UNDERPINNINGS AND PRINCIPLES OF JOAN’S WORK
This is an ongoing distillation of underpinnings which have shaped Joan’s work

AT A GLANCE

Backstage and Behind the Scenes…………………………

WELCOME…………………………………………………………

ENQUIRY ON YES, NO………………………………………….

CHOICE AND PAUSE…………………………………………….

ENQUIRY ON CHOICE AND PAUSE………………………….

PURE HEART/PURE INTENTION…………………………….

INTERRELATIONAL GROUP PRINCIPLES:

CONFIDENTIALITY, THE FIELD, SELF CARE, MUTUAL SUPPORT AND COOPERATION AND LAYERS OF SUPPORT………………………………………………………………

DOC ON SUPER EGO IN ESSENCE 24 FOLDER

BRIEF AND FREQUENT EYE CONTACT……………………..

GUIDELINES AND PRINCIPLES THAT SUPPORT BODY:

INTERNAL WITNESS, STRUCTURE AND FLOW……………

DOC ON WITNESS IN ESSENCE 24 FOLER

DIRECT EMBODIED EXPERIENCE …………………………………

ENQUIRY ON STRUCTURE AND FLOW……………………….

TOUCH AND ATTENTION………………………………………….

EFFORT AND THE LAW OF 5%........................................

ENQUIRY ON EFFORT AND 5%........................................

IMPULSE…………………………………………………………………

DIRECT COMMUNICATION…………………………………………

HOSTING GUIDELINES DOC IN ESSENCE 24 SHARED GOOGLE FOLDER

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CELLULAR KNOWING AND NERVOUS SYSTEM KNOWING DOC IN ESSENCE 24 SHARED GOOGLE FOLDER

EMPATHIC RESONANCE…………………………………………

RESOLUTION OF PARADOX…………………………………………

INHERENT ORDER………………………………………………………

CLEAR PRESENCE………………………………………………………

 

Annunciation

Even if I don’t see it again — nor ever feel it
I know it is — and that if once it hailed me
it ever does –

And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction not as towards a place, but it was a tiltingwithin myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t — I was blinded like that — and swam
in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.

• Marie Howe

 

OVERALL GUIDING PRINCIPLES

The following is a mixture of insights and felt sense understandings that have come into my life over the past fifty years. I offer them to you for whatever they are worth. I invite you to take what lands for you and what doesn’t and make it into your own. Some of them may be more specific to different cultural backgrounds. You can decide which fit more for you. However, I feel most of them are quite Universal.

 Many of these principles go together so how they are listed here is not in any order of priority but more of a non linear process from which each of you can make your own groupings and associations.

I have also included a series of ENQUIRIES for each of you to explore.

For many of the principles, I would like to thank Ray Castellino for their formulation and will put (rc) after those ones which are specific to him.

 

BACKSTAGE AND BEHIND THE SCENES

To function well in this world,

we need to become better at not knowing, at being at a loss...

Marcus Jenal

 

I am currently in touch again with a longing to return to a SIMPLE state of existence and consciousness; to SIMPLIFY and bring everything back to its most ESSENTIAL.

When I contact this longing, I often have the physical experience of almost falling backwards and translate that now into a longing to get BEHIND THE BEHIND the complexities of my thinking and reflections, my feelings and bodily processes, my creativity and my conditionings, my history and stories. I have a deep need to believe and deeply know (in a way that is beyond a mental ‘knowing’) that at the heart of all processes is a very simple state of consciousness/being: I am at ease on all the levels and life naturally unfolds. I am finding this to be more and more true for me when I truly enquire;

 

WHO IS HAVING THIS EXPERIENCE, WHO AM I WHEN I DON’T INTERPRET ANY (or this particular one I’m having in this moment) EXPERIENCE AS THIS OR THAT?

 

WHAT WOULD LIFE BE LIKE FOR ME IF I DIDN’T HAVE THIS PARTICULAR PERCEPTION/BELIEF ABOUT THIS EXPERIENCE?

 

The only way to do great work is to love what you do.
If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.
Don’t settle.
As with all matters of the heart,
you’ll know when you find it.”
— Steve Jobs

 

THE PRINCIPLES

 

WELCOME (rc)

There is a big YES in WELCOME for me…………... this YES arises from my deepest wounding; that of not feeling welcomed or wanted simply for WHO I AM. Indeed, this statement can easily configure itself into the enquiry WHO AM I?

I had an experience recently where I was in a very busy town in India. Much traffic, blaring horns and blinding lights (it was evening and dark), speed coming from all directions and tremendous noise all around me. I got scared about trying to cross the road and as I glanced around me I saw this young tall Indian guy confidently making his way across. The next thing I found myself right beside him saying ‘May I stay beside you as you cross the road?’ Without hesitation he turned to me and said, ‘Yes, no problem at all, I completely understand’. His vocal welcome and his body language in the welcoming of me joining him was absolutely complete without any trace of hesitation or doubt.

 

When I reflected on this later, I really felt I had received a profound teaching. I recognized how much NO there is in my life. Mostly because of the perceived wounding mentioned above. There is nothing wrong with this and many of us may have similar feelings. Sometimes in the opposite way of being unable to say NO to anything! However, for me, survival instinct combined with not feeling safe enough in the world and my lack of trust in the basic goodness of humanity was what I was shown on this occasion.

 

So, it is important to be able to WELCOME WITH DISCERNMENT. We need our YES, our NO, our MAYBE and our DON’T KNOW. It is interesting to note that embryologically, the little one in utero will turn away from a stimulus BEFORE turning towards it. The survival instinct is VERY strong. The movement in it is towards or away from, proximity and distance

So, saying NO or YES is an innate pattern wired into our neurology. This beautiful teaching I was lucky enough to receive, showed me what it was like to be fully received and the utter joy in that.

