Ontological Practice — Therapy at the Level of Being

The word ontology sits in the name of our practice — Baraka Ontology Clinical Counselling — and most clients, understandably, do not know what it means. The word is academic. It comes from Greek, meaning the study of being. Most uses of it in everyday language are technical, philosophical, or hand-wavy. So why is it in our name? What does ontology have to do with therapy?

The short answer: there is a layer of human experience that is not about thoughts, behaviours, emotions, relationships, or any of the other usual subjects of therapy. It is about the way we are. The quality of presence we bring. The relationship we have with our own existence. The being-level register from which all the other registers flow. Ontological practice — drawing on existential philosophy, contemplative traditions, certain branches of coaching, and depth psychology — is the clinical work that operates at this level.

This article is for therapy-savvy readers who want to understand what ontological practice actually involves and why it has a place in contemporary therapy.

What ontological actually means in clinical work

The technical philosophical meaning of ontology is the study of being — what exists, how it exists, what makes something the kind of thing it is. The clinical and coaching uses of the term are narrower and more practical.

In clinical and coaching contexts, ontological refers to the level of practice that addresses how a person is rather than what a person does or thinks. The distinction matters because change at the doing level often does not survive sustained pressure, while change at the being level reorganizes the whole system.

A few illustrative examples:

A client comes in saying I want to be more confident in meetings. The doing-level intervention is: speak up more, prepare more thoroughly, practice assertiveness scripts. These can help. They also tend to plateau. The ontological-level question is: who are you being in those meetings? What is your relationship with yourself in those moments? From what place inside you are you operating? When that level shifts, the doing changes naturally because the being from which the doing emerges has changed.

A client comes in with chronic anxiety. The doing-level intervention is: cognitive restructuring of catastrophizing thoughts, breathing techniques, exposure work. Useful. Also often plateauing. The ontological-level question is: what is your relationship with uncertainty itself? What are you in relation to the world? Are you fundamentally a someone who must control or a someone who can meet what comes? These questions cannot be answered intellectually; they have to be answered at the level of who one is.

A client comes in dissatisfied with a successful career. The doing-level intervention is: change the career, find a new role, try a different industry. Sometimes the right answer. Often a temporary fix that recreates the same dissatisfaction in a new context. The ontological-level question is: who is the one operating in this career? What is your being saying that your doing has not heard? What kind of life are you actually here to live?

The level of work matters. Ontological practice is not a replacement for the other levels — most clients need work at multiple levels. But certain material does not yield until it is met at the ontological register.

Three traditions ontological practice draws from

Several traditions feed into contemporary ontological practice:

Existential philosophy and existential therapy. Heidegger's Being and Time is the foundational text for thinking ontologically. Existential therapists like Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, James Bugental, and Emmy van Deurzen developed clinical practice that takes seriously the existential dimensions of human life — mortality, freedom, responsibility, meaning, isolation. Ontological work draws on this lineage.

Contemplative traditions, particularly Sufism and Buddhist practice. The contemplative traditions of the world have, for thousands of years, been doing the work of changing being rather than only doing. Their techniques — meditation, contemplative inquiry, ritual, the work with attention itself — provide methods for ontological practice that secular Western therapy has only recently begun to incorporate. For our practice, with Persian roots, the Sufi tradition has particular resonance — Rumi, Hafez, Attar all worked, in their own register, at the ontological level.

Ontological coaching, as developed by Fernando Flores, Julio Olalla, Werner Erhard and others. A distinct tradition emerging in the late twentieth century from work in linguistics, philosophy, and somatics. Ontological coaching focuses explicitly on the language, body, and emotion through which a person occurs in the world. While much of this work is in coaching rather than clinical contexts, the framework has informed clinical depth-oriented practice.

Depth psychology and Jungian individuation. The work of becoming who one fundamentally is — Jung's individuation — is itself ontological work. The depth-oriented tradition has its own version of this register.

What ontological work involves in session

A few characteristic features of ontological-level work:

Listening for the being-level question underneath the presenting question. When a client describes a difficulty, a skilled ontological practitioner listens for who the client is being in the difficulty — the underlying stance, posture, way of inhabiting the situation. Often the work is naming this directly. Notice that you are speaking about your life as something happening to you. Who would you be if you spoke about it as something you are creating?

Working with the language a client uses. Language is not just description; it constitutes how reality occurs to the speaker. Working at the language level — what a client calls things, what they take as fact versus interpretation, what they say is and is not possible — is direct ontological work.

Working with the body. Being is embodied. How a person stands, breathes, moves, holds tension is part of who they are being. Body-level interventions — breath, posture, somatic awareness — are part of ontological practice.

Working with mood and emotion as ground rather than weather. Conventional therapy often treats emotion as something happening to the person — to be regulated, processed, expressed. Ontological work also treats emotion as a predisposition for action — a fundamental orientation that shapes what is and isn't possible. Working with the underlying emotional ground is its own kind of intervention.

Inviting practices. Ontological work often involves practices the client undertakes between sessions — contemplative practice, observation, structured experiments in being differently. The work is not just talking about being; it is the slow project of being differently in real life.

The long view. Ontological change is slow. Real shifts in being unfold over months and years. The work requires patience and the willingness to attend to small changes that do not announce themselves dramatically.

Where ontological work fits

Ontological-level work is particularly useful for:

Midlife transition. The classic moment for being-level questions to surface.

Successful but dissatisfied clients. Clients whose lives look fine externally but who feel that something fundamental is missing.

Clients drawn to contemplative or spiritual life. Clients whose questions are existential, spiritual, or meaning-oriented as much as psychological.

Long-term therapy clients who have done significant doing-level work and are ready for the next layer.

Coaching clients who want more than goal-achievement. Transformational Coaching at Baraka draws on ontological practice as its primary frame.

Iranian-Canadian and culturally-rooted clients for whom the contemplative dimensions of their tradition are part of who they are and want to be honored in the therapeutic work.

What ontological work isn't

It is not pseudo-spirituality. It is not philosophical lecture. It is not the substitution of vague being- talk for concrete clinical work. Done well, ontological practice is rigorous, embodied, and practical. It produces real change in real lives — slowly, but durably.

It is also not for everyone. Some clients want practical, structured, time-limited work. Some want symptom relief and not depth work. Some want cognitive change and not being-level reorganization. All of these are legitimate and we offer them where appropriate. Ontological work is for clients drawn to it.

When to come in

If you have done meaningful therapy and you sense that what you are looking for now is not more technique but a different relationship with your own existence — please consider this work.

Ontological practice is integrated across our therapy and coaching at Baraka. Available in English and Farsi, in person at our Ambleside office and online across BC.

• Book a free 15-minute consultation → Or call (236) 455-6306 Email contact@barakaocc.com