Allison,
I am so grateful to you for sharing this with me. It is a wonderful lifeline to Hakomi, themes like \'unnecessary suffering\', nourishment, letting things take their natural course, etc. The Buddhist image of \'sitting in the fire\' - being with what is. Good writing, questions, noticing, an invitation.
Your writing style also invites one to listen, consider, be curious, feel, just be with and allow. It\'s charming and open enough for all that.
(Also so deeply personal, I feel privileged to be trusted. Reminds me that other sensitive, gentle and strong creatures DO exist & are in my life. You, kid. Glad to know you! )
It\'s funny how you started this at a party, with children racing around, a bit rough and tumble, then laughing at the chase game.
Somehow this topic of gentle strength has feeling about children - feeling into my child self, Tina. And I feel again how children are (I was, and I observe babies are) naturally exquisitely sensitive -- open.
Its vulnerable and capable of being seriously damaged, yet also so naturally capable of \'reading\' something about the energy of what is going on - a strength that is usually quickly discounted, dispatched or made too unsafe, undermined, made crazy. Not really nurtured. (What would THAT be like?!) Often doesn\'t work with grownup denial, anxiety, need for control, taught sense of normalcy, etc. The way much of the world is operating.
I notice how (again, I was) often older children are so hungry to observe, to use this inherent radar, how much they want to know what is going on. I wanted to understand, to find things out, not merely to avoid pain and prevent trouble, but to understand -- and then get free to play, interact, and go on exploring.
So, your writing has me thinking about at least two other themes - \\\'openness\\\' and also about how \\\'fear\\\' works into all this.
Fear can show up as expectation, a judgement-reaction. You know, that big unconscious, often unarticulated belief thing. Most of us have some version lurking of -- \\\'unfriendly universe\\\' \\\'not good enough\\\' \\\'your going to pay in relationships\\\' etc . Round up the usual suspects!
Before Hakomi, I studied a kind of cognitive therapy which drilled in \'stimulus-belief-response\' (in that order, importantly) - to expose the importance of beliefs. People skip consciousness around belief and go right for response. Such and such stimulus made me do it, and the belief step happens unconsciously. A big piece of unnecessary suffering there. This approach was good, but it dropped you at the front door, unable to \'get one inside.\'
Enter -- the adaptive unconscious. Human nature (natural needs). And love. Mindfulness which meets fear and stuckness with curiosity, experience-honoring, space and choice.
Hakomi, then, is simple (as as Ron would quote Lao Tsu pointing out, but the other way is more popular). The way in. It seems based on what I would call Ron\'s belief, earned through EXPERIENCE, of the Tao - the natural way, that emergence or nature (of which we are a part) towards healing and balance.
It\'s there, if the flow is unimpeded, if, for humans, critical elements like consciousness, lovingkindness, limbic resonance, compassionate witnessing are there. If paradoxes like \'no need to change\' and \'willingness be open/explore/change\' (through mindful exploration which might lead through pain & fear, stuckness, confusion.
The habit to sitting with what is covers everything - including grief, sadness, rage, confusion, overwhelm, fear, desire (convenient or not), reaction. The habit of sitting with it means there is just the Mystery, the human experience, compassion (a powerful allowing, a togetherness which potentially leads to better, somewhat freeing choices).
It is power from PRESENCE OF LOVE and lack of serious trance in Hakomi practice, where once there was reactivity and no perspective, people in deep trance.
And , it involves honoring the nature of things. The natural way. Human beings, for example, have essential needs as they swim through the temporal world. They also will by their nature react and self-organize around what they experience or perceive. Things happen to humans, sometimes things that deprive, neglect, hurt, threaten, confuse, thwarting the essential needs!
So, NATURAL physical and psychological needs get handled along a full spectrum from skillfully to pathologically (very unskillful).
Hakomi PRACTICES strength on the part of all participants. It acquaints and uses a witnessing part of the \'client\'s\' human psyche sometimes called the Self. It requires that the facilitator practice compassionate witnessing and a number of skills and techniques.
The facilitator must be bigger than their ego-driven state, capable of paying attention with a certain kind of responsiveness, but without mindless reactivity. They must be aware of their \'state\'. And it\'s practically helpful if the facilitator has imagination and heart, body awareness and a subtle, but deep understanding of human needs and nourishment.
The facilitator is someone who has done a lot of their own work, that is, familiar with their own trances, fears & tendencies.
Well - I will leave it there, Allison. I think that it is the practice of gentleness and strength, as well as an understanding of human nature (our brains & bodies , how we handle and organize experience, and how to gain access to this), along with the love -- that make it so powerful.
