Twig's SE Reflections

Continuing on with a mini-series on The Voo Sound. Here we take a deep 2-hour dive at a still incomplete list of values and opportunities in the Voo Sound from introduction to tracking sensation, to stimulating the viscera in titrated fashion, to effecting energy well transitions, utilizing a "reverse engineered intervention" to evoke the ventral vagal complex's influence on the Vagal Brake and on and on...for those who are still curious or dubious about investing time and attention in the Voo Sound with your SE clients, here is support and encouragement in making that investment. Next episode we'll take a look at invitations and applications of the Voo Sound.

I've been looking forward to returning to SE Reflections for a series of episodes in 2023 and had intended to start by reviewing the many reasons for the Voo that we do (for yourself and with your clients). Then at the close of 2022 I had a most remarkable health crisis due to mold exposure coinciding with recovery from COVID-19 and it was the Voo sound that really turned my hard times around - and I got to watch as it all happened - leading to a reinvigoration of my advocacy for the Voo sound and my segue back into sharing these SE Reflections with you.

These are trying times, and still, there are SO MANY THINGS YOU CAN DO. Yes There Are. Yes You Can. Here's a link to the project mentioned in this episode: SEP's in the Time of Covid-19. There is no fee. A link to this episode's sponsor: RiverMinutes.com You probably need a minute by the river.

An episode dedicated to looking at the challenges, and some of the inherent psychobiological influences of the current pandemic. Here's a link to the project mentioned in this episode: SEP's in the Time of Covid-19. There is no fee. A link to this episode's sponsor: RiverMinutes.com Just guessing, You probably need a minute by the river...

A placeholder episode while I reach toward episode 104 on Covid-19.

As I re-release the Guide to the SE Language and move toward making improvements on this project I've been looking for SE students and practitioners who would like to join me in this study. To share news about this I've prepared a small series of Promotional Ads to demonstrate and talk about the opportunities for SE Practitioners who join me in this exploration of the SE Language. I hope you'll find this piece helpful in itself. And I hope you'll consider joining me in one of my online programs for SE students and practitioners...your financial support helps me further develop the SE Reflections.com website and stay safer in the world. https://vimeo.com/384210306

I'm pleased to be re-releasing the Guide to the SE Language in an improved Version 2 form this week and am looking forward to the first months of 2020 where I'll be adding more materials for those joining me in this study. To share news about this I've prepared a small series of Promotional Ads to demonstrate and talk about the opportunities for SE Practitioners who join me in this exploration of the SE Language. I hope you'll find this piece helpful in itself. And I hope you'll consider joining me in one of my online programs for SE students and practitioners...your financial support helps me further develop the SE Reflections.com website and stay safer in the world. https://vimeo.com/383636577

I'm re-releasing and building upon the Guide to the SE Language in the first 3 months of 2020. This will make it a very robust v.2 with over a decade of thoughtful work and development. To share news about this I've prepared a small series of Promotional Ads to demonstrate and talk about the opportunities for SE Practitioners who join me in this study of the SE Language. I hope you'll find this piece helpful in itself. And I hope you'll consider joining me in one of my online programs for SE students and practitioners...your financial support helps me further develop the SE Reflections.com website and stay safer in the world. https://vimeo.com/383293539

Play Episode 102 Here

Play Episode 101 Here

Play Episode 100 Here With Enthusiasm and Excitement I've been returning to publishing works on the internet for SE Practitioners everywhere. This is an inaugural episode for participants in my Where to Start support program for SE Practitioners, though I think it'll be relevant to non-participants as well. I hope you find it interesting and supportive. And if you'd like to join in the Where to Start program, you can do so at any time (though please note that there's a price increase from $125 to $175 this December 2nd at midnight).

Sometimes things feels like everything is at risk, everything is a threat, everything can take us out. Not everyone has that sense, not everyone who has it has it all the time, but when we have it, it's good to have accompaniment with someone who can accept how we feel while also helping us hold on for when things change.

