[UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to the coach's rising podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am really delighted today to be hosting Dr. Laurence Heller.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is the creator of Nine, which stands for Neurofective Relational Model.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love this approach.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've worked with non-therapists.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really cutting edge trauma-informed approach to our thriving.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're gonna explore
[SPEAKER_01]: nine today we're going to explore its relevancy for coaching and why more and more coaches are actually training in their approach.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk about why they place a live-ness at the center of their work and we'll then explore what are the barriers towards a live-ness and how can we actually metabolize those.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk about some of their universal principles within nine and some of the
[SPEAKER_01]: into this work and the transformation of the heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: A few more words about Lawrence, he is the founder of the NOM Training Institute, which is training practitioners throughout U.S.
[SPEAKER_01]: and Europe, and he is the co-author of
[SPEAKER_01]: The groundbreaking book Healing Developmental Trauma, which I highly recommend, is more recent work addresses these societal and cultural dimensions of trauma.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I highly recommend you investigate Dr. Lawrence Hellers' work more fully.
[SPEAKER_01]: And let's dive in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the podcast with Dr. Lawrence Heller.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Laura and Sia, really good to be with you today.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been waiting for this conversation for quite some time after our mutual acquaintance Ralph introduced us.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great to be with you how are you today?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm good and that's nice to be here with you as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've also heard the Ralph I've heard a lot about you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Excellent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I hope we get into maybe some more of the kind of personal influences of what informed your work today actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I just want to start by saying, you know, you're going to talk about non-therapy, which I think is for me one of the most innovative, leading-edge modalities I've come across and I found it really stunning to be working with non-therapy, so thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think on text I shared with you just before we hit record was, you know, I see, I don't know if this is really that true, but it seems like there are therapeutic modalities that are kind of moving more to the center, focusing around, you know, human thriving.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there are coaching modalities moving the other direction into the center, recognizing the importance of working on a deeper level with the whole human being, and what kind of influenced their coming into maturity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so maybe that's the space we'll play in today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you could just, you know, I think a live-ness is,
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, when I, you know, when I look at your work, um, it's a big kind of core element of non, could you talk about why you think a live-ness is so central, um, so important, and, um, yeah, what's, what's, in a sense, like, my tears at what's obstructs human aliveness and how does
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, when you listen to people, and you really listen in what they're saying, is that's central to human life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, I never felt so alive in ABC, whatever situation, how important that is for human beings.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it strange once I was a years ago now, I was interviewed, and he said, what's with all this aliveness stuff?
[SPEAKER_00]: He seems to get seem so automatic to me that, of course,
[SPEAKER_00]: That's basic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the normal model, I do talk about the spontaneous movement in all of us is towards connection, health and aliveness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then goes on and on, but then the bottom line is here that what we do is we explore what's gotten in the way of the capacity for connection, the capacity for aliveness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, with that comes capacity for self-regulation capacity, for relationship,
[SPEAKER_00]: capacity, you know, healthier relationship with self, in other words, working with toxic shame and guilt and self-rejection, all those dynamics come into play because they all in different ways, but in some similar ways as well, they get in the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: of the aliveness, which I consider our birthright as human beings.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all we have to do is look at a healthy child, and we can see the aliveness there that often we're no longer so significantly connected to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the tendency is we have some great experiences as adults, where we really feel alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we tend to, again, give the experience itself the credit and not realize that at the experience was just the vehicle that helped us tap into this birthright, as I call it, of a likeness that is who we are when we're no longer dealing with the obstacles, the emotional obstacles, the somatic obstacles, the identity obstacles that are getting
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think what's fascinating about this before we go a bit deeper into the obstructions to our liveness.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the topics we've had on the podcast, I'd love to ask you this, it just comes to me as you speak.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is a deep questioning of,
[SPEAKER_01]: what a certain paradigm might be based on.
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, coaching, you might say this, and I mean, others would disagree, but you could say coaching has been based on helping wanna achieve something, become successful in a way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think,
[SPEAKER_01]: people are starting to question these deep beliefs in a way that, you know, they've emerged out of certain paradigms.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I've now hearing more and more people to speak about wisdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, could that be a more, you know, a better metric of measurement, meaning thriving.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what do you think?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think?
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think?
[SPEAKER_01]: And do you see a connection between that embodied wisdom and a life-ness?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the aliveness is there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is an aspect of that is at least mediated through the body, this force of aliveness, which is essential.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing to think about what you said a moment ago, too, is that
[SPEAKER_00]: In terms of coaching, there are, for my most point of view, as I'm a non-coach, but there was always so much focus on performance from the coaches that I'm had.
[SPEAKER_00]: And performance can be very useful metric, and things that, but,
[SPEAKER_00]: In Narm, we focus on, again, the deeper dynamics that are at play, that get in the way of being most who we are, most in touch with the capacities that we have and that we can develop.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's a basic, it's what I call it, it's part of the first pillar in Narm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what is it that a person wants?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that's a familiar question for coaches, which is not so familiar with Hall Therapis, honestly.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's what do you want?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then instead of,
[SPEAKER_00]: creating behavioral goals on how to get there are understanding what we call contract in quotes is to explore what's getting in the way of them having or being what or who they want to be or truly are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so generally I can say that the exploration evolves around learned dynamics often
[SPEAKER_00]: various forms of environmental failure that I use that very broad category, but various forms of environmental failure that we've internalized and carried forward, which then get in the way of the aliveness that, again, is on birthright.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a way, this is almost a pretty much a universal story for people now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It varies hugely in terms of degree, because some people have experienced extreme environmental failure and neglect, abuse, chronic, misitune and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other people have experienced the everyday misitune and the everyday kind of
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, as a child, being with people who maybe just have a little difficulty with the their aliveness for a variety of reasons we can choose to talk to, talk to, talk about later, but so there is a spectrum here, but still, all of these dynamics are learned and in
[SPEAKER_00]: We can work through those internalized obstacles that we have were all carrying around in one degree or another.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to make this comment because I might forget, I want to ask about developmental trauma and shock trauma, but the thing that I'm sat with is, first of all, if I think about a lot of what motivates me, you know, even that the ambitions I have, it's really when I look at it, it's
[SPEAKER_01]: is the sense of fulfillment and a live-ness that I'll feel in those experiences, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's the first principle, it's like, and so I'm thinking, this is the common art of the thought I had, which was like, yeah, yes, a lot of coaching has focused on performance.