I remain a fan and will stay tuned. I hope we look forward to more growth, more choice, more peace. Thanks for sharing, darling.
Gratefullness Hi Allison,
Thanks so much for sharing this today of all possible days. I needed to hear/read this today and really focus on unecessary suffering v necessary suffering with the outcome being what I will or will not allow in my life.
Sidebar. I really miss your special energy in our class this semester.
Rebekah
Thank you for sharing all this, Allison. It\'s rich and interesting as ever. You know I just love you and your originality.
When I read what you wrote I also think of my 14 year old self, a teenager who lost herself, some sort of power that felt NATURAL and IMPORTANT. Lost by the circumstances of my life then and before (and I see this more clearly now). I was in some ways an emotional car wreck, not a physical one. So -- different, of course.
What she saw and reacted to was too real for most people who were around to acknowledge. She had been lost, even as a child in other people\'s drama too much, and as a teen, there was a chance to change that. But just at that time of gathering strengh, she was sapped.
If her \'database\' was slim and her demands a little shrill, her drive and (young lionness) hunger for life was natural and beautiful. She was a velvety, wild creature who knew what she knew and yet asked many questions.
At one point much later, a therapist said to me that it was like I was (then) on a runway with both the throttle and the brake full on and pressed. I think part of what teenagers do is practice soaring, practice take offs and landings, and they celebrate and explore their very real strength and beauty, their \'go for it!\' It\'s important -- and if that stage is missed or done alone or shut down for some reason, it is hard to ever soar.
They may be pumping hormones, but in a teen can be that sober 10 year old intact (to those who have grown up in healthy environments around parents with functional lives and relationships). In most teens is that room for empathy that connects them to younger siblings and not so far off child-states, Theirs is also an intense awakening to things physical and sexual, adult but still lively, and if they can get beyond the need to conform to a peer group, the teenage imagination and emboldened spirituality can move mountains to overcome many a barrier, capable of expressing vivid truths.
There is enough near sophistication along side perennial questioning of what has \'always been\'. There is the \'keep it simple\' instinct and \'being with what is --now\' and what feels good -- as to make our teen selves respect and capable of the kind of invention that moves a culture forward.
So if you are reinhabiting, reembodying, inviting or reabsorbing the teenage Allison, I say, hello and welcome, darling! Your freshness is refreshing, your strengths welcome and strengthening, your energy and insight important and vivifying. Bless and keep you, Allison.
great writing and thanks for sharing as I semi-pressure cook my way to being picked up by a taxi -- and finish a million things and leave behind others undone so I can travel for a month, I find your blog. Allison, a quick not to say, thanks for sharing. There is learning and spaciousness in this for me - and for others maybe. I relate to what you say and recognize it as your own unique moment to moment hakomi, human experience. It's brilliant writing, it's powerful, it's evocative -- and I hope you keep sharing it. It's clarifying. Also helps me remember why all the logistics. Hakomi is a gift that has the ability to liberate way back upstream....and therefore, downstream, now, too.
Tomorrow I fly. After a day of recovery of this marathon (and the barbeque the people I am staying with are throwing Sunday night (when It will be very late for me - oi.) I will email you.
Meanwhile - LOVE YOU, darling. And your meaningful words. Your friend, Bettina
blame, guilt, ease.... I flatter myself to think that this entry was written for me personally to read. Acceptance is a big one for me, along with the balance it sometimes provides...
Wow, Allison. What insight. "The gift and the wound.". I learn from your reflections. "You would be easy to love" is a trigger for me, too (as I learned recently.). So glad you get to enjoy some integration today. Sending love westward - K
Sweet, Dear Allison, "It's not your fault."
Thank you for your courage to be present with all your layers of emerging Self. I am so nourished by your beautiful sensitivity and honoring of your infant state, and am full of appreciation for Hakomi and all the beautiful Souls, like you who have rode their rapids and found compassion for themselves and others. Gorgeous photos of Ashland too! Thank you for your willingness to share this with us. Namaste, Dear One.
Trish
Woo-woo, woo-hoo! A readback line... "I recognize that I have taken a dive into the practical applications of eccentric woo-woo isms these days."
Me too :) - xo, K.
I have been a traveller since the long night drives to Minnesota of my youth. There was something special about being four and waking up in Bemidji next to a giant Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. I knew then, the road would always be a good friend of mine.... full info
Todd Schwartz
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Love it.
Thanks for sharing. ~T