Then Again, Hope Springs Eternal - Maybe 2017 won't be so so bad? Let's find out. Before the "silence goes on too long" let me share a little New Year update from Twig's SE Reflections podcast project. This will probably be most interesting to regular listeners: it's mostly a progress report and a bit of cheerleading. A few final content heavy episodes before reaching 100 are still to come.

Play Episode 99 Here The holiday season impacts different people in different ways, from the option of taking it all in to wanting to be narcatized through it with a request to be reawoken on the other side. One of our opportunities with things like SE is helping people make more appropriate and successful levels of participation with the holidays, including helping them manage or even transform their associated stress response. In the season ahead, it's a good idea to consider the various possibilities in the Holiday Session and what good you might be able to help your clients find in them - even if that is them discovering that they want to tell the holidays to take a hike.

Play Episode 98 Here I'll be adding Show Notes eventually. For now, I hope some of you will enjoy the audio recording which is available here. You can also download my original primer for Preparing for Surgery below by entering your email below – which will help me gage interest in this piece and also let you know of updates to the primer.

Play Episode Recording Here I'm still looking for the opportunity to complete Episode 98 on Preparing for Surgery. On the way there I wanted to say hello, cheer folks who are headed to Adv. II and completion of the SEP training and share some thoughts on getting more comfortable through failing and looking forward to the next opportunity to do better. With a cup of tea and a microphone, I'm waving and wishing you well on my way out to the forest where I'll be teaching bushcraft for the next little while. I'll return to the studio toward later September.

Play Episode 97 Here We must make mistakes. It's part of the process of learning this craft. Exploratory SEP's can be enthusiastic about their mistakes because mistakes make us think long and hard about "what went wrong" and how we can do things differently. Ultimately our "library of experience" develops over time, through countless twists and turns. Some of these are clearly real mistakes. Things we simply will not do once we know better. The list of real mistakes is long and each of us has our own unique way of making them. This episode covers several key mistakes that I believe are extremely common in SE Students and Practitioners everywhere. Cheers for that, we're in good company.

Play Episode 96 Here I'm in Chicago doing something "different" than what I normally do. (A 5 week comedy improv theater intensive.) It's helping refresh my attention for my SE work. It's also a good opportunity for me to offer up this SE Reflection episode on advocating that we remember to engage "other things", not just Therapist related stuff. I'd bet we all want to be a well rounded, interesting people; for ourselves, our families and our clients. I'd bet. "Try something new everyday." -Maude

Play Episode 95 Here Here is a very long episode that boarders on exhaustive, though hopefully not too exhausting. The subject? Considerations and a pattern of thought for how we attend to people soon after they've been in an accident. At those times SE Practitioners have a special and often unique offer of support and guidance for aiding the completion of the autonomic stress response. This episode is a review, encouragement and cheerleading for that opportunity. It's going to take you several hours to listen to.

Play Episode 94 Here This does not cover every last thought I have on Orientation and what is required to ensure smooth meaningful participation when you're asking people to "allow their eyes to go where they want to go." But this 2-hour episode is probably the last thing I'll say about Orientation on this podcast project. You may need to approach this in rounds and I've left a few things out that would have been helpful to say...but this is what we've got. Please make use of it as you like. I think you'll see that I put some effort into this for you.

Play Episode 93 Here Smoothing out the rhythm of our sessions is an ultimate goal. From the back and forth between us and our clients to the in and out of our client's attention with the environment and their experience, much of this rhythm is cultivated by whether we encourage lingering or moving on. From calculating how long we can linger, to making sure we don't over stay, developing the skillfulness to know what kind and how much intervention is necessary at what choice point takes time. And it can help to think about the dynamics involved. Here's an episode that breaks down some elements inside the perennial question: should we linger here...or move on.

