3.0

Average Course Rating

The course seeks to include culturally diverse counseling practices such as mindfulness, yoga meditation, and expressive arts combining them with conventional psychotherapies such as Adlerian, existential, Gestalt, behavioral and cognitive behavioral therapies. It builds on the foundation established in ED.861.502 Counseling Theory and Practice wherein students introspect, analyze and synthesize essential concepts from various psychotherapeutic theories aiming to develop a personalized integrative theory. The emphasis is on a therapist’s creation of a repertoire of counseling techniques and interventions, drawn from multiple theories and most importantly from the client’s own life practices. Students learn to integrate key concepts from theories such as cognitive, behavioral, existential, Adlerian and Gestalt while concurrently resourcing alternative therapeutic modalities of expressive arts, mindfulness, movement, music, and yoga meditation. Emphasis will be placed on the importance of a therapist’s regard for client’s competence in overcoming challenges to facilitate relief from emotional distress, reprieve from behavioral dysfunction and restructuring of maladaptive cognitive schema. (3 credits)