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SE as Ritual: Unspoken Benefits
Michael Picucci, PhD, MAC, SEP
In the evolving process of educating myself and my clients about Somatic
Experiencing®, I’ve had some unexpected surprises. Based on my
experience and understanding, I have come to believe that although every
SE session is a refined clinical tool for the resolution of trauma, it can
also be a sacred ritual. Experiencing our practice as ritual allows for
the possibility of: (1) comprehending our existence in meaningful ways;
(2) providing a pathway to guide our moving from one stage of our lives
to the next; (3) establishing secure and satisfying relationships in our
communities; and (4) fulfilling our longing to know our part in the vast
wonder and mystery of the cosmos. Ritual, partnered with scientific understanding
of energy fields, gives birth to a new context in which to live a fuller
and richer life.
My clients and I are often bedazzled when I periodically weave teachings
about ritual into an SE session. These enhancements allow for even more
expansiveness than the healing of any specific trauma. The five elements
of ritual are: (1) Mind Mastery, (2) Barrier Dissolution, (3) Sex-Spirit
Split Healing, (4) Resiliency Building and (5) how these preceding benefits
can totally shift our world view and sense of self. This experiential shift
(personal, global, & evolutionary) holds a sustainable hope for our
species that we may evolve our existence in a more fulfilling, holistic
and thriving manner.
Mind Mastery
During my years of practicing SE, I realized that by helping clients come
into the present and curiously observe their experiences, their overall
awareness evolved. This is the experiential wisdom gained during SE that
allows clients to realize they have mastery over their own minds. Our thinking
systems can be put aside to perceive a different experience. Many people
realize an exciting, new capacity. Tuning into sensory experiences while
respectfully putting aside the mind helps people recognize that they are
empowered to do so in everyday life.
I find great value in making this additional benefit conscious and tangible
for clients. Who doesn’t want to experience mastery of the mind? I
invite clients to experiment with this skill in their daily lives, suggesting
they take a deep breath when they first notice activation. Then, setting
the anxious mind aside, insert a soothing resource, or sense their feet
on the ground, or create a circle with the tips of their thumb and middle
finger to modulate the activation. Any of these interventions brings energy
down from the cognitive head (which often amplifies the physiological and
emotional activation) into the body, accessing a different intelligence.
In my work with organizations and forward-looking innovative leadership
techniques, I notice the capacity to suspend our thoughts as articulated
by cognitive scientist Francesco Varela means the same as mind mastery.
This concept is highlighted in the book Presence: An Exploration of Profound
Change in People, Organizations, and Society by Peter M. Senge, C. Otto
Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers. They share the latest
research out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on how by
bringing leaders into “presence” (similar to SE in many regards)
that new answers to perplexing problems arise from a vast intelligence wanting
to emerge.
Barrier Dissolution
I was trained to use SE for trauma resolution and was captivated by its
capability. After using it for a time, I began to experiment using the same
methods for clients who reported physiological “barriers” to
getting their needs met. An example of this is the man who is bright and
articulate, but loses his voice and ability to reason when confronted by
his demanding female supervisor. Rather than set appropriate boundaries
with her, the client dissociates and ingests toxic energy. This exacerbates
the dynamic of non-effective communication. Another physiological barrier
that appears in many clients is the lack of ability to get physically intimate
with another.
Whatever the barrier may be, I’ve discovered that we can address the
physical manifestation of it, the same way we address trauma. It appears,
and many sessions confirm this, that under each barrier is a trauma. However,
the client may never have remembered it as such.
Once we bring these unseen traumas to light and melt the binary psychological
logjams that lock us out of our lives, we begin to make better choices.
Better choices help bring about happier circumstances, as we more fully
embody the lives we want for our selves.
I have witnessed numerous clients gradually (and sometimes quickly) dissolve
such barriers and find a core strength within themselves that allowed them
to set appropriate boundaries. This allowed for more fluid communication
and the dropping of what seemed like steel walls, allowing greater physical
intimacy.
