The Principles I Work with
These principles are interdependent on one another in their capacities to transform our consciousness, just as we humans are also interdependent on one another for our healing and forward movement in life. These Principles are reference points in consciousness, doorways through which we can enter into new paradigms of living. Through embodying these principles over time we slowly begin to radically and positively change our way of living to find greater resonance with who we really are. There are 9 main principles with many other minor principles strewn across the landscape of my work. A little like a starry night sky with a major constellation of stars and many other beautiful tiny dots twinkling in amongst them.
The Principles I work from are as follows:
Slowing Down, Pausing & Deeper Listening
Honouring limits
Presence & Helping
Resourcing
Allowing feelings
Awareness of bodily sensations
Exploring Resonance (Representation & Relational Presence)
Gratitude & Appreciation
Celebrating What Is
Slowing Down, Pausing & Deeper Listening
"Be patient and keep reminding yourself that you don’t need to experience everything now. This hero’s journey we are on proceeds one tiny step at a time" - Dr Peter Levine
The first of the principles is slowing down. Slowing down & Pausing is something that most of us find challenging most of the time. Slowing down & pausing powerfully increases our capacity for presence in all of our relations. In the work of Somatic Experiencing we understand that trauma is something that happens as a result of experiencing ‘too much too fast too soon’. Through slowing down and being aware, we can begin to heal & integrate difficult past experiences that are being held in our body-mind in the form of unresolved stresses and tensions. Deeper Listening happens naturally as we begin to slow down and transform the inner tensions that we carry in our bodies. The space within us gives birth to new horizons and it is from within the depth of this inner landscape and fertile emptiness that deeper listening grows. If we are constantly trying to fill this emptiness with activity then we become numb to the beautiful and subtle rhythms in life that it is possible to experience and enjoy. Slowing down & Pausing encourages the return of life energy, increases emotional safety & supports the healing of unresolved past traumas.
Honouring Limits
"You don't truly love someone until you love their fate, too." - Bert Hellinger
The second principle is Honouring Limits. We so often get caught up in living out of beliefs such as ‘anything is possible’ or ‘I can do anything I want’ or romantically and fantastically chasing goals and big dreams whilst wondering why we continually seem to fall flat on our faces. We have been conditioned into an aggressive survival based culture which constantly pushes at limits without listening. We so rarely pay much or any attention to the deeper layer of feelings and past experiences who lay distraught and undigested within us like heavy weights tied around our souls. Our limits are basically our unresolved past and it is by courageously turning towards them, facing them, acknowledging them, honouring them and celebrating them that we can really become more available to the aliveness and mysterious beauty of life.
Consciously Relating with our limits
We are human, imperfect and traumatised. When we deny that then we remain imprisoned by that. Of course my woundedness and trauma is not who I am, but unless I consciously relate with and honour the limits presented by the unresolved past within me then I will become crippled by it. I am encouraging you in this work to move from a culture of ignorance and arrogance, into a culture of deep recognition and appreciation of limits. Loving ourselves is about loving every part of who we are. Being honest about our limits is about taking the risk of sharing our vulnerable feelings. Some people build entire relationships on the foundations of avoidance rather than fostering the potential for real presence, aliveness and beauty in sharing honestly about what limits us. When we relate with our limits more exposed then greater possibilities are born into the field of that relationship for healing, growth and learning. When both parties in a relationship honour their own and each other’s limits then a truly alive intimacy becomes possible.
Presence & Helping
‘Every act of helping should make me happy’ – Bert Hellinger
One of the biggest confusions we have about love in relationship is believing that love and the need to help someone is the same thing. In actuality these two realities are very different. Our reactive need to help the other often masks our own difficulty to presence whatever that person is going through, helping in this sense is a survival behaviour and represents a symptom of unconscious trauma bonding. When we come into contact with a person’s emotional suffering and immediately react into trying to help them, this type of reactive helping behaviour often mislabelled as love is known as rescuing. In psychological rescuing, the rescuer prioritises their own survival need to avoid difficult overwhelming feelings over a genuine care for the well being of the other person. Surrendered Love is the capacity to remain present and empathic without reaction or a need to do anything. Surrendered Love is a state of being not doing. Love is effortless. The presence of love dissolves all tension and brings everything into a state of softness, ease & harmony, when our love is overflowing like this then real help can happen.