[SPEAKER_01]: and if you think about it, a lot of performance can be kind of conditioned and inhibited, you know, by the way, the experiences we've had as we've grown up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what kind of performance would come online as someone was able to reclaim more and more of that aliveness, that liberated
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one of the later learned obstacles is when you grow up in families where your self-worth and then ultimately your self-esteem is based on how you look and how you perform.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when people are performing from that place, they're already digging themselves into a hole because they're constantly feeling the need to prove themselves, which is the obstacle to actually performing at your best, because you're coming often from trying to convince somebody a parrot, often enough, and you know that's a very common dynamic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trying to convince a parrot that you're really
[SPEAKER_00]: worthy or worthwhile, and that kind of focus on performance is coming from a hurt and wounded place in people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's so much energy that's freed up when the performance or orientation towards performance is driven just by what you said, because it brings a lives when we use
[SPEAKER_00]: we feel alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we experience a certain kind of mastery in whatever field or endeavor that we're involved in, that brings a likeness and it often brings sense of connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're feeling alive, you're feeling connected to your body and to and often into other people as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas when you're coming from one of the five survival styles, it's always compromised.
[SPEAKER_00]: That aliveness.
[SPEAKER_00]: and that capacity for connection is compromised in some way and in different ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes the whole variety of ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's go into the process a bit more of how we get conditioned away, a live-ness gets kind of conditioned or diminished.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you mentioned the five survival styles there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could you say a little bit more?
[SPEAKER_01]: Could you unpack more?
[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned, like adverse childhood experiences.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's ways that our environment isn't meeting our needs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that has a certain impact.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could you kind of like,
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of sketch out a little bit that that process of how we become more conditioned and then these survival styles kick in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be happy to then I'd first like to address the word conditioning because it's commonly used in both psychological fields and spiritual work.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what we talk about conditioning in norm.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, when you're talking about cultural conditioning it's a little different but I'm going to talk about what
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't use the word conditioning, because when we think about the word conditioning that's based on a model that's stimulus response and it's never that simple and it's true when you're working with pigeons like Skinner or other behaviors that you know who use condition, operand conditioning, but it isn't so true with human beings because we start off, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: basically embodies and so on and then the organizing self develops and it responds to the environmental processes and failures and successes that we've experienced and so what I'm doing is not deconditioning people but helping people experience increasingly this organizing self.
[SPEAKER_00]: that views the world through the various lenses of the survival style, which in some way represents a distortion of both themselves, their sense of self, and the world, and other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for me, it's important distinction between conditioning and what we, as human beings, primarily experience in our
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what makes that distinction you've just made?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the most important thing about it rather than seeing it like conditioning than this distortion?
[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect question.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, because what that means is that we have agency that we never knew we had.
[SPEAKER_00]: As soon as we can start to see that when we're triggered, let's say, by something,
[SPEAKER_00]: is not just a stimulus response.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a stimulus, then we organize, usually implicitly or unconsciously.
[SPEAKER_00]: We organize our reactions based on reaction to that trigger based on our survival styles, our personal history and so on and so forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that means that even though we didn't start these dynamics, the more awareness that we bring of to these dynamics, the more agency we experience, the less we experience ourselves at the mercy of other people at the mercy of life itself, we experience an increasing sense of agency, which is nothing like blame.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's everything to do with a sense of freedom that we do consciously or unconsciously make all kinds of choices in our lives and for the biggest part unconsciously for the most important things.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not really consciously thought out.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're more what I talk about as child consciousness-based.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they limit us, and agency then, when you don't look at it as conditioning, but as a distorted sense of self that you developed in the, let's call it a mirror of our early childhood experience, that that is subject to quicker and more immediate change.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we've ever realized when we, when we realize that we're continually whatever,
[SPEAKER_00]: environmental failure, we experience, we continue and carry it forward, and do it also.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what I'm also hearing and what you say there is there's a kind of recognition of the intelligence of that distortion, that in some way it took care of us and I'm hearing that when you're working with someone there's something very liberating about helping people become self-aware, become aware of these distortions,
[SPEAKER_01]: as they're showing up in the moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know we're going to go more deeply into, you know, what, what, um, what are some of the moves, non, therapists make, non-practitioners make, in a bit more detail later.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, that's kind of what I'm looking at.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, you touched on a really important thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is the exact same adaptations and that's what I talk about them has.
[SPEAKER_00]: The exact same adaptations that we make to the environment as children that's once saved our lives, as we carry them forward into adulthood, are the same changes, the same strategies that we develop that now create the symptoms and limitations that we experience as adults.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could you say a bit more about the process of how they get taken on and then turn into survival style?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm aware of sense like we're a child in an environment and certain needs don't get met.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's a process we go through.
[SPEAKER_01]: Could you go into that a bit more detail?
[SPEAKER_00]: Happily, yeah, because the original title of my first book on the belt mental trauma was actually called connection are deepest desire and greatest fear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it is our deepest desire.
