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gementBefore I rant, quick update for my concerned public: After I went home early on Tuesday, I danced Shiva Nata for an hour and it really helped clear my head. I was productive working with J that evening. I was surprisingly productive at work yesterday, I intend to be today as well, and I have an appointment with the anxiety specialist this afternoon.
I went to a class on tapping last night, as in tapping on acupressure points while processing negative emotions and reactions. For a lot of people it short-circuits the nervous system response and defuses the reaction. I've been meaning to get some training in it for a while. (Formal names for it are Emotional Freedom Technique [EFT] or Meridian Tapping [MT].)
<rant> I am glad I went and got some muscle memory practice in the rhythm of it and the pattern of how to talk about a problem while doing it. I went knowing that the people involved were probably going to be much more woo than me, and armored up to deal with that. But the woo, it burns.
Full disclosure, I was raised New Age and have a certain amount of baggage accordingly, so I get fight or flight reactions more easily in a woo context. I still practice a certain amount of skeptical woo myself, though, and I have a lot of practice at reframing people's language.
If someone's talking about The Law of Attraction, I will translate it into "setting an intent makes you much more likely to notice the opportunities that were already in front of you," and move on. I respect that people's personal experiences are absolutely valid as perceptions, even if I have different interpretations of them. I know people who have been ridden by gods; I respect that epic internal experience and will use their language when talking about it. I speak woo.
Easy translations in this class: I distrust when a technique is about accepting the moment and yet the standard starting phrase is, "Even though I [have this problem], I completely love and accept myself." I substituted "While I," which is much more value-neutral, or skipped that phrase completely. I translated, I moved past it, but sloppy sloppy sloppy. (I take the love and accept myself part internally as the Buddhist sense of acceptance and compassion, "I'm starting from where I am right now." That doesn't take much translation for me.)
Buttons pushed in this class:
1) "Oh, don't worry, we'll FIX you."
2) "They're medicating all these children for ADD when really their energies are just out of alignment!" See also referencing "What the Bleep" as a source of scientific insight.
3) When I asked how they recommended opting out if we were working on negative statements that didn't apply to me, such as "My parents never had enough time for me" or "I don't like myself", it took them a couple minutes to understand what I meant. Five minutes later they'd already edited their memories to think that I'd been resistant to the positive statements because I just wasn't ready to love myself yet.
4) Instructors projecting their own emotions onto people and trying to get people to come up with a root cause (preferably involving parents) even if the problem was "I just feel so numb right now." If the point is to deal with the current experience, deal with the current bloody experience and see what explanations appear in the process, yes?
5) Instructor doing muscle testing (if you're not grounded, it's hypothetically easier to push your arm down) pushed hard enough to make my elbow ache on something she thought I should feel weak on. I've seen enough amazing chi tricks that I don't doubt there's some value in this technique, but I don't trust this instructor's objectivity to apply it evenly as far as I can spit a rat.
6) Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions, my experience is not yours, GAH.</rant>
So when they were tapping on loving one's drama (the instructor's issue again, not the person who was very reluctant to talk about her problem in the first place), I was tapping on my sovereignty, that I was struggling with drawing boundaries and feeling claustrophobic in a roomful of people who disagreed with me. That part felt pretty good.
When I got home, I told Jason. He said, a la Nicholson, "Wait 'til they get a loada me." He then proceeded to imitate Daria. "I completely love and accept myself. I see a herd of beautiful ponies galloping into the sunset, completely loving and accepting themselves."
I felt much better.
I went to a class on tapping last night, as in tapping on acupressure points while processing negative emotions and reactions. For a lot of people it short-circuits the nervous system response and defuses the reaction. I've been meaning to get some training in it for a while. (Formal names for it are Emotional Freedom Technique [EFT] or Meridian Tapping [MT].)