Many helpers approach their roles as if they are parents caring for children. This dynamic, however, supports the client to remain a child, while the helper takes on an easy role, indulging in being the caregiver without any real parental responsibilities. This dynamic happens when clients exhibit neediness, behaving and expressing emotions similar to those of a child. This is known as transference, where the client transfers child-like emotions onto the helper. As a consequence, the helper might engage in countertransference, responding with parental feelings. We call this a therapeutic relationship, however it can stunt growth for both parties, locking them into fixed roles prolonging the parent-child dynamic. In typical parent-child relationships, growth occurs when parents begin to treat their children as individuals, not as dependent children, making demands that might initially frustrate the child. This frustration leads to anger but also signals maturity, as children begin to separate and become independent. Similarly, in therapy, the relationship reaches its end when the client experiences frustration, realizing the therapist isn't a replacement for a parent. This recognition can lead to anger, enabling the client to sever the dependency and thus, begin their healing process. The true art of helping lies in the helper's ability to resist treating clients as children and instead, requiring them to act as adults. This can evoke anger in clients, but it ultimately pushes them towards independence and healing. This approach is revolutionary and demands significant presence & skill from the helper or therapist. Mastering this capacity for presence is an art, and it forms the foundation of effective helping.
Resourcing
“Resilient strength is the opposite of helplessness. The tree is made strong and resilient by its grounded root system. These roots take nourishment from the ground and grow strong. Grounding also allows the tree to be resilient so that it can yield to the winds of change and not be uprooted”. – Dr Peter Levine
We live in a culture that is so traumatised its often easy to forget to resource ourselves. Resourcing is about recognising our deeper needs and finding the resources to meet those needs for ourselves, so that we can begin expanding our consciousness beyond familiar limits. One approach to resourcing is calling on my ancestors whenever I am in need of support. I learned this from Daan Van Kampenhout in Systemic Ritual. He once said to me, “Isn’t it amazing that whenever we are feeling stressed or tense, getting identified in some kind of suffering, we can pick up our drum and choose to call on our resources through song”. So resourcing is active self-care. It is about becoming aware of what we need in the present moment and then calling on whatever resources we can access in service of coming back to the experience of our own essence. Whether they be inner resources or outer resources. Sometimes the resources we need in order to come back to ourselves are not accessible internally, then we have to find the courage and humility to reach out and ask others for help. Resourcing comes from presence, helping and fixing is reactive and lacks the strength to presence suffering. Resourcing is a way in which we share presence with ourselves and others.
Allowing Feelings
“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honourably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whatever comes. Because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.” - Jalāl ad-Dīn Rumi
Many of us are frozen through trauma and are unable to feel anything, so firstly our work is seeking safety & slowing down so that we can begin to feel something together. Once we get into the experience of actually feeling, we discover that feelings are like layers of an onion, one often covers another and that one is covering another one and ultimately the road leads deeper into the centre, into healing and eventually connecting with the essence of who we are beyond feelings. Discovering our true essence happens over time through the practice of allowing feelings. Of course our capacity to allow feelings increases as we begin to internalise a sense of safety and holding, also being able to recognise and engage with available resources, then allowing feelings becomes much easier. It is possible to experience feelings such as sadness, shame, guilt and despair and not let that effect too radically our overall state of happiness and peace. It takes time to arrive here though, like anything we have to invest the time to cultivate these new pathways deeper into ourselves. Being true to ourselves and our feelings takes time, it does not happen overnight. Through this work of allowing feelings our souls are swept empty of everything unnecessary and a new spaciousness gives rise to renewed flames of passion in our lives. In this work all feelings are deeply welcomed.
Awareness Of Bodily Sensations
‘If frightening sensations are not given the time and attention they need to move through the body and resolve or dissolve, the individual will continue to be gripped by fear’.- Peter A. Levine
Sensational awareness has the power to free us from debilitating symptoms, sensations are a gateway to healing trauma and reclaiming our original self. Sensations are the forgotten language of our bodies. Each sensation is a doorway to a deeper truth about where we have come from and what we’ve experienced. Sensations can be separated into two categories. Those connected with expansive & positive life experiences and those connected with difficult challenging experiences. Difficult sensational patterns often find their roots in unresolved traumatic experiences and can be transformed through resourcing. Resourcing encourages the bodies natural healing intelligence to come online. Difficult sensations are like fuel for the fire of our life energy, we consciously feel and digest these sensations and slowly we grow and open into more expanded states of consciousness. Through remembering the sensational level of experience, we are remembering our belonging to the strength & beauty of our original selves.
Exploring Resonance
Exploring Resonance is a creative act. In this we experience ourselves in radically different ways, moving beyond the idea of being fixed in our identities. Playing with different ways of being in service of healing and expanding our sense of self beyond previously known limits.
