Integral Transformative Practice (ITP) - Esalen Institute

Integral Transformative Practice (ITP)

Practice, Principles, and Promise
By Peter Friedberg

One of the most salutary things about the last three decades is the extraordinary amount of
research that has gone into the exploration and practice of human potentials. Pioneered by world-
renowned Esalen Institute, this research is one of the most profound contributions to the well-
being of humanity that one could imagine.

What is equally exciting, and perhaps even more important, is that the results of these intense
investigations have increasingly been brought together into synergistic packages, known
generically as Integral Transformative Practices, which are proving to be the most effective means
of human transformation yet devised.

Leaders in this field are, of course, Michael Murphy and George Leonard, and it is a pleasure to be
associated with them and their extraordinary work, which, in my mind, is the culmination of the
human potential movement itself. Count me as a grateful supporter and practitioner of this
important work.
— Ken Wilber, author of
Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

Esalen's chairman Michael Murphy and its president George Leonard had been
friends, colleagues, and intellectual soul mates for nearly thirty years, yet the two
men had never conducted a class together. By the close of 1991, this was about
to change. As the year drew to an end, Murphy was putting the finishing touches
on The Future of the Body, his exhaustive study of extraordinary human
capacities and metanormal experiences, and Leonard had just published Mastery,
a paean to the benefits of long-term practice. Their work had led them to a point
where they wanted to try out their ideas together to see if people with busy lives
could transform themselves for the better with long-term practice.

And so in January of 1992, Murphy and Leonard convened an experimental class
in what they called Integral Transformative Practice (ITP). That class, which met
once a week for two years, generated material, inspiration, and the extraordinary
results for their coauthored The Life We Are Given: A Long-Term Program for
Realizing the Potential of Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul. Since that time, the world
has witnessed the launching of an ITP website, www.itp-life.com; a videotape,
The Tao of Practice; several large-scale university experiments (including a
Sonoma State study with university students that produced remarkable results,
and a Stanford study with senior citizens); and ITP groups around the globe ("The
sun never sets on the ITP Kata," Leonard has said, only half-joking).

Now Murphy and Leonard, along with Annie Styron Leonard and Barry Robbins,
are bringing ITP back home to Esalen. During one unprecedented weekend, March
5-7, the entire Esalen property will be devoted to ITP. Specialized sessions will be
held in Esalen's four major meeting rooms, each offering a different aspect of ITP.
The Friday and Saturday night sessions will bring all participants together for
practice, discussion, networking, and celebration. In addition, there will be a five-
day workshop offered April 25-30 for those interested in furthering their ITP
training and starting their own ITP group.

The Practice

Integral Transformative Practice is a comprehensive, systematic, holistic approach
to personal transformation. It was created as a daily practice intended to tap our
latent capacities so that we may, to borrow a familiar phrase, "be all that we can
be." At the heart of the ITP practice is a series of mind-body-spirit exercises

called a Kata (Japanese for "form," or series of movements). A succession of
movements, rotations, stretches, twists, contractions, and relaxations, the ITP
Kata does not require a lot of time; at a relaxed pace, it can be performed in forty
minutes. Drawn from hatha yoga, martial arts, modern exercise physiology,
Progressive Relaxation, visualization research, and witness meditation, the Kata is
designed to:

• Balance and center body and psyche

• Provide an overall warm-up, raising the heartbeat, increasing blood flow,
and sending heat to all parts of the body

• Articulate nearly every joint, enhancing lubrication of the synovial joints
(such as shoulder, ankle, or knee, which are surrounded by fluid-filled
capsules)

• Provide stretches to increase flexibility in all major muscle groups

• Provide three essential strength exercises

• Offer a complete set of Progressive Relaxation exercises

• Enhance the capacity for deep, rhythmic breathing

• Apply transformational imaging and affirmations, utilizing the power of
intentionality to effect positive changes in body and psyche

• Enhance the experience of the ten-minute concluding meditation

The affirmations are not just "New Year's resolutions." The Life We Are Given
contains a statistical breakdown which directly correlates the success of realizing
the affirmations with a participant's degree of focus and commitment to the
practice. It is this correlation that helped to produce the book's many stories of
radical transformation of body and being.

The Principles

ITP is based on a set of powerfully persuasive principles. These principles, along
with the impressive results compiled in The Life We Are Given, provide a strong
argument for the most resistant of would-be practitioners. Some of the principles
(excerpted verbatim from Leonard and Murphy's book) are:

• Most of us realize just a fraction of our human potential. We live only part
of the life we are given.

• The culture we inhabit reinforces only some of our latent capacities while
neglecting or suppressing others.

• Most, if not all, human attributes can give rise to extraordinary versions of
themselves, either spontaneously or through transformative practice.

• Extraordinary attributes, when seen as a whole, point toward a more
powerful and luminous human nature.

• A widespread realization of extraordinary attributes might lead to an
epochal evolutionary turn analogous to the rise of life from inorganic
matter and of humankind from its hominid ancestors.

• To last, extraordinary attributes must be cultivated. For a many-sided
realization of extraordinary attributes, for integral transformation, we need
a practice that embraces body, mind, heart, and soul.

• Enduring transformative practices are comprised of several identifiable
activities, or transformative modalities, such as disciplined self-observation,
visualization of desired capacities, focused surrender to emergent
capacities, and elicitation of the "relaxation response." Integral practices
incorporate these modalities to produce a balanced development of our
entire nature.

• These modalities operate in everyday life to some extent, whether or not
we are engaged in a formal practice. In other words, all of us practice on a
daily basis, albeit in a fragmented, largely unconscious manner. Integral
practiceÉaims to make our fragmented practices conscious, creative, and
coherent and harness them for health and growth.

• To last and to be successful, integral practice must be engaged primarily
for its own sake, without obsession with ends and results. Its practitioners
do best when they learn to enjoy the rewards of long-term, diligent
practice.

• The grace-laden nature of extraordinary attributes, and the sublimity,
power, and beauty they reveal, strongly suggest thatÉthe world's primary
tendency is to manifest great goods that are hidden in it. That tendency
inclines us toward extraordinary life, which can best be realized through
integral practices.

The Promise

ITP is not a quick-fix approach. There are no "three easy steps" to fitness, health,
or enlightenment, no lightning bolts waiting to vivify us with Shaktipat. In fact, it
is our search for short cuts and climactic experiences that has helped engender
not only today's pandemic self-destructive and addictive behavior but also the
pervasive disillusionment with the very idea of positive human transformation.
Long-term change requires long-term practice. And such practice can produce
results that appear nothing short of magical. Integral Transformative Practice is a
long-term practice designed to best align the whole person with the "sublimity,
power, and beauty in the stuff of the universe."

—Peter Friedberg
Esalen Catalog Editor

At the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention we recently finished a three-year
investigation into the ITP model and its effect on three cohorts of senior citizens. The first two
groups included people who expressed an interest in improving their health and well-being while
the third group was comprised of patients diagnosed with atrial arrhythmias, or irregular
heartbeats. Each group met for a year and was facilitated by a psychologist practiced in the
methods of Integral Transformative Practice. The 150-minute weekly meetings included group
practice of the ITP Kata, group sharing, a lecture on some aspect of health and instruction in the
development and use of affirmations. The participants were assessed for improvement in quality of
life, emotional well-being, cognitive functioning, and physical health, at the beginning and the end
of the year of practice. Only the data on cognitive functioning has been completed to date. The
results show that at the end of the year the ITP participants demonstrated measurable gains in
reaction time, short- and long-term memory, reasoning ability, and global cognitive processing.

—Frederic Luskin, Ph.D.
SAGE Project Director