CARING
A Practical Approach to Giving a Session
Download VersionGrounding and Midlining
You start with grounding yourself and centering yourself.
You come first; never rush into a session, never. Every sensible client will understand if
you say: ’I need a moment to ground myself.’ If she really doesn’t, you better ask yourself
what this session is about in the first place and if you can avoid giving it.
Grounding enables you to hold your own space for yourself.
Grounding secures the place in the field you are at in this moment, it gives you strength,
it gives you inner presence and it enables you to turn to the other in a respectful and caring way.
But how can I do that if the client is already waiting? First, it’s not a question of time, it’s a question of the inner focus. You stand there, feel the soles of your feet, you let your shoulders drop and then. Feeling that your breathing gets slower, you feel that your slow breathing, combined with feeling the ground brings you into your center. So centering and grounding are actually one movement. You follow the strength coming up from the ground through you connection with gravity- Through gravity mother earth speaks to you in every moment of your life, if you are aware of it or not.
Back to grounding, noticing the soles of your feet you sense how the energy, the sensibility, the flow, the aliveness comes up your legs. It’s not important how you call it, it’s only important that you allow the feeling. When if reaches the perineum, you draw it, pull it up with your breath right up to your neck. In doing this you create a double movement : dispersed sensations and energies can float to the middle line and the energy that is coming up the middle flows out to all parts of your body. You are present inside in a dynamic, nurturing way. This double movement is midlining. The moment – all this can happen in seconds – you feel the double movement you can allow it to breathe you from inside.
That is the secret of grounding. You feel and breathe your own space and you can fill it with your felt deep presence. Because this happens from inside out you are immediately aware what is the right space for you now and what is the adequate approach you should take.You hold your own space. Firmly. That’s the ground from which your work can be what it is meant to be.
Before you enter the Space of the Other
Before you go into the space of the other, become very quiet, stand still, feel that you are holding your inner space, breathe in slowly. If you have the time you can do a little breathing- inside-meditation. If you have done it several times it becomes something like an attitude of inner preparation, nothing you have to go through all the way. Breathe in very slowly, breathe out through your ‘third eye portal’ between your eyebrows. Breathing in again you imagine the breath coming in through this portal you just opened. This is your switching movement using your breathing enabling, facilitating turning from the outer eyes to the inner eye. From this point between the eyes you let your inner feeling, without fixing to much on the anatomical detail, go backward, passing the optic chasm, the pituitary gland, the midbrain to the pineal gland, that is thus enlivened. But don’t expect the pineal gland to do the work of the third eye. The third eye then follows your loving, caring soul through pons, touching the medulla oblongata, saying to the reticular formation that it’s called for being very alert, thus arriving at cerebellum. You don’t need to think this journey of your third eye, you even shouldn’t, because everything that is touched by your third eye is present at once and in close contact with your deep heart, your feeling visceral field and your skin.
The three centers all together enable you to turn to the person in front of you, be very present for this person, all your inner senses plus your outer senses turn to warm, caring awareness. This person can relax, trust, breathe deeper and feel connected.
When you feel that all this is happening you can go into soul breathing, from your felt center your soul expands with your breathing all the way to the outer boarder, then goes to the center, the midline again, then your soul-feeling expands again going beyond the skin border, held by your open hands. Breathing in, breathing out you are with the other person, she can feel it, feel safe, feel cared for, be in your dense caring presence, ready to go deep.
The Four Shields
Four shields, once you feel how good they are for you and your client, you will not want to miss them. When you get used to the four shields, they become something natural in preparing a session, like putting a sheet on the table or mat, a sort of spiritual sheet. It doesn’t even take time.
Letting the space you are holding, grow denser, grow clearer, you protect this space and yourself be the four shields no wanting, no knowing, no possessing, no doing. It’s first protection, then it enables openness, a clear grounding, protection against you having a predefined solution, against you doing where it wants to evolve in her, if this is in you your holding can give the container for a free inner realm in her, it’s this freedom where intuition can flow in, it’s the peace that enables unfolding you can never know; so the four shield are sort of promise you give yourself and the client, and they help you to hold the space. Weather you express them or not depends on your intuition in the moment, sometimes it is just to much, nearly intimidating, sometimes it triggers the allowing to let go, to trust. What’s right just then .is in your caring hands.