Play Episode 92 Here CAUTION: This episode includes several strong curse words. Identifying, naming and explicating a client's experience is rarely as effective in Somatic Experiencing sessions as is joining in a more empathic, visceral and reflective (i.e. mirroring) way. Of course there are times for clarifying what you know about a client's experience and describing its values. Yet, nothing moves a felt sense experience forward like having the right amount of emotional reflection infused in the room. That's why, on occasion, we need to be willing to curse in our sessions.

Play Episode 91 Here Our SE work is motivated by the desire for change and animated by bearing witness to changing experience. As we cultivate our appreciation for Pendulation and all things "in flow" we can find it confusing to see what to do with client's who report things "just being stuck". How to help the stuck thing move again is central to our work and thus bigger than this hour+ long episode but herein lies some empathy and solidarity for the practitioner who feels frustrated and alone in their stuck sessions. Included are suggestions on contracting, language adjustments, invitations to prime the sense of change and background reminders to us all on what's at play and why we can't just "want it to be different."

Play Episode 90 Here Here's a longer episode reviewing 10 of the Comedy Improv games and their associated SE lessons that form the spine of my super fun SE refinement workshops Practicing Our Lines. Each game is covered in-depth with layouts of how you can perform the game in a group and what insights SE Practitioners can take from them. Games Reviewed Include: Wordball/Nameball60 Second Life StoryPatternsPolyvagal Family PortraitsSpeech of a Life-Time in Numbers from 1-100What-Cha Doing Now?Copy/Paste for Cutting Back the PhraseSlow Motion Ninja RiotTiger-Alien-CowCounting to 20 This episode will probably work best if you break it up game by game.

Play Episode 89 Here Techniques and technique generally is key to our success as SE Practitioners. Being able to identify what is happening for a client, what that indicates about what is coming next, having some sense of what to ask for next, all of these are necessary to move sessions in the right direction. And yet, other times there will be a dramatic unfolding that happens simply because the Practitioner has "A Feeling" and follows it. In those moments, technique likely only gets in the way!

Play Episode 88 Here In SE Sessions, some things are associated, while others are not. Practitioners need to see these relationships for what they are and decide if there's enough differentiation amongst associated pieces to create the context for penduluation. If so, off we go to see what happens next. If not, various differentiating, mitigating and directing questions will be necessary to help bring about that swing. In this "treading water" episode I borrow the audio version from Chapter 33 of Twig's Guide to the SE Language to share some thoughts on "seeing the Pendulation Terrain" (limits and opportunities of associated experiences) and prime listeners of this podcast for an upcoming episode on priming successful pendulation. https://vimeo.com/164844929

Play Episode 87 Here Dynamic sessions that move toward productive change rather than maintain the status quo regularly introduce new things. These include: experiments (also known as excercises), Practitioner behavioral changes (like increasing or decreasing pace of reflections) and trying on of different channels of attention for the client (such as turning toward sensation or image). In this episode I encourage SE Practitioners to try new things out "once" so that they can read the feedback of how it went and adjust their next interventions accordingly. Simple like that. Mentions: I reference a few older SE Reflections episodes this time around, including: e.38 - It's a Try It Out Kind of Thing (in which I encourage your to, well, try things out)e.01 - The Importance of Spontaneity (a critical metric for successful movement in sessions)e.43 The Formula (how to attend to the storyline without getting caught in the negative parts of it)e.77 - Will this Be an "I Can" or "I Can't" Moment (not mentioned but it could have been.) Some Added Thoughts: Sessions are dynamic, not rote experiences. The new SE client doesn't necessarily have a complete understanding of the SE session process, nor are they likely to be familiar with the kinds of experiences they'll encounter in your presence. There's going to be a lot of new things coming their way. That's part of the point of doing therapy in general: To find new ways of being rather than just repeating old ones. Thus Practitioners are going to offer a steady stream of "new" ideas, observations, requests and so on. Some of these will be transparent to the client, some of them will be more behind the scenes. On the transparent side will be clear request to try something out, such as "I wonder if you'd be willing to try a little experiment with me here?". These are generally best offered invitationally, as something approaching "an experiment", with attention given to the curiosity of what is found during and after trying this new thing. It's probably also best if they're done with a "beginning, middle and end" with a check-in/evaluation time afterwards to see how it went (also known as "a round"). Also, it's easier to manage the expectations from these experiments if you diminish or remove the sense of profundity before the fact. This can be super necessary if, in then end, the experiment doesn't go anywhere. What is discovered then helps inform both the client and practitioner of what can be expected next. Was it easy? Simple? Difficult? Scary? Successful? Productive? Annoying? Did "tyring that thing" increase intrest, engagement and participation or did it thwart it? This feedback – from both Client self-report and Practitioner observation – is critical for determining if the request should be titrated up or down, simplified, repeated at the same level or, as is the case sometimes, abandoned altogether or shelved for later. Then there's the less transparent side of things. These include behaviors, questions and requests from the Practitioner that are simply layered into the session behind the scenes. We might try to mirror a client's behavior, comment on positive elements of experience or even ask for internal sensation reflections as in our classic line "Can you tell me what you notice now?" If the introduction of any of those slows or stalls the session rather than move it forward with more spontaneously, we're best off reading that feedback and adjusting how we do things next time to garner more ease and acceptance of the new thing. For example, when a client has a difficult time answering the "What do you feel now?" question, it may be necessary to: Clarify the question next time (don't assume they know what you're asking for)Make it smaller (titrate it down)Ask a more oblique question ("If someone else had a response to that kind of thing, what might they be feeling right now?