 

ENQUIRY

WHERE IS YOUR YES, YOUR NO, YOUR MAYBE AND YOUR DON’T KNOW?

These are four different enquiries, each worthy of a full 15 minutes exchange with a partner. Speak from your body sensations when considering your responses to each question.

1. What do I say NO to consistently in my life?

2. What do I say YES to consistently in my life?

3. What do I say MAYBE to consistently in my life?

4. What do I feel I DON’T KNOW consistently in my life?

 

This has led me to the next principles of;

CHOICE and PAUSE (rc)

PAUSE is key to self-regulating where we can catch what we are feeling and take the space to down regulate/come into our breathing, feel our feet on the ground and generally resource ourselves in present time. Co-regulating is a social activity. That means to do this with another person or in a group setting seems to offer relational regulation.  We are not in the practice of integrating the movement of how we are being impacted by anything through time............we just move onto the next thing................................ 

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen Says;

The posterior horns of the spinal cord are where we receive information from the body and the outside world into the central nervous system.

 

Nerves communicate with each other through spaces between them called synapses.

In Body-Mind Centering®, we call resting or pausing in these spaces ‘sitting in the synapse’. This exploration is about sitting in the posterior horns of the spinal cord synapses.

Sitting in the synapse is about simply receiving information. Not doing anything about it – not thinking about it, not being sensitive about it, not wondering what it feels like. Those are all motor responses. I call this sitting with WHAT IS. We do not try to fix or change anything

 

This is just about receiving and opening our awareness to the information, without directing or responding to it.

Sitting in the synapse can be helpful when we start to tense or stress about something. Come back to sit in the space of the synapses of the posterior horns of the spinal cord.

Allow the information to travel to other areas of the nervous system, including the brain, to process without interfering. Absorb the information in an easy way rather than inhibiting or forcing a response.

 

 

ENQUIRY

Speak about how you experience PAUSE in all areas of your life, artistic life your relationships with your social circle and your work life. Speak from your body sensations when considering your responses to each question

CHOICE (rc)  

Choice to participate in this life in this moment or not. CHOICE very much ties in with the WELCOME and the YES/NO/MAYBE/DON’T KNOW as well as the PAUSE.

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response." 

• Victor Frankel, Man’s Search for Meaning

 

ENQUIRY;

What is your experience of making choices on a moment to moment basis and in the bigger life choices? Speak from your body sensations when considering your responses to each question

This leads me to the next principle of;

 PURE HEART/PURE INTENTION

This came to me while on El Hierro, one of the tiny Canary Islands when I came across a statue of The Mother and Child. I stood in front of it for some time and it came to me that this was truly PURE HEART. The absolutely natural love and bonding between a parent and child.

For me it represents our innate goodness and the Being nature that exists behind any complications that might have arisen in this primary relationship. At its most simple this is what that primary relationship is. As I write this, my heart feels full, has weight and substance, and there are also all my stories around my personal attachment history.............but behind all of those stories there is simply PURE HEART and there seems no question of polarity or duality. Yet I know polarities too are held in this state or whatever we may call it. Nor is my environment good or bad but I am holding both in me within the wholeness of my consciousness.

Pure Heart speaks to the heart of things.  Literally, the ‘heart of being’.  ‘Being to Being’ relationship is a very heartful relationship. For me it is the root of BEHIND THE BEHIND.

 

ENQUIRY

How do you understand and experience this principle from a felt sense in your body. What happens in your body when you read the above?

​

PURE INTENTION (rc)

Creating an intention for ourselves in our day, when entering a workshop or any situation is something we can keep refining. It is not simply about what you want to improve or have ambitions about though of course those things are not excluded. It is your soul’s deeper calling for something that only you can uncover. You are invited to go deeply inside your bodymindspirit and enquire, ‘what is my intention for myself for this situation’? An intention is always stated in the present tense such as:

• I intend listening to/being with/exploring/looking at/experiencing etc.

The reason for creating an intention for ourselves is that when we are working deeply on and in our bodies, many implicit (hidden and unconscious) memories can arise as well as ones we’ve known about forever. A clearly stated intention can help us align with our own greater good and deeper truth. 

Intention brings potency, energetic strength and tone to the work; what do you want different in your life when you go home from this meeting/interaction/situation? 

The next three principles I am weaving together, though of course they can be deeply considered individually, are:

 

INTER RELATIONAL

GROUP PRINCIPLES

CONFIDENTIALITY

 

We all agree you can say anything you want about yourself but to reference anyone else’s process, you need express permission from them.

 

THE FIELD 

As I understand it, the FIELD is a wider energetic environment which, by our very coming together, we create. It is completely unique to this group as it has configured itself beyond any engineering on anyone’s part in this particular way at this particular time.

 

This is always an extraordinary phenomenon to me…………..what will emerge within this particular group of people is a co creation of all that we bring to it. Without contrivance, we aspire to bring ourselves fully, all of ourselves warts and all, into the work. Our doubts, fears, uncertainties, unknowings, passions, and most importantly our own ENQUIRIES

 

In order to Set the Field, we really need to slow everything right down so that the field can hold us

We can let the edges of the Field move past us and include us in its circle. We can rest into the Field as it is now holding us

There is no right or wrong way to do this work. There is simply your way and your experience

There is an invitation to see the material that arises for you as a Portal to meeting the layers of conditioning that may obscure  your ESSENCE, ORIGINAL NATURE, TRUTH.

 

We aspire to be ‘alongside’ ourselves in our process. This means we aspire to participate in proximity to our experience as well having distance to it. This proximity/intimacy/distance/detachment can oscillate.

 

When One Person Does Their Work, Everyone Benefits.

