Topics-Finding Center

Introduction

A Practical Example

Life is filled with meetings.

Without centering, meetings follow unconscious trajectories, and recapitulate unresolved experiences from our childhood.

However, if one person in a meeting is well centered and intentional, they influence the trajectory. The meeting moves more slowly and deliberately. Emotions rise, fall, and resolve. They inform decisions rather than driving them.

We invite you to look at the following vignette that illustrates the effects of centering on a meeting. As you read the two versions, you may consider the following questions:

What resonates for you?
What changes between the first and second versions of the scene?
Who do you relate to most?

We will discuss in the group session.

I look across the way. We’re at a company retreat. There are a few of us sitting around a campfire, after a day of personality tests and lectures.

He’s a big barrel chested guy with a loud voice.

I’m a computer nerd with hunched over shoulders.

Why is he so fucking loud? I can’t get a word in edgewise.

There’s a girl there I’m kind of interested in. She’s kind of skinny, with slender arms and a long neck.

He turns to me, talking to the group at large. She turns to look at him.

“Harvard people never say they went to Harvard. They say they went to school in Cambridge, or Massachusetts. It’s like they think they’re smarter than everyone else.”

A bunch of thoughts flash through my mind. ‍

Because we are smarter than everyone else, stupid. Because when I tell people I went to school at Harvard they say ‘yeah you must be smart’. Or some other asshole dropped the ‘H-bomb’ and was a real dick and I don’t want to be that guy. Or girls think you’re a nerd. Or they say ‘yeah I went to a state school’ and then the conversation stalls.

I grin uneasily.

Someone asks where he went to school.

“I went to a state school in bumblefuck nowhere. There was absolutely nothing to do there. But that’s where I learned to play harmonica.”

What?

“Can you play a song? I love harmonicas.” the girl asks.

He pulls a harmonica from his pocket.

“Sure.”

What?

I look across the way. We’re at a company retreat. We’re sitting around a campfire, after a day of personality tests and lectures.

He’s a big barrel chested guy with a loud voice.

I’m a computer nerd with hunched over shoulders.

Why is he so fucking loud? I can’t get a word in edgewise.

Hold on.

I inhale into my belly and hold for a few seconds. Exhale. I feel the ground under me. I listen to the crackle of the fire. I’m inside a bubble.

There’s a girl there I’m kind of interested in. She’s kind of skinny, with slender arms and a long neck.

Squeeze the muscles in my pelvic floor. Inhale and hold. My spine tingles. Exhale.

He turns to me, talking to the group at large. She turns to look at him.

“Harvard people never say they went to Harvard. They say they went to school in Cambridge, or Massachusetts. It’s like they think they’re smarter than everyone else.”

Inhale. Feel the ground.

“What makes you say that?”

He glances at me.

“I got into Harvard but couldn’t go because we couldn’t afford the tuition.”

I inhale and let my breath out slowly. Everyone is looking.

“I went to state school instead.”

I imagine all kinds of answers - what school did you go to, how do you feel about that. But none of it feels quite right.

Inhale, hold, gaze.

He looks at me for a moment.

“I got into Harvard but couldn’t go because we couldn’t afford the tuition.”

Exhale, hold.

“I guess it’s always kind of gotten to me, wondering what would have happened if I could have gone.”

I nod.

The girl speaks up. Everyone turns to look at her.

“You Americans are always talking about schools and where you went. What does it matter? We’re all here now.”

The fire pops.

“I’m going to have a smoke,” she says, as she begins rolling a cigarette.

He pulls out a harmonica. “Does anyone mind if I play?”

He starts to play a quiet tune.

I look at her. “Do you have another of those?”

Finding Calm in the Center

Four F's theory proposes that fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are the major biological responses to perceived threat. In the diagram, each of the four F's are the extremes of four quadrants. In the center of each quadrant are qualities of drive, strategy, rest, empathy.

The tabs below list the associated emotions, thoughts, sensations in each quadrants, as well as common rituals and the alchemical symbol (i.e. fire, air, earth and water) for each quadrant.

The rituals give us an idea of how this energy is explored and expressed - i.e. that combat and competition are rituals where we explore conflict and fire energy.

The alchemical symbol serves as a shorthand for the collection of emotions, states and behaviors characteristic of that quadrant, i.e. fire energy is behind anger, irritation and frustration, as well as power, discipline and motivation.