[SPEAKER_00]: It only becomes fearful when we've
[SPEAKER_00]: learn to survive by disconnecting so all of the survival styles represent some form of disconnection that it one's helped us to survive so for example my very the first survival style that I talked about in arm as the connection survival style it's named for the missing capacity
[SPEAKER_00]: or at least compromise capacity.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, one of the things that children, particularly when they're very early trauma, pre-verbal trauma, sometimes even pre-natal trauma, birth trauma, or early attachment trauma, the way that children manage is by disconnecting and when it's too severe, they can shut down their emotions, they can shut down their body, they can disconnect from other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: they withdraw into themselves or they go out of their bodies, you know, into their heads or into the energetic feel.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a certain kind of escape when other escape is impossible.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a dissociative process.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I talk about when I teach people about dissociation is dissociation is that it's that capacity which helps human beings bear the unbearable.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the problem is is that we continue using disconnection dynamics in various aspects of our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole entire rest of our life, unless life experiences change it or the psychotherapy changes it or something significant goes on, that changes that we will continue to see other people as a threat.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will continue to feel emotions and self-awareness of the body as a threat.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can talk about it and you can read about it, but you have to experience it to know it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And norm is very, I think we sometimes say, the nominal logical or experiential moments at that kind of moment, a moment like exploration of, like for example, the connection disconnection process, because it's right there in front of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the room and we track that with clients and we reflect that and then we explore what it isn't they're disconnecting from and what are the various ideas and identifications that they're carrying around that you know got get threatened and from which then they disconnect.
[SPEAKER_00]: So disconnection and this disconnection is part of
[SPEAKER_00]: the process in all of the survival cells is just varies.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a very profound disconnection with this early first earliest developmental survival style.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I talk about attunement, basically these are individuals who disconnected from their needs at a very early age because their needs were not being met, and they learn to adapt to very little.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it could get more complicated, I won't go too much, but then we develop behavioral strategies, one of the very common behavioral strategies for people with the attunement survival style is to become helpers, helping professionals, they're taking care of other people's needs, and they, but they don't know how to focus on their own, and of course, it leads to burnout and all these other dynamics.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so we're looking at how they've learned to disconnect from their needs because needing for them
[SPEAKER_00]: needing something from someone else is associated with shame and humiliation and you know and helplessness too as well and so one way they've learned to manage it then is to be the helper and they they kind of secure a position they're important to people but they continue the dynamic of disconnecting from their needs which they end up paying the price for when they do this long-term.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then I go through this very briefly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't elaborate so much anymore because we could spend a lot of time, but if there was what I call the trust survival style, these are individuals who learned that they could not trust, that their dependency and their helplessness is children was in a variety of ways used against them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, for example, they're enlisted to become the sports star that their father never was or was and wanted to have in his son or the, I mean, I'm just using stereotypes here, but the stage mother who's, or Malarin, a mother who wants her daughter to be an accomplished what she never could.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're, it's tricky because they're getting lots of strokes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're being grown to use a word that's gotten increasingly popular, but they're being missed because it's not about them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about the parents' needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to make a long story short, one of the strategies then that these children use,
[SPEAKER_00]: is to make this kind of father themselves that they'll never be used again, because they feel that they, on some level, more than some of the earlier survivors, they have a sense that they're being used, but it feels good and it's confusing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so one of their strategies is to always be in control, always to be in power, never to depend on anybody for anything as far as as possible for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's two more, I'll say very briefly, then there's the autonomy survival style who was not supported in their own autonomy.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were not supported to separate and individuate from the parents in this matter of fact, often they were undermined.
[SPEAKER_00]: They might have been, you know, gotten there some of their basic needs in that that we've been talking about in the early survival stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when they go to become their own separate being,
[SPEAKER_00]: One, or both of the parents find ways to get in the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, it can either be very rigid into trolling parents, or parents with a parent with, you know, anxiety about being abandoned themselves, and they see the child's increasing autonomy as a abandonment.
[SPEAKER_00]: This autonomy, so I will say, will go underground, so they end up being on the surface very sweet and nice and pleasing people and on the deepest level it's this holding out and the ideas you've gotten my body but you're never again I get my soul so screw you so and and some of those individuals with the autonomy, so I will say I'll recognize that in themselves some have no idea they just think that they want to be pleasing all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: yet their behavior shows something different.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, we actually touched on the love sexuality one where if they grow in families where their value is based on how they look and how they perform, which means they're not valued at all, because your only as good as your last success and failure
[SPEAKER_00]: means not just something disappointing, but a kind of collapse of this sense of self of baiting that's based on how you look and how you perform.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of these dynamics, even though they saved our lives, they have a built-in pain factor that is implicit in each one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, just to be clarified because a lot of people have the question, you can identify with one or more of these survival stuff as a matter of fact.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's normal that many people can relate to several, two, three, and even more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think, as you were naming them and the characteristics, and I was just thinking of how, you know, I recognize them in myself and how much they could inform, you know, leaders, I mean, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people listening to this coach leaders and I use that term very broadly from you know, a leader of a community to a leader of an organization, and the thing that the point I want to make there is that's a lot about leading other people or being in connection with other people, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I'm saying that because that just emphasises how much
[SPEAKER_01]: as your in relationship to other people and there's something about this well let me ask before I ask that question I'm curious because before we hit record you said a lot of
[SPEAKER_01]: people coming now to train with them are actually coaches and you're creating coach specific offerings.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder what the possibility is that you see for people in the coaching industry too, to kind of learn about NIM and its principles,
[SPEAKER_01]: maybe in relationship to these survival styles that we've named.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you see the coaches in a sense learning about those styles?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that informing the work they do with the people they're coaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, interestingly, that is exactly what we've been experiencing now.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have different levels of training.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do have trainings that are only for psychotherapists, but we do have a specific training that is open to coaches and other helping professionals, people who want to be trauma informed, who want just the general understanding of Norman, how to apply it in their particular field.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now as I mentioned to you before we started, it turns out that we've ended up with a lot of coaches in our work and as a result as I mentioned to you, we decided it would be important.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got we got the accreditation from the International Coaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it Federation or the National Coaching Federation so that the coaches can get, you know, the continuing education points or whatever it's called in different countries.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they found it very useful to move from primarily a behavioral, you know, kind of metric to looking at the deeper emotional dynamics that are getting in the way of the kind of success or the kind of higher level performance that they're looking for.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, we,
[SPEAKER_00]: believe that we're taking it to taking these dynamics to a deeper level by exploring the emotional and other elements and identity, you know, because these each one of these survival-sized represents a distortion and identity so that
[SPEAKER_00]: When I talk about identities, distorses are not being critical.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying that we're not seeing a world as it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're seeing the world through the lens of the civil style that we developed in order to survive in a difficult situation when we were children usually.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, by going to the deeper dynamics, the feedback that we've gotten from coaches is that this has been incredibly helpful for them in terms of their coaching work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, as we've noticed that the cohort of coaches has increased,
[SPEAKER_00]: progressively, in the time that we've been offering this training, we've got planned a continuing segment, won't be available for at least six months, but we've got this, where it will be a subsection after the basic training, specifically for coaches to apply to their work and how the basic principles that you learn and what we call the MBT that are basic training.
