Finding Meaning and Purpose in Your Life

This workshop is being hosted live online only and will not be recorded to maintain the privacy of all attendees. Instructions on how to join will be emailed to registrants shortly before the workshop start date.

If you need to request accessibility accommodations, please email publicprograms@ciis.edu at least one week prior to the workshop start date. For more information, explore our Frequently Asked Questions.

Finding meaning in life is one of humanity’s most profound and ever-lasting tasks. We may never understand or reach consensus on the meaning of life in general, but each of us can certainly seek meaning and purpose in our own lives. In difficult periods and transitions—whether they are personal or collective crisis points like the 2020/21 pandemic—many people feel called to examine their lives and search for new or richer directions.

Join CIIS professor and psychotherapist Dr. Helge Osterhold for a transformative workshop exploring meaning and purpose. Drawing from depth psychology, global wisdom traditions, and over 20 years of experience working as a mentor and guide with individuals and groups, Dr. Osterhold guides participants through a series of inquiries designed to explore and discover deeper levels of meaning.

During this unique day-long workshop, Dr. Osterhold offers engaging individual and group explorations, using guided meditation, reflection, journaling, and soulful conversation to investigate ways of leading fulfilling, aligned, and purposeful lives.


Dr. Helge Osterhold is a psychotherapist and integrative educator. Teaching graduate level psychology courses since 2006, he joined the East-West Psychology department as a core faculty member at CIIS in 2017 and offers courses in Jungian Psychology, Archetypal Psychology, Dreamwork, Spiritual Counseling, and the Psychology of Death and Dying. His theoretical and clinical orientation includes transpersonal, depth and humanistic-existential psychologies with a special appreciation for systemic thinking, indigenous wisdom, and multiculturalism.

For 10 years, Dr. Osterhold served at the University of California San Francisco - in pediatric palliative care and as an educator on mindful caregiving and clinician resiliency at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital and UCSF School of Medicine.

Originally from Germany, Dr. Osterhold received a BA in Human Relations, an MA in Integral Counseling Psychology and a PhD in East-West Psychology and is licensed as a psychotherapist in California. Dr. Osterhold maintains a private psychotherapy practice with a focus on life transitions. He is the author of The Body’s Code – Synchronicity and Meaning in Illness and Injury. Through a depth psychological lens, his book explores how viewing serious health crisis as synchronistic events can provide an understanding as to how such suffering may meaningfully impact and transform psychological, spiritual, relational, and professional-creative levels of a person’s life.

CIIS students, staff, and faculty receive discounts on all events. CIIS Public Programs Members receive a 20% discount on all events. Contact us for more information at publicprograms@ciis.edu.