About Jon Terrell, M.A.
Jon Terrell, MA, has over forty years of experience as a psychotherapist, retreat leader, and meditation teacher. For the last twenty five years, he has also focused on leading intensive emotional healing events.
He helps people awaken to the healing power within them to become a force for good in the world.
Jon has extensive training in helping people through transforming consciousness, healing, and psychotherapy. Advanced Meditation is his site focusing on Inner Light-Fire meditation techniques, chakra awakening and energy healing.
Jon is a Core Faculty member at the Omega Institute and director of Star Dance Ranch.
Jon offers a different kind of healing and awakening which integrates years of professional training and direct personal experience of Inner Light-Fire.
Childhood Experiences of Inner Light
As a child, Jon began to have transformational experiences which shaped his whole life. His early childhood experiences initiated a journey of discovery into Inner Light, energy and emotional healing, and embodied spirituality.
When he was 5, Jon entered an uplifting and unusual state of consciousness for the first time. While playing alone with a wooden ruler, sunlight reflected off the ruler into his eyes. The Light lifted him into a dream-like state. These engaging, comforting, and healing experiences continued until he was 9 or 10.
The Inner Light seemed to guide him into a place that had no correspondence in his day-to-day life. However, when he reached his late teens this changed, as if the world began to reveal to many others what he was shown.
In a way, his childhood experiences were "a preview of coming attractions."
Inner LightFire Meditation and Energy Healing
Jon explored many traditions, especially those that spoke of Inner Light beyond just a metaphor for personal growth or healing. Jon tried numerous meditation and healing programs to find out more about this Light and the process of awakening.
He had many questions: Was the Light real? How do you access it? Is the Light of my childhood related to the experiences of enlightenment that spiritual masters described?
He joined a small study group made up of students and faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz to explore cutting-edge personal growth schools and techniques and join the best. The work of G. Gurdjieff had influenced Jon since high school and it was the main focus of the group.
In 1969, Jon attended a lecture by Ralph Metzner, who had joined Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) at Harvard to explore the power of psychedelic drugs to alter consciousness. After Harvard, Ralph followed Rosemary Leary's suggestion to meet Russell Paul and Carol Ann Schofield, who taught Inner Light techniques at the School of Actualism in southern California. Ralph quickly embraced their teachings, and was a student of their work. Ralph's talk focused on Inner Light, as did several of his later books.
Jon and all the study group members made their way down to study with the Schofields. Jon planned to stay for just a weekend but ended up spending the whole summer exploring what they called Agni Yoga, or Inner LightFire. Later they called their organization Actualism.
Advanced Meditation is a direct outgrowth of their training, although we present it updated and streamlined.
Both Schofields had clairvoyant abilities and could see the energetic changes taking place in their students. They connected with clairvoyants to study the effects of Inner LightFire and to refine the language they used so that students could have consistent experiences. They developed a series of techniques to help students learn how to work with Inner Light for personal growth and later planetary healing.
One benefit of years of practicing these techniques is that Jon now uses the clairvoyant abilities he gained to help clients focus on what they personally need to accelerate personal development, healing and awakening.
Jon found the techniques he learned clarified his earlier experience of Inner Light and provided a detailed framework to understand awareness, consciousness, identity, and much more.
The training awakened Jon to the world of Light and energy and most importantly, provided a method of transformation and awakening.
For the next 18 years Jon studied and taught these techniques, becoming a teacher and then senior trainer for the school while directing training centers throughout the US. He also led the school's Energy Healing program, teaching bodywork skills to students and offering group and private sessions to clients.
As part of the School of Actualism, Jon also directed one of the first wellness centers in the U.S. in 1973. It included eastern and western medicine, massage, energy healing, counseling, and meditation instruction. He also organized two conferences on "Healing Energy."
During this period, Jon also studied with teachers of energy healing in the US and abroad. Jon received training in CranioSacral Therapy (from Upledger), Touch for Health, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, and other forms of energy healing. He traveled to the Philippines and observed their psychic healers' work.
Russell and Carol Ann asked Jon to be one of two leaders to lead the school after their deaths. After Russell's death, Jon was president of the School of Actualism from 1986-1989. During this period he worked to transform the organization to a healthier, more stable and enduring organization.
Upon completing as much as he could, Jon resigned as president and Staff Director to focus on personal healing and find what was missing for him in the training. Jon moved to the Northeast U.S. and shifted his focus to deep emotional healing, first personal work, and then to help others.
Transforming Emotional Pain
Jon was led to Shalom Mountain Retreat and Study Center, in the Catskill Mountains, where he found the emotional healing that he was looking for. At Shalom Mountain he was able to heal deep emotional pain from his past. Under the leadership of Lawrence Stibbards and Joy Davey, Jon attended numerous personal retreats, and entered their retreat leader training program.
Starting with a six-month internship, and after several years of training, Jon began leading emotional healing retreats at Shalom Mountain and eventually on his own at Star Dance Ranch as well as in California and Florida.
He has now led retreats to help people transform grief, anxiety, anger and other difficult emotions for over twenty years. That work is the focus of another website.
Jon is also a core faculty member at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y.
Academic Education
Jon's academic education includes traditional psychology, psychotherapy, and spiritual psychology.
Jon's has a B.A. in psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Masters in Transpersonal Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. As part of his Masters, he studied Imagery at the Huntington Therapy Institute in New York.
He earned post-Masters certification in Marriage and Family Therapy and Mental Health Counseling from Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts.
Additional training areas include Psychosynthesis, Holotropic and other types of Breathwork, Core Energetics, and Gestalt Therapy. He studied Process Therapy extensively at Shalom Mountain Retreat and Study Center, where he completed a 6-month internship, and numerous trainings focusing on emotional healing and spiritual psychology.
During this time, he also completed a year-long training with Carol Jud at the Institute for Process Therapy in New Haven.
Jon was on staff at Shalom Mountain for many years until he left to open Star Dance Ranch.
Where Is He Located
Jon lives in western Massachusetts at Star Dance Ranch. Star Dance Ranch is his home and also a retreat center where Jon leads 3-5 day Grief, Loss and Difficult Emotions Retreats and Advanced Meditation programs. He also leads winter retreats in Florida and occasionally in California. He has a private practice in Sunderland, MA.
If you have a question for Jon or would like to schedule a session, you can reach him through the form below. He also offers private sessions via Skype and FaceTime.