- All moments are important,
but this moment is a time
to switch gears a little bit.
I don't have anything else to tell you or teach you.
You have everything,
I'm all depleted, it's all gone,
it's all to you.
I want to answer any more questions
that anyone has,
and I want to turn to a discussion
of how you might feel,
not how I feel because I don't know,
but how you might feel
or think it might be useful to see
how this work could be integrated
with the other work that you do,
because everyone here is coming
from so many different places,
different types of backgrounds and therapies,
and abilities and knowledge and skills.
So, I'm looking forward to seeing
how people might see
and it might be helpful for others
to hear how different folks think
this might be useful,
or not useful as part of their regular practise.
But first, let's take a few minutes
and see if there's other questions,
other things that have come up,
or reflections.
So, any other questions?
Yes.
- I noticed a book somewhere this week,
a similar one,
but it has said anxiety and depression.
- Oh, yeah.
- I'm imagining that you use
the same protocols, basically.
- Yes.
- Is there any difference between the two books?
- Yeah, the first, there's,
each book has 12 chapters.
The first five chapters are different
and the last seven chapters are the same.
The last seven chapters are kind
of the treatment protocols,
and the first five chapters are the science,
so the one about the science about pain
or the science about anxiety and depression,
so I put those different,
but the treatment is the same.
All of these books are available by e-book.
And the "Unlearn Your Pain"
and "Unlearn Your Anxiety and Deppression"
is also available in the first five chapters
as an e-book.
So, you don't even have to buy the whole,
to buy both books is,
you shouldn't do that because it's duplicative.
So, if you want to buy one book
and then the first five chapters of the other one,
that would make sense.
And you can get those online at the Amazon Kindle,
or the Apple Reader,
eBook platforms or from my website.
There's a Spanish version,
an eBook in Spanish,
that's available from my website.
There's a book called "Hidden from View,"
which is for professionals,
that Alan Abbas and I wrote together.
So, it's kind of more of a short guide to try
to help professionals do this work.
You already know all this stuff by now,
so you don't need it.
- I was wondering about people doing this
by themselves and getting possibly
to a place where they're not able
to get back from memory,
or I know for me that I went from something recent,
and it plunged me into something very far back
in the past that was more powerful
and I'm wondering what...
- How do you get back?
- Because I know in person,
I can remind the person to open their eyes
to feel themselves in the present,
but if you don't have somebody,
it feels a bit dangerous somehow
if you don't have someone
to help you in that process.
- Yeah, I mean,
at one level working with emotions is dangerous
because it's kind of scary.
And a lot of people have grown up
being fearful of emotions, being fearful.
And so, there's a question of,
is there a risk in doing this work?
And the answer is yes,
there is a risk in doing this work.
Overall, I think the risk is lower than the risk
of not doing it.
So that's one way to think about it.
It doesn't answer the question,
but at least what we're saying is that we've found
that being fearful of doing this work is a recipe
for not doing it,
and not changing or growing.
And when something happens
where someone feels lost,
or overwhelmed or caught in a overloaded
in anger or overloaded in grief,
or overloaded in fear and panic,
then yeah, people need help to kind
of come down,
to come back,
to be centred,
to be focused,
to be calm,
to be soothed,
And then to do it again,
but in small ways.
And so, the point of this work
is to keep the person in control.
If you're guiding someone,
you're not in control of where they go, they are.
So, the intent is to let them go
wherever they feel they are able to
at a certain time and not farther.
And sometimes, like you saw,
I think I showed a slide of someone
who was doing this work all on her own.
And she went to wailing,
she went to screaming,
she went to yelling,
she went to crying,
and then she just sat with it and then it subsided.
Emotions are like thunderstorms.
You get wet.
You know, it's strong,
they're strong things.
And they pass.
And if we can learn and teach ourselves
that they're not that dangerous
and that we can sit with them,
most of the time people,
what I've seen is people will be okay.
And there's a risk,
no question about it.
- I wanted to ask,
I feel, what we do,
and the patients that come and see you,
and what we all do,
is that people want to get better.
And my question is how do we move
from creative care to preventive care
so that maybe the people
that don't want to get better,
or before they get even hurt
are not even getting hurt.