In my view, because of the co creation of our ‘field of the moment’ and the undeniable interconnectivity of each of us in this field, when one person does their work, every single person in the group benefits. This truly has to be experienced to be known at a deeper level.

 

 

SELF CARE (rc) means taking breaks and basic needs of food, hydration, bathroom, rest and communication is very important where possible. This is essential during our work together as a group.

 

A WORD OR TWO OR THREE ABOUT SELF JUDGEMENT  

On the Superego or Inner Judge paraphrase from

A. H. Almaas book Essence with The Elixir of Enlightenment Pages 136/137

 

These are a few salient features of the sequence of development of this aspect of the personality.

As awareness expands, the person first becomes aware of the necessity to find ways of dealing with his superego. Without this ability, the individual will find it extremely difficult to expand his awareness and deal with his unconscious.

The reason is that the status quo of the personality is maintained by the superego. In particular, the status quo is continued by keeping the unconscious unconscious, by enforcing the defensive mechanisms of the ego. The agent that enforces these defensive functions is the superego or inner judge

We need to understand the process of repression in order to understand this mechanism more fully: awareness of unconscious material causes anxiety to the ego. The ego responds to anxiety with repression; it cuts off awareness from the arising unconscious material. In this way it avoids experiencing the anxiety and thus avoids the disintegrating effect of the anxiety on the ego structure.

Originally, the anxiety was the fear of the coercive agencies in childhood, mostly represented by the parents. These coercive agencies can come in many forms; often disapproval/shaming/ guilt/overly high expectations are some of the biggest ones. These become internalized as an inner disapproving/shaming etc voices. The fear becomes the fear of one’s own superego. The child, out of this fear of the superego and perceived punishment, learns to defend herself the way she did with her parents. She represses the particular action or feeling. She cuts off her awareness from her own impulses, feelings and actions. For this to become effective, the whole operation (of living and interacting) must become unconscious and automatic. The unconscious remains unconscious out of the fear of the superego and to defend against its attacks. Thus, the superego becomes the inner coercive agency that guards the status quo of the personality.

 

The capacity of the ESSENCE to know and act according to knowledge and core intelligence is not acknowledged by the world at large but certainly not by our parents who never had their ESSENCE recognized either. Hence the situation becomes a worldwide phenomenon, ancestral, global and societal as well as personal.

From A. H. Almaas’s perspective, the superego is the inner coercive agency that stands against the expansion of awareness and inner development, regardless of how mild or reasonable it becomes. It is a substitute and a cruel one, for direct perception and knowledge. Inner development requires that in time there be no internal coercive agencies. There will be instead inner regulation based on an objective (this word is tricky here but I think he is referring to a state of absolute realization where there is no personality left; this is an ongoing process of development and not even Almaas would call himself fully realized! In my experience, we always have a mixture of subjective (made up of projections, judgements, assumptions and interpretations based on early childhood experiences) and occasionally very clear seeing) perception, understanding and love.

Learning how to defend consciously and intentionally against the superego or inner judge and its attacks is learning a whole understanding and a whole inner technology. In this programme the work is extremely expanding and we are going to meet all our demons in all their forms. It is important that, to the best of our ability, we do not repress further but name them as much as we are able to so that I can remind you that we can invite them to wait outside the door as they are not helpful right now in this situation.

 

MUTUAL SUPPORT AND COOPERATION (rc) though NOT at the expense of one self. Communication with each other is ESSENTIAL where possible stating clearly what is happening inside yourself. You are not speaking to what you think is going on for the other person/people though you may want or need further clarification.  This approach is one of the most important aspects of creating a coherent group field. There may be many demands and needs in different areas during the programme. It is essential to me that we can be as transparent as possible in our communications of where we can and cannot offer MUTUAL SUPPORT AND COOPERATION within the group context. You are encouraged, to the best of your abilities, not to get into small groups of ‘gossip and speculation’. If, at any level, there is something happening in the group that is not sitting right and is of concern to anyone, there will be dedicated time to openly discuss these matters. Naturally, you are also encouraged to bring these concerns to the other LAYERS OF SUPPORT in your life outside of our group in full confidentiality. I also refer to this type of communication as TRANSPARENT COMMUNICATION, a phrase gleaned from the work of Thomas Hubl.

 

LAYERS OF SUPPORT (rc) each of us are required to establish layers of support outside of the group setting. These could be tried and trusted friends and therapists/counsellors/family members. People whom we feel safe enough to discuss things with and who will not judge or marginalize us but who primarily can listen whilst we try to work things out ourselves according to our own truth of the moment.

I also encourage you to create a buddy system within the group; team up with someone whom you can explore the enquiries with and generally have a little ‘how are you today’ check in.

 

BRIEF AND FREQUENT EYE CONTACT (rc)

Ray Castellino posited that without BRIEF AND FREQUENT EYE CONTACT we start to make up stories about other people which are mostly based on our own history. This is called projection and often has within it judgement and interpretation. In itself it is not a bad thing, and can truly help us to learn about ourselves and our own disowned parts that we may put onto the outside world. However, in this programme, we aspire to cultivate an INTERNAL WITNESS who can speak from his or her own experience in felt sense body, emotion and cognition.

 

 

THE WITNESS PROCESS

“The witness is actually another level of consciousness. The witness coexists alongside your normal consciousness as another layer of awareness, as the part of you that is awakening. Humans have this unique ability to be in two states of consciousness at once. Witnessing yourself is like directing the beam of a flashlight back at itself. In any experience — sensory, emotional, or conceptual — there’s the experience, the sensory or emotional or thought data, and there’s your awareness of it. That’s the witness, the awareness, and you can cultivate that awareness in the garden of your being.

