Course Catalog:
Certificate and Global Master's Programs
Listed below are brief descriptions of courses offered at the Institute. Not all courses are offered in an annual enrollment cycle nor is every course available in each program.
New courses may be developed to meet changing curricular requirements. The Institute reserves the right to substitute an equivalent course for any course listed in any curriculum. Some courses which offer special topics may be repeated for credit.
Transpersonal Approaches to Creative Expression
This course explores archetypal themes, psycho-spiritual development, and healing processes through creative expression and self-reflection. Students will participate in a variety of media including clay, the visual arts, creative writing, collage, drama, and movement, and letting the creative process inform their inner processes.
Opening Seminar
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet with ITP faculty. This seminar is taken at the beginning of the first year.
Closing Seminar
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet with ITP faculty. This seminar is taken at the end of the first year and is required for all students.
Global Seminar
Seminars offer a variety of transpersonal approaches to personal and professional growth in a group setting, providing the opportunity for students to meet with ITP faculty.
Spiritual Perspectives
This experiential course explores psychological, mythical, and spiritual perspectives of personal growth and development. It includes readings, activities, and explorations that help students to reflect deeply on how each moment is a spiritual moment. Exercises are included that stimulate application of principles learned.
Archetypes, Myths, and Symbols
This course explores archetypes, myths, and symbols as living energies that transcend time and culture. Students will reflect both personally and conceptually on themes from several different cultures, and express their insights in writing and symbolic art.
Introduction to Creation Spirituality
This course introduces you to the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality including: (a) the Via Positiva, (b) Via Negativa, (c) Via Creativa, and (d) Via Transformative. Exposed in the Four Paths are the powerful sources of wisdom that can be found in nature and the religious traditions of the world.
Women's Mysteries, Women's Wisdom
This course explores psychological and spiritual developmental themes in women's lives, including childhood experiences of the sacred, the search for identity, resacralization of the female body, and life-long initiations into women's wisdom from menarche to menopause.
Introduction to Spiritual Psychology
This course is foundational for those integrating spiritual psychology with professional applications. Participants will study key themes in spiritual development, including the relationships between spirituality and psychology, spiritual experiences and stages of development, culture and spirituality, a variety of religious perspectives, ethical considerations and listening skills. Students will develop a spiritual assessment inventory and make other applications of spiritual psychology to specific professional issues, e.g., management, health professions, spiritual direction, and counseling.
Psychology of Sufism
Psychology of Sufism is an introduction to classical Sufism, its teachings of inner life development and practices. This course includes sections on Sufi stories and dreamwork as well as the role of women.
Psychology of Christian Mysticism
This course provides a rich and fertile experience of meditative prayer and psychology of inner life of the Christian mystic. It focuses on themes of inner transformation and purification, death and resurrection, and a creative life of service.
Psychology of Shamanism
This course teaches tools for self-growth and explores the universal processes that are inherent to indigenous peoples and shamanic traditions. Students discover how these principles appear in modern times and will work with journeying and soul retrieval. This is an experiential course that invites exploration of creativity and connection to Earth.
Spiritual Dimensions of Human Behavior: Spiritual Wholeness Across the Lifespan
This course presents a psycho-spiritual approach to the questions of spiritual life development and explores how psycho-spiritual evolution informs all aspects and stages of our personal and professional lives throughout our lifespan. In this course, the student will explore universal themes that can transcend specific spiritual traditions and apply them on a personal level as a spiritual follower and professionally as a spiritual guide.
Psychology of the Body
This course provides an experiential, historical, and theoretical base for body psychology and the field of body psychotherapy. Through readings and experiential activities, students will explore the mind/body split and find ways to move toward deeper integration of mind, body, and spirit. Students will further reflect upon their personal lifestyle, and implement strategies for continued healthy living.
Feminine in World Spiritual Traditions
This course explores the common historical and cultural patterns and cross-cultural images of the feminine in the world's spiritual traditions.
