How do physics and psychology relate to each other?
of facts and dreams completely distinct?
mean you have to abandon your intuition and irrational experiences?
Trained at MIT before studying at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, he never stopped thinking like a scientist.
The physics he had studied, particularly quantum mechanics and relativity, was pointing toward something extraordinary: that at the deepest levels of physical reality, the clear boundaries between observer and observed, between matter and information, begin to dissolve. That we are embedded within, and a part of, fields.
Mindell saw that these same principles could be applied to psychology and social interactions.
Without including and working with both aspects of our perception, we have only a partial description of reality, and we lack the very information we need to solve our most difficult problems. This is foundational to Processwork and grounded in what modern physics itself discovered when it looked closely enough at nature.
“Just as the earth is moved by the universe, you, me, every human, every life form, and every thing is moved by the universe as well.“
Arnold Mindell
At the quantum level, the act of observing a particle is not a neutral event. The observation participates in determining what appears. Reality does not have fixed properties waiting to be measured. It exists in a cloud of probabilities until attention causes it to resolve.
The practitioner is never outside the system they are working with. Their attention, what they notice and what they pass over, shapes the process that unfolds. The observer is always part of the co-emerging field pehenomena. This is why Processwork is an awareness modality and places as much emphasis on the inner work of the practitioner alongside their outer skills.
Light and matter itself behaves sometimes as a particle with a definite location and sometimes as a wave spread across space as a pattern of probabilities. Which behavior you observe depends entirely on how you look and how the phenomena appears to you in the moment.
Experience also has two modes. When named and fixed, it can be understood as a particle, bounded, locatable, causal. When allowed to remain in its fluid, dreamlike form, it spreads like a wave, connecting unexpectedly across experience, carrying meanings that spiral and flow, repeating patterns through time. In Processwork, we try to hold dual awareness, understanding events both as things in themselves and as a wave that is part of larger, layered waves.
Space is not empty. It is filled with invisible, interpenetrating fields of potential energy that pervade the universe and from which all particles arise as local excitations. Nothing is truly separate. Every particle is a ripple in a field that extends everywhere and is all connected.
Individuals, relationships, families, groups, organizations, societies, eras in time; each of these is a field in and of themselves while simultaneously existing within additional fields, like russian dolls. These fields are an invisible to the eye, but also exist as palpable atmospheres carrying unspoken tensions, collective dreams, marginalized voices, histories and more. In Processwork, practitioners learn to work with the field, bringing to conscious awareness the unspoken elements that are structuring what arises.
Two particles, once they have interacted, remain connected in a way that transcends physical separation. Measure one and the other responds instantaneously, regardless of the distance between them. Einstein called this, and other curious quantum phenomena, “spooky action at a distance.”
People in close relationship often process each other’s material. A partner experiences a symptom mirroring the other’s unexpressed state. A group member suddenly voices what has been present in the room for an hour. These point toward a non-local dimension of psychological experience and connective fabric that ordinary frameworks cannot fully account for. When we understand the quantum interconnection we share, it opens up a whole new arena for understanding what is really going on between us and what to do with it.
The meeting point between Processwork and modern physics lies in a question that physics itself has not fully answered: what is the relationship between consciousness and the physical world?
Quantum discoveries show that consciousness plays a constitutive role in physical reality. It is not a by-product of the physical world, by an active participant in its emergence.
Reality is larger than any single framework can contain. Processwork is an ongoing attempt to keep expanding the framework
Just as gravity is a force due to curvature of the universe, so too the things that bother us are part of our universe's curves or nature.
The Edge Between Physics and Psychology
by Arnold Mindell
Connecting cosmic patterns seen in physics with experiences occurring in psychology and world spiritual traditions.
by Arnold Mindell
How to Listen and Respond to Your Body's Symptoms. A new model of medicine based on the mind-blowing findings of a host of quantum physicists.
by Arnold Mindell
Reveals quantum physics as a modern-day spiritual path for awakening and expanding consciousness.
by Paul Levy
We offer workshops, classes, and longer training programs throughout the year, in person and online. Whether you’re new to this work or looking to deepen your practice, there’s likely something in the upcoming calendar for you.
