Lauren Lesser
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Hi Caitlin,
I just absolutely have to savor “supporting discovery allows the wisdom and magic to live in the practice” beautifully, meaningfully said!Hi Rosie,
I confess, I’m drawn to other therapists looking at similarities in these practices and I really liked your leaning into listening and eschewing the advicing 🙂Hi Niki,
I love that you started with the example of the death doula’s practice, it’s so experience-near and it drew me right in to your essay“Reflect on what it means to support discovery. What are the primary tools?”
Meditation, in Susan’s words, in this year’s 21 Day Meditation Challenge, “introduces you to yourself.” In teaching meditation, it means finding space where students journey to discover their introduction to themselves.
This is so meaningful to me because it is so resonant and affirming to the principles that have guided me in all of my work, as it has evolved.
In community organizing, it meant finding space where people move into inhabiting their power to craft their agendas and make their way towards making a difference in this world.
In psychotherapy, it means finding space where people can find ways to safely unfold and soften so they can work with the places that kept them from their fullest lives.
In teaching and supervision, it means finding space where psychotherapists can freely examine, explore and grow into their roles.
At root, and in not dissimilar ways, these are all introductions to oneself.
And what are the primary tools?
After Saturday’s class and a review of the notes, I found, with greater familiarity with Julia Cameron’s exhortation that “the 1st rule of magic is containment,” deeper understanding of how important a container is for discovery.
In meditation, our practice technique provides the container for magic to form. It protects and directs the boundaries that help us know what we can do in supporting the student experience by offering instruction and support to create a sustainable practice combined with further study of the practice and the dharma teachings that help us to know what we cannot do.
We also spoke of listening in class as an essential tool of discovery. Practicing how not to think about what we think about when we hear what someone is saying and further not to take refuge in what we think we know, but to let go and enter a kind of magical energy wave that allows us to open to a deeper connection and understanding of what we hear as well as what we sense, and in communication, often connecting with presence rather than words.
Here too, there are deep similarities in tools; containers, listening and presence, with what I learned and how I worked in other roles, yet I can’t help feeling that this journey we are on will take me deeper, and in directions I can’t anticipate and I suspect, that magic is afoot.