The witness is your awareness of your own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Witnessing is like waking up in the morning and then looking in the mirror and noticing yourself — not judging or criticising, just neutrally observing the quality of being awake.”

• Ram Dass

 

The witness process as I am presenting it, is based on the practice of The Discipline of Authentic Movement as learned with Janet Adler and Julia Gombos. I have explored this practice for over 28 years and have found the practice of witnessing essential for all aspects of my life and work. We are always in relationship with something, inner and outer. This experience is ongoing and simultaneous.

 

What follows are some points that have clarified over the years. They will continue to clarify and so this document is a work in progress.

 

It has been my experience to feel it an incredible privilege to be witnessed and to offer this to others. I have found it to be a profoundly intimate experience. So much of our core wounding comes from being seen in ways that where misunderstood or misinterpreted with much blame, shame and judgment thrown in. Therefore, we have a great longing to be seen in our Original Nature and truth and also a great fear of being seen in what were often very vulnerable places within ourselves which never got spoken about.   We also have a great longing to see others.

​

The following points are open to discussion and further unfoldment:

In order to practice witnessing I need to be aware of certain natural events which are present in any relational field.

1. Projection. This means that something that I experience in myself, but of which I may not be aware, I attribute or project onto to another person. Franklyn Sills says ‘One can actually feel another’s projections not just as mental or representational forms, but as energy having direction and impact. Thus, a cyclical process ensues in which one person projects on the other and the other projects back, both living in past-time, mutually playing out their inner worlds of selfhood.’ This can feel very mutual and if the projections are pleasing to each side, satisfactory relationship can manifest. If they are not then there is going to be stress and a great deal of conflict.

2. Projective identification and introjection is where each person starts to live out the projections of the other, in other words they take the projection into themselves, and these projections can go against their deeper self-knowing. In other words, if you have a deeply unconscious pattern of rejection, you can start to blame the other for rejecting you (and they are most likely acting in ways which are very convincing of their rejection of you) and if they have a deeply unconscious pattern of being bossed around; you might become the bossy one. We actually can almost be ‘dreamed up’ to be that which the other most fears or indeed in less dramatic situations, the one that the other most ‘needs’ or ‘loves’.

3. Interpretation is where another person decides what you are thinking and feeling and what the story is that is going on for you. It is a little mixed with projections.

4. Judgment……………... This is an attitude we all hold and is an essential aspect of ego. It must be able to decide what is good or bad, right or wrong, real or unreal, big or small and it must be able to make comparisons….better or worse than. This has a very healthy side to it in terms of safety in the simple act of crossing the road or choosing food that is not fresh, or in answering basic ‘want or do not want’ needs. However, often the ‘judge’ has a very critical and harsh voice and can feel very violent and repressive internally so that we can have many internal rules and ‘shoulds’ / ‘should nots’ and belief systems that hold these in place. The judge is a central place inside ourselves where splitting occurs; where our inner world becomes an either/or. It often has the felt experience of diminishment and indeed we mostly have experienced this in our very early formative years.

These are the main ‘tools’ we use when in conversation with each other and in the witness practice we learn to language our experiences differently so that each person can have the fullness of their own experience in the presence of each other. For example:

• When I see you lift your right arm I feel a tingling/tightness/lightness/deadness in my right arm…….or any part of your body. This is Sensation.

• When I see you lift your right arm, I feel sadness/happiness/ anger in my ……name a part of your body. This is Emotion

• When I see you lift your right arm, I feel sadness/happiness/ anger in my …………….name a part of your body and I have a need to know that you are ok or that I am safe or need to know this is a different time and place. This is Need

• When I see you lift your right arm, I feel sadness/happiness/ anger in my…because it reminds me of a tennis match that I did/didn’t win, or being hit by a flying ball. This is Memory

• I imagine or this is my projection that you are on the tennis courts and you are winning/not winning. This is projection and interpretation

• The story could become very elaborate moving into fantastical realms.

• Then into archetypal realms such as this could be the tennis match for the whole world.

Points to remember

• In the ground form of just working in pairs, the mover speaks first and the witness only responds to that which they have spoken of.

• It is very important to have a context for what the mover is speaking of……for example ‘I am lifting my right arm and it is moving slowly/quickly/ with weight /on a diagonal’ etc. These are what I call the NUTS AND BOLTS. It is the basic mechanics of what is happening and is the container or context for all the layers of experience that will follow. The mover should say whether it is at the beginning, middle or end of their movement time.

• The witness needs to learn to ‘track’ another’s movement as we can sometimes forget these nuts and bolts when we are in movement.  The witness can therefore fill in the missing pieces. She does this by witnessing with and through her BODY primarily not her cognitive thinking mind and cognitive memory.

• The witness learns to contain a great deal of her experience and must watch for feedback in her mover if the content of the witness’s experience is more than the mover wishes to hear. She can do this by continuously checking in with her mover and allowing her mover to respond to what she is saying.

• In the witnessing that we offer another we are selective about what we offer, for example we do not offer our personal history but try to stay very close to the moment NOW as our responses arise in us. We do not offer memory or association, images or any of our JIP even though of course all that is going on inside of us. We must be aware of it all in order to be in a position to discern what to speak. We are ‘getting behind’ all of our conditioned responses more to what is at the heart of our experiences when we are in the presence of another.

•  It is helpful for both mover and witness to speak IN THE PRESENT TENSE. This helps to focus the experience in the NOW, even if we are talking about the movement that happened during the movement time.

• An attitude of warm-hearted curiosity is very important to cultivate.

• We also are cultivating the attitudes of  Receiving of another as an act of Love and in that receiving, the Recognition, Acknowledgement and Unconditional Acceptance of what they choose to reveal to us…and what they do not choose to reveal.

