Hello, Practice Group members!
Here are some follow up resources from Session 4, to support you in both your practice, as well as educating yourself further on the topics we covered, if you are inclined to do so. It is rich territory!
As always, please continue with the practice that feels more appropriate for you. I suggest that whichever practice you do, you practice at least 4 times over the week.
And, as you step into this practice (or any of the others), please feel free connect with me via email with any questions or if there is any support I can provide.
Here are the resources:
Note: In this kind of exercise you are going to be engaging in some potentially challenging inner work. Working with yourself in this way does not replace your getting the support of a professional, if that is what would support you. While there is much work we can do on our own, it is sometimes the case that doing inner work while held in a supportive, non-judging relationship with a skillful practitioner is most appropriate. This is especially true if you have experienced trauma in your personal history.
This exercise is designed to support you in developing your capacity to present to strong “charge” - emotion, and the sensation and energy that underlie emotion - a fundamental aspect of expanding your window of tolerance. And this expanded capacity contributes to greater resilience – being able to navigate a wider range of the experience that life presents to us. This is because this kind of expanded capacity helps us better regulate our nervous systems – we get less easily triggered and, when we get triggered, we develop the ability to bring ourselves back to a well-regulated state. We learn how to “digest” or “metabolize” our experience rather than try to avoid it, numb to it, brace against it, pretend we are “over” it, or work around it some way.
This exercise is based on the assumption that it is by facing and experiencing the “charge” - the emotion, sensation and energy that puts us at the edge of or out of our comfort zone, we can develop greater capacity for presence. Rather than “overcoming” difficult strong charge, we are able to work with it, allow it to move through us rather than overtake us.
This happens by being present to our direct experience rather than our story about the experience. Our direct experience happens at the level of sensation and energy. So, this is about being able to get intimate with our direct experience.
I suggest that rather than trying to distract yourself from whatever strong emotion, sensation or energy you find yourself experiencing, that you allow yourself to touch it, to give it some room to breath. While strong charge is challenging to stay with, developing our ability to be present with it allows us to be present to a fuller range of what it means to be human - the joy, the pain and suffering. It allows us to be more dimension as human beings and bring ourselves more fully and more effectively to what we care about in life.
In this kind of work, key principles guiding the process are: