“Ken’s work is extremely interesting and original. He has a sophistication that shows through his writing at a paradigmatic level. I have a sense that he is breaking new ground along the lines of ecospiritual leader Bill Plotkin.”
Dr. Edmund O’Sullivan
Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto
Co-founder of the Transformational Learning Centre
“Ken has been a student of mine since 2005, receiving and practicing many Buddhist teachings. He is dedicated to the integration of ancient traditions into modern psychotherapy.”
Spiritual Advisor, Namygal Centre of Toronto
Ken Walton’s articles integrate a psychotherapeutic perspective towards healing collective cultural issues. His writings also exemplify how issues within the collective consciousness can be healed within a therapeutic environment. The integration of cultural and personal change allowing for lasting integrative evolution is what Ken’s writings reveal.
Below are synopses of some of Ken’s articles. Essays are currently being edited for better viewing from this website.
Psychotherapy Essays
Psychological activism offers a revolutionary new perspective to cultural activism. While the activistic agenda often promotes a specific ideology, psychological activism provides a needed counterpoint. It highlights the necessity of cultural transformation arising from the therapeutic process, evolving from the strife from within. Attuning to the complexities, paradoxes, and cultural existential realities, provides a gateway for the mediation of seemingly opposing cultural ideologies to dialectically evolve. Believing in a cause, yet also being open to what is unknown and becoming, is what psychological activism propagates.
2. Wilderness Therapy: Ecospiritual Healing
Wilderness Therapy provides a healing modality for individual’s healing the existential pain of the modernist disenchantment of the environment. While many theorists believe western consciousness can’t ‘go back’ to a previous primordial intermeshed relationship with nature, it does promote the ability for a new type of integration between western individualism, and primordial psychic indifferentiation. A new consciousness which is sustainable and progressive for both humans and the natural environment. Ken exemplifies his own progression within this complex relationship following the enchanted path of nature and psyche.
It is imperative in multicultural counselling, between a non-Indigenous counsellor and an Indigenous client, that the non-Indigenous counsellor understand the relationship between his/her culture’s soul wound, and the ‘Indigenous soul wound’. The soul wound of the colonizer, and its relationship to the soul wound of the colonized. Ken outlines the relationship with his culture’s English and Norwegian ‘soul wound’, and the importance of this understanding when working with Indigenous clients.
4. Healing Existential Experiences in Group Therapy
Group therapy is an ideal context for healing western consciousness’s existential pain. Group therapy provides the context for the postmodern psyche to work through feelings of loneliness, meaninglessness, and the fear of death. To learn to be genuinely in relationship with another person, to find meaning in connections, and life in the face of death, are of utmost concerns to a world filled with postmodern decay. Ken addresses these issues throughout the group therapy process enabling group members to find a genuine connection within themselves and with others.
5. Peacebuilding Through Sailing
This essay provides a detailed analysis of the field of Peacebuilding in the context of sailing. It outlines how Peacebuilding theory is applied to sailing, and what organizations exist today. A detailed outline of how to structure a day of conflict resolution is given, including how to heal conflicts, cautions, and advice for leaders.
Poem
This poem was written after a sweat lodge at the Anishnawbe Health Centre, in Toronto Canada. It poetically counterpoints the beauty of this experience next to my feelings of despair living within Western culture.
kenwalton.org 