I know I'd prefer a softer landing. How about you? Play Episode 86 Here Some of our clients have been "going, going, going" and are going to continue doing so until they "collapse." When we can see that coming it's often worth introducing the idea of planning or preparing a time when they can permit themselves to "not do more" but instead allow their bodies to try to rest and restore a little. Obviously not a solution to overarching activation, unsustainable lifestyle choices or classic nervous system disregulation, the "planned collapse" can help soften the challenge of an exhuastion that threatens to make things worse. Toward the end of this episode I role-play an introduction to offering these ideas to a client: complete with mitigating language, preempting the Red Vortex, menuing, and titrating toward the Yes - any of which might be cut out when they're unnecessary due to a client's relative interest or resiliency. These are all communication issues that I cover indepth in Twig's Guide to the SE Language. Mentions:Although I flail when trying to remember Marjorie Shostack's name in this episode, her book Nisa is a classic ethnographic exploration and well worth checking out sometime. Here's a cliff note style review.

We're all about following and permission. Yet, when that's going to lead to a client getting hurt, it's time to come in and do something. Play Episode 85 Here There are times in sessions when movement becomes increasingly free and involuntary. It's a special thing to watch the body "come out of freeze" like that. And there are cautions: like being attentive that a sharp angle on a joint doesn't cause damage for later. To avoid this practitioners need to monitor the range of motion for even as we support it to "do its thing" we don't want to let it become too extreme.

