What is Compassionate Inquiry?

In 2019 I was part of the first group of people to train and certify in Compassionate Inquiry (CI), which is an approach to short-term therapy developed by Gabor Maté, the renowned trauma and addiction specialist.

Because Gabor is so well known and respected, I get a lot of people contacting me who are curious about CI — so many that a few weeks ago I decided to create a post for Instagram that offered a short and simple summary of the approach. It seemed to connect with people so I thought I’d expand on it a little here and offer some background on how I came to train in Compassionate Inquiry.

I’ve been following Gabor’s work on addiction and trauma for some time, but it was around 2015 that I learned he was also doing a form of therapy in the ayahuasca groups that he facilitated.

Through my own exploration of ayahuasca, I met some friends who had been to the retreats he organized in Mexico and apprenticed with him for a couple of years, learning his approach to group processing and integration in the context of plant medicine healing.

I’d already been doing psychedelic integration counseling for a few years so naturally I was interested in how Gabor approached this work, particularly how we might address healing from trauma and addiction with the help of the plants.

In 2017, after returning from a stint teaching yoga at an ayahuasca healing centre in Peru, I had the chance to go to a Compassionate Inquiry weekend workshop with Gabor in Toronto.

I write about the “eureka” moment I experienced during the workshop in my book, but the gist of it is that I was struck by how compatible CI was with my approach to yoga and the values I try to uphold in my teaching and coaching work.

One of Gabor’s great strengths (in my opinion) is that he has a voracious thirst for knowledge and a gift for distilling and synthesizing the essence of whatever subject he’s diving into. In the case of CI, he has gone deep into researching the causes and effects of childhood trauma, explored the most effective therapies for treatment, and synthesized the best of it into a clear and coherent approach that seemed to me to be a way of helping someone do the kind of self-inquiry that is at the heart of yoga.

The big revelation to me — the eureka moment — was seeing that there could be a way to guide someone to the kind of revelatory, perspective-altering insights I’d had in both my yoga practice and in the plant medicine ceremonies I’d participated in. I remember the following words appearing to me like a vision over the stage where Gabor was presenting:

“Yoga is the therapy! The therapy is yoga!”

After a year of working with Compassionate Inquiry as part of my therapy toolkit I’ve found this to really be true — at least the way I use CI in my work.

CI isn’t the only approach I incorporate into my coaching, but when I suspect there might be an unconscious belief lying under the surface of someone’s suffering, CI does a great job of helping me guide someone to discovering and uprooting it. I think that’s an important aspect of CI — that it’s essentially an approach to guided self-inquiry — because it’s only when we see something ourselves that it really hits home.

The moment when we see it for our self is the key to real transformation.

When inquiry unlocks an insight it opens the door to a whole new possibility for who we are and how we show up in our life. In that opening we have the opportunity to grow beyond the hurtful core beliefs that are limiting us, rather than just paving over them with some positive affirmations or mantras.

So, with all of that background, here are some points I compiled about Compassionate Inquiry as I understand and experience it. I originally put this together for a post on Instagram, as part of a series where I share some of the “Therapy Field Notes” I’ve been writing.

What is Compassionate Inquiry?

  • Compassionate Inquiry (CI) is a method of guided self-inquiry developed by renowned trauma and addiction expert Dr. Gabor Maté.

  • Together, the individual and CI practitioner explore the present state of the integrated body-mind to reveal the living truth that lies beneath the stories we tell ourselves.

  • Through Compassionate Inquiry, the client can recognize the unconscious dynamics that run their lives and how to liberate themselves from them. As Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

  • Compassionate Inquiry facilitates a process of understanding, growth and transformation that leads to the client experiencing more freedom, authenticity and intimacy in their life.

“The purpose of Compassionate Inquiry is to drill down to the core stories people tell themselves — to get them to see what story they are telling themselves unconsciously; what those beliefs are, where they came from; and guide them to the possibility of letting go of those stories, or letting go of the hold those stories have on them.”

— Dr. Gabor Maté


To learn more about Compassionate Inquiry and explore working with me, please consider booking a free 15-minute consultation.

Brian James

Brian James is an artist, musician, coach and cultural activist located on Vancouver Island, Canada.

http://brianjames.ca
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