Introduction to Transformational Coaching
This course introduces students to the transpersonal approaches to personal and professional coaching. It emphasizes various transformational coaching models, skills, and practices; empowering individuals to be at choice in regard to how they want to be in their lives.
Introduction to Transpersonal Theory
This course introduces theories and concepts of transpersonal psychology. Students will learn about the origins of transpersonal psychology, the contributors to the field, the research that is being conducted, and the applications of transpersonal studies to personal growth, counseling, education, society, and human welfare.
Creative Problem Solving
Designed to challenge preconceptions, this course evokes innate problem-solving capacities and offers experience with a variety of tools for increasing effective problem-solving ability through creative means.
Basic Concepts of Jungian Psychology
This course teaches Jung's unique insight into the nature of the psyche and the creative wisdom of its archetypal dimension. Through academic inquiry as well as creative processes such as painting, moving, dream work and active imagination, students will learn about and engage in the body-mind-spirit journey towards wholeness from Jung's perspective. Students will explore the experience of human individuality as the paradoxical mystery at the core of one's being in which the unique and the universal merge.
Self-Reflection Paper
The self-evaluation paper is designed to help the student integrate learning throughout the first year both professionally and personally. The paper is written at the end of Certificate and Ph.D. Year 1 by all students, and is presented for peer review at the closing seminar.
Independent Study (Certificate Level)
In consultation with the faculty mentor and Global MA Program Chair, students may substitute independent study for subject areas not available through Global Programs course material. (3 units maximum)
Professional Specialization Practicum
In this course you will design and implement a practicum experience in your home locale that is relevant and appropriate for your area of specialization. This course will facilitate the student’s professional development and help the student apply his or her transpersonal education in this area. The practicum can have an educational, social, political, ecological, wellness, transformational, or other focus. It should offer hands-on opportunities for practical work with individuals, small groups, larger groups/organizations, or the global community/ecology.
Transpersonal Integration Paper
This 30-page integration paper provides you with the opportunity to bridge your transpersonal knowledge and wisdom with your professional experiences and aspirations in considering how your transpersonal education will contribute to a more conscious world. It illustrates that you are able to integrate and apply transpersonal principles and practices in a professional arena. It assumes that you have explored your area of specialization in depth, have considered your unique contributions, and can place your professional objectives within the larger context of what already exists in the world.
Showcase Portfolio
This capstone course requires students to demonstrate mastery of academic and professional goals. Students will gather artifacts, build, reflect upon, and publish high quality electronic portfolios suitable for showcasing educational and professional competencies.
Inquiry into Creative and Innovative Processes
This course focuses on the theories, models, and practices of creative and innovative processes using an Intuitive Inquiry approach. You will immerse yourself in a personal and collective exploration of creativity and innovation through a number of lenses including: a) the literature; b) contemplative practices; c) autobiographical accounts of people; and, d) visualization, writing, and creative exploration. You will begin to gain a deeper appreciation of creativity as a transpersonal and natural process inherent in the world by exploring one topic of interest in this area as well as observing your own creativity.
Creative Expression and Transformation
This experiential course explores the relationship between creative process psycho-spiritual awareness, and wholeness both in self and in community. You will participate in creative explorations using art, music, movement, writing, and Earth’s inspiration around a variety of themes that they may also wish to apply or explore with others. You will read material related to creativity, creative process, and healing through the arts and choose one professional application project designed to integrate creativity more fully into your work life.
Ways of Knowing
This course explores various ways of knowing and constructing meaning including creative, transpersonal, and collective approaches. Students in this course will be able to engage more flexibly with their outer world and develop self-awareness in a fully embodied, multimodal fashion. They will broaden their ability to access information and express themselves.
Women's Psycho-Spiritual Development
Featuring the creative work of Jungian Dr. Marion Woodman, women's psycho-spiritual development is explored focusing on the symbols, issues and challenges particular to women.
Parapsychology
This course explores what one has learned, through careful scientific research about the paranormal processes of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, as well as evidence bearing on the possibility of survival of physical death. Theories, implications, and possible applications of these findings are discussed--with emphasis on their relevance to human interconnectedness, healing, consciousness, and other transpersonal concerns.