• The practice of witnessing helps us have some distance to that which we are in the presence of; be it a personal experience, pleasant or unpleasant, an interaction with a friend, a television program, or any relational event.

• Identification and dis-identification. In identification we experience ourselves AS that which we are experiencing. In dis-identification, we can see we are having an experience and we are not that experience.

• By the same token, this works with body sensations, felt sense, felt knowing, felt experiences, felt memories, felt images, imaginings, stories, fantasies, archetypal experiences, and felt beliefs.

• Even the body itself is eventually dis- identified with and we may begin to realize that we HAVE a body, but we are NOT a body. This is perhaps the most subtle layer since we are talking about the FELT experience and that FELT is experienced in the BODY.  Therefore, the journey is one of deepening into the body and the different tissues and coming to the conclusion that you HAVE a body but you are NOT a body. This can create tremendous freedom which paradoxically can be gained by deep embodiment of your own flesh and blood, conditioning and history.

• Witnessing enables me to say I am feeling sad/happy/fearful etc rather than I am any of these feelings.

• This allows me to be deeply engaged with life and living but not become submerged or overwhelmed by it.

A Few thoughts on Language itself

• Three of that areas of the brain that are important for language, reading and comprehension are the Angular Gyrus, which integrates what is being seen and heard and works out the comprehension, Wernicke’s Area, which works out what you want to say and Broca’s area which says it.

• Each of these three areas has corresponding centres in both left and right sides of our brains. The left brain works more sequentially and organizationally whereas the right side works simultaneously, intuitively and has no sense of linear time but is more in the ‘only now/not now’ of time.

• The left brain formulates words, edits thoughts to say them. The right brain is more non-verbal and resonates with guttural utterances, sound (music) Noises (grunting) and gestural language.

• Therefore, when we speak our experiences, we are attempting to; incorporate the inferred meaning of what is being said/heard or what you are saying, order the information, and the actual meaning of what is being said/heard/you are saying.

• Add emotional colour to the thoughts and ideas and turn the thoughts into words and vice versa; turn words into thoughts.

• Co-ordinate the muscles of speech and choose words, especially verbs to express the thoughts and feelings and add rhythm and tonal emphasis to the words to express what exactly our felt experience is.

• We can speak from our thinking and opinions; our JIP’s and personal history which influences our felt sense experience and felt sense perceptions in the moment of speaking

• We can speak from our felt sense experience and felt sense perceptions. We are attempting to do this in offering witnessing to another WITH the discernment of where our personal history influences our Direct Embodied experience of speaking in this here and now.

• Merleau-Ponty (page 90, The Spell of the Sensuous by Davis Abram) says that ‘the complex interchange that we call ‘language’ is rooted in the non-verbal exchange always already going on between our own flesh and the flesh of the world‘. He further states that ‘sensory perception is inherently participatory and the source of all experience.’

 

For me I am seeing all these layers of guidelines and principles as layers of support in creating a container that we can all lean into. It is essential that we have this container to support us enough, creating the ‘safe enough’ in our fundamental NOT KNOWING AND IN STEPPING INTO THE UNKNOWN. That we can become familiar with all of them and REST INTO those that resonate with us. They are like the layers of an onion and the basic cell is a vivid, very alive and functioning metaphor for all of them.

 

GUIDELINES AND PRINCIPLES THAT SUPPORT BODY.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CELLULAR KNOWING AND NERVOUS SYSTEM KNOWING by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen.

‘Feel it in your body and get it out of your brain and frontal lobe’

Someone recently commented on this quote of Bonnie’s. They commented ‘First, though it must be felt in the brain to reorganize the body’

Bonnie says:

That’s a general conception and it’s valid. What I am sharing is another perspective. When our body is forming as an embryo, it does so without the brains control. There are processes that take place before there is a brain.

The brain itself is one of the later structures to develop embryologically. The heartbeat can be perceived in the embryo at three weeks. Brainwaves are not perceived until about 6 months. From my experience in researching through embodiment, there is an organization within the tissues themselves that underlies the organization by the nervous system. Experience happens first in our cells and tissues. The nervous system, including the brain, records this experience after it happens.

Each cell in our body has living intelligence. It is capable of knowing itself, initiating action, and communicating with all other cells. Cells experience directly, before information reaches the brain. In exploring the body and movement, there are ways to access the direct experience of our tissues and cells, ways to enter this process before the brain modulates or filters it. When we follow our awareness to this place of directly experiencing, it gives us a sense of open presence in our body.

The brain, of course, is important but it enters the process secondarily, after the experience has taken place at the cellular and fluid level. The brain organizes experience at a different level. After an experience occurs and is recorded by the brain, a dialogue emerges between the cells/tissues and the brain. This dialogue creates patterns (memory) and helps shape our expectations and responses to present, future and past experiences.

This is a completely different approach to what most people are used to. It involves opening awareness to your cells and tissues in this very moment.

Then, when you initiate movement from this place of cellular awareness, you provide new information to the brain of what is actually occurring. This is different than responding based primarily upon the memories stored in the brain of what happened in the past.

A cellular approach provides you with new options for perceiving and responding at the body level. This will, in turn, also open new possibilities for how you perceive and respond cognitively and emotionally.

The embodiment of cellular experience and cellular knowing is a thread that weaves through all of my work.

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, founder of Body-Mind Centering®,

 

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... (Martha Graham)

We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life Alive

 

This is the great bewilderment: that out of a cold austere cosmos arose the roiling wonder of life, from the tiniest archaeans that have “confronted sulfuric boiling black sea bottoms and stayed” to the cathedral of consciousness ringing with music and mathematics and poems about archaeans; that we are here trembling with all this love and all this suffering, all these vicissitudes of aliveness, and all the while each one of the atoms in our bodies can be traced back to the core of some particular star that died long ago, some insentient cauldron of chemistry and chance.