Play Episode 84 Here When we're stressed we think less. That's true for everyone but it's an especially vexing fact for our distressed clients – many of whom desperately need to make more helpful and healthful decisions on behalf of their well-being. Milton Erickson, the famous psychiatrist and hypnotherapist, knew this too. That's why he maintained a list to reference when his body got racked by pain due to his history with polio. I often tell clients about Milton's list (and my own) and why it may be a good idea for them to create something similar for times when they're "freaking." Episode Mentions: Milton Ericsson - WikipediaMilton H. Erickson M.D.: An American Healer - Amazon - non-affiliated linkKathy Kain - Somatic Experiencing® FacultyStephen Gilligan - Trance Camp When I'm introducing this idea of "Milton's List" to clients I'm first trying to get it across that: We think less when we're stressed so it's a good idea to have an aid to help us re-direct our attention toward more helpful ends.Other people have needed similar lists and have been willing to use them (such as Milton Erickson and Twig).Repetitive distress is rarely productive and usually deliterious. Working on our behalf to minimize it's consequences is a smart thing to do.Each of us has a pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that we do when we're "freaking out." Our goal is to name some of those steps so that when we see them coming we can turn our attention toward the list.No single aide or activity is going to be the answer every time. When I'm helping clients create their list I try to: Find resources or activities they've already discovered on their own that they know are helpful in calming things down. As in Kathy Kain's question: "When these things have happened before, what have you found that helps the most?"Help them think creatively about about other "resources" they have in their lives that they could lean on to help them minimize their repetitive activation.Increase the amount of social contact or "outside of me" attention that can be engaged.Encourage the use of somatic and physiologically informed activities that can be anticipated to help calm things down such as: * Orientation – Engage the world around you rather than reference "in you" too much.  * Simulated Pendulation – Probably in the 3x3 pattern of "Naming 3 things you can see around you, name 3 things you can feel inside, name 3 other things you can see." Repeat. * The Hook – Brain Gym move where you tangle your hands, arms and legs across the midline of the body and press the tongue to the roof of the mouth. * Sometimes breathing excercises, though rarely do I include this. * Grounding excercises in rounds – Like standing in a doorway with the outside of the feet and hands pressing out to the doorjam. * Squeezing things in rounds – Like plastic water bottles or towels. * Ripping up Newspaper in rounds – The sound is so so satisfying. * And so on... Setting up easy access to this list can be necessary: Sometimes just talking about the idea of such a list is enough to give people something to lean on rather than focus all their attention on recurring anguish.Other times it's enough to actually make a list on a single piece of paper.For some, making copies of the list and posting it around the house, in the car and at the office is a better idea.The homescreen of a smartphone can be another handy place to have this list available for quick review.

The more we can "let that be itself" – the better. Helping to find the amount of possible allowance and being satisfied with that, is a key to successful integration. Play Episode 83 Here There's a classic moment in SE sessions when a client is successfully moving through the activation cycle only to balk at allowing the discharge or deactivation phase because it "feels too weird" and indeed often times this phase includes truly odd, unsettling or even frightening sensations. It's important to get adept at gauging how much allowance of this "wierd" experience can be tolerated and to work toward trying to limit the attention to the "strangeness" in a way that your client can be successful at allowing this very "new" impression to be felt and integrated in their somatic experience - as much as possible. This episode looks around at the timing, considerations and some lines of trying to help these unique experiences be felt and "move on through."

Play Episode 82 Here An unrestrained reverie episode considering the mythical, idealized and probably impossible Perfect Therapeutic Island. Includes a look at when it would be necessary to go there, what would make it ideal, and words of encouragement on what we SEP's can do when holding the tension between the reality of what is possible and what we wish for.

Play Episode 81 Here Practically speaking, when every knew sensation is a threat there are things that SE Practitioners need to do in order to enable success rather than recapitulate the feeling of pain, failure, or the impossibility for change. Episode 81 looks at some of the step by step nature of bringing pain laden movement sequences into small successes and "back out again." It's all in the name of success in getting to do something new, rather than the same old thing that calls up the pain and thus reinforces it.

Play Episode 80 Here Sometimes pain is the overriding signal in a client's experience. Try as we might there's simply not much ease or goodness to be found. In this episode I start to look into what we can do about such a scene in order to get some traction to help things change. Funny enough, this episode gets cut short due to local conditions so the next one will tackle the more practical elements while this recording covers some of the basic concerns for the practitioner and client when working with chronic or overwhelming pain.

Play Episode 79 Here Challenged sleep is a psycho-historical phenomenon of the times in which we live. It's also a very real and personal experience for many of our clients. Being able to think and talk about sleep from multiple different levels is a requirement of our work. This episode looks at self-care tactics, some broader notions about sleep and reiterates my conviction that enhanced self-regulation accessed through completion of self-protective responses is a golden key to help us close our eyes at night and find out what are dreams are going to be about.

