 PH
is a highly effective way of releasing the crippling toxic shame
and frozen energies which block our holistic expression. We explore
unconscious happenings in our bodies and make them conscious.
When this happens, it releases an energy enhances relationships
with others and with the natural world. Carl Jung called this
phenomenon the "transcendent function." He explained that when
unconscious content becomes conscious we experience a sense of
clarity, a fuller understanding of ourselves, an experience that
goes beyond ordinary, everyday consciousness. I refer to this
as a glimpse of holism--a stroke of our own genius. It's almost
like seeing your world from the top of the Empire State Building!
In AHP, we leave the everyday world behind--the world of right
and wrong, good and bad, "more thans" and "less thans" - and we find
and integrate our complex, more complete selves. In the holistic perspective,
there is no "normal" or "abnormal." We are diverse by design. As the
author Jean Houston once said, "A normal person is someone you
don't know very well."
In interviews with individuals who experience holism, it is not uncommon to hear someone say, "I am awed," or "I never believed life could be this special." This was certainly the case for me. It was not just a passing euphoric feeling. It became established in my ground-of-being. Once, the awe surrounding my own life experience was so great that I sought out a therapist solely because I needed a safe place to share it. I needed a place where I knew I would be heard and would not be triggering someone else's feelings of deprivation or envy. Since sharing it with a therapist, I have been able to integrate awe and bliss as components of my everyday life. I, too, would never have believed it.
Integrating Holism
In his Holotropic Breathwork workshops, Stan Grof, M.D. teaches people to breathe in a very specific manner until they access a "non-ordinary" state where it is possible to have physical, emotional, and sensory experiences that empower them with a larger view of life. Often they discover repressed traumatic conflicts or unfinished business from the past. These events tend to be very healing, unleashing new energy and clarity. In Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing the process is much subtler and more specific, yet a deep unfreezing occurs. Wavework Integration, a graceful technique derived from yogic tradition, has its own style of healing. The list goes on: EMDR, Hakomi, Polarity Message Therapy, Craniosacral, Healing Imagery, Rubenfield Synergy, and many more from modern and ancient traditions, are just some of the possibilities available.
An encounter with the holistic state of being may bring with it
feelings of "non-ordinary" calm and detachment. When we expand our
perceptions, we see the impermanence of things yet trust that it's
okay. Friends who practice Buddhism are able to articulate many of
the finer points of non-attachment and impermanence. For me, this
has come to mean that though I may want to cling to certain things,
relationships, or even life itself, deep down in my soul I know that
I am okay without them. Somehow, my inner sense of knowing and my
experiences of transcendent spiritual calm give me something to fall
back on when other realities appear to desert me--or at least the
part of me that wants to hold on. Similarly, in the experience of
holism, people report feeling less dependent on the "things" of life
to feel whole and content. They relax their sense of "holding on."
There is a look, or aura, that I perceive in people who have this personal sense of awareness. I see it in some of the elders in the recovery movement. I see it in some of the dynamic teachers and leaders in our society. I see it in depictions of Buddha and Jesus and in the faces of the wise people of many cultures. There is a kind of otherworldly respect and knowing in their eyes. They seem content to feel their serenity in privacy, even without verbalization. They have a presence that goes beyond ordinary time and space.
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