Session 6: Turning Towards Discomfort

Guiding the home practice from the last week.

An opportunity to go around the group and invite them to share how they are progressing with the practices

In Chinese medicine disease is caused by impediments to the flow of energy in the meridians. These are channels throughout the body along which a subtle energy called chi flows . The blockages are caused by blocked emotions.

In 5 elements practice we visualise the elements as coloured lights that we breathe to the five organs associated with the five basic emotions. We imagine the light as a tonic cleansing the organ of the stagnant emotion and eliminating it as we breathe out a dark smoke through the bottom of the feet.

The coloured lights are associated with the five elements - Wood, Air/Metal, Fire, Earth and Water. You don’t need to retain that information to do this practice. It’s best simply to focus on breathing in the coloured light, down into the organ and breathing it out. Repeating for about three minutes for each organ.

We start with eyes closed by visualising a green light, we breathe this light to the liver on the right of the body under the bottom ribs. The emotion associated with the liver is anger. Imagine breathing the free light out of the souls of your feet like a black smoke, that returns into the earth.

Then there is a white light. This we breathe into the lungs, and the emotion is sadness. Breathing out as a dark smoke through the bottom of the feet.

Next is a red light. We breathe this to the heart and the emotion is joy.

Next we see a yellow light. This we breathe in to the stomach and sola plexus. The emotion is disgust.

Finally we see a blue/green light. This we breathe to the kidneys and the emotion is fear.

It isn’t necessary to try to conjure the emotions. Simply let the visualisation do its work.

This is perhaps the most powerful creative challenge of this whole course. It is certainly the most emotionally intense for the majority of people.

You will need a lot of tapes of different colours and sizes ideally and plenty of scissors. Smaller groups of 4 or 5 are formed along gender lines ideally. Each member of the group take it in turns to stand in the middle, close their eyes and go through the stages as described below. No one should feel obliged to volunteer, it is important that they feel safe to step out or to not take a go if they wish to do so.

It’s important also to go through the instructions with the group more than once and to explain that the process occurs in distinct stages.

Stage 1: To the person who has volunteered to step into the centre of the small circle - Close your eyes and feel your body. Feel for where it hurts. Wherever you feel pain, tension, anxiety, numbness - that clenched feeling in the body.

Describe the colour, size and shape of this ‘wound.’ Your support group will then provide you with this tape to attach onto your body in the location of that ‘wound’. You should apply the tape yourself, not your support team, unless it’s somewhere you can’t easily reach. Once you have identified all the wounds you have located and applied the tape go on to the next stage.

Stage 2: Eyes remain closed. Now go back to each wound and tell out loud to your support group the story of that wound, how it came about. Sometimes the hurt will have a physical cause sometimes it will be an emotional scar, almost all the time it is both. So don’t go into a kind of doctor’s health check. Go into the emotional and relational aspects of the pain. Sometimes the wounds are connected, sometimes they are old, even older than you. Let the body speak rather than inventing stuff with your mind. Check you have told the story of each wound, feel your body for any tape that you might have missed. Your support group will also remind you of these.

Stage 3: Eyes still closed, revisit each wound and start to say out loud why it is good. What is the gold in the wound? What does it mean to show up in the world with this wound? If you struggle, slowly peel off the tape to see what is revealed. Once all the tape has been removed you can open your eyes.

The support group can ask you questions to help you tell the story and they can remind you of ones you might have missed. They can then encourage you on stage 3 to find the gold in the wound. There is always something good about each hurt. Find it.

The support group bear witness to the volunteer and must stand with open hearts and without judgement. They must give all their attention to the volunteer and their story. It is through their empathy that the power of this practice can release energetic blocks that have lasted lifetimes.

When these blocks are released expect explosions of emotions, mostly sadness and grief. Be open to feeling them too. They can feel like they will overwhelm you but they can’t. It is the resistance to feeling and expressing them that causes the pain.

This activity can take a lot of time to complete and it needs time to breathe. Once each group is finished, and everyone in that group who wishes to has taken a turn, they are introduced to the Hand in the Mirror illusion.

The hand in the mirror illusion is offered to each small group as they finish with The Gold in the Wound. Since groups finish at different times it allows you to offer this ‘metaphor’ for each member of the group who want to.

It is also important to ascertain consent for this exercise. Let them know that their hands will be touched and stroked, and their hands will be resting on their knees. But no other part of their body will be touched. Let them also know that some people can react strongly to this dynamic metaphor. If they wish to continue let them know that they can ask it to stop at any point and you will stop the process.

You both, facilitator and participant, will need take take off any rings or bracelets on the hands before starting.

For this you will also need a long mirror, ideally on a stand. Place two chairs on either side of the mirror facing each other. Now with facilitator sitting in one chair with legs straddling the mirror the participant sits in the chair opposite also straddling the mirror. One leg and hand is behind the mirror and the other leg and hand is in-front of the mirror. Move the chairs closer so that they touch the mirror frame and move to sit on the front of the chair. This is the position you must maintain.

The facilitator instructs the participant to keep looking at the hand in the mirror. They will need to lean to the side to look into the mirror.

The facilitator, with the participants’ consent takes hold of their hands - one behind the mirror and the other in-front. They places their the hands on the participants knees and begin to stroke down their hands. It’s important that what is done to one hand is done precisely the same with the other in synchrony.

“Look at the hand in the mirror. Do not look away. Keep looking at the hand in the mirror.”

Now the facilitator can start to stroke the fingers individually. They can lift the hands off the knees and squeeze them gently. Most important is that they are done in synchrony and that the participant is looking at the hand in the mirror at all times. Now on both hands the facilitator squeezes quite hard the fleshy part that links the bottom of the thumb with the hand, on both hands.

“ Is this painful?” the facilitator asks the participant. The answer will be a little, a lot, or yes. If no, squeeze a little harder. “How about now?”

The facilitator then places the hands back on the knees and continues to stroke down the hands in synchrony. It might be that the partner needs reminding to look at the hand in the mirror. The stroker then says -

“What if this pain is not your pain?”

They then, immediately, continue stroking the hand in front of the mirror but stop stroking the hand behind the mirror. Leaving it untouched. You might get a reaction from the partner. Pause a beat and then start to stroke both hands again as if nothing has happened.

After 15 seconds of more stroking in synch and if needed reminding the participant to keep looking at the hand in the mirror, say the following.

“What if the reason it is not your pain is because…”

Now at the same time as saying the next line the facilitator must stop stroking the hand in front of the mirror and press down hard on the hand and knee behind the mirror.

“…you are not a body”

The stoker now slowly, gradually releases the pressure on the hand behind the mirror until lightly removing it all together.

There are one of three reactions you can expect in the participant.

One is, not understanding and not caring much either. They don’t understand the purpose of the exercise OR they do but it doesn’t work on them. If this is the case then thank them for giving it a go and move on to the next one.

Two, they are very spun out and screech or laugh. Catch their gaze and enjoy experiencing this liminal moment with them. On the threshold of a new discovery.

Three, they are very shocked and shaking. Maybe even upset. Get them to breathe as if they are breathing down through their legs into the ground. Feeling their feet on the ground, until they have calmed down.

As per recording below