Holding Space and letting Intuition come
Deep down it’s all about love. You are here, you are grounded, you feel your feet on the ground, you feel your own space, you fill it with you felt presence, letting the essence of your breathing go beyond the border of your skin and let it flow into the space around you. Hold that. Bringing it back to your center you are there and you are ready.
Now you can open. Sense the space of the other, give her the protection of the four shields and offer the space between your open, radiant hands. The space of the other is very tangible, more or less dense according to the momentary state the other is in, but you can always feel it in the palms of your hands. Trust this feeling. This is what you are there for.
Now your space and her space touch each other and around you both is a common space, gentle and strong. Trust it. So be very present without getting stiff, it’s nothing to get a stiff upper lip about, just relax into this presence, caring, holding, sensing, touching with or without touch. The partner in front of you feels she can trust. Now she can go deep.
Never interfere, intuition comes. You ‘know’ it if you are open, honest and caring. Now knowing , just being at the disposal of the space you now are part of. In this space intuition is natural, it’s fed by humble awareness, caring, deep listening, and the third eye moving.
The great privilege of working with and for the bodysoul of another is that you work as a subject from your own core. You must work from your core if you really want to give what is needed. What’s more, working like this always give you something, because the one that is holding space with love coming from the center is the ‘I am’, is the subject saying: ‘I am here for you.’ Only coming from the center holding space is genuine. That’s why you always have to ground yourself first and then connect to your center. Only grounded and centered can you enter the realm of the third eye. The third eye is something very practical1, but it’s not ‘some thing’, it’s part of your sensing soul moving in intuition. The third eye is always at your disposal. Moving around as part of your bodysoul feeling it’s seeing inside.
The point between your eyebrows – or just above – is the portal of the third eye. The third eye has something like a magnetic quality, it takes up different parts of your inner senses and integrates them into the third eye seeing. With this integrative quality the third eye is an important practical dimension of your intuition. If you feel the need to connect to the third eye, you imagine that you breathe in through the point between the eyebrows thus opening the portal of the third eye. The sensing quality can flow in, you are connected to the field in a special, way, turned inward and tuned to sensing beyond yourself.
Now you let this sensing spread in the area just above the floor of your head from the portal all the way to cerebellum. Do it very slowly and with a lot of caring attention. The caring attention you give yourself allows you to give the caring attention of the third eye to someone else. Turning from your own sensing to holding the space for the other you honor the sacred space in her. So always do it slowly and with a devotional quality.
Deep intuition can now flow.
Gravity and more
In deep sensing there are always, since we are part of this planet, at least three forces fluctuating in the background of our sensing, first gravity, second the so-called circardian rhythm, (the temporal biological changes we go through every day), and third the fluctuations in the radiation of sun and moon. These changes are very much part of our aliveness, even if we are rarely aware of them. Animals sense when a tsunami is coming, migrating birds find their way even if they don’t see the ground. Giving a session it seems important to be in contact with these forces.
If we feel grounding, sense the energy coming in and connect to the deep heart waves we are in contact with these forces even if we do not go into them in detail. We adjust ourselves, our sensing, our radiating, our caring, to the forces that are there anyhow. But the quality changes if we are connected.
The important point here is that we do NOT go into these forces as an outer object of knowing. Of course we have to know that they are there, but the contact is on the level of feeling, sensing, fine-tuning our sensibility. In doing so our inner senses expand and so we extend the realm of our intuition. Now this is important even before the first touch. (Extending the sensibility for our inner senses is the theme of current explorations, a sort of ‘meant-to-go-into-deep’-theme. Now I have the feeling that the question of extending these senses should be an extra ‘text’)
Non-invasive Holding Space
If you hold space for someone you care for you are always holding this space for the whole person in her. Inside this space you will experience different dimensions of non-invasive contact arising out of your intuition in this very moment.