Sex-Spirit Split Healing
The resources that ritualized practices, like SE, offer are not about wishful
thinking or the denial of reality. In fact, they allow us to face the traumas
of pain, hardship, and sexual “splits” in our selves, eyeball
to eyeball, and respond to such challenges effectively in ways that are
fundamentally transformational. The sexual-spiritual (love) split is a deep
psychic schism within almost everyone in our culture. It prohibits loving
relationships from forming and enduring, while remaining sexually alive
and growing. The schism between sex and spirit is caused by generational,
cultural and religious programming that plants traumatic seeds deep in the
unconscious. This can make merging the two energies after bonding virtually
impossible without the specific healing that an SE ritual offers.
Many sex-spirit split dilemmas presented by clients appear like the barriers
we just addressed. The way we hold and address them are similar. An example
of this is a client who is married, has children, and has not had sex with
his wife in four years. In the times he tried to address it with her, he
did so clumsily, experienced rejection and then stopped trying. Though the
couple tends to bicker and have some polarity-dynamics going on (which is
often attributed to insufficient sexual connection and/or communication),
they do love each other and want to stay together.
In facilitating an SE ritual with such a client, we melt one barrier at
a time before getting to a place where the sexual communication necessary
to reinitiate an erotic life is well established. And, yes, of course we
end up healing some unresolved and often unremembered trauma(s) in the process.
Often, I find this work is best enhanced by my bringing awareness to new
constructs regarding fulfilling erotic connection; exp: the true purpose
of pleasuring as opposed to just orgasm or performance. As they progress,
I often refer clients to the Vibrant Eros section of my last book (which
uses the acronym S.E.X. for Soul Energy eXchange) and give them additional
resources for up-to-date sexual-spiritual education. I might also encourage
them to read some about Tantra, an expansive system of all-encompassing
reality that teaches the continuity between spirit and matter through our
senses. Clients often discover a love energy that opens an ascending path,
increasingly embracing a higher and wider identity and sense of self. Lovers
who heal this sex-spirit (love) split are taken out of themselves and into
a larger union with the cosmos.
Resiliency Building
We all know that all SE is about resiliency building. I make a distinction
about a particular category of this art for our clients who live or work
in emotionally toxic environments and are not in a position to leave, and
those who are long term care-givers to the seriously ill.
In both of the above situations, the client is traumatized on a daily basis.
The worker feels his/her spirit crushed daily. Care givers are traumatized
by what they witness and by being forced to live in two worlds; the world
of illness’ fragility and the everyday material world that diminishes
and undermines that same fragility.
In SE rituals directed at this type of resiliency building, resourcing becomes
the most important tool. These people need to feel a sense of restoration
that goes to the bones. Time and time again I find that our basic SE tools
rise to the task beautifully.
Shifting World Views
By enlarging our view of trauma healing, and naming what we are doing, we
can totally shift our world view and sense of ourselves into more holistic,
tangible co-creators of our evolutionary process. Joseph Campbell predicted
that new mythologies emerging in the 21st century would involve consciousness:
“knowing oneself,” and a wealth of new rituals unleashing a
fresh set of energies. The knowing of the self can bring us peace and equanimity.
We learn who we are in a swiftly changing spiritual, material, and scientifically
manipulated reality. Trauma focused SE rituals are a doorway to this journey
of knowing.
Being the eternal (big picture) realist and optimist that I am, I concur
that we are living in what philosopher Buckminster Fuller called our “final
evolutionary exam.” The questions before us are simple: Can we move
beyond limiting modes of consciousness? Can we let go of our illusions,
discover who we really are, and, in that, find the wisdom we so desperately
need? Every day, I find myself in the presence of those who are doing just
that. Fuller also suggested that all humanity now has the option to become
enduringly successful. I believe that SE, and the many ways we can use it,
brings this option to our being. Ritual (and SE) as a resource, and healing
as an art are bringing us the tools of the future: light, belief, self-love,
and imagination.
Dr. Michael Picucci is author of The Journey toward Complete Recovery (Oct.
1998) and Ritual as Resource: Energy for Vibrant Living (Jan. 2006), and
was the recipient of the National Institutes on Health (NIH/NIDA) Outstanding
Leadership in Research award for his findings. He has a private psychotherapy
and consulting practice in NYC. His web site is www.michaelpicucci.net and
his additional research can be found at www.theinstitute.org. Contact: michael@michaelpicucci.net
or 212-242-6545.
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