Emotion: Anger, frustration, rage, irritation.
Thoughts: Expletives. “They are doing something to me”
Somatic: Increase in heart rate, dry mouth, shallow rapid breathing (sympathetic nervous system activation). Gritting teeth. Frowning. Clenched fists. Impulse to scream or yell. Stomping or pounding.
Centered States: drive, motion, discipline, energy.
Alchemical symbol: Fire.
Ritual: Combat, competition

Emotions: Fear, anxiety, panic, worry, concern.
Thoughts: “It’s my fault”. "I have to figure this out" "I need to get out of here"
Somatic: Shaking leg, inability to stay still.
Centered States: strategy, direction, discernment.
Alchemical symbol: Air.
Rituals: Science, mathematics, engineering, intuitive.

Emotions: Resignation, helplessness, disorientation, confusion.
Thoughts: “I can’t” “I feel overwhelmed” “I don’t deserve…” "I am invisible" "Blend in" "I need to hide"
Somatic: Numbness, dissociation, or disconnection from the body. Frozen, speechless.
Centered states: hibernation, stillness, rest, recovery.
Alchemical symbol: Earth.
Ritual: birth and death, harvests, moon.

Emotions: Loneliness, nervousness, betrayal, concern
Thoughts: "I need to be nice" "They are right" "I'll ignore that and smile" "He/she is attracted to me, that is good" "If I have sex, they will protect me"
Somatic: Collapsed chest. Downward looking, no eye contact. Submissive posture.
Centered states: joy, empathy, trust, collaboration.
Alchemical symbol: Water.
Ritual: art, music, dance, tantra.

Why the emphasis on finding center? In our society, we are often stuck in threat responses without knowing it. When redirected, the energy of fight, flight, freeze and fawn turn into discipline, strategy, stillness, and empathy. We are looking for flow among all states, but the first step is often to return to center.

When our threat responses become mismatched from reality we experience depression, anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and people pleasing. If stuck in the center we experience performance anxiety, analysis-paralysis, lethargy, loss of identity in relationships.

As we will learn later in the chapter, the root causes of this misdirection are low level programs learned in early childhood, or in the case of PTSD, programs that emerge in the adult due to a traumatic event. Programs also reflect the pervasive conditioning of society and family, where we learned to suppress anger, to smile and be polite, to appear productive, and demonstrate our intelligence.

The goal of our work is to find the emotional calm that exists in the center so that even as strong feelings arise, our actions are informed by conscious intent.

To use language borrowed from alchemy, we might imagine a boxer training for a fight. She is developing her fire energy, in balance with periods of rest and recovery (earth energy), working with air energy to plan and build mental clarity, and does it all with compassion and flow (water energy).

When we look at the whole picture, we see that, like the boxer, we want to develop the ability to be in flow among the states, consciously and with intention. Through training rituals and practices, we will learn to navigate being authentic to our inner selves in our lived experience.

Questions for discussion

Think of a situation where you found yourself in one of the threat responses.

What happened?
What were your thoughts, sensations, feelings and actions?
How did you get back to center, if ever?
What might you do differently now that you have seen this framework?

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Ritual Practices To Find Center

You will often hear lists of ‘things to do if you are feeling x…’ but this is like learning to serve in tennis by following a list of ‘hold your head up’ ‘power through your hips’ etc. It is through conscious practice in a whole context that we develop the intuition and natural flow.

We include below a composite sample of rituals we’ve encountered in our practices. Find what resonates for you, and incorporate it as you evolve over time.

In our society, anger is often suppressed. Most of the techniques shown here involve learning how to surface anger consciously and with intention.

Grounding anger somatically and with compassion.

Recall a triggering situation where you were angry but were unable to express it.
Find a safe somatic expression of it - take a towel and twist it with every ounce of your strength. Go to your car and scream. Squeeze your eyes, grit your teeth and shake your fists. Pay attention to your breath - when are you taking breaths, when are you holding. Exaggerate these.
Once you are able to get deep into the emotion, then begin to visualize it outside of your body - perhaps as a ball of energy of a particular color or brightness. Listen to the child that was angry.
Visualize the love and compassion you have for that frustrated, angry, child - it is a child and knows no more, he or she is pure feeling. If it helps, imagine holding the child, imagine being held, make a motion of cradling or holding - while simultaneously in that angry place.
Feel as the compassion and the energy of the anger mix together. Practice holding both energies at the same time. Allow the child to calm, cry, rest, all with compassion.
The next time you feel the surge of anger, you may find that you are more aware of changes in breathing and tension in your body, intuitively know how to subtly ‘lean in’ to those feelings to release them (i.e. do a brief breath hold, a subtle clenching of the hands), and are also feel both angry yet comforted and safe.

