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Facilitation & Integration
Spiritual bypassing
German: Spirituelles Bypassing
A term introduced by psychotherapist John Welwood in the 1980s for using spiritual ideas or practices to avoid unresolved emotional, psychological or practical issues, for example insisting that everything happens for a reason in order to skip over grief. In breathwork it is a reminder to keep experiences grounded in everyday life and not to treat bliss or insight as a substitute for working with real difficulties.