Uses outside of therapy

[SaphiraL at aol.com]

Dear Psychodramatists,
I have used psychodrama in many "outside" venues ever since I studied with  
the Morenos in the late 1960s.  First, about spirituality and the  
Transpersonal. At the same time I was working with the Morenos, I was studying  
metaphysics and practicing meditation and have been a Sufi (wisdom  underneath all 
religion) meditation teacher now for 36 years. I always saw  JL as a spiritually 
oriented teacher (after all he wanted to start a new  religion) and Zerka I 
always felt as walking the talk of an authentic spiritual  teacher.My colleague 
Penny Lewis (a dance and drama therapist, who also had a  Jungian background) 
and I began a Transpersonal Drama  Therapy Certificate program in Boston 8 years 
ago, overtly working with  spirituality and a transpersonal perspective. 
Penny (now deceased) had  studied with Robert Siroka way back, just after I 
studied with the Morenos.  Both of us really valued psychodrama and have required 
our drama therapy  students to do more psychodrama training than our national 
organization  does as well as approaching all of our training from a 
transpersonal  perspective. I have decided to apply to sit for the CP exam (which I never 
did  back then) in order to help bridge the drama therapy and psychodrama 
worlds.  They are very integrated inside of me and I hope that will be possible 
with many  others of us.
In the 1970s and 1980s our theater company was working with special needs  
children in the dysfunctional schools in Boston (torn apart from the racial  
prejudice overtly manifested through out the school system). As a theater  
company, we went into the schools under the guise of theater and the arts to  reach 
students who were disabled physically, learning  disabled, economically 
disabled and unsupported in school and of course  emotionally disabled. Through non 
competitive theater games and  later mini psychodramas, our students had new 
inspiration to learn. We  then did programs bringing urban and suburban 
highschool students together and  did wonderful psychodramatic work on their oral 
histories.Different  adolescent students of one ethnic background  enacted the 
story  of another student's  ethnic background which were eventually perfomed- 
an  exquisite translation and use of role reversal. We were the first theater  
company to be allowed into the schools for such a project during school time,  
integrating the experience into the curriculum. It was very successful as we  
involved and trained the teachers as well as students. 
Then, we did management consulting in the corporate world,  using psychodrama 
techniques in team building. goal setting. empathy  training, visioning and 
stragegic planning and in many other venues over  the years. Some of these 
projects are documented in CURRENT APPROACHES IN DRAMA  THERAPY, Lewis and 
Johnson, Charles Thomas, 2000.
When Drama Therapy became a field, which incorporated psychodrama and also  
worked with other theater modalities in the service of healing, new  
opportunities presented themselves. 
I am trying to write a book about our transpersonal approach to drama  
therapy including  psychodrama. 
For those of you who have been using a transpersonal approach, I would  love 
to dialogue with you. Connie, I see you have. I wonder about others.
 
If anyone is interested, please check out our website: _www.omegatheater.org_ 
(http://www.omegatheater.org)  
 
I am enjoying immersing myself again in the history, theory and  
methodologies of psychodrama, sociodrama, sociomentry and group psychotherapy in  
preparation for the exam. I would like to get to know more of you. Anyone  interested 
in  transpersonal approaches to psychodrama, please be in  touch.
 
Best Wishes,
Saphira Linden,MA, RDT/BCT, LCAT
 
 
 
 
For more information contact:
Omega Theater at 617-522-8300 or  email: _info at omegatheater.o_ 
(mailto:info at omegatheater.org) rg

Omega Transpersonal Drama Therapy  Certificate Program
On the web: _http://www.omegatheater.org/_ (http://www.omegatheater.org/) 
41  Greenough Ave,
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 (In Boston)



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