Play Episode 78 Here One paradox in our SE work is the need to engage the "problem state" or "Red/Trauma Vortex" material and at the same time avoid it becoming too much of itself. Some of us get quite good at helping clients feel calmer and even generally "better" simply by helping them avoid reinforcing their attention toward disquiet and turmoil. Still and all, eventually we need to address the problem, the challenge, the task at hand. This episode simply names that out and makes an encouragement to not avoid (fear) the text.

Play Episode 77 Here Our SE sessions are made up of dozens, if not hundreds, of elements of experience encountered in the moment. Part of our task as SE Practitioners is to help clients thread their attention through these elements in a way that maximizes the sense of success while minimizing the sense of failure - ala the "I Can Principle." Judging what is going to become an "I Can" moment and what will lead to reinforcing "I Can't" requires time, experience and attention. This critical weighing of what is going to work and what isn't will be greatly aided by realizing that you're constantly updating this assessment and that you''re better off working in relationship to ideals of "what should be happening" rather than continually frustrating a person's success by either asking for or being unhelpful in minimizing when things will not be successful. In short, we need to be able to perceive what our client's "can do" and help them achieve that while doing our best to minimize what they "can't do." Here's a reflection on some elements that go into this assessment.

As SE practitioner we often either accompany or prepare our clients for stressful events. Things like surgeries, court battles, conflicted meetings with family or employers and so on. These inherently stressful events can be hard on anyone and are especially challenged for people who already experience themselves in regular distress. They're also the kind of events that we shouldn't "do alone" if at all possible. And whenever possible, hopefully we'll have an advocate on our side. Advocates can focus on all kinds of different responsibilities. In this episode I consider the advocate whose role is to help modulate the stress response during a challenging event. This is only a first look at a broader subject that I'll return to more specifically around preparing for surgery and medical procedures. Preparing for Surgery Primer In this episode I mention a Preparing for Surgery primer/guide that I created years back. This piece still needs an update but the original document still stands up and by signing up to download it below I'll know how to tell you when the updated version is available.

Play Episode 75 Here Along the path of learning something as dynamic as Somatic Experiencing is extended time repeating and mimicking other peoples words, voice, rhythm and presentation. This "copy cat time" is probably necessary. There are so many patterns in our work that require our extensive practice before they become our own. Once they do become our own, once we hear our own voice and expression coming in to guide our sessions...we should give a cheer and turn that way. Even if it includes quirks of our own personality that may be unique to us. Ultimately finding our own voice reflects our at-ease-ness in the room, which transmits through our tone and posture to signal a stronger sense of safety "I'm okay to be here. And so are you." Here's some encouragement for going through the process of finding your own SE voice.

Play Episode 74 Here The consistency of our signal and feedback to our clients is key to helping them get to know us and our work quickly. The more random, confused or inconsistent our requests the harder it is for our clients to find security and success in our offices. This reflection doesn't go into all the nuances behind helping our clients get to know our work but it does look at this issue of consistency and offers a few ideas on where to apply it.

Play Episode 73 Here From the first contact we're learning things that will matter later in the session. The more we acknowledge that we're actually trying to get to know our client's quickly, the better we'll get at it. This episode includes some storytelling from the field in DR Congo where my ability to get to know my client quickly made all the difference.

Play Episode 72 Here There are occasions when it's problematic if our client's "fall away" or "go to sleep" during our sessions. However most of the time it's an honor and potentially a very good sign when a client "let's go" in our presence. Letting down in the company of a member of our own species is a mammalian expectation and not always easily achieved by some of our clients (or ourselves). This episode looks at a few considerations involved in what helps, and hinders, people from letting go near us.

Play Episode 71 Here Silence is a critical and natural part of SE sessions. And yet sometimes it can go on too long. The client can sit there in silence while you explain things excessively.You as the clinician can sit there in silence while your client talks and talks endlessly.The two of you can sit in awkward silence not knowing what to say next after you ask "what do you notice now?"Worst yet, sometimes in Freeze/DVC phases the silence can become terminal and reinforce the stuck state. In this episode I look at some of the dynamics of allowing silence to go on too long: including internal critical dialogue of the practitioner, consequences of allowing too much silence and some solutions to avoid it being problematic.

