Secondly, it shows that a therapist’s ability to move fluidly between various feeling attitudes as they arise gives her access to the very basis of various schools of psychotherapy.

was attracted to process work’s belief in the Tao—that numinous, unexpected mystery which fills us as individuals and groups with the sense of awe.3

Esalen Institute

How can she hope that her client will become free if she herself is not?

metaskills that are hinted at by the ancient Taoists but realized that most of us, most of the time, are not Taoistic at all!

Hence, therapy becomes a spiritual task.

This book explores the ways that therapists express, through their feeling attitudes, their fundamental beliefs about life. These attitudes permeate and shape all of the therapist’s apparent techniques. Conceptually, I raise these essential, underlying feelings of the therapist to “skills” that must and can be studied and cultivated. I call these n

feeling attitudes such as fluidity, compassion, humor, playfulness, and shamanism allowed these basic beliefs to come to life in practice. I elevate these feeling attitudes to the level of a skill appreciating and cultivating them with as much love and depth as ordinary techniques. The concept of metaskills implies a new art form or discipline that

By metaskills, I do not mean that we should focus on the ideal feeling attitudes of the therapist but instead concentrate and study the actual feelings that a therapist has from moment to moment. The task is to make these attitudes conscious and useful in the therapeutic situation.