Ritual Anger and Combat

A pair of participants stand facing one another - one is the actor, the other is the witness.
To open the ritual, they set intention and boundaries - no one is to be harmed or take on the energy of another.
And the actor brings to life his or her deepest anger, jumping, screaming, pounding at an intensity that can only be held for a short period - all at the agreed upon boundary.
The witness watches the anger, without absorbing or reacting to it.
After the expression is complete, they close the ritual by sharing their thoughts, feelings and learnings.
A variation of this is ritual combat where the participants fight (safely).

In our modern society, flight is often mixed with freeze. Because we can’t run away from a situation physically, we leave our body, and in our minds we try to ‘run’ from the situation by thinking our way out of it. We are also rewarded for being in our minds. We spend hours writing code, watching TV and movies, playing video games and getting lost in books and social media.

The main ritual practices to develop our re-centering conditioning are:

Breathwork - to quickly get us back in our body
Movement meditation - such as qigong and yoga - also to get back into the body and listen to it, rather than the mind
Mantra (repetitive thoughts, feelings, songs, calculations) - repeated with compassion and love to strengthen the connection to the heart and body.

Breathwork. In the next chapter we will review breathwork rituals and practices extensively. For now the idea we put forth is that breathwork rituals are intended both to solve the immediate issue (i.e. getting back to center) - as well as practice how to bring conscious awareness and intention into each breath from moment to moment. Here is a brief example of short, active breathing:

High intensity breathwork (pranayama, Wim Hopf style). This short, active breathing meditation that will give your mind something to do while disengaging the flight or freeze response physically.
Take 30 rapid breaths - most important is to fully inhale and exhale through the belly. Make the last few breaths slower and deeper. If you get a little lightheaded, feel tingling in your fingers, you are doing it right.
Exhale gently to let most of the air out
Hold as long as you feel comfortable. Explore what thoughts and feelings happen as you hold - do you get bored, distracted? Do you feel sensations in your body? Even if you ‘give up’ just notice that you gave up. You can also notice the time that you held your breath.
Take a deep breath to fill your lungs. Hold it for 15 seconds, tightening your diaphragm and perhaps forcing blood to your head.
Release, and repeat 2 the cycle 2 more times. You may notice differences in what happens both during the breathe-up and the hold.
On the last hold, inhale fully, hold, and then let out slowly as much as you can. Hold at the bottom of the breath, and inhale when your body is ready. Notice how your mind is now, compared to when it started. Repeat the slow inhalations and exhalations (you may be breathing about 1-2 times a minute) and gently return to normal breathing.
You can vary this exercise in the number of breaths, repetitions, etc. Find whatever can consistently help you shift out of thinking to quiet in your body.

Movement meditation. This includes qigong, yoga, ecstatic dance and other movement practices. The emphasis is connecting to our emotional state through these meditations - the difference between going through the motions and feeling the emotions. There are many excellent resources out there. Here are some simple exercises to try:

Head scan. Turn your head, neck and torso to look behind you to one side, and then to the other. Scan the room and see that there is no threat. Peer around the corners of your vision. The first time I did this I was surprised at how much calmer I felt. In early development the infant engages the neck muscles to look around and check that it is safe.
Tapping. [tapping example here]

Mantras and repeated patterns come in all shapes and forms. There seem to be a few major approaches:

Using the mind against the mind. Ram Dass describes mantras in which every thought is countered by another thought, until thoughts are gone. Meditations on Koans are similar. Counting rosaries. Saying blessings. Do a calculation. Recall your scientific reasoning and rigor. Science is the ritual language for connecting logic to the divine. In some ways, this is tiring or distracting the thinking mind. Notice that obsessive compulsive behaviors, rumination, paranoia also are distractions. The difference is to not be attached to an outcome. Watch as the mind goes round and round and keep on redirecting it to stillness.
Anchor memory. Find as early a memory as you can of being peaceful, happy, joyful - say visiting a grandmother who always made cookies. Remember as many details of this moment or memory as possible - the smell of the cookies baking, the taste of the cookies, the sound of her voice - anything that brings it to life. And then - hold onto the feeling while releasing the details. Practice invoking this feeling and holding onto it - first by building up the detailed scene - but then more and more automatically, and eventually just invoking the feeling directly.
Repeat something with feeling, over and over. Sing a lullaby - with feeling - until you don’t have to sing it any more. Breathe - and with each breath, find another emotion, another gesture. The important thing is to have the mind focus on something - and always connect it to feeling in the body, whether evoked, or intuitive.