So, there's the saying
where you cannot help someone
who does not want help.
But how do you make someone aware
that they might want or need help?
- Yeah, I mean, preventive care
means literally changing society.
- Yes. - It does.
I mean, preventive care.
Gabor Mate talks about that.
Preventive care means helping children
to grow up where they're not hurt or traumatised.
Preventive care means a just society
where people are not exploited.
So, there's a lot along that line for certain.
And preventive care,
I think, also means,
I think, one way of doing preventive care
is making these ideas,
these simple ideas
that the brain affects the body,
that stress and trauma can cause headaches
or stomach pain, or fatigue, or anxiety,
or depression or insomnia,
making that common knowledge
so we don't have this stupid article
in the New York Times from yesterday
where they say irritable bowel syndrome,
we don't know what causes it
and you have to live with it forever.
I mean, how stupid is that?
How stupid is it that the best doctors
in the country,
you know about the Havana, we talked about the Havana,
Cuba diplomats and did I mention
what happened when they were examined
by the best doctors in the United States?
I don't think I mentioned that.
So, what happened is they brought
all these diplomats back from Cuba
because it was dangerous to be there.
They brought them all back
and then they had all these doctors examine them,
test them and see if they could find
what was wrong.
And the doctors,
these doctors,
the best doctors we have in our country,
I guess when I say best
I should say best,
but whatever, they are the best.
And they wrote in the Journal
of the American Medical Association about this,
they wrote up their findings,
and they said these problems couldn't possibly
be psychosomatic
because these people wanted
to go back to work.
How ignorant is that?
Did I mention that already?
Oh, I did, okay.
It's one of my favourite things to say
because it makes me so angry.
How ignorant is that?
So, we have a long way to go
until this work is common sense.
But if it's common sense at some point,
then your mother and your grandmother
have common sense.
And a lot of this work has really almost been lost,
like generations ago, really understood it.
- The same thing when this neuroscientist
was invited to Sweden.
The woman that writes "Sleeping Beauties?"
- Yeah.
- And that the doctors were so disappointed
that she said,
"There is no neurological disorder."
- Yeah. - "As such."
And they didn't want to believe her,
they didn't want to talk to her anymore
because that's why they invited her to-
- Find the problem. - To find the problem.
Yes. - Exactly.
Suzanne O'Sullivan, it's a great book,
"Sleeping Beauties."
And she talks about all these other syndromes
in Eastern Europe and in Africa
and other places where we see
these culture-bound mind-body syndromes.
Any other questions?
- Is there already some sort of network
in Europe for those people who are working
with your work?
And how do can I get in touch with it?
Well, there's the SIRPA in the UK.
SIRPA s-i-r-p-a.org,
it's pretty well established.
The woman who started it is named Georgie Oldfield.
Sirpa.org in the UK
they've trained a lot of people,
they've got a lot of resources.
In the Netherlands, there's how do you say it?
- Emovere. - Emovere
E-M-O-V-E-R-E
Shtikting
So, let's open this up.
So how would...
Everyone's coming here with skills,
abilities, things that they've been doing.
How do you think this work might fit or not fit or be able,
or even if you have questions,
you don't know how it would fit
with the work that you do.
Because a lot of somatic education
is what they call bottom-up.
It has to do with touch,
it has to do with working with the body,
it has to do with breath,
it has to do with movement,
it has to do with embodiment,
it has to do with a variety of ways of thinking
about the body and the mind
and everything I present.
It's kind of top-down, you know,
we're working with the brain and the mind,
and how does that affect the body?
So, you have the people
who can do both have an amazing opportunity,
I think, to integrate those in their work
and use some of each.
For example, the physical therapy,
physiotherapists, have an opportunity to focus
on the abnormalities
and hone in on the problems that they find,
the little minor deviations,
and focus in on those and scare people,
from my point of view,
scare people or make them worried
that their bodies are damaged or broken.
But a good physio would also be able to see,
oh, these are just minor things,
those aren't the problem,
you're actually okay,
giving reassurance,
helping people learn
to move their body with safety,
with joy, with ease, with reassurance.
Now, you have a fantastic opportunity
to integrate movement and physical work
with this kind of a brain-first approach.