• The Marginalian

 

 

Structure and Flow

The following guidelines arose in particular to the ESSENCE programme (2020-2024) though we may find them in many aspects of our lives.

Structure, in this case body, is aided by considering it to be a container or channel for the flow of ever arising and emergent movement in this moment now to flow through. Therefore, how we meet the obstacles to that flow is a lifetime’s journey and becomes a very deep and intimate relationship with our body. A metaphor is that of a river flowing between two banks, maybe meeting rocks and growth along the way. How does it meet these things? Often by flowing around them, finding paths of least resistance and of ease.

ENQUIRY

Sit by a body of water for at least 20 minutes; a river, lake, heavy rain or the sea and witness its movements, rhythms, timings and sounds. What happens in your body as you witness it in this moment and now in this moment? Keep repeating this question to yourself allowing some space for you to track your body sensations.

 WHAT IS AM I EXPERIENCING RIGHT NOW? AND NOW? AND NOW?  OVER AND OVER. Your experience can include body, emotions, thoughts.

Now put your attention on the banks or whatever the container is for your exploration. Repeat the above question. What do you notice in your body/mind/emotions now, and now, and now?

Finally, see if you can allow your attention to rest lightly with both the container and the body of water. What happens in your body/mind emotions with this possibility?

I feel we have to have structure for flow to manifest. They cannot be independent of each other. An empty structure without flow is a dead body. Therefore this body needs FLOW, MOVEMENT, LIFE to fulfil its raison d’etre as it were and vice versa. For LIFE to fulfil its raison d’etre, it needs a BODY, a STRUCTURE.

Flow can arise in apparently different forms, but really it is ALL FLOW.  Can we experience Flow simply as it IS and IT IS NOW in this moment?

FLOW is movement. MOVEMENT is LIFE

Flow also has a PULSATION, a movement towards and away from, a condensing and expanding, a coming and going. This is a primordial and ever-present rhythmic movement that underlies all of life. It is innately in our cells and may be different for each body system….for example our lymph flows at a much slower rate than our blood or some of the other fluids linked to different systems. In fact every body system has a fluid linked to it and they each have a different quality of FLOW and PULSATION.

The directions of FLOW are fundamentally from inside to outside and the reverse, from center to periphery and vice versa, fronting and backing, up and downing, side to siding and diagonaling across the body. These simple directions can combine into a multitude of possibilities for the dancer and deeply inhabited body.

How do we invite FLOW? Possibly by coming into deep connection with our STRUCTURE so that they can be a team together. By inhabiting our BODY and the felt sense of and in this STRUCTURE. When that becomes more accessible for and to us, then we can attune to the FLOW and how that is moving through our STRUCTURE whether it is music, sound, dance, emotions or thoughts. Ultimately, these are all interconnected energy flows and each one will always translate into a FELT SENSE in the BODY experience.

In therapy, we attend to and unfold the emergent and its associated thought patterns and emotions. In a creative or performative approach, we can recognize, and acknowledge the arising, but the deeper enquiry into the conditioning behind that arising is for you to take into a therapeutic context.

It is inevitable that you will meet all of the above in our time together!

I STILL AM!!!! It is a life’s journey to deal with our conditionings, patterns and habitual behaviors/ways of moving and being in the world.

One way to meet yourself in this inevitability is to sit even more deeply into your STRUCTURE, your BODY and your FELT SENSE EXPERIENCE. Coming into PRESENT TIME is also helpful and using the PAUSE to self-regulate.

Ultimately our bodies are our main containers and they host all that we are. When we can bring ourselves right into present time in our physical selves, feeling the ground of our physicality, this, for me, is the most present and here and now that we can be in any given moment. This is an important resource if and when we inevitably get lost! We want to anchor in sensation BODY.

The BODY is deeply interrelational and interconnected, within itself and as a communicator in the world. No cell can move without it impacting the whole. No emotion or thought process can happen without the whole body being impacted.

We need to learn to activate our social nervous systems to avoid dropping too deep into whatever it is we are negotiating. IF YOU DROP TOO DEEP THEN YOUR SENSITIVITY WILL TAKE OVER

This is where many of the principles come in as extra STRUCTURE. You are encouraged to become REALLY FAMILIAR with each of them. They are there to lean into.

DIRECT EMBODIED EXPERIENCE is PRESENCE IN THE ABSENCE OF OUR CONDITIONING

Recognition of same and different in the one moment and where duality falls away and ALL is here now in a deeply embodied known way. I am not this nor that but all and none at the same time. From duality to non duality it is an endless spiral. If there is any ‘dis ease’ it is most likely that it is because a YES is fighting with a NO and a NO is fighting with a YES. This is an important aspect of our development and self-formation. For example:

I recently experienced a very, very old and recurring pattern of utter meaninglessness, hopelessness and no point to anything feeling. I have been meeting this all my life. The effect of it is often one of either shut down or even a deeper ‘leaving’ and dissociative states to try and manage the pain behind this embryological trauma. This time I heard myself say to myself, ‘no, you are not ‘leaving’. In managing somehow to stay Present, slowly, my body was able to recognize, acknowledge and unconditionally accept that both utter meaninglessness, hopelessness and no point to anything AND meaningfulness, hopefulness and point were both present to me and in me and in the same moment they were not ME. My midline joined up in that moment and I felt incredibly joyful and liberated. Automatically, I felt, and still do, liberated in the knowing that I am both and neither.  I should add that because this is such an early and core wounding for me, it frequently can pop up at the most unexpected moments. The teaching around it is ongoing and never done and dusted!

