Liberation Is Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Supporting Text Coming As Soon As Possible

Sometimes things happen that are essentially beyond our control and impossible to know when they will end or what the consequences will be once they are over. Wildfires and other natural disasters are good examples of these kinds of experiences. Generally speaking, these are considered “traumatic events” and while different people experience these things withRead More...

Caution: This episode is heavy. Proceed with caution.  Creative thinking combined with an attraction to – or fear of – Danger in a world full of Existential Threats can quicken the pulse and take people right out of their ability to respond spontaneously to the moment. SE practitioners, as with everyone else, cannot “solve” the challenges thatRead More...

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.

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 theRead More...

At long last I’m finally able to share this episode on helping clients prepare for surgery. I’ll be adding Show Notes eventually. For now, I hope some of you will enjoy the audio recording which is available 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 toRead More...

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 ofRead More...

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.Read More...

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 theRead More...

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 needRead More...

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 weRead More...

For Clarity: 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.Read More...

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 moveRead More...

Here’s a LONG 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.Read More...

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 timesRead More...

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 willRead More...

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 episodeRead More...

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 restRead More...

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 ofRead More...

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 referenceRead More...

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 muchRead More...

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 weRead More...