[SPEAKER_00]: can be applied specifically to coaches because we just kind of see that it's important audience for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we could get into some of those principles in a moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really love what you say there about going beneath, you know, just behavioral goals and performance into, you know, what's the identity that I've taken on that's, you know, getting in the way or, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's reached the end of it's, you know, it was very, it was very useful.
[SPEAKER_01]: It kept us safe and then connected and belonging.
[SPEAKER_01]: But now perhaps it's kind of confining as in some ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder what you think about this and this might segue, because I know, you know, what this is one of the things I really appreciated about nine was how it is working with the present moment in a non-pathologizing way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And
[SPEAKER_01]: What I see in coaching now, and in other fields as well, is a move into approaches which reject kind of self-improvement paradigm, or at least recognize the limits of it, you know, maybe not reject it outright.
[SPEAKER_01]: This idea that, you know, often it's like, well,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, here I am now and then I want to be over there and I'm going to kind of, you know, you know, sense like strategize or use effort to get over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what it actually often does is it and it kind of reinforces a sense of there's something wrong with me as I am.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it creates this tension with our experience, like, and actually can be very counterproductive.
[SPEAKER_01]: to that, deeper transformation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I see types of coaching now, which, in a sense, they're working with, what's here right now, as we just explore this topic, they're moving very much into the present moment and becoming aware of what's actually unfolding in the present moment and letting that be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as they do, that's when they're kind of integration or, you know, and I actually had never used the word
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, with my clients I've seen, they drop into a sense of a lifeness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, I sort of lot there, but I wonder how that lands for you and maybe that's a segue into some of these principles of how you would, yeah, go about reclaiming a lifeness law.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, honestly, if it's exactly into our paradigm, and I can kind of elaborate it a little on that, but I just want to share this association.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our podcast series is called The Aliveness Project.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, because it does so much revolve around not just
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, fitting in or being more functional, but really what we sometimes talk about is transformation through the trauma work that we do.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not just looking to get them back to baseline.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're looking to help people,
[SPEAKER_00]: unlock potential and capacities that they had been, you know, in some ways, unable, it wasn't, they weren't available to access with the person.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what you're saying here is really fits in in another piece that you mentioned that also very much fits in is that when you're coming from a place of quote unquote, as you mentioned, improving yourself, implicitly,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's like, I'm not good enough as I am, so I'm going to make myself better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's painful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even when we don't realize that that's what we're formulating, that implicit self-rejection is painful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that part of our self that is being left behind and being judged.
[SPEAKER_00]: is going to in some ways come out to sabotage the process, so it's really important that we understand our limitations through the lens of how they help us make it as far as we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean we have to give them up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they're now no longer in, you know, in the investment isn't in so-called self-improvement.
[SPEAKER_00]: The investment is in accessing the deeper aspects and capacities of ourselves and manifesting those.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like, it can be a problematic word, but, you know, mature using those capacities and enjoying those capacities.
[SPEAKER_00]: using the capacities that we have and that we've developed to be able to share those with the world and share those with other people and to have those capacities impact others as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I mean, so what you were saying was really very consistent with an arm approach.
[SPEAKER_01]: Beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I bookmarked the deep prospects of ourselves for later.
[SPEAKER_01]: What?
[SPEAKER_01]: What does a non-therapist do when they're where the client?
[SPEAKER_01]: In a sense, I'm wondering about what's some of the... And in a way, and we mentioned this before, recording, you know, what are some of the... I'm fascinated in, what are like universal principles that inform...
[SPEAKER_01]: these modalities that are arising.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for example, internal family systems has become incredibly popular, something about that where they say, if you're trying to, if parts are trying to fix other parts, they polarise and that never really works.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, disidentifying from a part into what they call self,
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and that seems to be a kind of tapping into a universal principle that, um, you know, when we, when we identify with something larger, we can bring a kind of love and presence to these parts that wasn't possible when we're only inside parts.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, those kind of principles I'd love to see if we can tease out a little bit that
[SPEAKER_00]: with Dick Schwartz and some of the familiar with his work and he and with with mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one thing we do have in common is really the acceptance of all of the parts of ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't go into the parts in other ways that he does, but that is a common principle that we agree on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the more that we have these split off parts that are then struggling and suffering,
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, acceptance of our parts, the various parts of ourselves, particularly the parts that we don't like is important to recognize and accept the, and understand the survival, you know, value of these even these dysfunctional aspects of self, that we're going to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't want it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't grow by rejecting ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: We grow by accepting ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't mean staying stuck in these old patterns.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it does mean that we're not condemning ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's actually for many people just a recapitulation of their history.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not good enough and you've got to do better and you've got, you know, and so when we take that position with ourselves, there's actually a self-injury that's going on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: and your energy is divided and you're basically trying to, you know, improve yourself with the sort of damages hanging over your head, meaning which is that you're, you're, you're nothing if you don't, if you don't improve, that puts so much pressure on some coaching processes because when they don't get the results,
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes the coach is disappointed, and the client is disappointed, and when you're turning, you know, growth into a win-lose situation, that's a major obstacle just in itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, again, it's really important that we're
[SPEAKER_00]: we're not staying stuck in the past but we're moving forward and then you asked about some universal principles.
