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Sharing…..

1) In the past I had read a little about the Emotional Freedom Technique and then had forgotten about it, but more recently I came across Nick Ortner’s work and through a bit of reading and practice I learnt to tap and realised that it is quite potent in releasing emotions and decreasing their intensity, and also, noticed that when practised before meditation it kind of facilitates one’s capacity to stay centred, I suppose because tapping on meridian points soothes the amygdala and gets us out of a fight-flight constricted state. Anyway, there is information, research findings and demonstrations on his website at: https://www.thetappingsolution.com/blog/well-tapping-grief/

2) A short talk on Grief: A Pathway to Forgiveness by Dr Joan Rosenberg                          at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UacbvBcbP34

Dr. Joan Rosenberg discusses her GRIEF protocol on how to process loss and grief, and also, talks about “disguised grief”, which underlies emotional reactions and experiences like bitterness, blame, grudges, hostility, negativity, regret, or resentment, etc. She notes the healing nature of grief as she describes the five step Grief Reset Protocol, an approach that suggests that grieving and making sense of your life story can be a path to forgiveness and a happier life.

3) The extract below written by Bethany Webster and posted yesterday on her Facebook page:

‘Outrage is part of our healing.

Don’t let anyone try to shuffle you away from your anger.

Anger is a wise, cleansing force alerting you to the truth of your worth and to the greater truth within you.

It’s a necessary step in recovering from being violated, personally and collectively.

Don’t rush out of your anger, listen to it and harness it as fuel for wise, informed action on your own behalf. Your anger is part of your power.

Do what so few dare to do: Give your anger a safe, empathic space to be fully, completely felt. Harness it, listen to it.

To the degree that you allow yourself to do so, is the degree to which you will own your power without apology.

Anger has so many gifts. Not indiscriminate, projected anger, but the energy of outrage, felt and placed where it truly belongs. Anger has an inner alchemy that heals and isn’t contingent on external validation.

Collective female outrage is a nectar that this world needs’

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In the second video broadcast I watched last night: The Neurobiology of Trauma of the series Master Strategies in the Treatment of Trauma hosted by Ruth Buczynski (NICABM), Pat Ogden discussed how trauma can lead people who have experienced trauma to feel both victimized and empowered, and it is through the integration of these two aspects of the self that healing can take place. She described how she used her Sensorimotor approach to work with a client in order to integrate these seemingly conflicting experiences, which were stored in the left and right side of the body respectively. The client felt that the weak and victimizing experiences were stored on the left side, while the more empowering part of the self resided in the right part, as if the body were split vertically. I decided to refer to this short vignette because I realized again the huge significance and utter necessity of working with the body when treating trauma, and also, the amazing potential art has to quickly uncover lived experience and workings of our mind and its capacity to reveal material and knowing we are not necessarily conscious of and how art can complement working with trauma.  

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‘For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die’ (Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

Today I am sharing a quote by Anne Lamott and an extract by Albert Flynn DeSilver from their books on writing and living, which I came across recently.

The extract below caught my attention for many reasons. One being the miraculous way our bodies and minds work and the ways we hold or contain all that has happened to us, the good stuff and the trauma, at a very deep cellular level, and how at times allowing this past lived experience to surface can change us or our lives. Years ago I read about how during memory work a woman had retrieved memories of an exotic language spoken in a country she had never visited. She held amazingly great chunks of knowledge of this language without having a clue of how this had come about. She much later discovered that her mother had lived in this country during her pregnancy and while she herself was a baby. So it seems that nothing is lost, and that so much lies dormant within us for better or for worse. Another reason the extract caught my attention was that it vividly describes the interaction between past events and fantasy or symbolism; the layered aspect of memory and how memories can surface in a condensed manner; how remembering or processing contains seeds of liberation and release and the potential for integration of the many aspects of a memory or event. What surfaces as a trauma memory or dream may contain the resolution. A process that further allows us to catch glimpses of our younger self’s capacity to cope and make sense of the experience and also of the intensity of the emotions experienced by this very much younger self at times. And we may often also catch a glimpse of the impossibility of the situation and the power dynamics at play or at least the truth of this sinks in. This can happen as part or as a result of a meditation practice or during a session with an attuned and present therapist; any experience or context that feels safe, can contain our experience and sustain us.

An extract by Albert Flynn DeSilver from Writing as a Path to Awakening, published by Sounds True

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