Somatic Life
Over the past 25 years I’ve worked with some of the most successful people in the world. For the past thirtyfive years I have been engaged in a thorough and varied independent study program. I have studied and trained with some of the country’s finest teachers and coaches, each, in their own way, pioneers in the human potential movement.
I have distilled the many disciplines I have studied into a coherent and relevant coaching system.
The foundation of my philosophy is based on some fundamental principles and key observations. I have observed that when we lose track of our dreams we lose our passion. We become disenfranchised. There are aspects of the self that have been abandoned in favor of the reasoning mind. To fit in, we utilize certain cognitive skills required to navigate our way through the work place, we have learned to suppress and or cut off aspects of our selves which are empowering once reclaimed
To reclaim our passion and imagination, there is an essential process through which we can begin first to notice where we are numb or disenfranchised, and then with curiosity begin to become newly conversant with the linguistic distinctions of the body. Or simply stated: The world of Sensations.
It’s important to enhance our capacity for feeling, sensing, and observing the life of our body; how our moods shift as we interact with others, how our bodies light up in response to certain phone calls, and anticipated conversations, deadlines, and requests.
Why is that important?
The body is a resource, we are biologically designed to run the energy of emotion through us. These feelings and sensations are neither good nor bad, they are all simply different frequencies of energy that show up as images, emotions, and distinct sensations of heat, cold, tightness, flaccidity, rigidity, fear, hopefulness, excitement, courage, confidence, mood-all of which are the language of the body. Intelligence does not reside in your head. The body and the mind are not separate. It is one unified field of intelligence.
To utilize these principles is dependant on a sincere desire to move into your own trajectory, to give up ego in favor of growth, to embrace the notion of practice, of discipline of personal mastery. This fundamental, and transformational work is amplified by good coaches and teachers. None of these notions produce sustained and recurring harvests without sustained and consistent practice over a horizon of time.
Through these somatic practices new momentum can be gracefully generated, new possibilities and innovations unearthed in cooperative learning environments.
The Samoans say “knowledge is only a rumor until it’s in the muscles.”
Through practice, we can powerfully integrate the world of the reasoning mind and cognitive learning in coordination with the life of the body.
Real knowing translates as know-how, and know how translates as the capacity to take effective action. So, we engage in somatic-practices for the sake of building our “know- how” and our capacity to take new actions in the world.
Through what we call “Somatic” practices we can build our body as a resource that is better able to contain the onslaught of incoming faxes, emails, crisis, and the ensuing feelings, moods, and concerns that are aroused or stimulated as a result.
We can through some simple practices begin to utilize our bodies as a resource that can contain and funnel these energies, reorganize and discharge. There are so many ways our nervous sys stems can become disorganized, and this disorganization shows up in many sometimes unapparent ways, from overeating, drug use, sitting frozen oat our computers, feeling tired, depressed and overwhelmed, or hoped up and over adrenalized, unable to stop, reflect and return to a centered place before responding in ways we may regret five minutes or an hour later.
Through the practice of cooperative and reflective inquiry both cognitively as well as somatically or bodily oriented inquiry, these practices can establish very quickly a deeper capacity to see our selves and our impact on others more clearly.
These practices help us to see and sense others through their shape, mood and tone. Our new awareness of other people allows us to connect in more meaningful and rewarding ways, and to respond to each person in a way that better blends with their respective mood or frequency or personality.
This new listening to team mates and loved ones produces the feeling they are seen, heard and understood, valued rather than objectified. And they as a result feel more drawn to you, more trusting and willing to consider your ideas and to move forward with you as a team.
Imagine the body as this deep lake where at the bottom sits this silt, this easily stirred and muddy ground. As we begin to dive beneath the clear surface and swim towards the depths, our curiosity is evoked. What is it that may lie just beneath the surface of this silt? What pearls or treasures are just waiting to be unearthed? These gifts are there for all who are willing to patiently inquire, and with sincerity and curiosity continue to reflectively inquire, and practice a certain candor, practice and participate.
Metaphor
There were a group of men within either the Astro-dome or the convention center after Katrina, and the whole place was cloaked in darkness and overcome with anarchy.
There was a small community within the dome of Vietnamese men who formed a protective circle in the dark around their women and small children. This was their line in the sand. They put their bodies in harms way and were determined to keep the marauding hoodlums, armed bandits from breaking through this circle and preying on their loved ones.
It was dark, they could never tell from which direction the enemy would approach. These courageous and committed men and women protected their loved ones, protected their families with their own lives. And this small group was successful. By uniting in their efforts the anarchist hoodlums went after easier prey. I draw on this image as an example of embodied and somatic leadership. These people dropped into a somatic or felt sense and listened in the dark and stood their ground, and even though they themselves faced an unseen and armed enemy. They protected their families, they survived, they prevailed.
Have you have seen the documentary, : March of the Penguins?
Imagine if you will these male emperor penguins, each of them holding an egg for safekeeping until the return of female from her twelve-week journey back from the sea. The male penguins form a protective circle to protect themselves and each-other from the furious cold and winds of the Alaska winter. They take turns cycling into the center and out to the perimeter. In the center you are warmest, and on the outside you are most exposed to the harsh and penetrating winds.
But the eggs are all held with great care and tenderness within a flap at their feet, by the male of the species. How do they know do all this? How did these Vietnamese men and women know to form this circle in the dark?
This speaks I believe to an archetypal consciousness or deep knowingness that bubbles up from deep within our cells. And within each and every one of us lives this knowing. And this knowing is what Somatic practices is all about. To attain, hone and reclaim our biological inheritance.
“Never Forget the Essential Delight of the blood”
this is a line from a poem by Steven Bender.
The coaching work I do, is about getting-out-of-the box-through-the-body. Through the life of the body new worlds open to us. Fresh perspectives and new possibilities for action are gracefully revealed. Our learning about our selves and each other is quickened and made instantly visceral as we drop into the felt sense.
One of the discoveries people make as they learn to listen to the life and language of the body through this particular set of practices, is the capacity to listen with a new depth, to listen in a way which shifts how you see your self and other people.
Perspective offers the opportunity for fresh insights to emerge and creativity and imagination, and passion to be unleashed. Clients report that they are able with practice they build more of a sense of “Can-DO” into the life of their body, they have to access a sense of calm and steadiness even as some crisis looms or some business storm is blowing.
My clients report feeling grounded and viscerally connected to their long-term vision, a bigger for the sake of, they feel resolute, yet flexible and adaptive. Sometimes frightened yet present and available for those courageous conversations.
Begin to cultivate a non-judgmental-curiosity, about how have you been shaped by your history, your childhood? Life events? Your successes? How have your failures, losses and disappointments shaped who you are and how you show up?
How do you show up in life?
The landscape of sensations, mood, images and our deepest yearning to create are all functions of the body. So, what is the mood you produce in others, even before you’ve opened your mouth?
We have been taught that only certain aspects of ourselves are welcome. We’ve most of us learned that from a very young age, there are certain “parts” that are not welcome at work, or even with some of our closest friends. But what most of us discover along the way, is that we don’t get simply get to pick and choose between the aspects of ourselves we like and don’t like. This feeling is ok to feel but this one is taboo.
The more we censor and shut down those more difficult feelings, the less access we have to the full spectrum of what it is to be human. The more we deny our feelings, or sensations any feeling, the more dumbed down and numb we become. We have learned to keep the unwanted self in hiding, discarded, left at home.
But, at what cost do we cut ourselves off from our unwanted self?
Is it possible to reclaim the abandoned self, the poor step-child to the reasoning mind, the wild-child within?
To recapture our passion we learn to work with the body in its living wholeness: “Clairsentience.” This is where intuition, imagination, creativity and passion reside.
For the sake of reviving your passion, for the sake of resuscitating your dreams, begin to listen to the life of the body, to observe the current and tides of the breath and blood as your heart beats and your lungs pump and the gift of this breath keeps coming one gift at a time.
The body is a resource. It holds the key to our aliveness, imagination, and intuition. Our intelligence and consciousness is not located in the head and separate from our limbs, we are one integrated set of systems, organs, muscles, bones, and nervous system that works in a coordinated and sophisticated dance with or without our awareness.
Our attitudes and beliefs about ourselves are conveyed through our bodies, and actually shape and reshape our bodies. It is through our bodies that we move away from or towards relationships. It is also through our bodies that we either retreat from or advance our own cause; move forward and out onto the edge of our own frontier.
Sometimes we are emboldened and thrill to the pulse as we charge forward into the fray. At other times we become frozen with fear. We are biologically designed to experience all of it and to be stuck with none of it. By working through the body we can reclaim our resilience. Loss and recovery is part of the natural order, like the tide.
When we apprentice ourselves to the language of the body and thereby become well versed in the subtleties and nuance of sensation, mood and shape, new options for action are revealed; whole new vistas of possibilities open up before us.
|
