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| Presencing Issue 92 New Paradigm Extensions Our Client's Gifts Towards a State of Presence XIV Extensions to Bodywork: Three New Webinars: 1. Conscious Proprioception; Entrance into Presence 2. Touch is Always a Two-Way Connection
3. Building Case Studies from Our Sessions
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I started The Presencing Newsletter in 2006 and
we are now reaching towards the 100th Issue.
The next 9 newsletters will contain case examples from my files that I hope you will find interesting and useful! I'm ever more sure of the importance of presence not just in living life fully, but in understanding life more fully.
**Join A new wave of Jack&Koito webinar classes in July! Get all handouts and videos and CEs! All bodyworkers and other caregivers are welcome!!**
Moving into case reports: The next nine issues include case reports from my practice; that I can broaden and deepen our touch therapies' paradigms and perhaps those of all caregiving professions.
Sources: Side Lying and Decompression Somatics, TableTalking, Ethics, Supervision, Palliative Care, Sharing Presence, Trager Aspects, Reiki tools, Presencing Meditations, and Focusing for Bodyworkers.
As we attend more to the sensations arising from within our own bodies, a new essence starts to companion us from within. We start to experience presence as the arising of each moment, as a taste of eternal awareness. All living systems are attuned to NOW. Every event; past, present, and future is a part of this eternal moment. This growing awareness of NOW seems to put many things, especially fearful ones, into different perspectives.
We may start to wonder if our chronic problems have always been self-created diversions from NOW. In this eternal moment we find only continuity, not discontinuity. Is it possible the body can become our vehicle for a journey into awakening? The body is temporal. If we pay close attention, we realize that the body only exists now. So that which is implicitly temporal may lead us to experience that which is explicitly eternal!
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AUGUST 16, 1987- MY FIRST TIME ENTERING NOW: In this issue I'm clarifying the account of my work with my dear friend Jessie Loo, which started me on this path of presence and changed my life entirely... and perhaps other's lives as well. Little did I suspect what was coming. The date: August 16,1987. Early, 5 am in the morning of the Harmonic Convergence. In Newsletter 7, I wrote about this experience. Here are some more important details:
BACKGROUND:
Jessie Loo was born in China, some years prior to WWII. Midway through the war, for safety sake, her family arranged for her and her sister to live in the mountains of Chungqing. At the war's end Jessie Loo moved to the Buddhist and vegetarian Lantau Island in Hong Kong Bay. She joined a Quaker Meeting in Hong Kong. To deepen her practice of silence, Jessie enrolled in Pendle Hill, in a Quaker Study and Service Community in Pennsylvania. There she met and married a teacher, Jim Pinney. Like many Quakers and other "peace church" members, Jim had been a conscientious objector during WWII. Also, during the 1930s and 40s Jim had hitchhiked the USA, visiting and studying various types of intentional communities. Jim himself was intent on creating an idyllic community he called Stillpoint.
ORCAS ISLAND:
Jim and Jessie moved to Orcas Island in the 1960s. That's where I met them when I moved there with my family in 1979, during the counter culture and back-to-the-land movement. I found both of them fascinating. We became close friends and spiritual searchers. Orcas included: Theosophists, Quakers, Rosicrucians, Buddhists, etc.
Perhaps, due to wartime conditions in Chungqing, Jessie eventually contracted Lupus Erythermatosis, an autoimmune disease which attacks skin, joints, heart, kidneys, and even brain cells. I learned about Jessie's situation, because she, along with my wife Jacky, was one of the patients we worked on in a Therapeutic Touch a healing group. Jim, who was 20 years Jessie's senior, was being trained to do kidney dialysis for her, to remove excess proteins in her blood due to kidney failure.
When Jim suffered a stroke, I volunteered to be trained to perform her dialysis two seven hour stints a week. This meant spending quality time with Jessie and in one sense, holding her life in my hands as various emergencies arose.
DIALYSIS:
Jessie and I became very close. Since we were both greatly interested in spiritual matters, we studied many texts and teachers during those hours together. After
about a year, I was then asked to manage a Buddhist vipassana retreat center on San Juan Island. So a new person took over Jessie's dialysis sessions.