[SPEAKER_00]: So exploration is a universal principle in nine.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a whole different
[SPEAKER_00]: perspective and symptom eradication, which is what is so common in the psychotherapy world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes I think in coaching too, but particularly in the psychotherapy world, like to get rid of a symptom and that's there, you know, and that's their standard of improvement.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, for me, that's so misguided.
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the eradication of a symptom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, we trust in norm, that as people reconnect and as they become more whole and as they experience and as they work through the various issues of the various survival cells, their symptoms do just fall away.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's, so that's an indicator that something good is happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you make that a go-oriented process, you're missing the whole dynamic that's driving the symptoms.
[SPEAKER_00]: And NARM is profoundly interested in the clients in our world, and the various internal conflicts that are driving these dysfunctional, or less than optimal dynamics, and symptoms that the person
[SPEAKER_00]: is experiencing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can go on with a couple more principles where we can maybe want to interject something.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I think it's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm thinking, when this might weave into some of my tee up, some of the principles you're going to share next.
[SPEAKER_01]: But so I'm thinking that a client is there
[SPEAKER_01]: the norm practitioner who sat there with them and is really attuning to this person on an experiential level and this kind of attitude of exploration is really essential that there is a kind of bringing into awareness everything that's arising in the moment around the topic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exploration is based on one core principle and that's curiosity and for us to be curious about the difficulties we're having rather than to try and eliminate them, that changes the emotional dynamics immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: Curiosity is just bad, it's an openness, it's an assumption that we don't know because when if we assume we know we don't have to be curious about anything,
[SPEAKER_00]: But when we're curious, we're assuming we don't know what these dynamics are and we're open to exploring and finding out what the dynamics actually are and it's energetically and emotionally, it's a huge shift.
[SPEAKER_00]: in direction to be curious.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's part of the inquiry process.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exploration oriented, but what I call the second pillar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the third pillar I talked about was agency to see, and this has actually done more effectively sometimes in coaching than in psychotherapy, where
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's like with therapy, everybody's viewed as just a victim of their past and they have no control and the best they can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a lot of things I won't get into a criticizing, at least any more than I already have.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the fact that we do have agency where we didn't know it, now you can't force it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as you explore, you get to see that, oh yeah, I have been doing this to myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So for example, let me take a very common human challenge, rejection.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when you read books about rejection, it's always, oh, well, if you were rejected by somebody, then think about all the bad things you could think about them or, you know, don't give him so much power or hurt so much power.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a lot of like bromides that people get about rejection, but what I talk about when I'm teaching people therapists and encroaches about how to work with rejection is to see, let's say we want somebody
[SPEAKER_00]: and they don't want us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we experience that as rejection, and it's natural that we want someone and they don't want us that will be disappointed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the rejection piece isn't that isn't rejection?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's somebody who's just not wanting the same thing we want.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you look at it from adult consciousness, it's simple, but we don't usually do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mostly unless it emends something that's when we do it, it's just rationalization.
[SPEAKER_00]: in us is the self-rejection process.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we start saying, oh, I'm not pretty enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not handsome enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: My thighs are this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: My nose, I'm not smart enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not tall enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, and there's this constant
[SPEAKER_00]: dynamic of rejecting ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we'll reject ourselves in advance, so we don't experience rejection.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're interested in maybe chatting up somebody and we start talking ourselves out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, they won't want me there too, pretty, they're too busy, they're too, you know, and so this would self and that with understanding how much of what we experience as quote unquote rejection is actually self rejection is a movement towards increasing agency.
[SPEAKER_00]: when we see that we're doing that to ourselves, that changes the calculus there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think this is a universal principle, if we couldn't call them that, I mean, and I see it in coaching too, I see it, it's like when we start to recognize that we are creating our experience of the world, you know, through the,
[SPEAKER_01]: constructions we have around that the sense of identity we have and and it's a profoundly rich and nuanced and deep thread to explore because I think this is you know it gets into more of the esoteric traditions as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: They pointed at this but you know this in a sense like the world is a subjective experience and so do you and I found this rich in my experience to really take that on it's like
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, in a sense, I'm creating my experience of the world and it's very liberating and it's humbling.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, it's humbling because, you know, I'm continually contracting or reacting in the face of my experiences.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I'm curious if anything comes up there, and also if you were with a client, would how would you work with that principle of agency?
[SPEAKER_01]: Would it be that you would, you know, I mean, if you kind of said to them, hey, you're doing this to yourself, you know, you know, we would never see that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so how would you work with that principle?
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, a very common dynamic that is brought to coaches and to psychotherapists is burnout.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we never preach about agency that goes nowhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually hurtful.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when the client is seems ready, he is best we can determine.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, they come in and say, well, I'm suffering from burnout.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the right moment, when there's an therapeutic alliance or alliance with the coach when you feel like you're working together and there's a certain amount of trust that's developed and then we might say, well, I'll explore with you how you burned yourself out on your last job.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's agency.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the language of agency.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now some clients are minority, but sometimes We'll feel blamed and then we have to address that if that's what they're doing to themselves at that moment And even doing to themselves as an agency based language, but sometimes and then if they're open that and then see well Yeah, they
[SPEAKER_00]: Never set limits.
[SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to always prove themselves so they took on more than they could handle.
[SPEAKER_00]: They pressured themselves all the time when other people didn't do their jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: They did their jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're a whole variety of strategies that people use.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then they start to see, yeah, it wasn't just that I suffered from burnout and it wasn't just, and they may have been objectively in a difficult environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: still where they grow is when they see what they did in that even in that difficult environment, even if they chose and rightly so to get out of that environment, they're still useful information about why they stayed so long, what they did to themselves in that context, and that is all involved with agency.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how would you, because I know none does this, you know, you can have a conceptual conversation about what you just shared, you know, that, hey, we, I don't know you said you don't talk about agency directly, but we don't preach it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the preacher, yeah, don't preach it.
[SPEAKER_01]: How would you bring that conversation down into a kind of embodied somatic revelation?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I know that's every moment is unique.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a difficult question because we're talking about an abstract example.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because as a matter of fact, you just, well, this has happened several times already in our podcast together because we were talking about universal principles and I was getting to my last universal, well, not the last one, but one of the more significant universal principles, which is embodiment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's how the various pieces fit together that we've talked about, is that the mechanism of disconnection for all of us as human beings is the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: how do we disconnect?
[SPEAKER_00]: We disconnect at first by contracting and tancing ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: We disconnect by holding our breath.
[SPEAKER_00]: We disconnect by sometimes deeper contractions in the viscera, you know, in the core, in the neck, and the joints all, you know, and when contract, and when trying to do that to manage our experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we all know that when we're nervous, watching a movie and then finally, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: So that we've been contracting against the anxiety that we're feeling for, by carelessly for the person, you know, where I identified it with the film.
[SPEAKER_00]: But so it is a body and disconnection is a body-based dynamic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't bring the body into the narrative, you're missing a very important point.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the way we do that in arm is the fourth pillar.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we track the connection and disconnection process.
[SPEAKER_00]: We deconstruct it in both ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when people start to disconnect, I might say something I notice that you're tensing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We try to stay with what's observable in a client.
[SPEAKER_00]: I notice that you're, looks like you're grinding your jaw or I notice that you're holding your breath.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going on there right now, and so we bring their attention to disconnection.
[SPEAKER_00]: As soon as the attention is brought to the disconnection, it starts to change just in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then we deconstruct what it was that they were starting to feel that then they felt the impulse to disconnect from.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was anger.
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe a sadness, maybe something else, but so the deconstruction part is part of the inquiry, the second pillar piece, but we do it by focusing on not just the verbal narrative, but what we're observing in the client.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: and the residents to the residents that we feel and we're working with clients.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of these are sources of information, and we bring that to their attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that's when they're disconnecting.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the other side of the coin is when people are reconnecting,
[SPEAKER_00]: when they've had an important insight or completed a significant emotion that was unresolved for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We always will then bring that process back to the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you felt that anger, as you felt that grief, what's happening in your body right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, most people can go, there's some people can't go to their body, and then we respect that, of course, we don't push them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for those people who can go to their body to anchor that insight or that new emotional freedom or whatever it might have been that changed, in bodily experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: is a significant step towards integration.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, without that step, being part of the therapeutic process, you're missing a very significant element of completion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's beautiful, you name that, I think that's often missed by coaches, actually, is when a kind of state of coherence or haltness emerges, then people move on, and it's like,
[SPEAKER_01]: But I want to ask you about the deconstructing, what that means, and it sends what the, are you saying that, so the client's sharing their topic, the non-practitioners inviting them into curiosity and there's an exploration that they're experiencing on an embodied level,
[SPEAKER_01]: um, they're having stuff reflected to them by the practitioner that, you know, maybe reveal something they didn't see.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the mechanism that creates the, I don't know what work to use here, is it healing or integration or, you know, brings it brings forth the,
[SPEAKER_01]: and metabolization of the barrier to a live nest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, is, well, there are two questions that really, let me kind of take one at a time because you first asked about the deconstruction.
[SPEAKER_00]: The deacordruction piece is slowing the whole process down because when we have a reaction, it's often very quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody hurts our feelings, it's very quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's say we get,
[SPEAKER_00]: sometimes called triggered by somebody else's comment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of just taking that at face value, we say, okay, and we do this in the here and now.
[SPEAKER_00]: So thinking back about this person at work, or this love interest, or whatever it was, that you felt really hurt, or maybe the first thing that they were aware of was anger, whatever the reaction is, it doesn't matter ultimately.
[SPEAKER_00]: We say, let's look at what it is that you actually hurt you.
[SPEAKER_00]: let's look at exactly what it is that you're getting angry about and we start then to slow the process down and look into the details of the reaction in a way that in the moment that they experience it happens so quickly that they don't have the time to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do that slowing the process down comes a great deal of awareness?
[SPEAKER_00]: insight on an intellectual level, emotional awareness of what may have been that they got angry, but what really was it hurt their feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we explore what was it exactly that hurt?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say if that's their reaction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it hurt because part of them in general believes it.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, believes or takes on what this other person said or what they interpreted from the other person's head because it's often as you pointed out we're in our little bubbles and we often don't really even hear the other person we're just responding to our own you know internal dynamics, the projections and so on.
[SPEAKER_00]: So by slowing it down,
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of them, the child consciousness, as I talk about it, being the driver here, is that it becomes increasingly available to adult consciousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, embodied adult consciousness is really the one of the most significant steps towards a more complete integration.