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People pleasing, feelings of betrayal, loneliness, addiction to pornography, sexual addiction reflect unmet need for emotional connection.Our society conditions us to direct creative, sexual energy outwards - looking for sexual encounters, working hard, or if neither is possible, seeking conflict and release.

The following practice helps to contain and consciously cultivate the energy.
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1. Feel for energy in the sexual and creative center - about 2 inches below the navel, near the genitals. You may feel this by squeezing the muscles in the pelvic floor.
2. Take a deep diaphramatic breath and imagine channeling this energy upwards, towards your heart and lungs. Hold at the top of the inhale.
3. Recall an anchor memory of love and compassion - a moment where you felt comforted, held, cared for.
4. Mix that feeling with the energy that you have channeled upwards.Exhale, and imagine the energy going back into the sexual center, where you may feel it more tangibly.
4. Take a moment to appreciate the energy for the drive and direction that it provides.
5. Repeat

Root causes

The root causes of being stuck in one state or another are in the low level programs and beliefs learned in early childhood. Gabor Maté writes in In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction

“The greatest damage done by neglect, trauma or emotional loss is not the immediate pain they inflict but the long-term distortions they induce in the way a developing child will continue to interpret the world and her situation in it. All too often these ill-conditioned implicit beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies in our lives. We create meanings from our unconscious interpretation of early events, and then we forge our present experiences from the meaning we’ve created. Unwittingly, we write the story of our future from narratives based on the past...Mindful awareness can bring into consciousness those hidden, past-based perspectives so that they no longer frame our worldview.’Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present…Until you reach that point, you are unconscious.’ …In present awareness we are liberated from the past.”

Traumas as old programs

We maintain a set of beliefs - models of the world - to navigate conditional reality. These beliefs vary from logical beliefs like “I believe most ketchup is red” to non-verbal beliefs - like ‘asking for help will result in pain’ buried in our unconscious and low level programs.

We can use our thinking mind to shape logical beliefs, but non-verbal beliefs are more difficult to change. Even if we can verbalize a belief (i.e. “Loud noises make me go back to that scary situation”) the lower level patterns still emerge, seemingly out of control.

Non-verbal beliefs are stored in body - i.e. in spinal cord, lower cerebellum, brainstem, vagus nerve. Walking, running, and speaking are learned and stored in motor circuits in the spinal cord. Posture, breath, and appetite are stored in the brain stem and vagus nerve. Trauma is the influence of early childhood experiences on these systems.

In early development we learn how to breathe, grasp, walk, and eventually talk. These become low level programs that as adults we often run intuitively and unconsciously.

Events during childhood shape these low level programs. These are manifested in acute reactions such as flinching when hearing a loud noise or sweating when in a tense situation, as well as body posture and alignment. Hunched shoulders, lower back pain and other chronic conditions are the product of our childhood experiences.

This view explains why it is difficult to change posture problems and chronic pain solely by addressing the symptoms. The underlying cause of the symptoms is the influence of traumatic experiences on low level programs. To re-program these, we must surface what are often unconscious influences and work with them consciously.

This process of going back through our traumas in some cultures is called ‘remembrance’ - remembering who our pure inner child was. It is also called individuation (in Carl Jung’s terms), coming of age (i.e. emerging as an adult member of society) and alchemical transformation into gold.

Character Structure Overview

Character structure is shaped over phases of of child development. At each developmental stage, the child is sensitive to a different aspect of environment and physical body, and will adapt to the external environment at the time.

Particularly for earlier stages, these adaptations will manifest unconsciously in many cases as somatic patterns in the body, including posture and movement patterns visible in the adult.

Each person will typically have 1-3 predominant structures as an adult. As the structures are loosened through work, then other structures will appear.

During each phase, the child is learning new aspects of interacting with the world. This is where interactions with parents, siblings and peers shape the unconscious programs.

The character structures are intimately linked with bioenergetic fields and the chakra systems.

Character structure in adults

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Startup Alchemy

Week 2: Finding Center