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OUR STORY
About Homa - How we came about, our philosophy and who we are
We, the Homa Team, have stepped into the world of psychotherapy training to offer a new, bold humanistic programme in north London. Most of us trained at Spectrum Therapy which, for over forty years, was the largest humanistic psychotherapy training centre and practice in the UK. Spectrum swam against the current in psychotherapy, staying true to their profoundly experiential approach to training.
A few years ago Spectrum decided to end their training programme, leaving a hole in the world of humanistic psychotherapy training after many years of invaluable service. In creating the Homa Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy it is our intention to honour Spectrum’s invaluable body of work. We are passing on all that we have learned, with immense gratitude and respect for our training and those who passed on to us all their wisdom, skills and experience.
Over the years, sharing our wishes, hopes and dreams became as common to us as brushing our teeth. It is out of this on-going practice that, sitting under a pergola in an ancient olive grove in Puglia, our vision to create and manifest a bold new psychotherapy training programme emerged. Drawing on our very distinct personalities and different walks of life, we have patiently and carefully shaped a common vision of who we are as a collective and how we want to actively bring change to the world of psychotherapy.
The Spectrum training was not just a four year course. As part of an organisation committed to life-long learning, many of us continued to learn and grow within the professional community for decades. We met annually in the same group we started with in the first year of training and met as a whole community for continued professional development. We know that you don’t train to become a therapist in just four years. The day we qualify is just the beginning, this work does not have an end point. The continued support and connection that comes from being part of a community with shared values is how we have formed ourselves as human beings and as therapists. This is the model of learning that we are now offering at Homa.
The Homa team firmly believe that we are at our best when we learn experientially rather than academically. We do not subscribe to a way of working or training which seeks to assess, diagnose, label and pathologise people's experience. We have an embodied understanding of others and ourselves by physically sitting together, relating to each other face to face, taking the time to talk, listen, move and explore our unique life experiences, we believe this is as true for training therapists as it is for sitting with clients.
Our emphasis at Homa is to create and hold a space where therapists can develop a profound sense of process and have an understanding of humanity, where trust can grow and deepen over time. It is our aim to foster a learning environment in which being present for and with others, allows the shaping of a congruent sense of self, the healing of past wounds and the experience of well-being. It is in these conditions that the free expression of oneself, both personally and professionally, can become a reality.
At Spectrum we learned to be active agents of self-actualisation. For years we travelled together, challenging each other with goodwill and courage. We explored every aspect of our humanity with compassion and audacity, even when it was painful.
As Terry Cooper, one of the Spectrum Founders, says: ‘When you want to torque away from the things that threaten you, discipline yourself to engage with them, turn and face them’.
Our training invited us over and over again to be curious and compassionate, Jenner Roth, a Spectrum Founder, once said: ‘Find out who you are and be true to it as best you can’. We spent over twenty years at Spectrum, finding out who we are and we continue to endeavour to be true to ourselves as best we can. The Homa Training Programme is the next step in our process of finding out who we are and being true to who we are; as individuals, as therapists and as a team.
It is with deep gratitude that we acknowledge the space that the Spectrum team held for us for so many years. We appreciate them all for their huge contribution to our personal and professional development and to the foundations of the Homa Training Programme: Jenner Roth, Terry Cooper, Rex Bradley, Maggie McKenzie, Judy Hargreaves, Anna Patterson, Julia Naish, Gill Doust, Paul Allsop, Oriel Methuen, Jane Gotto and Lotta Kitchen. We thank them all for the excellence and integrity of their teaching and for their dedication and commitment to the practice of humanistic psychotherapy over the past four decades.
The Homa Team
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