Zbyszek Miłuński: “I took the advice of Laozi to be like water: I went where I was guided to go.”

An Interview with Zbyszek Miłuński by Kazimiera Kazijevaitė

Zbyszek Miłuński is a Processwork Diplomate from Poland, an experienced therapist, teacher and supervisor of this method. He belongs to the Polish Association of Psychotherapists and Process Psychology Trainers and the International Association of Process Oriented Psychology. He is also the co-founder of the Process Work Institute Lithuania and one of the teachers working there.  

Zbyszek, you are a process work therapist for twenty five years. How did it all start? How did you find process work? Or maybe it found you?

Yes, process work found me. At first, I read a book “Working with a Dreaming Body” written by Arny Mindell (an American author, therapist, teacher and founder of process oriented psychology or process work.) It was in 80s. The book was interesting, but that’s it. I was a Buddhist at that time, I meditated a lot, it was my way. At the beginning of 90th people were telling me: “Zbyszek, there is such a thing as process work, you should try it, it can be right for you”. But I was answering: “No, no, I have my Zen practice and I don’t need anything else.” 

Finally, after two or three years, I had a car accident and in that way I realized that my Zen practice is not enough for me. I experienced and learned a lot from my practice as a Zen student and I am very grateful for that and all my Zen teachers. But I had some psychological issues, some relationship issues, that my practice could not solve. And then again somebody came to me and repeated the same message about process work, so I decided to go and check it for myself. I started participating in a group meetings and very fast I realized that it is something I am fascinated with. That I want it in my life, that it brings me these special “aha” moments. I couldn’t understand how these people, process workers, are doing that, and I dreamed about becoming one of them. And finally it happened, after many years. 

You mentioned the car accident and the insight you had after that. Could you tell more about it? 

In Zen practice there is this idea that your state of mind just before you die is the most important thing, because it causes your rebirth, so it’s important to have a so called good state of mind, peaceful state of mind. At that time I was married and I loved my wife very much. One day, early in the morning we had an argument just before getting into the car to go for our holidays. I was very angry at her while driving, in fact I was furious, and then we got into an accident. Fortunately nothing happened to us. The car was destroyed, but we were fine. At that moment I realized that even after twenty years of my Zen practice I could have died hating the person that I dearly loved. It was really shocking for me. It showed me that my Zen practice is not enough for me, that probably I need to find another way. Because of that I started practicing process work. 

What fascinated you about a process work? 

I had a very deep personal insight in one of the first group meetings. We were working with a childhood dream or a childhood memory. And I had a deep realization about myself, about patterns that were present in my life. It was a memory of my parents arguing in the middle of the night. As a child, I was watching them almost paralyzed, not understanding what is going on. They seemed to me like Greek gods fighting with each other. Like Zeus and Hera. They were not fighting psychically, just with words, but it was a really strong experience for me. 

When this memory came back, I started to understand more about my whole life. Because there was a polarization. And we in process work often work with polarizations. There were two figures: one was represented by my father, who was both very powerful and hopeless at that moment: he was convinced that his wife did something wrong to him, he felt hurt and was furious at her and sure that he is right. And on the other side there were a figure represented by my mother, helpless and begging: please stop, it is not true, I haven’t done it and so on, but at the same time having different kind of power. 

Many years ago, when I was a beginner psychotherapist, I worked with one of the first couples, they came to my office and they started to fight. I was looking at them, not knowing what am I to do. And then I realized that I am back in my childhood memory, in the same role as then, I am again this hopeless child who doesn’t know what to do with these guys fighting in front of me. At that time, my dear supervisor and friend Connor McKenna helped me find a way to solve this dilemma. He was my coach and my mentor, we worked together a lot. I am very grateful to him and his partner, Clare Hill. 

You mentioned that you had a very deep personal insight working with this childhood memory. Could you say more? 

My insight was that these figures are a part of me. That these are not only my parents, not only something that happened in the past and was difficult for me, but that it is a big part of my inner life. That the meaning of my life is to deal with such situations. And also I realized that not all the time in my life I am in the role of hopeless child. That sometimes in my relationships I am in a role of blind and hurt and furious one. And sometimes of the oponent. That I am traveling between these roles, these polarizations, these points of view. Usually unconsciously. I understood that this pattern of dealing with anger and power in relationships is a part of my life myth. 

This is the idea taken from Jung that there is some deep pattern in our life that we can easily approach when we remember childhood dream, there is blueprint of this deep structure in the first memories. In my case I didn’t remember a dream, but a memory from an early childhood came back to my mind and I worked on it. It was about relationships. It appeared that somehow at least a part of my life myth is dealing with relationships in many different ways.