Play Episode 70 Here To work eyes open or closed? That is the question. Rather than one way being "right" and the other "wrong," there are times when one or the other is more appropriate with a continuum between the extremes. This episode looks at some of the dynamics behind when we're better off to help our client's keep their eyes open and when it only makes sense to let them close.

Play Episode 69 Here A common challenge for SE Practitioners is accommodating clients who have high expectations for the success (or failure) of this work. Too often immediate demands from either the client or practitioner curtails curiosity, participation and permission to engage with a process that necessarily takes time to develop and unfold. In this episode I look at some of the considerations we can hold while accommodating high expectations in our office. Note: Unfortunately the recoding of this episode included a background buzz that I'm unable to eliminate. This will probably make listening through earbuds or headphones unpleasant. My apologies for that. I'm still learning. I appreciate your patience. - Twig

Play Episode 68 Here Learning new things takes time. You need to experiment with all kinds of different combinations, try different things out, take note inside yourself on what works and what doesn't. Such things take time. Like learning the nuances of a new landscape or city. The local resident has a dozen tricks for getting to the airport on time. The visitor or newbie needs to give extra time for getting stuck in traffic because they simply don't know the secret way. So too with learning a craft like Somatic Experiencing. There are a dozen routes to where you want to go, but you'll need to put some time and attention into learning where you're likely to get stuck and where you found the goods. This episode offers some encouragement to let yourself experiment along the way while you learn this new terrain.

Play Episode 67 Here Without a doubt, some sessions are smoother than others. Some work "like magic" while others can be a long slow torment for clients and practitioners alike. One thing to do is ask what the smooth sessions have in common and what attributes therein can be cultivated to make all sessions ring with a bit more satisfaction. This episode looks at a number of these "positive deviancy" elements that we'd like to see everywhere. The Themes in this podcast have matured in this program...

Play Episode 66 Here Today is January 1st, 2016. In celebration of starting another calendar year I've offered up a little meditation on Looking Back and Looking Forward. To get where we'd like to go is always a process. Things take time. Today you're not troubled by at least some things you found excruciating 5 years ago. Same too with skills and smoothness of execution in our SE sessions. We get better at these things over time. That includes coming through where we were before to where we are now and only then where we'll go next. It's a journey. The New Year is a time I like to see where I'm at along the way. Maybe you too.

Note: Sorry but for some reason iTunes isn't update as normal so you're probably only seeing this if it's fixed or you came to www.liberationispossible.org. I'll get that fixed soon but not this moment. Summary: A short message out of the Winter Silence I've stumbled into as Solstice Season has come on. I'll look forward to being back with more SE Reflections podcast episodes on January 1st. Wishing you all a safe and gentle holiday season. https://vimeo.com/149810598

Play Episode 75 Here There's a hope amongst many of us that if we can just "get this to Pendulate" than the task will be done - we can then sit back and watch the magic happen. I don't offer an exhaustive list of why that's a fantasy or incomplete appreciation of what we're doing but I can assure you it is. In a informal-podcast-kind-of-way I say as much in this episode. Mentions: In the close of this episode I recommended Brad Kammer's webinar introducing Larry Heller's developmental trauma model NARM. I attended this 2 hour program with Brad recently and was appreciative of NARM (and Brad's) ability to distinguish between Shock and Developmental trauma. There are more introduction webinars coming and I find them reasonably priced. Here's a link to the registration page on Brad's site. I also saw that the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute is doing another round of short programs on the Foundations of Disaster Response. I'm just saying...I think that's a really great thing. The locations and dates are all listed on this page.

Play Episode 64 Here Continuing with the theme on Pendulation, this story based episode reviews a few reminder details about how to help ensure that things oscillate if they're not going to of their own. Many of the themes I touched on in Episodes 63-64 were addressed extensively in my Guide to the SE Language.