Learning about Deft Bowen with Ray Smith is causing significant expansions of my own internal representations of reality.
In other words, my mind is totally blown))
As far as I understand it, here’s the story of how Australia is poised to heal the world and make sure we can all stand straight with our heads held high…
Australia is a country of vast spaces and as such a trip to the doctor’s office can mean hours of travel. If you’re back is out and you’re in pain, you’re more likely to try that guy down the road who fixes backs, (in this story, that guy is Ray;).
In this way the incredible developments in bodywork that were made by a handful of pioneers began to grow into professional disciplines made popular by their effectiveness in getting results.
My big insight from yesterday’s training is about the relevance of psychological safety to both bodywork and education.
The discipline of welcoming can be applied from the same depth of empathic preparation. When a client with severe or chronic spinal issues hobbles into a clinic for treatment and is able to take deep, swinging strides on their way out, that’s a result of the professional ability to bring about deep rapport, and the sense of psychological safety that results in the client.
This state of harmonic resonance is what is able to produce such quick changes in muscle definition.
But it does expose a flaw in our cultural heritage, that we each must get over individually, if we’re to continue growing and collectively mature. Namely, the tendency to define ourselves according to the ‘life policies’ we’ve each developed, in order to feel safe.
If you’re happy and feeling content, your posture and body language will show this. Now our bodies are precision engineered by life and that means that they display a certain intelligence in responding to our instructions.
Like Roald Dahl says in The Twits, if you’re a nice person, you’ll probably have a nice face…
The problem with ‘letting go’ of emotional stuff is that if you’ve already defined yourself as that stuff, then letting go feels like attempted murder.
We tend to define ourselves using traits which are based on our own unique responses to every instance of psychological threat which has occurred in our lives. Even when the threat is no longer present, those behaviours have already been learned.
Fortunately us humans are a resourceful bunch and even now we have the solution within us… Our cells can either be in one or two modes: Growth or Protection. Creativity or Habit.
Here’s the point: Learning and Safety are philosophically, psychologically and biologically inexorable.
If you’re in business and still do old style Marketing and HR, do you see the relevance??
The lesson for teachers and trainers is to integrate the insights from psychoneuroimmunology into your empathic preparations for each class.
The reason is that self-esteem is not even relevant if you’re in Protection mode… Self-esteem comes from the achievement of Creative goals.
In the most simple way, if you want to feel good about yourself… just keep learning!
-.-
P.S. If you need some ideas to be getting on with try one of these right now… and get into the habit of learning.
Khalil S. Patwa 