Developing a mindset for this work

Respect and honor everyone, and all of life

This is a concept that took me quite a number of years to fully accept and appreciate. As I started to learn a fair amount about “psychology” I spent quite a while stuck in models which led me to feeling somehow superior to the people I was meeting and working with. Finally, thank goodness, I came to understood the need to bow in supplication to each and every person I met, be they clients or someone out on the street. It took me quite a while to realize that there wasn’t any hierarchy of good, better, and best amongst people If one has even the slightest amount of condescendence in a relationship (regardless of whether it is personal or professional) one’s counterpart will feel not fully respected and thus the outcome of the relationship will be affected.

You might be an expert in psychology, but that does not make you an expert in being a human being.

Approach each session and each client with curiosity and humility.

No matter how clever you might consider yourself to be, fully understanding your client and their model of the world takes a good deal of sensitive, respectful digging. Realizing that you lack a truly in-depth understanding of the situation at hand, employing a humble curiosity will invariably be the best means for moving forward. Working from a place of humility helps you to continue to respect your client and the challenges they have been facing, and makes it that much more likely that your client will continue to share their challenges with you.

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Release yourself from the dualities of right OR wrong, good OR bad

When you explore with great curiosity, other people’s models of the world, they feel appreciated and respected, and you wind up learning a lot along the way. Many of the people you meet will offer you the opportunity to learn a model of the world that will be quite different to your own, and the experience can be somewhat like visiting a “foreign” country. “Foreign” to you, but not to the people born and raised in the location you are visiting. Appreciate the differences you find, and strive to find out as much as possible about how these differences came about. ?In the process, you will greatly enrich your own life. Begin a new coaching relationshop by pproaching clients with curiosity, and respect, rather than attempting to diagnose them. Strive to understand exactly what does and doesn’t interest them, and the structure of their experience. The more you can understand about how others respond to life and what it is they do and don’t respond to, the more you will realize how subjective your model of the world is. The more you will realize there is no “right or wrong”.

When working as a coach or therapist we suggest you begin by asking your client, “What is it in life that interests you the most?” “What gives you the most enjoyment in life?” And from there, ask probing questions that will help you uncover t”he structure of happiness” your client maintains. The longer your client engages in this conversation with you, the further away their problems will appear to be.?

Another early phase question is- “What do you excel at in life?” Again, the longer your client engages in this conversation the further away their problems will appear to be.

Finally, when you do get down to talking about your client’s challenge, ask them “How can you use your strengths… what you enjoy and excel at, to help you master your challenge?”

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Everything alive is moving, Everything alive has a rhythm, Movement = Alive/Life

What we state here, relates directly to the beliefs of Noguchi sensei.

If the body stops moving, you can’t realize?what it is meant for and how to use it. With this thinking we can realize that the body is similar to a blade of grass on a windy day, or the ocean when the tide is receding. Human beings are living organisem similar to every living organizm in nature. Please remember this, and rejoice in being a part of the family of life.

All stress and tension in people involves unnecessary and mostly unconscious tensing of the muscles, and a narrowing of the visual field.

When we release unncessary muscular holding patterns we release/add to our potential.

Muscular holding patterns lead to excess energy being stored in the system, and these holding patterns limit our ability to move, be proactive, and maintain high quality health

As Noguchi sensei said- People tend to use unconsciously generated strategies to organize their body in such a way that they?hold onto excess energy in their system, and inhibit the body’s natural movements. It is this holding of excess energy and the concurrent inhibition of movement that causes illness and less than full health in general. Physical tension and emotional tension are realized as two sides of the same coin.

?When you release muscular holding patterns you give yourself greater potential for being proactive instead of reactive. You increase your potential!

The human system naturally entrains/synchronizes with all other repeating patterns that it comes in contact with (both natural and man-made)

Day and night, rumbling sounds from an engine, traffic passing us by as we sit near a highway, jet lag, the “pitter patter” of rain on a tin roof, crickets in the early evening, and on, and on, and on…. Our nervous system entrains to the many patterns we encounter in the course of our life, and this goes as far as entraining to the way that certain people regularly complain! In the long run, quiet, “constant” environments benefit our emotional and physical health, and noisy environments and flashing lights are to be avoided.

The heartbeat is the body’s way of keeping time

The cardiac cycle?involves all of the events that occur from the beginning of one heartbeat to the beginning of the next and can be divided into two parts: a period of relaxation known as diastole and a period of contraction known as systole. This periodic relaxation and contraction is an important means for the body to “mark time” and indeed the faster our heart beats the less time we sense having, to get done whatever is important. ?

Our sense of smell (Olfaction) is essential to our ability to taste. Smell and taste can play an important and powerful role in the make-up of certain memories.

Human-beings ability to recognize specific smells and tastes can be very precise and when we work with people in-person we strive to have the same pleasing fragrance wafting between us, as often as possible. This can play a meaningful role in helping a client feel calm and safe.

The body’s response to stimuli is systemic in nature, and not linear