December 2010 Happy New Year

This site has been up and running for some time now and although, when we started I promised to deliver a new entry every two months, I have, in fact, put up something each month – albeit sometimes a little late. As we get to the end

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Teaching November 2010: Random thoughts around Shock and Trauma, Spirituality and Labelling ourselves

Some bits of this month’s submission may be familiar to some of you. You may have heard me or someone else say something very similar. I do not too much mind this; it has become apparent to me that one can go on and on saying something very similar, in

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Teaching October 2010: Confidentiality

I am sorry this submission is so late.  I have been a little snowed under but have now broken free and the next two offerings should follow closely behind. I am a bit chattier than usual, I think.  Please let me know what you think.

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Teaching September 2010: Ordinary

As I have explained before, I consider that the sharing we do, of the experiences that arise during the hands-on sessions, is probably, the most important segment of the work. Important in the sense that what we are listening to is someone’s embodied experience of the life story that they have

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Teaching August 2010: Preface

The contents of this book emerge, for the greater part, from relationships with students in classes over the last fifteen years or so.  As each chapter, each article I could say, stems from a different time, place, space and grouping of people from every other article, the result is a

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Teaching July 2010: Some ramblings around Essence and Age.

Do please look at the responses to the June entry, they deserve it. There is a perennial wisdom that pervades all cultures. It manifests time after time after time in different forms according to time, place and space. The form may be Dance, Speech, Painting, Poetry, Film,

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Teaching June 2010: Some thoughts around form and emptiness.

Addressed to therapists but also, in a broader sense to everyone in relationship. What I have learned from Milarepa, a Tibetan rogue then saint of the 11th century, in particular is, that when I don’t like what arises, I try not to get rid of it but rather, get to know it better by schmoozing it. Offering tea with

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Teaching May 2010: Synergy, or let the work do the work

From time to time, I offer a session where the whole group just receives, in silence, whatever feeling, thought or sensation reveals itself as they sit or lie in a receptive mode.  My task is to approach the group, energetically from as deep and still a place in myself as

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Intermezzo 14: Coming into the present – with emotions – a dialogue

Mike: One of the problems with this idea of being present is that you don't actually know what you are going to say until you are actually saying it; it is what is there in the moment, and it comes from all other moments. In that sense it's quite magical,

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Intermezzo 13: On being a specialist

Question: I would like some amplification on something. There was a point in my professional life where I was the practitioner and that was very clear to me. When I heard the title 'practitioner' I imagined that meant something, I didn't quite know what it was; there were some ideas but I never knew exactly what the meaning was. There comes a moment when people tell you you are a practitioner, but the simple fact is that all the doubts that you had before are just moving along with you and it is just a never-ending story. A new training or a new story, amplifies your knowledge and it is always like that. Probably the physicians who made the diagnosis for the OCD child Mike spoke about earlier, these doctors have their titles, their degrees, their trainings, they have everything.  I don't really know where is the point of balance in all of this. Mike: Nor do I. It's never fixed. There is no place you can go to and say if I am here everything is fixed, because then you have got rid of insecurity and therefore you are not growing. I get very nervous with specialists, because specialists tend to make everything fit their speciality.  We have to be careful not to make the facts meet what we know, but rather to being open to be surprised by the facts. Response: But it seems to happen that if you are specialised in fixing, for example, problems of the knee then those clients will in fact come to you. Mike: That is also true. But other clients may come to you for some other reason, but you are likely to make their problem a knee problem because all you can see clearly are knees! Response: It is also true though that when you have somehow resolved things in yourself, people do come with similar problems. Mike: Yes, that is also the case. Print this article in pdf Print this Article