Practical Philosophy

The primary difference between healing and therapy is that in therapies the patient or ‘client’, has to take part.
Between therapy sessions the practitioner will give their client ‘homework’ – tasks they need to do or rituals they need to perform typically for an uninterrupted period of 21 days immediately following the therapy session. It’s an integral part of the treatment and therapists will normally explain up front the client must commit to doing what is requested of them, with full engagement in the process, or the treatment will have very reduced effect or not work at all.

Exceptions to this are some forms of hypnotherapy where the client participates, often passively, in the session but is not expected to do anything between sessions except perhaps keep it in mind. Sessions with the practitioner are usually more frequent and greater in number that in other therapies. Such arrangements may go on for years.

Therapy sessions normally require a conversation, or series of conversations between the client and the practitioner, sometimes under hypnosis. These can be carried out on-line but in my experience are more effective (by about 10-15%) when they take place face to face. After all we’re not designed to communicate or interact in two dimensions! A single therapy session or a short series conducted this way may lead on to an ongoing coaching arrangement to ensure the ‘corrections’ or enhancements made in therapy persist on a permanent basis.

As a general principle, neither therapy nor healing can treat a client or patient for ‘all’ the problems or issues they may have, as in ‘regular’ medicine, each condition needs to be dealt with separately, there is no universal panacea.