With all the new sub­scribers, (wel­come!) I thought I’d write a “Start Here” arti­cle,” to help you get on board with some of our per­spec­tives. This arti­cle con­tains mul­ti­ple links to our site, and to other BLOG arti­cles. Click around and enjoy!

We see what we see

1– Per­spec­tive Colours Everything

I wear a few hats on this BLOG, or bet­ter, speak from sev­eral per­spec­tives. First of all, I am a Human­is­tic, Transper­sonal Psy­chother­a­pist, which is baffle-gab for assum­ing that human nature has within it a pull to things which go beyond the ratio­nal and observable.

I also ascribe to Zen Bud­dhism, and this per­spec­tive on being colours my inter­est in sim­ple pres­ence, med­i­ta­tion, and expe­ri­ence ver­sus think­ing.

This will be the theme of my next, soon to be released book, “Half Asleep in the Bud­dha Hall.”

I’m a Body­worker, and assume that the body is the con­tainer for our lives. In broad terms, there is free, and there is blocked, and what lies between these poles. My work is designed to help clients notice, access, and release blocked energy and emo­tions, through­out Breath­work and direct manip­u­la­tion of the body.

I’m in rela­tion­ship with the lovely Dar­bella Mac­Naughton (a.k.a. Dar), and she’s been my favourite per­son since 1982. We use a com­mu­ni­ca­tion model that has yet to fail us, and our approach to each other is to encour­age explo­ration and self know­ing, while keep­ing each other in the loop through total hon­esty.

OK, so those are a few of my per­spec­tives.

I am clear that these are not optional extras for me—these are my core beliefs/ways of doing life/ways of relat­ing. Thus, every­thing in this BLOG in some way reflects these per­spec­tives, as well as a host of lesser themes.

If you have not explored your per­spec­tives, and instead think that what you believe matches what oth­ers believe, you need this BLOG!

I was just talk­ing to Dar about a client not lik­ing what she heard from her part­ner. Dar said, “Tell her to write a script so he says the right thing next time!” I hope I don’t have to say she was being ironic. We often do not hear what we want to hear, and assume the other per­son is wrong. Hint: they’re not. They just have a dif­fer­ent perspective.

I could swear I saw that prob­lem yesterday…

2– Life is Lin­ear, and also a Spiral

One of my favourite writ­ers is Abra­ham Maslow. His Hier­ar­chy of Needs is cru­cial for our under­stand­ing of human devel­op­ment. I wrote about his hier­ar­chy recently, and also looked at his work as it relates to Body­work.

Humans develop through var­i­ous stages, some of which are obvi­ous. Phys­i­cal devel­op­ment, for one, fol­lows pretty uni­ver­sal rules, as the cliché “You have to walk before you run” points out. Men­tal and spir­i­tual devel­op­ment also fol­low pat­terns or stages, and what’s odd is that most peo­ple do not put much energy into this work. They assume that things are sup­posed to mag­i­cally work out, and when they don’t, they blame oth­ers.

Our approach is simple.

We teach full and direct self respon­si­bil­ity. Part of this is to accept that your job, your path, is to fig­ure your­self out, while at the same time mov­ing “up the spiral”—in other words, we re-visit famil­iar themes through­out life, and as we move past these themes, we then con­front the same issue from a more com­plex point. It’s like walk­ing up a spi­ral staircase.

It is…what it is

3– Med­i­ta­tion teaches us self-knowing

Many peo­ple have heard of the hyped up ver­sions of med­i­ta­tion. You know it’s one of those if there is a promise of future rewards con­nected to the med­i­ta­tion process. If you med­i­tate to: relax, feel bet­ter, become spiritual—you are miss­ing the boat.

Med­i­ta­tion is a process of slow­ing down, and sim­ply sit­ting (zazen.)

If you’d like addi­tional Med­i­ta­tion infor­ma­tion, includ­ing a video, it’s avail­able through this link

In this process, you engage fully with liv­ing, and part of that is that you are present with all of you—with your thoughts, your emo­tions, your aches and pains. Med­i­ta­tion is “being present with.”

If you spend suf­fi­cient time med­i­tat­ing, you’ll notice that you do actu­ally get more peace­ful and clear, yet the zazen is “in and of itself.” This process allows us to see just how busy our minds are, and gives us the space and oppor­tu­nity to “just notice.”

4– Breath and Body­work teach us about hold­ing and being free.

There’s a whole sec­tion on Body­work on my web­site. You can spend many prof­itable hours there, learn­ing about where and how you hold ten­sion and emo­tions in your body.

I use sev­eral ways of work­ing with the body, from Reich’s idea of char­ac­ter armour and use of pres­sure to release blocked emo­tions, to acupressure—which helps with blocked chi, to think­ing in terms of Chakras. If you click this link, you’ll find an entire series of arti­cles on the topic of chakras.

5– Com­mu­ni­ca­tion requires a com­mit­ment to honesty

We use a com­mu­ni­ca­tion model that was devel­oped by Ben Wong and Jock McK­een at The Haven. It’s easy enough to learn, and is help­ful for, for instance, teach­ing the dif­fer­ence between an emo­tion and an interpretation.

For exam­ple, peo­ple say, “You make me sad!” This is untrue. I make me every­thing. In a very real sense, I choose sad­ness in reac­tion to my judge­ment of what I think you are doing or intend­ing. And mostly, peo­ple do not check out these inter­pre­ta­tions with the other per­son, so such con­ver­sa­tions rapidly turn into messes.

We there­fore teach two things: 1) use of “I” lan­guage, and 2) total hon­esty. Thus, when I speak, my pro­noun is “I.” What I report is what I am think­ing, how I am inter­pret­ing my expe­ri­ence, and what I am going to do about my expe­ri­ence, emo­tions, and judge­ments. To learn a lot about com­mu­ni­ca­tion, click this link.

So, those are 5 things that are impor­tant to us. The links in the arti­cle great for dig­ging deeper into any or all of these themes.

Our weekly, main arti­cle tends to go “up” on the BLOG on Mon­days, and arrives in your mail­box Tues­day morn­ing. Please, click through to the BLOG, and make con­tact with us! There is always a box like the one below, link­ing to the cur­rent arti­cle. PLEASE LEAVE US COMMENTS!