What is Stream Work?
A method to increase clarity, enthusiasm, and sense of purpose
“Steam work” is a kind of work that increase clarity, enthusiasm, and purpose in life. It involves identifying stuck places, blockages, triggers, projections, and other psychological obstacles that get in the way of flow and using the awareness of them to gently loosen or nudge them out of the way of the flow.
What is the method?
To do stream work we use Jungian principles and a type of talk therapy called dialogos.
Jungian Principles include a respect for the unconscious parts of our psyche, recognizing the role of archetypes and complexes, and incorporating non-rational experiences such as dreams and rituals, to facilitate individuation.
Dialogos is a conversation that facilitate collective intelligence to emerge. It is not just two heads put together to solve a problem, it is more focused on creating trust and partnership so that new insights can occur within the dialogue that would not have been possible without the intention to operate in a "Being Mode."
Being mode is a commitment to prioritize an unhurried curiosity without a predetermined end. It isn’t a rejection of the idea of solving a problem, it just comes at the problem or challenge from a wider perspective. Through true curiosity without side or hidden agendas the coach and client can see through each other’s perspectives, and then use analogy, metaphor, and other techniques to create a new way of approaching the problem or challenge.
By doing this we can experience new awareness of our own biases and blind spots, leading to a richer understanding. People often say something like, “Now that I have said it out loud it doesn’t seem as scary,” or “As we are discussing it now, I just realized I’ve been avoiding the topic for years.”
The process is inherently transformative. As awareness expands through the dialogue, the client gains a more accurate perceptions of what is real, what is going on inside themselves, and what they need to do to increase flow in their lives.
This flow is similar to the flow defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi because plumbing the depths of your psyche for wisdom and guidance is engaging and challenging, two of the factors needed for flow. Finding that wisdom and guidance is both possible and likely.
Dialogos opens up insight that neither participant could reach alone. This is one reason that this kind of coaching is described as a partnership.
The coach’s role in this special type of dialogue is to ask perceptive questions designed to gently uncover unconscious elements that may include avoidance and self-deception, but also the deep resources everyone has access to in their deepest Self.
It can be described as the experience of moving a dialogue from exploration and clarity into insight and a shifted perspective.
Do I need a Coach?
Meeting with a Jungian coach is helpful for this kind of experience because few people have the opportunity to practice depth work on their own or with their family and friends. It is important to understand that the coach doesn’t deliver insight to you, but instead participates in this very focused form of discussion (dialogos) with the specific intent to help you uncover hidden aspects of yourself and get in touch with the various parts of your psyche. In this way you get in touch with your own inner wisdom.
The key distinction is that ordinary conversation is based on an exchange of information. Dialogos is seeking to uncover information not known to either person consciously. It also tends to move people from having questions to living their questions1.
Stream Work is also informed by Internal Family Systems Theory and the spiritual insights from my long study of wabi sabi. As I wrote in my books on the topic, Wabi Sabi asserts that, "nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.” This relates to individuation because we never fully arrive at a state of perfection, stream work is never finished, and we all eventually die, but in the life we have, in the time we have left, we can experience more and more insight and integration on the journey toward what Parker Palmer calls, “a hidden wholeness.”
[1] “The purpose of a Jungian coach is to honor the individuation process.” - Handbook of Jungian Coaching by Akke-Jeanne Klenk.
[2] A model of development based in the research of Clare Graves, and popularized in such theories as Spiral Dynamics.