Transformational Coaching Process
The course will be informational, didactic, and experiential. Students will gain a solid foundation in the coaching process, have an opportunity for extensive practice, and be given feedback about coaching skill. The course is taken in conjunction with GLBM 7551 and is offered as a 3-day intensive in the summer and winter terms in Palo Alto, CA.
Practicum in Transformational Coaching
Students will work with others to master the International Coaching Federation (ICF) core Competencies that were discussed previously. This course focuses on specific coaching issues that arise through the process of coaching. Students will consider in more depth the underpinnings of the coach’s issues, as well as clients’ survival strategies and mechanisms, which act as obstacles to their desired results.
Practical Application in Transformational Coaching
This course will help students to bridge previously acquired specialized knowledge and skills with transpersonal coaching strategies. A Faculty Mentor who understands the nuances of coaching will guide students in creating a plan for the development of a specialized transformational coaching practice.
Introduction to Integrative Health and Wellness
This course offers an integral vision of healing and wellness. It presents theories and practices that are based on the assumption that health is a condition of the whole person. Integral Health assumes that the person is not just as body, but is an interdependent multi-dimensional process that includes body, ‘heart’, mind and spirit and that humans are capable of achieving wholeness.
Science, Spirituality, & Healing
Science-based approaches to healing are one way to approach this important topic. By having spiritual perspectives inform our scientific understanding, we begin to develop a dynamic, wide-ranging understanding of health and healing. In this course students are presented with a broad spectrum of research that has science and spirit at its core. They are also invited to identify those areas of personal interest and find and discuss research to support and deepen those interests. By the end of the course students will have a significantly expanded understanding of current scientific thinking about the health and spiritual issues that interest them most.
Transpersonal Approaches to Dreams and Dreaming
This course, written by renowned dream master, Jeremy Taylor, offers an overview of the history and current status of dreams as a means of apprehending multiple levels of non-material truths in the lives of individuals, and also as a means of detecting and observing larger collective, social, and cultural patterns of human action, and the evolution of human consciousness itself. During this course, participants will keep a dream journal, work alone and with others to gather greater insight into their dreams, and deepen their understanding of how dreams can facilitate transpersonal awareness.
Transpersonal Discipline and Practice (Second Year Level)
Transpersonal Discipline and Practice is designed as an experiential course to help students integrate transpersonal practice more fully into life. It is a practicum that uses self-observation and reporting in the pursuit of a spiritual discipline, along with the theoretical and psychological basis for the practice. This course spans the entire 2nd year of the Master’s Program.
Cross Cultural Values and Transpersonal Experiences
This course begins to prepare participants for the moment of death by examining how the deaths of others have informed and shaped their lives; by inviting an examination of their current relationship to grief and the inevitability of death; and by looking at the possibilities of living consciously up to and through their final breath.
Opening the Gifts of Death and Grieving
This is a foundational course for students seeking to apply their studies in Transpersonal Psychology in the area of death and dying. Participants will study key psycho-spiritual issues related to death and dying, including one’s own feelings and assumptions. Issues related to supporting a patient and family include: making sense of death, dealing with pain and loss of control, supporting different grieving styles, and making end-of-life decisions. Students will pursue their study from a cross-cultural perspective and practice applying what they have learned to specific cases and situations.
Cross Cultural Approaches to Death and Dying
This is a foundational course for students seeking to apply their studies in Transpersonal Psychology in the area of death and dying. Participants will study key psycho-spiritual issues related to death and dying, including one’s own feelings and assumptions. Issues related to supporting a patient and family include: making sense of death, dealing with pain and loss of control, supporting different grieving styles, and making end-of-life decisions. Students will pursue their study from a cross-cultural perspective and practice applying what they have learned to specific cases and situations.
A Transpersonal Investigation into Death and Grief
This course begins to prepare us for the moment of death by examining how the deaths of others have informed and shaped our lives; by inviting an examination of our current relationship to grief and the inevitability of death; and by looking at the possibilities of living consciously up to and through our final breath.