Connecting to your inner space your bodysoul gathers all attention, awareness, all wanting to know in the center. You can let it happen. Sensing your inner space you can glide into whole body breathing. Slowly letting this deep breathing expand from the center to the outer borders of your body, you can feel your presence radiate inside-out. In one movement you let this radiating happen and you move with your inner senses from one body region giving them fluid receptivity, seeing that nothing is stuck, feeling the rhythm that is evolving. This vivid inner space is the foundation of your holding space. When in the course of the session you feel that your attention is getting wobbly, you can just go back to this center; so you don’t need to take energy from your partner.
As the space you hold for your partner gets clearer and stronger, your hands will first find the right position for holding space.
From there, you often don’t even need to ask your intuition where the hands should move to, they ‘know’ by themselves, holding, moving, giving strength. No intention is needed, your hands have soaked up all your capabilities, they ‘know’ better then you yourself, you don’t even need to know when your hands are giving an impulse, you simply feel your being present for your partner, feel and see that you are in the flow of intuition, as you protect yourself you also protect your partner. Being there you are thankful for the gift of being able to be present when the bodysoul of your partner connects to her own depth, when the sacred realm unfolds.
As the Noise dissolves
Some of the noise we gather going through the marketing-oriented world will simply glide to the side as we let ourselves go into deeper realms. The shields protect the partner I am holding space for against anything coming through me. But much of the noise is ingrained in the persona, the mask we have accepted as our self and in the emotional set-up we learned in order to adapt to the ‘I am this and you are that’ – plays a big part of the social communication consists of. It’s noise.
First of all going into deeper realms of the bodysoul is like holyday. Here the rules of the games of accepting and making noise don’t count, we can relax, the body can let habitual tensions go, can collect new energy. That’s one of the main reasons for most sessions; and there is no but about it. This is good and necessary. Now since you hold the space for the one you care for from your own deep core, the depth you are holding from is not determined, there isn’t even a measure for it.
As your two souls meet on their own ground, a spark can spring over, some unknown door to the core self is opened and – both of you might not notice it at this point of the session and this is another reason why the shields are so important – the soul connects to the deep heart, the ‘love that is beyond understanding’. From this moment on it’s no longer anymore holiday from the noise, the connection to this core lets the noise dissolve inside. It’s still there outside and you can still interpret it, but you are not determined by it any more. This can happen in any deep going session, you can not want it, nor can you avoid it if you do not stay on the purely functional level of un-personal treatment procedures; so it’s important that you are prepared for it, don’t get scared, go on holding a dense space and find a way to mark the event. Often it takes time to settle, so you feel into your intuition when you should talk and when you should be silent. Honor it, show your reverence and sometimes it’s good to give a simple, clear ‘homework’. We will come back to this in the last paragraph.
The Miracle of the Intuitive Touch
Be the touch. To be able to be the touch, you have to be well connected to your own center.. Only if you are connected to your own center can you can go far in touching the other. Preparing yourself to be the touch by grounding, centering, midlining and feeling the space emerging, your are quit and feel it in your palms. Your palms connect with your intuition. Feeling this connection arising you step back. You are already beginning to hold the space. Being present you touch her before you are in skin to skin contact.
Be the touch. You feel her space: how is it connected to your space? Don’t’ answer the question, simply connect to your heart. Your palms will give you the answer.
As you are drawn nearer you feel the field radiating from the center of her body. If you don’t feel anything you better step back and wait. There is a question. Again don’t answer the question, just wait. I know, that’s much harder than doing the ‘right’ thing. This might be some seconds, but in this delicate situation it seems a long time. Wait, she might not be ready or your intuition isn’t ready or both. You don’t need to know, you wait, feel, sense, open your palms – and then it happens, your palms ‘know’ where to go.
