FAQs
How should I prepare for a session?
This is up to you. I always find it helpful to spend some time in meditation or contemplation prior to a 1:1 session. If you are new to the Realization Process, it may be helpful to read through this website and perhaps explore some of the resources under the "Resources" tab above (or just click here). Additionally, having a sense of your goals with regards to healing and development can be helpful, but is also something that we can inquire into and clarify together.
Do I have to have experience with the Realization Process to work with you?
No, absolutely not. With clients who are new to the Realization Process, we will likely begin our work together by exploring some of the main Realization Process exercises. These provide an important foundation, and from there our work together can take many directions.
What is your cancellation policy?
I ask that you cancel as far in advance as possible. With the exception of cancellations made due to an emergency, I ask for the session's full payment for cancellations made less than 24 hours before our scheduled meeting time.
How often do you suggest we meet?
This is of course up to you, but for most people, weekly sessions are helpful in order to create for yourself a sense of commitment to your process and stay with the momentum developed during each session.
How long is a standard session?
A standard session is 60 minutes. 90 minute sessions are an option as well.
How do I schedule, join and pay for a session?
You can schedule a session by messaging or emailing me to set up a time below. Upon scheduling a session, I will send a Zoom link to your email.
Do you work online or in-person?
I work online (via Zoom) with clients anywhere in the world and also in-person in Ashland, Oregon
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What is embodiment? What does it mean to inhabit the body?
To be embodied is to be present and conscious within the internal space of your body. This is of course a matter of degree and depth. We each inhabit some parts of our body more easily than others, and with more or less subtlety and depth. To be in contact with ourselves -- present and conscious -- everywhere in our body at once is to experience our internal wholeness. It is interesting (and perhaps confusing) to think that we can have a body but no be embodied. This is very much a reality. Most of us live in front of ourselves to some degree, or almost exclusively in our thinking minds (experiencing reality through a narrow, conceptual veil). Some of us live a bit behind ourselves or even to the side, relating to ourselves and others from outside of ourselves. We all have less access to certain parts of our body because of trauma or tension that we hold there. The more embodied we become (the more we are able to inhabit our body), the more access we have to wonderful human qualities that naturally exist within our bodies, such as our love, power, voice (the potential to speak and express), understanding/intelligence and sexuality. It is also very important to distinguish between inhabiting the body and being aware of the body. This is a crucial distinction in the Realization Process. In the Realization Process, we are asked to inhabit our body. That is, to make deep and subtle inward contact and to feel a sense of being present or conscious within the internal space of the body. When we are aware of our body (note that body awareness is the focus of many movement practices, body-focused meditation techniques or body-scan exercises), we are experiencing ourselves or a part of our body from our conceptual minds. It is a "top-down" experience of our body, rather than a direct, lived experience.
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What does attunement mean?
To attune means to resonate with, or to align our consciousness with. This is different than to simply align our thinking with. When we align our consciousness with something like the quality of love, we are not merely thinking of something loving (though this can help). And we are not trying to conjure up a feeling of love. We are attuning to a feeling of love that is already there. We are aligning our being with it, opening ourselves to it. To attune requires volition, though not strain or over-effort. It is something we find our way with internally, as no one can really steer us there, they can only offer an invitation. That said, when someone sitting across from us is attuned to their love, it can certainly help us to find the love in our own body. Somewhere within us, we know what love or power or emptiness or presence feels like. And in the subtle volitional movement, we are inviting our being to remember that feeling... to attune to it.
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What are limiting core beliefs?
Core beliefs are schemas or mental models of reality that shape the way we experience ourselves, others and the world. They effectively tell us how the world functions. These core beliefs or schemas are outside of awareness (until they are made conscious and verbalized). Many people think of implicit feelings such as, "I'm not lovable" or "I'm not good enough" when they think of limiting core beliefs. When it comes down to it, however, we find that our core beliefs are actually much more specific than these and are loaded with emotion (though are more than just emotion). They are well-defined construals of how the world operates. To the person, it really feels like reality...how the world operates...not just a belief. In Coherence Therapy, we recognize that a core belief or schema is an emotional learning that is encoded in memory, meaning it persists over time and is at times re-activated. An example could be, "If I feel particularly emotional and let that be known to others by expressing my emotions, I'll be ridiculed or shamed, so I better keep my feelings inside and blocked," or, "The only way to get attention is to act out in some exaggerated or destructive way." Uncovering these emotional learnings or core beliefs and resolving them has a profound effect on our lives.
What is transformational change in the context of this work?
Both the Realization Process and Coherence Therapy are concerned primarily with the lasting transformation of our being. The Realization Process provides precise mediation and attunement exercises that, when practiced patiently, gently and consistently, gradually transform our fundamental experience of ourselves and the world. The psychological component of the Realization Process is also concerned with getting to the most subtle dimension of our various defenses and holding patterns in order to address and resolve them at their root. This is distinct from many body-focused or psycho-somatic modalities that provide techniques for soothing our nervous systems, managing or counter-acting triggers and symptoms, and/or addressing holding patterns at the more gross/surface dimension. These tools and techniques can be very important for some people, though they are not concerned with lasting transformation. In Coherence Therapy, transformational change is viewed as deep, lasting change of existing patterns of thought, emotion and behavior.
What is Coherence Therapy and how does it integrate with the Realization Process
Coherence Therapy is a psychotherapeutic modality focused on transformational change. That is, deep, lasting change. In one sentence, Coherence Therapy's methodology is to find the emotional learning(s) that generates a specific symptom and guide the thorough unlearning of them. An emotional learning is a schema or mental model of how the world functions. We often speak of them as core beliefs. They are loaded with emotion but are much more than emotion – they are specific, well-defined construals of how the world operates. They are outside of awareness and don't exist in words until uncovered and verbalized in a session. To uncover these emotional learnings, we can use a variety of inquiry or discovery techniques to more clearly and thoroughly understand how the symptom that we are working with is actually emotionally necessary. We see how our symptoms of thought, mood and behavior are produced coherently according to our emotional learnings. In essence, our symptoms are urgent solutions to a problem. For instance, one might suppress their anger (solution) in order to avoid the criticism or shaming that comes from a parent in response (problem). With an emotional learning in conscious memory, we can guide an unlearning experience that facilitates memory reconsolidation, a type of neuroplasticity that allows for the permanent resolution of emotional learnings. Realization Process exercises to take us deeply inward and help us to feel very subtle mental and emotional movements, tensions and learnings within us. It is this ability to inquire into and contact the roots of our emotional learnings (schemas) that acts as a starting point for Coherence Therapy's methodology. From this place of deep inward contact, we are all the more primed and resourced to inquire into our emotional learnings and participate in the process of transformational change.
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“Traumatic memory consists of much more than episodic memory of the perceptions, sensations, experiences and emotions of the original experiences. In traumatic experiences people form emotional learnings, which are models of reality or schemas…patterns about how the world operates held in implicit semantic memory. And those schemas generate symptoms ever after until the schema is unlearned (if it ever is)” - Bruce Ecker, co-originator of Coherence Therapy