In terms of the basic process that’s being addressed in Somatic Inquiry, we’re talking about working with our conditioning, the habitual patterns that have formed in response to the influence of our parents, our culture, our religion… Now, those are terms that point to a “big picture” view of conditioning, but in everyday experience it’s […]
Author Archive | Chuck Whetsell
Meditation and Anxiety Notes from Group
We are unique individuals, ineffably lonely. We need not, however, be isolated and alienated from each other. The Peace of Nowness (PON) group is an opportunity to share our aloneness by listening to ourselves and to each other. Particular topics of exchange include our experience of anxiety and our experience of meditation. Developing peace is […]
Recapitulation of the Paradigm Notes from Group - Part 3
We suffer in life because we are not up to date, but instead carry around unfinished business from the past that we project onto present situations. This past is present in the form of psychological representations about self and others, object representations that form the core beliefs from which we live our lives. We are, […]
Don’t Get Stuck In Your Life Notes from Group - Part 2
Somatic Inquiry meditation uses an approach that has been described by the meditation master Chögyam Trungpa as “touch and go”. The previous post, Get into your Life is about touching aspects of experience we have not wanted to acknowledge, or that we wanted to “observe” from a safe distance. But there is wisdom in fully […]
Get into your Life Notes from Group - Part 1
As we begin to work with unconditional acceptance the question often arises, in one form or another, “So I should just be OK with myself if I lay on the couch and do nothing for years on end, or if I am drug-addicted and don’t take care of my children? Ted Bundy should be OK […]
Alternative Responses
Much like Donald Meichenbaum said many years ago in articulating his method of stress inoculation, we find the power to deal with feared experience when we turn and face it. That is what the aspect of awareness Daniel Siegel calls mindsight allows us to do. If we can turn and face our fear, we are, […]