Horizontal Resonance - Relational Presence
Relational Presence is the pathway to remembering our connection to the whole of humanity and the universe. When our eyes are truly open then we can not maintain the illusion of separateness. It is through Relational Presence that we become one again with the entire universe. It is through Relational Presence that we remember our togetherness and that struggling to carry the suffering alone is no longer an option. It is about letting go of our own way of seeing things and taking the time to come into deeper resonance with others, letting ourselves be changed by the experience of relating more openly whilst also remaining aware of our own needs and staying connected with our own sense of self. This is something many of us find challenging in relationship, being present and aware of our own needs whilst also being truly connected to others. Relational Presence is about developing empathy for others whilst maintaining our own integrity of being. When we truly open to meeting one another we discover together new ways of being that we could never have found without one another.
Vertical Resonance - Representation
Representation is where we come into resonance with different energies and feelings in service of healing. Representation is where we temporarily let go of our identity and come into resonance with different feelings & experiences that belong to a larger field surrounding an issue or a problem. In these diverse feeling states we may find ourselves representing more expanded states of being or deeper states of tension. Traditionally in Family Constellations Representation is the act of standing in resonance with the member of a person’s family, in service of a larger healing process that we call a Family Constellation. In general Representation is about learning the art of non-reactive feeling and presence. Vertical Resonance is born out of my experience with the representative experience in the fields of Family Constellation & Systemic Ritual. It is the act of downloading universal intelligence from a larger field of knowing, in Constellation work we call it ‘the knowing field’. I believe we are bridges between earth and sky, and Vertical Resonance is a call to remember this truth. It is about reclaiming the vertical thread of wisdom and connectedness, which many have forgotten.
Gratitude & Appreciation
‘Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore, May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul. As the wind loves to call things to dance, May your gravity be lightened by grace. Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth, May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect. As water takes whatever shape it is in, So free may you be about who you become. As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said, May your sense of irony bring perspective. As time remains free of all that it frames, May your mind stay clear of all it names. May your prayer of listening deepen enough to hear in the depths the laughter of God’. - John O’Donohue
Gratitude & Appreciation brings us in touch with our true essence, if ever we feel stuck, taking a moment to be grateful & reframing our experience in a positive way can have a very radical effect. Being able to experience gratitude for what happened in the past frees us from the past and brings us powerfully into the present moment. Gratitude is the gateway to presence. Without it we remain stuck in frequencies of suffering. Gratitude and appreciation both supports and represents a forward movement in life. Gratitude & Appreciation is the key to healing past trauma and moving beyond suffering. For every challenging traumatic experience we have brings with it some kind of gift and lesson. Once we have gained genuine access to feeling gratitude for these challenging life experiences, this reflects the healing and integration of these traumas. Gratitude & Appreciation is about acknowledging that we have received something, it is a way of saying, “I see you and I thank you for what you have given”. In this movement we shift into a natural state of generous overflowing. True giving and a true forward movement is not something we need to do, it is something that happens naturally when it is ready to and it happens in tandem with Gratitude.
Celebrating What Is
“I don’t think existence wants you to be serious. I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole existence is a celebration. Celebration is without any cause. Celebration is simply because we are. We are made out of the stuff called celebration. That’s our natural state – to celebrate – as natural as it is for the trees to bloom, for birds to sing, for rivers to flow to the ocean. Celebration is a natural state” - OSHO
As the frozen cold of winter starts to give way to gushing birdsong. We are born again into movement, energy and life. Trees celebrate their stillness in swishing and swaying, birds celebrate through singing, celebration is about expressing naturally the great joyfulness that we are. Celebration is an uprising of self-hood, it is a state of oneness with everything as it is. All difficult feelings dissolve into it. Celebration is the act of letting go of the ego and coming totally into the joy of the present moment. First we learn to acknowledge and allow feelings, then we learn to honour them and give thanks and finally we celebrate them, no matter what they are and from where they are have come, we celebrate them and we celebrate ourselves because we are happening right now in this very moment! How miraculous this reality of being alive really is! Through the practice of celebrating what is we learn to not waste our energy fighting with life but instead we learn to welcome the surprises that come our way with lightness and ease, no matter how challenging they are. We learn to not take everything so seriously and approach dealing with the challenges that life brings us with greater lightness and welcome because we understand that these challenges are simply gifts waiting to be given birth through us. Rather than seeing life as a problem that needs to be solved, an injustice that needs to fought or a wrong that needs to be put right, we can see life as a gift that is asking to be realised and celebrated.
Contact Me.
For booking, information or you just fancy a chat why not send me a message?