[SPEAKER_01]: And is it that by, I like that description of deconstructing so it's like it feels like you're expanding everything out, you know, like, you know, zooming in and a sense or but by zooming in, in a sense, there's also a zooming out, you know, the client is disidentifying from,
[SPEAKER_01]: the experience is the adult conscious that the adult you described is it is and this maybe gets the second part of my question about what is the integration mechanism you know is it is it that in that moment the client will be you know seeing
[SPEAKER_01]: that whole experience through a different lens now and through the adults and you know they're they're not playing out and the heat identified with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now there's a kind of relationship to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is that integration mechanism?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, as you said, and I like the way you describe it, it is consistent with the way I describe it as probably what I like it, but it very much fits because you're both zooming in, looking at the details of the reaction, and in that process, there's a zooming out dynamic which I talk about in norm as a disidentification.
[SPEAKER_00]: so that we can see that by zooming in and looking at the details, we start to take all of that less personally.
[SPEAKER_00]: So interestingly, I often don't talk about this seeming paradox until later in some of the trainings, but it's so appropriate now, is that there's an increasing sense of our own subjectivity.
[SPEAKER_00]: because we're more in touch with our bodies, our emotions and, you know, our thoughts and belief systems and all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we have an increasing sense of self, increasing sense of subjectivity, which brings with it seemingly paradoxically to some, an increasing objectivity.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like we don't take our responses as seriously as we once did.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can see that
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, some people would talk about it as a mindfulness process or, you know, and I, I will, at mindfulness is fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although, I heard the John Cabot Sin is wanting to, it wishes that he and you named it something else, but I also talk about it as a mindfulness process, so that we've become more heart-centered and we start taking our own.
[SPEAKER_00]: internal dramas less seriously, and we take other people's dramas less seriously, and that doesn't mean we're disconnected, just the opposite.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're taking them less seriously, because we're more connected.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the stoic.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm gray rocking as it's called and called, you know, it's like just standing back from things, but it is having from this more disidentify places, having more objectivity, about our own process and about other human beings.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think this tea's a per question.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to ask you about
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, your view of the potential for humans, for humanity and the certain views of spirituality, which maybe emphasise the kind of transcendent view, a kind of redundancy at view, renounce the body, the emotional world, relationships, they get in the way of awakening and
[SPEAKER_01]: what seems to be proliferating around the world now or at least I am drawn to which is to be fully embodied, to be fully connected, to kind of live a juicy life.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I certainly recognize like it's like feeling more but bothering you less I think I'm stilling that phrase from someone else but I recognize that in myself where it's like
[SPEAKER_01]: through the intimacy with experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like I move more into a kind of fluid experience where constructs that would have reified and kind of reified into a new identity, that they can't take hold in the same way in the moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's that very capacity of feeling more
[SPEAKER_01]: being more intimate that actually creates more disidentification and I wonder what you think about that and what your biases or your view of, you know, where we're developing too, you talked about the
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's interesting to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: This happened again and again is that you're really on the similar track as how I see it so there is this kind of congruity between what you just said and how I hold it, which I'll share with you, that and I completely agree with you about the, it's a lot easier to be quote-unquote enlightened, meditating in a cave,
[SPEAKER_00]: than in an intimate relationship with a significant other.
[SPEAKER_00]: We probably most of us have experienced that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, of course, if you're alone and meditating, you can tap into a certain kind of flow.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not juicy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the same juicyness as in the more you use it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I used that word in two of myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it has more to do than with living your life fully on this planet.
[SPEAKER_00]: but not being not taking all of the drama that we create on this planet as seriously as we once did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, of course, there's some drama that people when people are actually getting heard or injured or, you know, all kinds of things that the difficult things that happen on this planet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying not to take those things seriously, but I'm talking about on an emotional level on a personal level, not to get involved in so much drama and not to be so thin-skinned about things
[SPEAKER_00]: it's not about us anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not so much of what we've always taken to be personal, really isn't personal.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, but we don't know that and just knowing it in our head is not enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's that embodied piece.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you know it in your bones and in yourself, it does lead to just what you describe.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a fluidity that happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: When I talk about, I'm getting some more advanced levels here, but when I talk about identification, so that's where this used in spiritual work, too, but I talk about identification are held in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: as in the form of tension and collapse, which I touched on earlier, so that as and that means a frozen fixed and stuck quality and what we do experience as these old identifications dissolve, there is a fluidity.
[SPEAKER_00]: that happens in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a sense of flow that we experience that was not available, and that flow is connected to joy and aliveness and play and creativity, and it has nothing to do with not being productive because productivity can be.
[SPEAKER_00]: hugely joyful when it's coming from a real and embodied place.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all of those things are possible, but either from a over-determined or survival style place or from the real place in us as human beings, where our juices and our life is,
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe this comes to us, well, there's a live-ness has an intelligence to it, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I mean, in a way, I mean, from maybe you have a lot to say on the hits, but I'm just thinking out loud, but you know, a live-ness is something, it's so palpable to us, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, if I'm going to ask you all your life or not, you say, I'm alive, and yeah, it's kind of a mystery at the same time, you know, it's, and I'm feeling there's a sense of intelligence, perhaps, in inside that aliveness, you know, life can move more fluidly and it seems like we need
[SPEAKER_01]: more of that in the world right now and it may be connects with us to one quick comment I'll make which is, you know, I used to feel my spiritual practice was about kind of identifying into a kind of, you know, spacious awareness and it's not that I've gone away from that.