We are talking about life myth, an important construct of Jungian psychology and Process work, that can give you a very deep insight about your life. You accessed it through your childhood memory.

Yes, if you think about life myth in general and how to access to it, there are other possibilities to get there, to get an insight about the meaning of somebodies life. Very important access could be through long term body symptoms, because they are a very strong and important part of somebodies life. Working with symptoms we can get the deeper meaning of them. And another way of accessing it is working with fairy tales, especially a fairy tale that was important for us when we were children. 

When I asked myself what was the important fairy tale of my childhood I was again shocked with the insight I had. It was a Polish fairy tale. The story was about a man who was sick. The only medicine for him was a water of life from a stream running on the top of a mountain. He had three sons, first was a warrior, the second was a church helper and the third was for nothing. That is, a stupid one who was interested in birds and flowers and such things. Of course, those two went first and failed, didn’t come back. Then the third one went. The biggest challenge on the way there was that anyone climbing the hill was hearing horrible sounds going from behind and when he turned around to see what it was, he was turned into a rock.  The third son went up the hill seeing many rocks on his way, got a water of life and a bird gave him a green branch. On his way down the hill he was dropping some water on every rock and all the people came back to life. 

At that time I was working with groups of men, working on a sick father, that means, on a paternal figure which in our culture is so full of oppression. It was so clear to me that this story was about that and also about what I was doing in my life – bringing back to life people who were turned into stones by their past experiences. And the most amazing thing was that the blueprint of what I was doing in my life was there when I was four or five years old. 

It seems that working with a fairy tale and an early childhood memory was a big inspiration for you to begin your path of becoming a process worker. Was there any people who supported you along the way? 

After coming to my first process work seminars I met Lane Arye (a singer and songwriter, also an internationally known processworker and workshop leader), who came to Poland to teach process work. I was translating for him during workshops and by this cooperation I was very close to what he was doing. And it fascinated me. He worked with some person and then he explained to everybody the structure of a process, what the person did, what he as therapist did and why… He was explaining it on the spot, right away, I was fascinated how he is able to do something like that and I wanted to learn how to do it myself. And then there was a big workshop with Max Shupbach (a facilitator, co-founder, president and educational director of Deep Democracy Institute) who is a very important teacher for me until today. It was a turning point in my life. Or should I say, that there were several things one after the other: car accident, the insight I had after that, the realization working with childhood memory about the deep pattern of my life, meeting Lane Arya and then Max Schupbach. 

We talked about how you came to process work, that the beginning was very powerful for you and you understood you wanted to become a process worker. Could you tell more – what does it mean to become a process worker? I know it takes many years. How it was possible for you to live your everyday life as a simple human being, with a family and the struggles of every day life? How did you find a way? 

From the very beginning of my process work studies I was sure that I wanted to work with people using this method. For me it was a path to change my profession and to change my life. But what does it mean to be a process worker? In fact I started being a process worker earlier, even before hearing about process work. When I am reflecting on my life, I have a feeling that it started much earlier. Unconsciously it started when I was around thirty three. 

I was a Budhist at that time and I read a book written by Dōgen, he was a very important figure in Japanese Zen in fifteen or fourteen century. In this book he was writing: “Oh practitioners, don’t worry about food and dress, it is prepared for you. Just study the dharma.” Meaning, the budhist truth. And I asked myself – do I believe that? Because if I do not, then all my budhism is fake. And I decided that I want to check if it is true. 

At that time I had two children, I was married, and one of my children was very ill, my son had difficulty with moving. I worked at the university and was expected to write a doctoral thesis in philosophy. But I was not much interested in academic career, it was boring for me. I just liked talking with students. The rest was so empty for me. So I left university. I needed medicine for my son and it was expensive. I went to Netherlands to work in the fields as a manual worker to get money. Later I came back to Poland, we bought a medicine for our son and he was better, but money was going down, I didn’t have any job. And when we were almost out of money, somebody came to me and said: “Zbyszek, my friend is looking for a person who could work for him”. I thought: “Oh! Maybe it’s Dōgen! Maybe it’s a message from him!”. 

I took this job. It was totally different then anything I was doing before in my life, it was manual work high over the ground, I had to confront my fear and many other things. But since that moment I never ever looked for a job. I changed jobs many times, but I decided to be guided, I decided to trust Dōgen and check for myself, it was true what he had written or not. And I realized that yes, it was true. Often it was difficult what I was doing for a living. Some of these jobs were really low. For example I was working as a seller for a little company selling chime bells. My work was to produce them, to put them into packages and send them to clients. I had a university degree, but I was doing simple things, sometimes having a nasty boss and so on. But it was OK, I learned a lot. I lost my feelings of superiority, I became much more humble. And when after some time somebody again came to me and began to persuade me to become a process worker I said yes. I just followed. With some resistance at first.

