History of Astrotherapy:

In a way, Astrotherapy started at a lunch gathering during an astrology workshop.  Rob Hand, arguably one of the top three astrologers in the world was talking during lunch about a client he had done a reading for in New York.  It appears that the client’s chart showed a simply horrible past year:  alcoholism, depression, even suicide.  He prepared for a tough session with the client and asked, after preliminary greetings:  “how have things been?”.  The response surprised him.  The woman said “Fine, its been a great year!” 

“What have you been doing?”

“I’m in a little off Broadway play that’s getting great reviews”

“Oh!  What’s the play about?”

“Judy Garland!”

This shows that, while astrology’s symbolism is correct, we humans can dance our own sort of dance to the tune that is given to us!  Thus the seed for Astrotherapy was born.

In keeping with this idea, Astrotherapy attempts to use the symbols of the chart and its ongoing advancement through time to show what tune is currently playing on the “cosmic jukebox”.  The idea then is to find the right dance to go along with it.  Once we know we won’t clash with the current pattern, we can live more freely within that pattern.

Astrological Sources:

The medieval astrologers were masters at their art, we are only now realizing how accomplished they were with recent translation from the Latin, Arabic and Greek sources.  One unique perspective was to look at the different departments of life (the houses) very thoroughly in order to understand the circumstances surrounding the person.  These techniques, along with certain predictive methods form one of the important streams of understanding in the astrotherapy process.

In addition, in the twentieth century, modern psychology was found to have a unique partner in the analysis of an astrological chart's symbols.  While many of the medieval tools had been temporarily lost, twentieth century astrologers found that new techniques, based on a modern understanding of the psyche were equally applicable to the astrological chart.  This tradition allows astrotherapy to work in a unique partnership between the astrologer/therapist and the client, to find strengths and areas of developmental challenge to overcome.

Psychotherapeutic Sources:

In the late twentieth century, a therapeutic genius named Milton H. Erickson, a psychiatrist who settled in Phoenix, Arizona (after being raised in the midwest) was discovered by researchers and clinicians to be doing very unique things with his patients.  His methods were studied and had impact on hypnosis, Neuro Linguistic Programming, family therapy and brief methods of psychotherapy.

One of those methods, the solution focused approach, aims to find the exceptions to a problem and focus the client on those, often rapidly changing previously "stuck" circumstances.  This approach believes that change is always happening and that positive moments and skills of the client can be utilized to move forward into a solution to the problem without long periods of difficult "analysis".  Since an underlying assumption of astrology is that of constant change, and medieval astrology allows one to find the strengths in the chart due to its techniques, they go very well together.

Schema therapy, on the other hand, comes out of the cognitive behavioral school, but recognizes the origins of long held beliefs and attitudes in the early life of the client.  Challenging the thoughts, healing the emotions and teaching new behaviors are the main tools used.  Those limiting thoughts patterns, called "lifetraps" or "schemas" are examined to find where they started, how they have affected the person's life and where they are triggered in the present.  The patterns in the astrological chart can give strong indications of the areas to be examined and help to short cut the process of investigation.

Added to this is the robust personality theory of Hakomi, body centered therapy, which looks to find the interaction between beliefs and their expression in the body.  By working with feelings in the body, core beliefs and material such as memories can be accessed and worked with, allowing one to bypass the incomplete understanding of the conscious mind.


All of the above combine to weave a rich pattern of outlooks to help the client find new insights into themselves and their situation.