Intensive Journal Program
Frequently Asked Questions:

What is it?

Most simply, the Intensive Journal program makes use of a three-ring workbook developed by the late psychologist Ira Progoff. Using the workbook the Intensive Journal workshop leads you through a set of structured exercises that help you draw the many parts of your life together into an integrated whole. The basic exercises allow you to explore all the aspects of your life in depth -- gently, privately, at your own pace. The process includes your life today, events in your history, people who matter to you, your body, your work, the society around you, your dreams and images, your emotions and beliefs. The advanced workshops go more into depth with your inner life, your dreams, and with correlation among the many parts of your life.

Will I be committing myself to journal daily from now on?

Not at all. This method does not depend on keeping a daily diary. Many people journal intermittently, some only during a workshop. You may want to write more frequently at some times in your life, but that is up to you. Dr. Progoff said we all have enough other things to feel guilty about, without feeling guilty about not journaling.

Can I come twice to the same workshop?

The workshop supplies the structure and you supply the content, so you can come as many times as you like. (You can get CEU credit for the first time.) Simply being in a quiet room where other people are concentrating and writing makes it easier for many of us to focus and write.

How is it "Intensive"?

It is "intensive" in that you can set aside a couple of days to focus on your experience and inner life, and then let the journal rest for a while. It is "intensive" in that it goes to the heart of issues without circling at the edges. However, there is no pressure to "wear down your resistance" or to uncover more than you wish to. It is not a process where anyone picks apart what has gone before, what you are experiencing today, or what may be possible in the future. Writing in the workshop room, you are helped through a self-balancing process. Working in a safe place, at your own speed, you can be honest in your privacy and move forward in your life.

How is this workshop different from other workshops?

This is not a workshop where a leader teaches you information, and it is not based on "sharing" your feelings. There are no name tags, no circle where you introduce yourself or tell why you came. You do the work you choose, and no one intrudes. You could remain anonymous and silent, writing quietly for the entire workshop, if that feels right to you.

Keeping a Personal Journal: Finding the Inner Self

by Sister Dorothy Dawes,
St. Mary’s Archivist and long-time Intensive Journal Consultant

"The difficulties we encounter in our life are like logs; our inner life is like a flame. What we need is a safe way to burn the logs." -- Dr. Ira Progoff, founder of the Intensive Journal method.

Creative people of all faiths have kept personal journals. We are all born creative, but circumstances may block our gifts. Dr. Ira Progoff zeroed in on the link between journal-writing and creativity over thirty years ago, and designed a way of helping people learn to keep their own journals, freeing up their creativity. In the process about two-hundred thousand have experienced healing, finding meaning in their lives.

My lifelong call to be a healer drew me to this work more than fifteen years ago, one of those times in my own life when I was acutely aware of my need for healing. Here in this safe place of the journal workshop we learn to take time to look inward; we find the force, the energy, the promised fullness of life that was there from the beginning, but perhaps barricaded by the events, the hurts, the brokenness of day-to-day life. With gentle work, people find they can open a channel for the Spirit to carry them forward with energy to embrace whatever gifts God (or their higher power) has in store for them.

What's different about the journal workshop experience is that it suits "shy people" (those of us who closely guard our privacy) as well as those who are more extroverted. There are no name tags, no introductions, no judgments. Although not rigid, it's more like a silent retreat than like most other groups. You learn to go down alone into your own well, and there discover riches that may surprise you. The Spirit pervades the atmosphere where the inner work is going on. The group is mutually supportive in the solitary experience common to all present. Unbelievers are welcome, and can benefit as well as Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, or others. No one but yourself goes into your well.

Participants, who may have kept journals before or not, are virtually unanimous in describing the experience as a breakthrough in their lives. It's important to know that you don't have to be much given to writing. Nobody reads it but you, and you take your journal with you!

Why would a Catholic nun have taken to this method, begun by a Jewish psychotherapist who studied with Carl Jung, and with the Buddhist teacher, Daisetz Suzuki? Some, though not all, of the country's hundred or so leaders in the Intensive Journal process, called "journal consultants," are Catholic sisters and priests. It may be because Dr. Progoff himself was drawn to the contemplative dimension. The journal process is in harmony with that tradition; it has been for me a source of inner peace through all these years.