<rant> I am glad I went and got some muscle memory practice in the rhythm of it and the pattern of how to talk about a problem while doing it. I went knowing that the people involved were probably going to be much more woo than me, and armored up to deal with that. But the woo, it burns.
Full disclosure, I was raised New Age and have a certain amount of baggage accordingly, so I get fight or flight reactions more easily in a woo context. I still practice a certain amount of skeptical woo myself, though, and I have a lot of practice at reframing people's language.
If someone's talking about The Law of Attraction, I will translate it into "setting an intent makes you much more likely to notice the opportunities that were already in front of you," and move on. I respect that people's personal experiences are absolutely valid as perceptions, even if I have different interpretations of them. I know people who have been ridden by gods; I respect that epic internal experience and will use their language when talking about it. I speak woo.
Easy translations in this class: I distrust when a technique is about accepting the moment and yet the standard starting phrase is, "Even though I [have this problem], I completely love and accept myself." I substituted "While I," which is much more value-neutral, or skipped that phrase completely. I translated, I moved past it, but sloppy sloppy sloppy. (I take the love and accept myself part internally as the Buddhist sense of acceptance and compassion, "I'm starting from where I am right now." That doesn't take much translation for me.)
Buttons pushed in this class:
1) "Oh, don't worry, we'll FIX you."
2) "They're medicating all these children for ADD when really their energies are just out of alignment!" See also referencing "What the Bleep" as a source of scientific insight.
3) When I asked how they recommended opting out if we were working on negative statements that didn't apply to me, such as "My parents never had enough time for me" or "I don't like myself", it took them a couple minutes to understand what I meant. Five minutes later they'd already edited their memories to think that I'd been resistant to the positive statements because I just wasn't ready to love myself yet.
4) Instructors projecting their own emotions onto people and trying to get people to come up with a root cause (preferably involving parents) even if the problem was "I just feel so numb right now." If the point is to deal with the current experience, deal with the current bloody experience and see what explanations appear in the process, yes?
5) Instructor doing muscle testing (if you're not grounded, it's hypothetically easier to push your arm down) pushed hard enough to make my elbow ache on something she thought I should feel weak on. I've seen enough amazing chi tricks that I don't doubt there's some value in this technique, but I don't trust this instructor's objectivity to apply it evenly as far as I can spit a rat.
6) Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions, my experience is not yours, GAH.</rant>
So when they were tapping on loving one's drama (the instructor's issue again, not the person who was very reluctant to talk about her problem in the first place), I was tapping on my sovereignty, that I was struggling with drawing boundaries and feeling claustrophobic in a roomful of people who disagreed with me. That part felt pretty good.
When I got home, I told Jason. He said, a la Nicholson, "Wait 'til they get a loada me." He then proceeded to imitate Daria. "I completely love and accept myself. I see a herd of beautiful ponies galloping into the sunset, completely loving and accepting themselves."
I felt much better.
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 03:55 pm (UTC)Okay, yeah, burning now... It's amazing how those two run together. (And I used to teach at a school for gifted kids, particularly those with unmedicated ADHD... but that was more about how a lot of schools push hard for ADHD diagnoses with kids who don't fit in in class one way or another, and also that for some kids that medication options aren't good.)
"5) Instructor doing muscle testing (if you're not grounded, it's hypothetically easier to push your arm down) pushed hard enough to make my elbow ache on something she thought I should feel weak on. I've seen enough amazing chi tricks that I don't doubt there's some value in this technique, but I don't trust this instructor's objectivity to apply it evenly as far as I can spit a rat."