Next you enter the dense, ‘magnetic’ field near to her skin. Staying there for a moment – again it’s hard, but it gives her and you a lot of connectivity – you build up a common ground of understanding. The intuitive realm is expanding. Being here is already very much touching, exchanging, dancing, sometimes even singing (if you know each other better you might sometimes even express it). Under your palms you feel the flow.
Hold this near space, wait for the call for following in, touching the skin, with a warm, soft, quiet touch. The skin is waiting for this touch. At this point it is most important that you don’t start doing something immediately. Just give this caring touch, flow in, silently, softly, feel the quality, sense your sensing, don’t think, let your intuition take the lead and follow.
Now you are connected to her inner flow, so don’t intervene, follow. Her IT takes over. Be even more present, relax, care for your own comfort, don’t think you should do something because you are doing the most important thing in holding a dense space. In this deep inner flow the body can do wonders you couldn’t even dream of.
Sometimes from here you both enter the sacred realm inside; you never know it, you should never want it, just be there in utmost, simple devotion. Be there and be still.
Secure the Results
It’s funny, but I always ‘know’ when it’s over. You both sit there, you are both still full of the experience and you think you will never, never forget this, but you will. You had a glimpse of a deep knower you normally don’t have in view. So you might have the vague memory of the feeling and the depth, but the results will fade if you don’t find a way to secure them. Take notes together, it’s not a sacrilege, don’t postpone it and if you don’t have the time in the session, give it as ‘homework’ and check. If not you might turn circles. Securing the results enables inner development, deepening, growing, unfolding.
Sometimes you need it: caring for your own energy :
THE THREE PORTALS MEDITATION
Uniting the Power of the Third Eye, the Deep Heart, and the Pelvic Floor into One Flow
This is a practice that nourishes, purifies and centers you, gives you balance and flows into your inner gait, easing it, making it more alive and stronger. You should take a little time for it; you don’t know how much, because the practice works by adapting to your momentary life flow.
- You begin by opening your third eye portal. Take one finger of your dominant hand and feel without touching just above the point where your eyebrows meet. Your fingertip feels where your point is. Only then touch, marking your specific point. Leave your finger there for a moment, Taking away the finger, you imagine breathing in through this point. Your third eye portal opens.
- Now you let your feeling of the connection your momentary presence has with your field fly in. To make it shorter I call it your living co-presence. The living co-presence flows in very easily and gathers just behind your frontal and gets denser there.
- Letting your dense living co-presence free, it flies as part of your inner consciousness just above the floor of your low brain. Flying over the elements of your low brain mesh, very gently, with a deep caring feeling, your living co-presence ignites them one by one. They get luminous. Igniting the optic chiasm, the living co-presence enters the imaginal realm, flying, for instance – without focusing on one of them - above the pituitary and the amygdala, taking up feelings and attachments, passing the midbrain and all around it, receiving a sense of rhythm from the pineal gland, and a glance of the momentary sense of movement from the cerebellum. Now you see them all as part of a living mesh, their connectedness being bigger than their respective functions. The essence of the mesh getting vaporous, it rises leaving the unnecessary noise and dirt behind. Thus purified, it rises to the dome of the skull, raining down from there, creating a very light, fluid steam that flows through the foramen magnum right down to your deep heart.
- While this steam flows into your deep heart you strech out your arms, palms up and receive the energy from your field and thus from the stream of life. It’s waiting to flow in through your palms, your arms into your deep loving heart. There the two steams unite, creating very strong, deeply alive and vivifying waves that go out into all your cells, all. Though these waves your wise life-snake wakes up, joins the rhythm of the waves, ads her wisdom to their energy and aliveness. Like this she dances up your midline, blessing your loving heart and the deep brain mesh. Like this all three movements unite flowing into a deep. slow all-body breathing coming from the midline, going back and forth as a caring, nourishing movement to the outer borders of your skin and radiating beyond.
1 It’s a pitty that some esoteric circles made such a hokus pokus about the third eye, but since it’s so important for the work, just disregard that and stick to the practical side.