Introduction to Spiritual Psychology
This course is foundational for those integrating spiritual psychology with professional applications. Participants will study key themes in spiritual development, including the relationships between spirituality and psychology, spiritual experiences and stages of development, culture and spirituality, a variety of religious perspectives, ethical considerations and listening skills. Students will develop a spiritual assessment inventory and make other applications of spiritual psychology to specific professional issues, e.g., management, health professions, spiritual direction, and counseling.
Self-Cultivation
This course engages students in the study, practice, and application of true Self Cultivation and completion of all things. In the spirit of appreciation of differences, the course content inquires into world wisdom approaches to the higher art of living and deepening way of being. In this course students will learn specific methods, skills, and practices to enliven the development of psycho-spirituality of another person. In addition to the required readings and exercises, students will apply their learning towards professional fields such as spiritual guidance.
Spirituality in the Workplace
This course provides a basic overview of the field of spirituality in the workplace. Students will review the trends that have led to an interest in spirituality in the workplace, and will explore its many definitions. Course participants will assess the application of spirituality in the workplace at four levels of analysis: individual, group, organizational, and societal. Topics covered will include work as a spiritual path, spirituality in teams, and systemic organizational approaches to creating holistic organizations.
Creative and Conscious Aging
The Creative and Conscious Aging module is about elderhood, primarily in the United States. This topic is of great importance, both to the elders in our society and to those of us coming into our own time of aging in the coming years. It asks the questions: What does it mean to age consciously and creatively? Is it for everyone? And how can we assist ourselves and others so that we can reach out and help our culture in new and vital ways?
Approaches to Transpersonal Healing Practices
This course provides a basic overview of the field of transpersonal healing practices. Although there are many different theories and methods of transpersonal healing, they all consider spirituality to be intrinsic to healing and maturity. The integration of psychotherapy, body therapies, and spirituality raises many interesting questions about the nature of both the spirit and the psyche. Are they one and the same? Do we need to overcome personal suffering in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment? Do spiritual practices help alleviate limiting beliefs?
Psychology of States of Consciousness
This course explores alternative ways of transpersonal knowing, issues in the definition and functional valuation of altered states, as well as criteria for the correlation and comparison of these states cross-culturally.
Eco-psychology: Remembering Our Place in the Natural World
This course is an introduction to the field of ecopsychology. Through readings, experiences in nature, and conscious reflections we will explore the theoretical, psychological, and philosophical underpinnings of the field and practical ways that we can actively bring ecological consciousness into our personal, service and professional lives.
Eco-spirituality: Our Spiritual Connection to Gaia
This experiential course explores eco-spirituality and our relationship to Gaia through reading and spending time in the Natural world. Students will capture their growing relationship and appreciation for the Nature in intuitive, expressive, and reflective ways as well as consider how they might bring these new awarenesses into their daily lives. also It is suggested that students planning to take both Eco-psychology and Eco-spirituality, take Eco-psychology first and Eco-spirituality second. This course can be taken alone.
Theories of Personality
Theories of Personality lays the foundation for personality theory, psychological inquiry, and the understanding of psychological concepts. This course surveys eastern, indigenous, ecological, and western perspectives on being human and emphasizes an integration of personality theories and transpersonal practices as preparation for identifying one's own beliefs about human development.
Independent Study (Second Year Level)
In consultation with the faculty mentor and the Global Programs Dean, the student may substitute independent study for subject areas not available through Global Programs course material.
Independent Study: External Professional Training Program Elective 1
In consultation with the faculty mentor and the Global Master’s Program Chair, the student may substitute independent study related to a training program not available through the Global Master’s program.
Independent Study: External Professional Training Program Elective 2
In consultation with the faculty mentor and the Global Master’s Program Chair, the student may substitute independent study related to a training program not available through the Global Master’s program.
Independent Study: External Professional Training Practicum
Spanning 18 weeks or more, in this course you will design and implement a practicum experience in your home locale that is related or connected to your external professional training. This course will facilitate your professional development and help you to apply your transpersonal education in this professional area.
