Simon d'Orsogna

October 14, 2015 at 7:23 pm #2312

Hello Maria

thanks for posting here about the work you are doing. I’d love to hear a little more specifically about the various workshops and each of their content, if you would be willing to share and have time to do so. It’d be really valuable to push the thinking along, as I quite often find people are intrigued with self-complexity and adult development but want to get to a concrete application of it and ROI pretty damn quickly. Wrapping the two together so they self-reinforce seems an excellent way to combine the reassurance of a technical response wrapping with an adaptive filling.

with good wishes

Simon

Simon d'Orsogna

October 14, 2015 at 7:11 pm #2311

Thanks for posting Jonathan. I appreciate your willingness to ask the question, inviting all of us to ‘learn in public’, possibly even to have a difficult conversation, or simply to be transparent and ask for what you want.

I too have been somewhat casually observing the vitality and frequency of posting in both locations. And I agree it may never be an extremely busy forum wherever so. Also, it comes to mind that most people lurk and do not post (forum stats generally indicate 90/10 up to 99/1).

There are advantages to LI that are not shared here (connecting to others, seeing related topic-groups etc) as well as advantages to having a close touch in a private forum with the originators of ITC where there may be richer flow on insider knowledge and experiences, fresh thinking, potential sharing ahead of the general release to public (these would things I would value).

be keen to hear from others too, including what you would hope or wish for from your forum?

best wishes
Simon

Simon d'Orsogna

October 14, 2015 at 7:00 pm #2310

Hi Johannes, Vic, Lisa and all

thanks for the posts here, little slow to get to this. I too am getting a lot of rich value from attending to the transverbal gift of information first experienced as sensation and feeling and more in the body, so I very much appreciate your posting here.

I notice the use of ‘the felt sense’ in many people’s language these days, a term first developed by Gene Gendlin a philosopher-psychologist who originally worked with Carl Rogers, and who is one who early-on directed attention to the body in the 50-60s (hat tip to Wilhelm Reich’s intuitions in the 20s and on). Gendlin’s philosophical work is rooted in the phenomenological thinking of Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Kant, Dilthey, Heidegger, Husserl etc. Gene Gendlin’s initial contribution (with Rogers as a contributor and project sponsor) was through extensive research as to whether clients got value from a therapy session, and what if any might be the early indicators. What they found was it was determined by the client’s ability to experience the hem-haw of something murky and unclear, supported by the attuned therapist,and this attended to most frequently between throat and stomach. Clients are internally refering to something beyond words, and this is known to them by their opening edge of experience through this ‘felt-sense’. Gendlin found that the degree to which people referred to their felt-sense in the first two sessions of therapy correlated with the ultimate success of therapy one or two years later. This remarkable finding has been replicated 27 times since then. See Hendricks, 2002 http://www.focusing.org/research_basis.html

I notice that the ‘perspective-taking’ of various Developmental Coaching approaches is an analogue of this ‘staying with something murky and unclear’, though they do it usually in more verbal forms. Giving people some permission, comfort, endorsement, space and time to stay with the body’s knowing and unfolding experiencing can provide for extremely valuable moments of learning and integration in the coaching arc. So finding a movement or posture might be as (or more) valuable as finding the words. And the neural counterpart of movement-posture-somatic experiencing activates other synaptic realms and hemispheric real-estate, more right than left to put it perhaps too simply. Recalling that posture or movement may be akin to reconnecting with ‘state dependent knowings’ or ego-states, which can be a dependable resource for our coachees into the future.

Later neuro-research identifies the density of neural networks in the heart and gut, higher densities even than spine and skull – as well as the frontal vagal nerve (Porges). HeartMath and Hakomi both point to the doorways here. Gendlin and others from the 60s onwards developed Focusing so their clients could learn felt sense awareness. Well worth finding an experienced Focusing teacher (Gendlin’s method of teaching people to attend to their felt-sense) to learn the difference between sensation, sheer emotion, and the felt sense.

all best

Simon

Simon d'Orsogna

July 26, 2015 at 11:03 pm #2001

Thanks Deb, it’d be great to see some more of your teaching materials and thinking here. Appreciate the sharing. Simon

Simon d'Orsogna

May 30, 2015 at 6:44 pm #1943

hi Deb

oops – only just saw I messed up the links in the post here but they’re still working – sorry, no editing available 🙁
[call to mods, please fix?]

and yes, some good resources IMO. Listening to the 30min audio interview (first link) gives a good overview of IFS, and the online self-work is very helpful to some, just acknowledging not everyone can do that kind of work.

The quizs are not scientifically validated, rather built backwards from user input. The over-large number of questions relating to eating indicate one common way that self-attacking can show up, but I am cautious to suggest it is developmentally telling for all cultures/ages/stages. Perhaps a more gendered response? as I know that the quiz and site attracts 80-20 F/M, and these formed the basis of testing groups and audience checking. And mainly a North American audience – see Joe Henrich’s terrific and perturbing article http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135

I really liked that there are some ideas about how the experience of the Inner Critic can be a constellation of ‘typical flavours’ which range from SuperEgo-like perfectionism to more debilitating Self-attacking ‘Destroyer’ as a result of early trauma and attachment disruptions, and more. See http://personal-growth-programs.com/inner-critic-section/inner-critic-types/

best

Simon

Simon d'Orsogna

May 18, 2015 at 10:32 pm #1921

Hi all

so helpful to see LOTS of great resources in the responses – thanks! And particularly I appreciate those that help us clearly to get the voice of the inner critic.

Further elaborating the IFS work (neat&free 30min intro interview from Richard Schwartz with Serge Prengel ) is the work of Jay Earley and Bonnie Weiss. They have 7 sub-categories of inner critic, as well as recognizing other aspects of our everyday multiplicity of mind – eg Criticized Child, the Protected Child, the Inner Defender, the Inner Champion, and the Inner Mentor. See http://personal-growth-programs.com/products/product-category/books/ifs-books-books/freedom-from-your-inner-critic/ or a free quiz at Jay’s online selfhelp application ‘Selftherapy Journey’ which provides IFS for those of us that can work on their own – see https://selftherapyjourney.com/Members/Questionnaire.aspx?Questionnaire=23

All these inner critics are aspects are seeking to protect/make safe, adapt to the world, or respond to injustice – and are potentially able to be understood as kinds of SuperEgo functioning (BA’s by any other name would smell so sweet). IMO these play into the pre-to-post Conventional mindset as noted, but I wonder if some might play more actively as we are leaving the Conventional eg the Inner Champion’s supporting role. And while that may inform our work, and those client conceptualizations needs be tested gently in-vivo, one real very practical learning I have come to is this – we need to get onside with the coachee’s experience of the world, and really ‘get’ how the sensemaking of whatever the protecting part-subpersonoality-voice-schema-knowing actively makes such good sense. IFS speaks about this as ‘getting the Protectors to relax enough or to step back’ and it seems to me that the work proceeds much better so when we attend to this. And actively note if/when the work slows down that a Protecting part may have become activated or polarized with another.

Lots of good and useful ways into deepening the work with our clients from these lens and using this language.

best

Simon