Retreat 5 & 6
In Year 3, we increase the already intensive focus on supervised practice and hone newly acquired observational and other skills for working with the most complex disorganization, including deep listening and touch, and embody the pleasure of what it means to be of service. Clinically, we examine how physical syndromes such as migraine, fibromyalgia, environmental sensitivity, addiction, etc., show the compromised autonomic organization. Special care is needed because these most disorganized systems may appear to be quite functional according to societal standards. Fundamental system disorganization may appear as the successful workaholic, the functional addict, or the successful executive, for instance. Here, the steady work of the shaping paradigm within a positive reinforcement framework is the most challenged and challenging.
Success occurs through working with core regulatory systems previously believed to be out of reach to ‘conscious’ intervention. While the client has the needed resources, they are typically unconscious for the client and overlooked by the therapist. Having learned how to make a deep joining at the level of the nervous system, HEARTraining students understand that complex systems do not organize through interventionist strategies or self-control. Rather, seeing subtle bio-states, instinctive responding alone can talk to the brain stem. Simply put — we each need another person to accurately reflect what is intrinsically available for support. This accurate reflection is what we have cultivated throughout the HEARTraining. With the right support, all complex systems — each of us — can end the cycles of disintegration, and become self-organizing; and even become organizing influences for systems we encounter. Systems such as clients, colleagues, family, friends, and the larger culture. In fact, a lifestyle of compassion begins to emerge and OI students develop the ability to create and increase “islands of coherence.”
In this third year, the refinement of wise support takes us to a new level of sophistication. The result is deeper compassion for ourselves and others, self-acceptance and deepened intuition. As our organism blossoms out of freeze it comes to move naturally and spontaneously, expressing Organic Intelligence. The pleasure is unmistakable, the hope is palpable, and the effect is powerful.
Year 3 Topics Include
- Working with the Three Phases
- Phase 1: Disorganization and Chaos:
- Why & How Systems Get This Disorganized
- Assessment of Autonomic Disorganization: Syndromes, Observable Criteria
- Phase 2: Complexity
- Stabilization and Good Social Work
- Facilitating the Transition to Phase 3
- Organization and Coherence
- System Coherence and Self Organizing Systems
- Building Islands of Coherence
- Reinforcing and Catalyzing Biological Synchrony
- Tracking Organismic Coherence with Eyes and Hands and Hearts
Gestalt Seeing
Deep Listening & Felt Sense
- Nervous System: Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Systems
- The Sympathetic Death Spiral
- The Dorsal-Sympathetic Breakdown
- Glia: Not Just Packing Peanuts
- A Cartography of Body Systems and Structures
- The Non-doing Reinforcement Approach
- Pathologizing as Politicizing
- Touch
- Normalizing Touch for Mammals: We Don’t Thrive with Wire Monkey Mothers
- The Ethics of Touch
- We’re Made for This: Social Attunement
- The Singing and Dancing Species
- Building Your Practice
- Technology & Treatment
- Marketing: Getting Your Skills in The World