 

TOUCH and ATTENTION

TOUCH is known as the ‘Mother’ of our Sense Perceptions. When we put our ATTENTION on any area of the body internally it responds as if it is being touched and attended to. Especially if we can do this with kindness. Our bodies respond deeply to kindness and consideration and a warm-hearted curiosity. We avoid trying to make them do things or use force and extreme effort. So, TOUCHING with your ATTENTION is an act of generosity to your body. Therefore, with the deepest respect to these vessels that allow us to be in this world in any kind of functional way, we do not want to cut off our attention abruptly. Our cells are extremely sensitive to this ‘abandonment’, ‘denial’, ‘lack’ of bodily attunement. Body time works much more slowly than mental time and therefore requires slowness and warm-hearted curiosity

Attention

If wonder springs from the quality of attention we pay to things and joy springs from our capacity for presence with wonder, then the quality of our attention shapes the quality of our lives. It is a dangerous falsehood that to find wonder in reality is to relinquish our realism — rather, this attentive gladness, this fluency in the native poetry of the universe, may be the truest realism we have.’

• Robert Louis Stevenson

Simone Weil insists that ‘attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer’

William James says ‘To be human is to continually mistake our frames of reference for reality itself. We so readily forget that our vantage point is but a speck on the immense plane of possible perspectives. We so readily forget that there are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives’

He goes on; Millions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. Only those items which I notice shape my mind- without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos. ( JD adds selective attention/interest is part of differentiation.)

He also says, ‘Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity’ and ‘My experience is what I agree to attend to’

Alexandra Horowitz says ‘Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that’                                                                                                                      

ENQUIRY

How do you experience the use and felt sense of your ATTENTION? How focused or wide does it feel for you in your daily life?

 

EFFORT AND THE LAW OF 5%

Everyone has some relationship to EFFORT. Since engaging in the work of Dr Moshe Feldenkrais, I have really learnt how identified I am with being someone who tries hard, works hard, and puts their all into everything. One of the key instructions in the Feldenkrais lessons is to do less, just 5% is more than enough. Another is to find ease and pleasure in your body as you are following the lesson. Never push or force yourself over or through the threshold of pain.

In this approach, you may be encouraged to try Feldenkrais lessons to practice. I have found these very conducive to developing more sensitivity in my body and being able to track the minutiae of my movement. They help me know where my attention is directed and how present or absent I am at any given moment.

ENQUIRY

What is your experience of effort in your body? How do you experience effort in your, emotions, thinking, your life in general?

How do you feel towards your body?

How do you see your body image?

Can you access sensation in your body?

How do you translate, interpret sensations? For example, do you have stories for certain sensations e.g this sensation means such and such for me.

How do you resource yourself when you are having sensations of distress/upset/are under pressure/fearful or any other strong emotional states?

IMPULSE

In 2023, we started to work in some depth with IMPULSE as it may be linked with Present Time and this moment NOW. In breaking down the process, the intention was to be able to step behind any stories, conditionings, habits and/or premeditated patterns of movement, in order to return to the most essential nature of the energy that was behind the impulse. This is an ongoing exploration and we keep finding new aspects to it. These are some of them:

• Listening to body and tissue and it’s field in silence and stillness

• Feeling the arising and building of potency/energy/sensation and noting where in your body this is happening

• Containing and letting potency build or expressing and inviting initiation of a movement early in the building from that place in body or somewhere else. This is not a mental question or a deliberate choosing. It is a deeply felt sense attention in your tissue.

• Sound is movement also

• Going with the flow of the movement. Following FLOW

• Dropping ever deeper into the FELT SENSE of this movement, HERE NOW

• Until it wants to complete itself……………I’m calling this the MOVEMENT ARC

• Completion

• Listening again deeply for residue of sensation in body

• Waiting in PRESENCE IN PAUSE

• Stepping behind the residue and inviting movement (if appropriate) from there, from deep listening.

 

By continuing to step BEHIND THE BEHIND, we come to DIRECT COMMUNICATION

DIRECT COMMUNICATION comes in the form of sensations, images, felt experiences and textures, movements, gestures and subtle knowings, emotions, and flashes of insight that are deeply felt from and in the cells and tissues of my body and the consciousness therein. It is slightly different to simply contact in that we are even closer to our felt experience. Perhaps later the ego, in its capacity to reflect, will have words and sounds and sometimes not. If there are words they are often sensation words or a direct expression of what is arising in this immediate moment.

The experience of DIRECT COMMUNICATION is often very spontaneous, immediate and right NOW. Therefore, I’m linking it with IMPULSE

DIRECT COMMUNICATION

Tissue to tissue........direct communication comes from the cells and tissues of the body and the consciousness therein.  DIRECT COMMUNICATION can arise from my fluid body, my cells, my fluid matrix of connective tissue, my differentiated and circulating fluids of blood, CSF, synovial, interstitial, lymph and peri organ, my organs, digestive, respiratory, urinary and endocrine systems, my muscles, bones and joints, my nerves, brains and skin. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen named this as Embodiment, a direct communications through the cells. There is no premeditated intention as it were.

 

EMPATHIC RESONANCE

From the direct and tissue cellular experience of Empathic Resonance we can, as writer Daniel Siegel says ‘feel felt’ by the other. The ‘other’ in the context of this programme can be me, the self, another human being or even the SELF. It seems that when I can offer myself empathic resonance, with boundary, then something at very subtle and deep levels shifts inside me. Without boundary I will not be able to hold enough differentiation with other and may not be clear on who is who. Without boundary, I will not ‘feel felt’ by the other and may feel intruded or impinged upon by possible projections, judgments or interpretations.  The knowing of the other within me is one form of direct knowing and out of that I can communicate from a place of empathy. Another way of knowing the other within me is the direct knowing of me through deepening into a moment of my own bodily sensation and related emotion. When I feel ‘felt’ by myself, then I really feel literally ‘full of heart’ in my connection and relationship to and with myself. When I feel ‘felt’ by another, then I really feel literally ‘full of heart’ in my connection and relationship to and with the other.