At that time when I read those words of Dōgen, unconsciously I became a process worker in that way that I started to follow feedback coming from the world. I took seriously the advice of Laozi, an ancient Chinese philosopher and a great inspiration to Arny Mindell and all process workers, to be like water – the water goes were the road opens. In my professional life I was just like this – I went where I was guided to go. For example, during one process work seminar I translated for Lane Arya who was working with young men. I said: “You know, Lane, maybe you should do something with men because it is needed in this country”. He told me: “Yes, Zbyszek, do it!”. And then I worked with groups of men for fifteen years. 

I know that you were working with groups of men in Lithuania for some years too. How did you come to Lithuania? You were also guided here? 

Yes, it was the same story. Somebody told me: “Zbyszek, I am going to Lithuania, could you go with me?” And when I came to Lithuania, another person said: “I heard that you are working with men and it is so important. Maybe it would be good if you could give some presentation of what you are doing?” I said: “OK, If you think it would be interesting to anybody, I can do it”. And from there I was invited to have workshops with men, later came workshops with couples, then I began to teach process work, and now we have a Process work institute in Lithuania. 

It sounds that coming to Lithuania was an important turning point in your life. 

Yes, it was. When I had my first public speech in Lithuania the first thing I did – I apologized. I felt that somebody should do that and no one have done it before. I apologized for Polish invasion. It happened in 1921 as I remember. We as nations were friends for a long time, we were allies, together we created Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów or the Commonwealth of Two Nations. But finally we behaved horribly. When your country decided to be Independent we just invaded you. I apologized for that. 

It is very touching. 

From my point of you, we should do things like that. Somebody should apologize. I am Polish, OK, I didn’t participate in this war at that time, but I am still Polish and it is my heritage. So somebody should apologize. I’ve done it not only personally, but from a role of Polish citizen, representing Poland at that moment. I think doing such things is really vital and important. Not only in our personal life, but in our relationships as nations or groups of people. Something is changing in the field even if one unimportant individual is going over the edge and expressing gratitude or apology or anything like that. In that way we can change the world for a bit better place. 

So it went like that in Lithuania. I agreed to do a presentation, then after that a group of men asked me to have a one day workshop. Again I answered „Yes, no problem, I can do it”. And during this one day workshop these men asked me to work with them longer, to have one more workshop. I worked with this group of men a year and a half, something like that. And then they asked me to work with their partners or their wives. I told them: “No way, guys, I will not going to work with your partners to make them nice to you. It’s not the way I am working with people. But if you need that I can propose you a workshop about relationships, for both you and your partners.” 

They agreed and at the end of this seminar about relationships Viki (a student in PWI Lithuania, watsu and body therapist) asked me: “Could you do something about body symptoms and how process work is dealing with body?” I agreed and during this workshop Ieva (now a student in PWI Lithuania, organizer of process work seminars) approached me and said: “Zbyszek, I want to learn from you. Come and teach us.” I answered: “If you gather a group we can do it.” She gathered a group of fifteen people and I worked with this group for two years. Most of these people are now a core of the Process work school in Lithuania. 

So it was growing like that. But a very important step to create a school in Lithuania is connected with Max Schupbach. He encouraged me to go over my edge. I had an edge to understand that I myself can initiate a school. I thought that maybe somebody else will do it and I will join, I tried to connect Lithuanian students with Polish process work school that I am part of, but it didn’t work well. There is too big difference between Polish school and Lithuanian approach, I would say. Recently I met Max after some years of not seeing each other. We had a conversation and he said: “Zbyszek, you already have a school in Lithuania. You are working there for eight years or something and you think you don’t have it? Go for it! You can invite two more diplomates in process work and create a school. Do it!“ I was at the edge and asked him: “Are you going to support me?” He said: “Of course, I will support you!“ And then I invited Stephie (Stephanie Bachmair) and Gabrysia (Anna Gabryjelska-Basiuk) and asked Max Schupbach and Ellen Schupbach to become our mentors and now we have a school. It’s a long way to go to really establish it, but we already done a lot and I am so proud and happy about it. Especially because I was able to give you what you wanted so much. I felt this calling from so many people here. A deep calling to create a school in Lithuania. And I struggled for a long time to be able to answer it. I am really happy that I found a way to do it or a way found me and all of us.