Um. Er... Ugh. How did she define grounded? Did she suggest any objective metrics? (This is something I love about Chen. If someone has a good root, it should be very difficult to knock them over.)
no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 04:10 pm (UTC)5) Instead of difficult to knock over, it's difficult to push down a straight extended arm, palm-down, by pressing on the hand or wrist. I'd really like to see this tested with biofeedback equipment that can measure how much pressure it takes, comparing loaded positive and negative statements with baseline emotionally neutral statements.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 04:32 pm (UTC)Oy. That really doesn't sound like it would work at all with people who've had internal martial arts training - and I include training entirely on a physics/biomechanics level. There is probably some correlation - a lot of people who are emotionally off balance are probably physically off balance as well, but there's going to be a lot of individual variance. (When I'm in a situation in which I feel uncomfortable, I tend to be very precise about my balance and my root, and to physically relax. A lot of people read that as a projection of comfort with my environment. And people who know me well read it as preparation or being attacked and making sure I'm ready to throw someone into a wall if I need to.)
I would suspect it has a lot of other failure modes.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 08:20 pm (UTC)I went to this guy because a friend thought it would be valuable and offered to pay. I did not go back.
Oh, and he had a book by Dr. Emoto in his waiting room. You may remember him as the guy from "What the (Bleep) Do We Know?" who sells water that remembers nice thoughts, and claims that nicer thoughts make prettier snowflakes, and has photos to prove it! Also, he's not a doctor of any kind. Although it goes well to the tune of "Mr. Roboto": "Take another photo, Dr. Emoto..."
""Take another photo, Dr. Emoto..."
Date: 2010-06-17 09:37 pm (UTC)I care... 8)
Date: 2010-06-17 03:55 pm (UTC)What I got from my readings - the technique seems to be about pulling your attention/intention to areas you need to work on in non-invasive ways and focusing your attention on *why* does thing mess with you, and *how* you can create better ways to deal with thing through your attention. I too am woo, but did not have a lot of tolerance for dealing with it in an unfacilitated manner, at least not at that time.
From the sounds of it, maybe you would do well to study reading materials on it, without having the baggage load of the "helpful" instructor. It sounds like you were fine with the technique, but not so much the facilitator? If you stripped away the instructor baggage, do you think the technique would be more useful?
Have you had any thoughts on what's poking your anxiety buttons? I don't know if examining that would help, but I haven't seen any musing on root causes here. Sometimes that helps me work on my stuff.
I'm buried under a load of my own hassles right now, but I'm keeping the mental and energetic fingers crossed for your return to feeling good, or at least OK and better than you currently are.
Love and joy to you, from me.
Re: I care... 8)
Date: 2010-06-17 04:07 pm (UTC)Yes, I'm still very interested in the technique, and did my best to just focus on learning the technique and picking up the parts I needed, leaving the rest with the people who needed it.
I need an instructor to feel validated that I'm doing something right, and weirdly even though I considered these instructors untrustworthy, they performed that function for me. I can go off and do it myself now with confidence, and would even feel confident teaching other.
Re: root causes, a couple entries back I talked about some core issues around feeling like I can never do enough to make my internal parent caricature happy. (Old baggage from housework as a kid that's transferred over to my entire life in an unuseful way.) I do think a lot about root causes, I just only write down about 1/10th of the LJ entries I write in my head.
Re: I care... 8)
Date: 2010-06-18 12:46 am (UTC)I don't always get to write things here I'd like to either... something about not having enough available time and energy to write in LJ on top of homework and cover letters to potential employers.
I probably missed the entry, but I'll be looking over LJ a bit while I'm on break, so I will keep an eye out for it. Hopefully, I'll catch it, though his break I'm going to be doing a lot of packing too. I don't have a place to go, but stuffs have still got to be packed up and gotten out of here by 1 August.
Hoping to hear more from you, and hoping your anxieties lighten up on you a bit... I will keep my happy candle burning for you! 8)
no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 05:06 pm (UTC)If it helps you, you can ignore the Woo.
Peace and Love!
no subject
Date: 2010-06-17 06:02 pm (UTC)But yeah, these sound like the sort of people who really need to know themselves on a deeper level than they already do.
1) "Oh, don't worry, we'll FIX you."
Date: 2010-06-17 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 04:24 am (UTC)Good choices.