So since my last blog entry in January I’ve been to the Barbara Brennan School of Healing two more times.  One of the key things I’m discovering about this school is that in many ways it’s indirectly making you a better healer.  What I mean is that the primary goal and activity of the school it turns out is often very little to do with any clients you deal with, but more about how you the healer will grow and heal yourself.  It’s like the basic principle is that if you can heal yourself and become really clear of life blocking issues, then clients in your mere presence will heal.

And so my times spent at one week long sessions at the Miami, Florida school location have clearly been about how to heal Wilson.  That means how to embrace all that life has to offer: the pleasurable stuff and the painful stuff.  And it also means how to express all that you have to offer: the kind stuff and also the nasty dark side of ourselves. In the end it’s all good.

So this past week I volunteered to put my guts out for my classmates and teachers to see.  They all got to push and prod my psyche until I was like a 5 year old little boy, super shy and scared standing in the middle of the room, yet at the same time the keep-it-together adult at times popping back in to suppress any hurt.  For me it was an exhausting 1.5 hour session of me really trying to resolve why I get socially anxious at times, yet then suddenly want lots of social contact.  I was hoping to uncover a long suppressed hurt and to cry it out, but in the end it was sort of a dissatisfying nothing.  But where it did end is in me understanding and knowing my child hood wound that didn’t so much express itself in tears but more in emotional numbness, in an area where I feel awkward and just don’t know how I feel.  Almost like I disappear, lose my attention and then suddenly regain my attention to possibly realize I just went unconscious into some day dream.

So this past weekend I started to adjust to taking the risk to not put in many unpaid hours of extra work for my employer.  And by Sunday evening the guilt started to hit me and I started to freak out a bit.  I started to try grounding exercises to enhance my level of contact with the “real” physical world and it almost seemed that if you pinched me I would no longer feel the pinch.  Then I watched this movie “Souce Code” which mostly takes place in the dreams of a fatally injured character.   And then I really started to drift into the sensation of a virtual world.

And then I truly felt the most separated from my body.  It was like I was a stranger watching a movie and physical sensations of my body going out of sync with what my body was actually physically touching.  It felt a bit that I was truly going crazy, maybe a bit like the main character in the movie “Black Swan”

The next morning this dissociation went further and on the drive to work, I felt as if the skin was burning off my face, hands and arms.  It was a bit painful, but I knew the relief that I sought would be found if I could restablish physical contact with myself.

And so in the end I’m trying to follow general guidelines from the school, by trying as much as possible to avoid drinking any alcohol.  In general alcohol is something I’d take to numb ovewhelming discomfort and pain.  But this time I’ve really exercised self will to avoid alcohol to numb any fears or pains and just allow myself to fall into the scariest and most painful part.

So despite this frustrating realization that I might start to become dependant on drinking coffee, I’m at least aware of how I hide and protect myself from what I fear by trying to have someone else stand up for me. I’m now conscious of the clarity that sensing nothing brings to the table.  So in this setting it doesn’t matter if you have prior “professional” yoga, meditation or energy work.  It only matters how authentic people are about how they feel and how they feel other people perceive them.

I’m dissociating lots now, but it’s OK. It’s too be expected and i’s all OK.

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