health practitioners are not being
adequately trained to deal with life adjustment problems that almost everyone experiences in the course of their lifetime. The concern, implicit in the current emphasis on pathology and psychotherapy, is the assumption that service providers need not be trained in the strategies of preventing mental illness, and that if they are taught to understand the nature and treatment of psychopathology, they will be able to develop effective strategies for preventing psychopathology.
The issue is dealt with keeping in mind this perspective. Mental health service providers need a strong foundation in normal human development and problem prevention strategies in order to meet the mental health needs of the 21st century.
Students should be acquainted with prevention and treatment of developmental concerns. A developmental approach to counseling acknowledges not only the potential for positive growth and change within each individual, but also the ongoing tendency towards change, both positive and negative, throughout the lifespan. It is therefore essential for counselors to develop an understanding of these natural progressions in the life of an individual. Such an understanding enables the counselor to approach each client from the most suitable perspective and assist each individual better. This chapter gives an overview of some of the important developmental theories needed to effectively bring about positive change.