I kept in touch with Jessie and Jim, and her health situation. When I returned to Orcas, we had regular contact. A doctor friend of mine learned that Lupus patients were starting to become able to receive kidney transplants. Shortly afterwards Jessie's transplant was scheduled. A preoperative exam found that her heart needed some small repairs before she could endure the transplant surgery. I called Jessie to check in about 9 pm that night. She was aware that the next day was the Harmonic Convergence. She said that she wanted to fully experience the HC. She told her surgeon that she preferred to wait one day for the heart repair. We then said goodnight and shortly thereafter I went to bed.
HARMONIC CONVERGENCE:
Perhaps, because of the significance of the HC, I woke up early and started my meditation at 5am. Almost as soon as my eyes were closed, a strange phenomenon started. A blue flash appeared on the inside surface of my eyelids, accompanied by the word: "now." At first, I paid it little attention, but it kept repeating as a pulsing flash, about every 2 or 3 seconds. The word "now" also continued, and I realized it was a woman's voice. Not only was it pronounced, but I could feel the pulsing throughout my whole body. As the pulsing and the "nows" continued, I was being lulled into a state of body refreshment and tremendous ease. I was used to various experiences during vipassana meditations, but something unique was happening with the repeated "nows." The feeling awareness in my body became a velvety flow. I could feel my whole body as a community of cells, all of it interconnected with my breathing, and yet also extending into the space around my body. I completely lost any sense of time, bodily discomforts, and surfaces of support. Gradually I became aware of a glow in the space around me. The origin of the glow was coming from behind and from inside my body. The pulsing and the "nows" continued, suffused and surrounded by curtains of deep silence and stillness.
NOWS:
When I finally opened my eyes, I realized that the glow I had been experiencing was because the whole room was being backlit by the glow of the risen sun. I saw the time was now 8 am. I had been sitting for three hours! I was still rapt by the velvety feelings in and around my body, and the memory of the "nows." I glanced at my copy of A Course in Miracles, and I realized that every page, every sentence, every word was sustained by the word "now." I then had the insight that what the Course called the Holy instant is this moment, suffused with "now." I knew that I needed to pass on this insight, and I also suspected that the woman's voice I was hearing was Jessie Pinney. During the rest of that day, I did my best to keep the flow of the "nows,"and share them with various friends. I did not try to call Jessie because I knew she would be resting. But I also knew that Jessie was with me, because she was no longer in her body. Indeed Jessie did give me this gift of presence, as she was leaving her body. Her last journal entry that HC eve was "Into the light! " The Nows, the Holy Instants, and Presence have all merged in my inner awareness, my sessions and my teachings. "Thank you dear Jessie! I'm passing it on."
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The Trillium Institute Presents:
Webinars with Jack Blackburn
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Conscious Proprioception; Entrance into Presence
Four Two-Hour Classes 8CEs **July 7,10,12,14th. Time 4PM PDT**
NCBTMB Approval in Process Cost $160
Proprioception: We're always propriocepting. The traditional definition: our awareness of our bodyparts, where they are, what they are doing, and our overall level of coordination. Proprioception involves our sensory nervous system and our motor nervous system. In our work we often become aware of our clients' conscious and unconscious levels of proprioception. One thing to add to our knowledge and experience is that proprioception is always in the present moment. We can focus our work so as to enhance our clients' overall level of proprioception, which also enhances their overall body awareness. In our sessions as we work in a way to bring our clients consciously into the specific body parts we're engaging, we're also helping them experience the present moment. When clients learn to engage physically with our hands and our quality and direction of touch, they are starting to become authors of their own body experiences. And because they are entering presence, they are starting to grow in consciousness. Thus, we can add conscious awareness to the results of our work... And healing is one of the rewards of sharing presence. Thank you Jessie Loo for giving us this gift in your passing.
