Today, around the world and across traditions, the ancient spiritual practice of meeting regularly with a spiritual director is growing and developing. Here, I explore 6 key contemporary trends based on my own experience, and drawing on recent comments by Liz Budd Ellmann (executive director of Spiritual Director's International)* and reflections from a recent Retreat Association conference of those across the UK involved in running training Courses in Spiritual Direction.

Spiritual direction is not a modern innovation but a very ancient and simple process of one person offering another spiritual guidance and counsel. In the Christian tradition this goes back to the Old Testament with Moses giving guidance to the Israelites in the desert and Eli helping Samuel in how to answer when God called. In the New Testament, Paul wrote letters of spiritual guidance to new groups of converts across the Roman Empire. In the 3rd, 4th and 5th Centuries this

Are you wondering what the similarities and differences are between counselling or therapy, and spiritual direction? After all, they both use many of the same active listening skills in working with people. Both offer a safe and supportive space for the person to talk about their lives. Indeed, they both can cover very similar ground in that in spiritual direction the person can share anything from their life experience that is with them at this time, not just their prayer o

What is spiritual direction? The first thing to say about spiritual direction is that it's not about telling people what to do, but rather about helping people find and follow their spiritual direction in life. Sometimes it is called spiritual accompaniment or spiritual companioning, or even spiritual mentoring. Sometimes people refer to themselves as 'soul friends' of another - 'anam cara' in the Christian Celtic tradition. Below, I have gathered together a wide range of p