 In April and May 2021, I continued my explorations and development as a Clean Language facilitator with the next advanced course with Nick Pole and an amazing group of mind-body practitioners. The final course work was a mini-project. I chosen the topic “Being in your center is like what?”. The conclusions are based on 10 sessions. You can see the whole project here.
The background story As a Shiatsu student during my training, I practiced for extended hours developing my Ki and Hara awareness. I had a chance to work with martial art masters and to compare their work with mine, their state of being in their Hara and my “lack of being” there. I spent a year “trying to find my center”. I believed that there must be something really wrong with me. I donated my high heels and switched to trainers and barefoot walking to improve my connection with the Earth. Now, I consider this personal story hilarious, but back then I was very serious. I meditated on being in my center and every time my awareness brought me to different states of consciousness, Ki patterns of movement and connections to the outside world, and not only to the area between the pelvic floor lower back and the solar plexus. If I have to translate in not so clean manner the topic of the research, it will be something like “in searching of my center with the help of the others”. The topic of exploration “Being in your center is like what?” I have chosen this topic with the idea to discover more about: The experience of the center for the people who have been trained in the oriental traditions to develop awareness about their center. The experience of the center for the people who are not familiar with that concept. The similarities in the perception, the embodied felt-sense for practitioners with extended practice (20+ years) related with mindfulness and Ki work? If there is a difference of the perception of the center in the presence of different facilitators? If there is a difference of the perception of the center without a facilitator, and eventually what kind of difference is that? Staying open for unexpected discoveries. Clean Usage of the Language The word Center is a tricky word. It could be a dot in the middle of a circle. It could be the midpoint, in a continuum. It could be a place, a feeling, a state of mind, physical center, center of gravity. It could be pretty much anything. It’s a point for relation. I used intentionally the word center instead of Hara, to avoid the mental constructs which are developed with training, to create and to allow a freedom and space for a felt-sense. My personal observations were that using the “Tethering post” (Tamsin Hartley) approach for this particular project in a way restricted the ultimate freedom, by leading the focus in particular directions. My personal understanding Being in our physical center is a matter of mechanics and structure of the body, determined by the physical laws on the planet Earth, which have been discovered so far. Beyond that we work with something that is always there, our awareness about who we are, what we are, and how does it feel to Be. There are different aspects of us. We expand the range of perception, but also, we are our focus of attention. In our interaction with the others, with the outside world, we create a potential for expanding our awareness to areas we don’t know that exist, but to be able to explore this potential we need to let go of any preconceptions. Conclusion Being in our center is a unique sense of our being, how we perceive ourself at this very moment of time. It is affected by our attention, training, mental constructs, and maybe is defined by parameters outside our understanding of time-space. The perception is influenced by factors like: Different level of resonance with another human being how ready are we for not knowing, to welcome openness and avoid any expectations. If I have to summarize the results, the felt-sense of being in ones center could be:
There are reemerging insights during the different sessions and that require more detailed and further investigation. The emerging associations and states of experience involved sense of relaxation and ease, physicality, lack of sound, feeling of expansion from the center to the periphery and feeling of movement. Increased awareness of the body sensations and need for Ki transformations in the energetic system. My personal experience is that there is a difference in the self-perception, and one possible explanation is the work with different facilitators. My favorite surprise was the session which showed me that the awareness about ourselves, not necessary is related with the time, spent on practices, or with the age, since this was the youngest (20 years old) and unexperienced participant. In another session the connection with the center created space for self-healing, recognition of the reserves and finding a way for restructuring of the Ki movement in the body-mind system. The experiment with Clean Language questions in meditative state led me to the idea that it is possible to develop a technique, that supports the person to bring their attention to their center, inner resources and reduce the stress levels. If you are curious to learn more about how the Clean Language approach could support you just contact me and we will organize a free 30 min session. Photo credit: Sebastian Svenson Comments are closed.
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