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Touch is Always a Two-Way Connection
Three Two-Hour Classes 8CEs
July 17,19, 21st Time 4PM PT
NCBTMB Approval in Process Cost $120
"The one you are touching is touching you... Two-way touch informs outside, reforms inside" Jack Blackburn
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Some simple facts about touch: We think about touch as a one-way experience most of the time. In fact when we use touch therapeutically, we divide touch into touch given and touch received. But the truth is that we have touch sensors distributed throughout our bodies; outside and inside. And touch sensors are always two-way and the information we are receiving tells us much about how our touch is being received. We not only feel tonus; we feel temperature, tissue response, autonomic engagement, and consciousness. And in fact we can change our own tissue responses in most parts of our bodies, by engaging with them tactilely. Does this mean by interacting with them by touching that body part on the skin surface? Well, yes, and we do that continually with different parts when we feel aberrant sensations like pain, stiffness, numbness, and autonomic arousal. Sometimes we're using pressure, manipulation, sometimes gentle soothing strokings. But what about when we go inside our own body using a felt sense of touch, and filling and emptying with breath, with internal touch, expending and emptying using our connective tissue, and searching for a vocabulary that comes closer and closer until it resonates directly with what we're feeling. In those cases, the various subsystems of our bodies change in response. One of the earliest discoveries of yoga, was that we are able to change our physically reality by interacting with our body systems from within. Variations on the same techniques are taught to meditators, for creating deeper penetration and conscious awareness of this mystery of life in a body. In paralysis and other conditions of limitation, we can use touch responses that trigger new-found awareness and abilities to express.
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Generating Case Reports From Our Practice
Writing From Our Client Experiences and Records
Methods & Practice July 24, 27, 31, August 3rd
2CE hours per class, Cost $160
Posting Online, Publication 2 extra CEs NCBTMB Approval in Process
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Writing down the bones-a joint enterprise: I'm planning to start a Webinar in July aimed at the Bodywork community in general; to take us through steps in writing and publishing about our real experiences and learnings from our work, using touch therapeutically. In 2004 I first became aware when writing articles for the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapy, that most of my colleagues were not writing about their sessions with clients. I realized that if we do not communicate publicly about our work, and what has been happening in our sessions, the public and other caregiving professionals would not really understand the full benefits of touch, and the unique things we were learning. But now, after three years of Covid, I realize that the other caregiving professions only partially understand bodywork. Even less is understood by a touch-wary public.
Thinking about your practice over the years: What stands out for you? What clients and learnings do you recall from those relationships? What insights and curiosities did you receive and how many of those gifts are you still keeping inside? Undoubtedly it would be good for all of us if we could share them with all our colleagues. For 12 years I hosted an inter-professional supervision group biweekly. The group included professional caregivers from medicine, psychology, physical therapy, psychotherapy, bodywork, and theology. We found that we all were dealing with similar situations as helpers for others. We all shared personal difficulties as well as insights derived from our work with clients. What a treasure trove of sharings those group meetings were. I came away realizing that it's important that we end the false hierarchy of care. Professional touch has a very significant role to play in personal healing, well being, and self-empowerment. ... The many unique elements of professional touch: Touch is a form of communication that's deeply effective in releasing pain, tissue constriction, sympathetic autonomic states, and creating somatic awareness. Using touch, we learn that when we teach our clients to feel directly into their places of distress and interact in ways that release those discomforts they increase their own bodily confidence. We can also use touch to encourage client self-awareness by entering a state of presence, which helps to release them from past regrets and future worries. Every session is a lesson in body mechanics for ourselves as well as our clients. We can also teach our clients to practice inner touch and felt sense that they can practice by themselves, and to create their own movement patterns that free up areas of restriction. Finally, we can empower our clients by teaching them to interact with our hands and our words in ways that give them equal authorship of their session's results.
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| Jack Blackburn, LMP, Master's in Theological Studies, Certified Spiritual Director, specializes in body centered spiritual growth and healing. He has been a Trager® practitioner since 1986. He has been a Trager tutor since 1993, has taught Trager electives classes since 1996, and teaches a variety of classes to care giving professionals. He is a NCBTMB Approved Continuing Education Provider and AMTA National Presenter. He is a Focusing Trainer and teaches Bodywork Focusing classes for professionals. Jack is also a Reiki Master and teaches levels I, II, III and Advanced Reiki for Bodyworkers. *Note* Jack's personal email address is: jackpresence@gmail.com
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