Being Friends With The Unknown

Creativity in healing

What I see in people that I work with is that the creativity shows up in them and their essence. It's a natural part of them that oftentimes is either a part of the work they do professionally, or sometimes they have a side gig that has a creative element to it, or neither of those, but they have a creative way of listening.

Even if they're an attorney, there's elements of that in the field. Or medicine, being a CEO, being a creative director. There's ways that you have to hold a larger picture while also being aware of the details. You can't hold it too firm. You have to hold it lightly, otherwise you can restrict certain flow that is necessary for the whole process.

The skeptic can be open

There can be skepticism. I see the skeptic as being open. They're not so firm in their belief of other things that it limits them to the work, but they're also not so open that they're not able to be present with it and really inquire within, listen, and then receive what that process offers them.

People who have done great and new and innovative things are often like this, because innovative, great new things often require being friends with the unknown. Being open for the unknown to present itself, being patient, having perspective, and persisting. A lot of these are qualities of self as well.

A session is a song

If you think of the practitioner and the client as human beings, in the session, two instruments, and they are playing a unique song. That session is a song.

The grounding is like tuning the instrument. That's almost like the beginning of the orchestra when they tune up together. From that connection, the client chooses a question or an intention, and that is almost like the name of the song.

From there the song starts to open up. Somatic inquiry has an improv element to it, because improv has rules. The rules are the competencies in the approach.

It goes a little bit further beyond the story and into the felt sense experience. That's where the song goes a little bit deeper into a deeper pocket that might have some dissonance. It might be a little offbeat. It might be unlike the original chorus.

I will oftentimes mirror, and there will oftentimes be silence. The silence is just as important as the musical notes in any piece, as creatives and certainly musicians know. Just like in architecture, it's more about the space that the architecture creates, not as much as the architecture itself.

There's a chase in the song. There's a chorus, there's a dissonance, there's a going into the underworld, there's a chase for the truth. Once the truth is discovered, the truth is set free. Then more spontaneous resonance will arise, a return to the chorus, but it's slightly different. It's fuller.

The both of us become instruments of the healing.

What creative clients do differently

They delighted in the process of curiosity and discovery. They were genuinely open to my questions, and they trusted the process in a way that people who are heavily cognitive or distrustful of things that aren't very clinical do not. They're more anchored in the realm of possibility.

Even if someone has a smaller percentage of openness toward a creative aspect of it all, that's okay. That genuinely is enough, because through reps and coming to the sessions repeatedly, that is what enables the work to unfold. They need the help, they want the help, they're ready for it. They're comfortable with the unknown. They trust it enough.

The courage to not know

Part of the essence of trauma recovery is a willingness to look into areas not previously looked into. It's a willingness to shine light into the darker spaces of your internal world and your history.

There's a courage to creativity, because you risk being out of alignment as you do the work, and you also risk making something that's not good or not usable now. It's different in the somatic work, because the courage is about showing up to see what's there.

If it were up to the rational mind, it would be too woo to look and shine light into the depths of the darkness of your inner world. It would be too woo to time travel to the child you once were. It would be too woo to think that you could create harmony in the areas of polarization of your inner system.

But from the vantage point of openness, curiosity, willingness to see and to receive, to notice, to sense and to feel, to really set the time aside to actually do that, that is part of the essence of trauma recovery. It's not a cognitive process, and it's not a linear process, and it's never pre-known how it will unfold. You have to take the journey to see, and you have to continue to take the journey as many times as needed.

You'll know when it's complete

That's similar to the creative process. You apply it as much as needed, in the way that works, until you come to a place where it's complete and there's a sense of that completion, so it's just known. It's a felt sense of completion that can't be measured by anyone except for you.

I see that as similar to the artist and a piece of work. They'll know. They'll also know if a completed piece in the past wants to be continued in some way, or there's going to be a part two.