So over the weekend I had gone away to a Core Energetics “personal intensive”. In some ways it was a bit like a small retreat to one of those spa’s to help you lose weight and get more physically fit. Except in this retreat the goal was to become more psychologically fit. Those of you who have been privileged enough to have attended the Barbara Brennan School of Healing are familiar with the personal process sessions. A “personal intensive” is in some ways just a personal process session that lasts about 2.5 days.
A general description about Core Energetics is that it works with trying to move and release stuck emotional energy by loosening up where they stored within the body. It starts off with some discussion to try and push your buttons or bring you back to a painful memory. Then it continues with heavy physical exertion beating the crap out of large pillow while simultaneoulsy saying how you are feeling in terms of any past anger, fear, and hurt. At times doing this can result in a very cathartic emotional release.
For me I came out feeling an indescribable rejuvenation. It was a rejuvenation that was different then say going out to a relaxing tropical island getaway. Because when you simply escape to a relaxing environment you inevitably come back feeling the stress of knowing you must return to whatever you tried to escape. With the personal intensive the rejuvenation was more “organic” and so the transition from vacation life back to normal weekday work life also seemed “organic”.
In my personal intensive my goal was to find a deeper understanding of myself. A group of about 9 facilitators/practitioners teamed up to work on my psyche. I did my best to reveal anything I could possibly think of for all to hear. The facilitators would team up to try and find and push my buttons, but in a way that felt safe. In fact I tried my best to work with them to have my buttons pushed, because its in my buttons that I find the doorways to healing. And during some of my sessions I was quite surprised to find myself vomiting air, purely on emotional release. At one point I was asked to do a relatively simple Yoga-like exercise and I was triggered into a sensation of indescribable pain and fear. For a brief period I was brought into absolute agony, screaming at the top of my lungs. But once this happened there was this deep inner smile welling up within me.
I was smiling because I came to be broken and freed, and in many ways that’s exactly what happened. I was a very satisfied customer. Within a day I was totally spent physically and emotionally. My body was becoming so sore all over. I started to have difficulty sleeping as I my dreams were flooded with more phantom facilitators that would take me through more sessions. They broke me. Or rather as my facilitators would probably say: “I broke me, they only facilitated and provided a safe and loving container for my break down” And then they spent about a day and a half gently putting me back together, healing me with exercises to start implanting new memories of a much happier childhood experience to sit alongside of some my scary, hurtful, shameful or missing experiences. So now it was like I could survey my past memories and choose new possibilities to my past experiences to better effect my presence in the here and now.
In one exercise they brought me back into the sensation of being in a deeply unconditionally loving womb. Intellectually I was still an adult, but emotionally I had yet to be born and I have never felt such comfort and security in my life. The sensation was of tentacles or umbilical cords connecting with me kind of like the tentacles coming from the tree of souls in the movie “Avatar”
I was blindfolded so I couldn’t see with my eyes. But I could see with my heart, my body, my ears, my mind. It was beautiful. It was safe. Every sound that I was making as the infant was being echoed in a humanity of souls (my facilitators mimicked my sounds) lovingly mirroring my emotions, and lovingly holding me. This was a moment that I can’t get enough of. I was told that this very spot of complete security and love resided in the same “void” area of where by deepest fear and pain resided. This is something I believe, yet sort of boggles my mind to have such opposites sitting so close together, all suggesting that it’s a matter of my perspective and choice that determines whether an unknown “void” part of me that I’ve never been to feels “terrifying and painful” or “fluid and safe.”
On the last few hours of the final day of my weekend they put the finishing touches on putting me back together with a body massage that words can not accurately describe. All I can say is it was so loving, so compassionate, and so real. And when it came to me having to drive 3.5 hours back home, I was actually OK. Well much better than OK. They tore me apart and lovingly put me back together.