Felipe Capiral is an alumnus of our Masters in Counseling Psychology program, as well as offering psychotherapy services in his own practice. Felipe recently gave a talk on “Reconnecting with Inner Child Through Playful Attitude and Buddhist Concept of Non-Attachment” during Journey Week 2024. I’m delighted to speak with him about his work.
Angela Borda: Thanks for speaking with me, Felipe. Can you begin by telling us a little about your background and what led you to Pacifica and the counseling program in particular?
Felipe Capiral: Psychology has been my passion. I’ve always been interested in dreams and human behavior. Right before I went to Pacifica, I finished a Masters degree in research in Los Angeles. What led me to Pacifica was a synchronous event. Someone mentioned Pacifica to me years ago, and when I attended a writing workshop there in 2014, I got in touch with some of the people there in different programs and it really appealed to me. It felt right. And I had a very deep sense of “this is my home.” It nurtured my organic interest in the psyche, not in the cognitive behavioral sense but on a soul level.
Prior to becoming a therapist, I was working as an occupational therapist, learning about human life and impermanence, which was the topic of my talk at Journey Week. Physical rehabilitation taught me about decline, death, and it formed my world view, how I approach my life and practice. I have this sense of immediacy, living our lives to the fullest, to be grounded in our bodies and experiences, being able to live out our potential. I also grew up in a Filipino culture that values practicality and relationships, so that’s the kind of background that formed me. Synchronistic events in my life have been a big thing and have led me to where I’m at now, honoring dreams and the patterns I see around me. My upbringing in the Philippines was close to nature, it helped me become detached from the materialist perspective. My upbringing in the Philippines and our openness with nature got me ready to be more receptive to the ideas of Jung and depth psychology.
Angela: On the home page of your website, you have the quote by Jung, “An innate urge of life is to produce an individual as complete as possible.” How have depth psychology and Jung influenced or shaped your practice?
Felipe: One thing that appeals to me with Jung is that no path is ever wrong. We have to honor the path we’re on and be who we are. That’s his real message of individuation, to discover who we are and only by being who we are can we be free. That’s my take on how he influenced me. Other schools of thought in psychology tend to apologize for anything that doesn’t conform to the status quo. But with Jung, you are just being who you are, and everything about you makes psychological sense if you’re going to dig deeper. I find it to be more compassionate toward the human condition. That appeals to me, unlike the perspective of mainstream psychology.
My practice is continually evolving. I honor transformation and evolution because it means something is alive. Only dead things don’t evolve. I mostly now see people who want to free themselves to be who they are, that’s the general flavor of my practice, first to discover who they are and then develop into that being that they’re meant to be. This is what constitutes freedom. In Hindu philosophy it’s called moksha.
Angela: I understand that you are a photographer and a poet. Is there an intersection between the creative arts and depth psychology for you?
Felipe: Absolutely. For me, depth psychology is being aware, to feel and honor what comes up from the psyche, something that’s beyond the physical reality. The arts helped normalize for me the so-called darker aspects of human nature. It’s helped me to be more relaxed about accepting the darkness of other people and myself too. I write poetry whenever I get the inspiration and that also is depth oriented, because we use images whenever we get inspired, we use metaphors; those are modalities of depth psychotherapy. When we talk about images, we’re able to get in touch with something beyond logic or the linear.
Angela: We were fortunate to have you speak at Journey Week on “Reconnecting with Inner Child Through Playful Attitude and Buddhist Concept of Non-Attachment.” Can you tell us a little of what you spoke about, and whether or not this is a subject of interest that stems from your practice, your research, or perhaps future projects?
Felipe: That talk came to being while having a conversation with my nephew. He told me he was worried about the future. I told him the future doesn’t exist yet, so why worry about it? We’re so oriented toward the future that we lose track of what’s happening in the now. There’s a chronic unhappiness, discontent, anxiety when we live for the future instead of living for the now. By having a playful attitude, we do things for the sake of doing them, not motivated by anything else. For example, I create videos/reels for enjoyment, and people ask me if I’m making money from that. I say, “No, why should I do that? If money comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, so what.” That’s the playful attitude. Not being attached. You do your best at things and then you are not attached to the results. Failure is part of it, winning is part of it. We’re so attached to the concept of winning and gain. We need to be okay with whatever comes. According to Allan Watts, it has to do with liberation from social constraints and the dictates of society; it goes back to Jung’s concept of individuation.
Angela: In your experience, what is the importance of Journey Week within the Pacifica community and to you as a returning alumnus?
Felipe: Journey Week attracts people with something to bring to the table, it gives alumni the chance to be in touch with different ideas. That makes me feel alive and fresh, to get in touch with something that touches us. Those things become part of who we are.
Angela: Any upcoming professional ventures that you’d like to share with us?
Felipe: I travel a lot, four times a year internationally. I wander. I call it “wandering travels.” I go to a place without any plans and see for myself how it turns out. It really teaches me to live in the moment. I’ve been to 42 countries so far, and recently I’ve been to Taiwan, India, Thailand, and the Philippines of course. Usually I go to Europe a lot. This coming year, I’m planning to go back to France, Spain, maybe Mongolia. Something that’s universal is human emotion; everywhere in the world people smile when they’re happy and cry when they’re sad. There’s no superior culture, each culture is superior in its own right. My favorite experience so far has been three months I took in 2012, and that’s where my Master’s thesis came from, about travel and psychological transformation. I learned so much from that.
Angela: Thank you so much for speaking with me today. I wish you all the best, being in the moment!
Click for more information on our Masters in Counseling Psychology program.
Felipe Capiral is a Filipino-American Depth Psychotherapist who graduated from Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is also a graduate of Masters in Transformational Psychology from what was then University of Philosophical Research, now Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. He is connected with Coldwater Counseling Center as one of their part time therapists as well as having a private practice. He has delivered lectures about Depth Psychology in different parts of the world. in You can find out more about him at www.livingfullyandconsciously.com
Angela Borda is a writer for Pacifica Graduate Institute, as well as the editor of the Santa Barbara Literary Journal. Her work has been published in Food & Home, Peregrine, Hurricanes & Swan Songs, Delirium Corridor, Still Arts Quarterly, Danse Macabre, and is forthcoming in The Tertiary Lodger and Running Wild Anthology of Stories, Vol. 5.