[SPEAKER_01]: but it was like, there was a kind of slight dissociate feeling from that maybe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas now, and much more interested in the intimacy and fluid flow of experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in relationality itself, you know, Dan Siegel, and many others I've heard talk about, how the relationship between things is maybe even more primary than the things that
[SPEAKER_01]: that kind of arise themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I know we're getting into like, I'm taking us into the weeds a bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Great.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a question in that, but... Well, maybe, I mean, just the R and R stands for relational, that's how significant I see this piece, relationship to self, relationship to other people, relationship to the word, world, relationship to the universe or something bigger than ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, for me, relationality is a key factor too, and
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I didn't invent this word, I don't know who did it, but there's this spiritual bypass that sometimes people will do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they can get to, maybe some very real, expanded, seemingly expanded states.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really expanded spiritual states, but by passing their human experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me it's really more about not bypassing the human, the human experience, living the life with all its juice and all of its challenges and finding increasing connection to self-others and the universe in that process.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so to go back to the process of this identification, which is again a word that I borrowed from spiritual work,
[SPEAKER_00]: is that I often get the question, well, if we continue to disident identify, well, and who are we, when we're disident identify?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, sometimes I'll play the year, I don't, I'm never, I pretend to be anybody's guru, but sometimes I'll play the guru role and say, well, that's a very good question, you know, or something like that, but, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: One, what I do find, and two major traditions, like in the more devotional traditions, it's the heart, soupism, esoteric, Christianity, and so on, in other traditions, it's more mental, like Buddhism, where you're focusing on emptiness more, and the other is focusing on fullness.
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, they're two sides of the same coin.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it leads to a blow, a liveness, connection,
[SPEAKER_00]: Increasing emptiness because we're not taking ourselves so seriously all of these bound up energetic You know, I then it all these identifications that are bound up energy basically are softening and releasing and again
[SPEAKER_00]: uh to quote uh the famous Hungarian psychologist whose name is six me high six sent me high some of your you know it's it's it isn't spelled like that because there's all the kinds of elves in there that apparently are not pronounced in all gerry.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he was an expert in flow, and that flow experience is available to all of us, and it comes in my experience with deep connection, deep heartfulness, emptiness, a combination of all those, because they're not exclusive to the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, when we're connected to our hearts, that love is one of the capacities of the heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's interesting, we keep going to the kind of some of the deeper levels of norm, because in norm, I talk about the, you know, for many of us, it's just focusing on capacities, developing more capacity for, you know, emotional capacity, not just physical
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also do make it explicit in norm about states of being, and so that when we're truly in our heart,
[SPEAKER_00]: various aspects of being this actually do arise.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the capacity for love is important one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Compassion is another one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Courage, it comes from the French words, from hearts, all of these are heart qualities that we have more access to the more we
[SPEAKER_00]: are able to really access our heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just to share a little story with you, I didn't know this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: I first started teaching this, but in one of my trainings, I think it was in Germany at one point.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was talking about exploring the obstacles in the way, and somebody brought me a quote, it turns out it was a quote from Rumi.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I had not seen it before, but I've used it since, which is something I'll miss quoted to some degrees, so look, bear with me, but it was like, don't go looking for love, look for the internal obstacles that you've developed against love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's very, they showed that to me because it's consistent with my work, with the norm work, that love is what's left when there are the obstacles that were once there to love usually true hurt and various kinds of things that we disconnected from the deep part of our nature, which is love.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so pleased you bring this in because I think this is missing from a lot of, I mean, I can't speak too much for therapeutic models, but I think it's probably missing from a bunch of them and in coaching too, these qualities of heartfulness, so I might call them qualities of presence that arise when
[SPEAKER_01]: when one is able to integrate or, you know, this identify from parts, the model I've used which I have from one of my mentors is, you know, you can dis identify from parts and and bring love to those parts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And which often opens up more flow of experience and can drop us into it an experience of wholeness, of presence where qualities like love and compassion and strength can arise from which within which then we can act skillfully but they're not strategic.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not the kind of foe
[SPEAKER_01]: confidence or the follow-up that can exist prior to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a spontaneous kind of expressed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, we're on the same page there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I resonate with just put everything you said.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would I agree with all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: and Lauren Sam feels like we're moving to a close, but I wonder if there's anything you want to share with people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything we haven't mentioned that actually think is really important to bring into the conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, that's a good and challenging question to kind of I may be I'll just go back to that very first thing that I said is the spontaneous movement in all of us is to the heart is towards connection is towards love and
[SPEAKER_00]: we've all learned various ways to disconnect from that because we were hurt as children.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were looking at the world through a child's eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for many people, we developed a worldview by the time we're six years old, which is common understanding and psychology, but the deep implications of that is that we continue to worldview the world through that distorted lens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, of course, the child takes everything personally.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as adults, we can experience it differently, not just as a mental construct, not just as a rationalization, but as a real and in depth and in body, the understanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if I were to sum up our whole conversation, just like to remind people,
[SPEAKER_00]: of that, and as you said earlier, we don't have to will ourselves to get to, but that place is a matter of fact, trying to will ourselves to get to that place, those places get in our way, but when we pay attention and we do the emotional and other kinds of work that are part of that process, that's where it all leads.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a beautiful ending and invitation for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Laurence, I just want to thank you for, for I just really enjoyed myself and I just want to kind of really express my gratitude for the depth of
[SPEAKER_01]: um exploration and expertise and wisdom you bring that's led to the creation of this work.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, thanks so much and it's really been a pleasure of being here with you too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, rough thought that we would there would be a nice synergy between Elson.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I've experienced in our conversation today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, great.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll link when it comes out, if you want, we'll link to that coach offering and on the notes page.
[SPEAKER_01]: And is there, can we find out more about your work?
[SPEAKER_01]: Has do you want to name any resources or your website?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can Google NARM and there's a NARM training and the two which is,
[SPEAKER_00]: both US-based and but also touches international through virtual you know through our virtual programs and then we I've also got trainings all over just about in every country in eastern and western Europe these days that's my through my personal website Dr. Lorenzeller.com I think that's the right thing but it's just
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can find all of the international and particularly Eastern and Western European trainings that we offer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, Lawrence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll encourage people listening to check that out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.