EFT Journal-Online, Volume 03 - spirituality and Culture

Editorial 

Welcome to the third edition of the EFT Journal-Online, a practitioner journal in Emotion-Focused work. We begin this edition with a book review of our very first edition of Emotion-Focused Counselling: A Practitioner’s Guide. I have put together a manual for counselling practitioners on the what, when, where and how of our work. Dr Clare Stapleton, one of the Institute for Emotionally Focused Therapy’s senior trainers has written a lovely review of this valuable textbook.

The theme of our third edition is spirituality and culture. Practitioners are engaging with contextual matters such as spirituality and culture on an ongoing basis. In Emotion-Focused work there seems to be a paucity of articles for practitioners on these matters. This edition of EFT-Online endeavours to rectify this with six new articles. There are four articles focused on spirituality beginning with Dr Toni Tidswell’s article, Spirituality and Psychotherapy: Beginning a discussion through an Emotion-Focused Therapy lens. Here Toni presents a brief overview of the history of spirituality from a comparative religion perspective before illustrating how spirituality can be a helpful or hindering factor for clients. Sue Olds, in her article, Lifting the Lid Off My Heart: Integrating Emotionally Focused Therapy and Christianity in Clinical Practice explores how Emotionally-Focused Therapy and Christianity can work together in the healing process. Our third article is by Dawn Smith, Heart & Soul – A Duet in E.F. Major. In this article Dawn explores the process of working towards both emotional and spiritual re-formation. She demonstrates how prioritising and working with the therapeutic relationship in Emotionally Focused Therapy can bring this two-fold success. Finally, Kay Djoeandy explores how the Psalms from the Bible can help individuals be with their emotional experience in her article, Out of the Miry Bog.

On the cultural perspective, we have two articles that explore aspects of culture. Yasmine Wahab in her article, The Longing to Belong, explores the notion of belonging when individuals have spent their developmental years in foreign countries. Iris Siu Yin Yip reflects on working with clients from Chinese culture in her article, How EFT therapists work with clients from Chinese culture.

We hope you enjoy these articles and they help you reflect on spirituality and culture, only two of the many aspects in the crucible that we can call the context for both our clients and ourselves as practitioners, that we need to be mindful of in our work as practitioners.

With warm regards, 

Dr Michelle Webster

February 2008


EFT Journal-Online, Volume 03 - spirituality and Culture