 

In order for there to be Direct Communication, there has to be heart cantered presence and contact. Then there can be attunement from which we can have direct empathetic resonance and direct knowing of the other in me and communication can flow from there

Empathic Resonance and Attunement are areas that allow for the Direct Communication and Perfect Right Action, Interaction and Timing to happen

 

                •              PERFECT RIGHT ACTION, INTERACTION AND TIMING. Overall outcome

This is a natural outcome of all of the above.

RECONCILLIATION OF OPPOSITES; PARADOX

MOVEMENT AND STILLNESS, SOUND AND SILENCE, SPACE AND DENSITY, EMPTY AND FULL, DARK AND LIGHT, PRESENCE AND ABSENCE, MATERIALITY AND IMMATERIALITY.

ENQUIRY

HOW DO YOU EXPERIENCE OPPOSITES? WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO OPPOSITES? WHAT IS YOUR BODY’S FELT SENSE OF OPPOSITES?

EVERY’THING’ (OBJECT) HAS AN OPPOSITE. IF ONE IS THERE THE OTHER HAS TO BE THERE TOO, THOUGH IT MAY BE IN THE SHADOWS AT THIS POINT IN YOUR LIFE. 

All of the OPPOSITES are SIMULTANEOUSLY CO EXISTING, CO CREATING A DYNAMIC INTERPLAY, A DYNAMIC RECIPROCAL TENSION BALANCE  WHICH HOLDS THE TENSION OF OPPOSITES SO THAT THERE IS

THIS

THAT

BOTH

NEITHER

ALL AT THE SAME TIME RIGHT NOW

This brings me back to Primordial Pulsation and our background AWARENESS of this LIFE MOVEMENT. This is modulated by the movement of our ATTENTION

We would probably blow a fuse if we were constantly aware of all of this THOUGH THERE ARE THOSE WHO CLAIM SUCH A STATE! For us, meeting our humanity in all its complexities, we must learn to trust that our fundamental EXISTENCE SIMPLY ‘IS’.

This trust/knowing is beyond body, mind, spirit and yet again paradoxically also includes them all. It is beyond/behind the experiencing of any ‘thing’ and there is no one experiencing that. Therefore, it is impossible for the ego or the mind to understand/grasp any of this. Our energies and life force can be put to better use by

BEING HERE NOW!!

 

•INHERENT ORDER         

There is an Inherent Order within us (often referred to as fluid intelligence) and the universe at large.

This Inherent Order has a huge and Profound Intelligence which at the moment, I am calling ESSENCE.

This greater Intelligence has also created our adaptations to what has often been a less than receptive environment that we have come into.

It is not a case of Greater Intelligence or adaptations, ESSENCE or this humanity; it is BOTH AND……and NEITHER.

Again, another PULSATING, SPIRALLING PARADOX!

ALL paradox is, for me, felt experiences that are interrelational and interdependent. One cannot exist without the other. OUR BODIES ARE COMPLETELY INTERRELATIONAL internally. It is not possible to move one cell without it impacting all cells. There is a constant cycling and spiraling and what is emergent does not arise in a linear structure but more as a natural outcome of our unknowing..

I return to PURE HEART as the middle ground that can hold ALL PARADOX and is here NOW in everything and in every moment though it may at times be temporarily obscured by our suffering and inability to access it.

 

CLEAR PRESENCE

This came to me after a visit with Mother Meera where she simply puts her hands on either side of your head and looks into your eyes. This happens in a room with maybe a couple of hundred people and is in total silence. Afterwards the words CLEAR PRESENCE came to me in that I felt absolutely no conditioning or agenda present in Mother Meera. My body felt tremendous ease with this possibility of stepping behind my conditioning even for brief moments and being seen in this way. To be seen through clear presence was completely refreshing and restorative. All holding in my tissue seemed to fall away and I was more grounded and present. I realized just how much I hold in my tissue when I anticipate being seen by another person. This was and continues to be a very important learning for me.

With the resource of heartful connection and relationship, I may be safe enough to touch into CLEAR PRESENCE; I am stepping behind all my conditioning, my ancestry and lineage into a place where there is no agenda for myself or the current situation I may be grappling with. I don’t want, need or expect anything from the current context. To feel my way into any situation from this place allows me to really be able to recognize, acknowledge and unconditionally accept that this is the way it (the situation, person, me, the process or whatever the ‘it’ is right now) and to find the ease in stepping behind that. I can see that whatever is playing out in this moment is the conditioning at play in this moment. In this moment, I may or may not be able to change anything.  It is possibly a place of no action and non-doing in and of itself and holds no agenda for the self or other. Within Clear Presence is the possibility of stories, associations and memories arising. In Sanskrit, this is known as MAYA or illusion. We learn to see them as just that and engage with them and disengage (as we step behind) from them in such a way as to allow us to loosen our identification with earlier experiences. Recognition, Acknowledgment and Unconditional Acceptance fit very strongly into Clear Presence.

 We can then learn to be with another without the agenda of our own conditioning or ‘knowing’ what is right for them or happening for them.

 

                • Fundamentally, all our methods are about WHAT IS:

THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MIND IS EMPTINESS/SPACE, THEREFORE IT FOLLOWS  THAT IT IS THE SAME FOR BODY AS BODY AND MIND CANNOT BE SEPARATED.

THIS IS ANOTHER WAY OF STATING CLEAR PRESENCE IS THE ABSENCE OF CONTENT AND OUR CONDITIONED HISTORY

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