Beginnings

We are entering a new era.  What lies ahead is a new frontier of uncharted territories and wide open landscapes.  The possibilities before us offer a bold new world. Yet, as in any new uncharted land, to pioneer requires risk-taking and a leap of faith into the unknown.  What I speak of here is homesteading of the uncharted realms both within and around what we call "the self"—our casing of the human body.  Our very conception of what it means to be human is shifting and science is extending beyond what we ever believed possible.  We are in the midst of a paradigm shift that is altering how we live, work, and engage with the literal environments that surround us.  These shifts have yet to trickle down into how we practice as clinicians, but pressure is building with a few trickles making their way through the once solid wall of the body and it is only a matter of time before the entire dam breaks and we are flooded by this new reality.
 
The realization that my world was shifting began in reading Iian McGilChrist's book The Master and His Emissary where I awakened to the power of right hemisphere, implicit processing and the non-languaged, but wise realms, of the intuitive. From this, I was able to appreciate the distinction between the right and left hemisphere and the importance of the implicit in change.  His articulation of the differences between the hemispheres supported through science followed by a sweeping survey of the last thousand years of history, that I began to make connections between then and now to what is possible as we move forward from here.
 
The meta-theoretical conversations between my favorite clinician/theory creators convinced me that we were entering a new era where our conversations were becoming more fluid and better able to articulate what really creates change once one surrenders categories for processes and flow. As I began to shift, my teaching was influenced as was my training and supervising, by my growing appreciation for the wordless yet wise landscape of the interior realms of the implicit. I began searching for pioneers—way-makers within the healing professions—to help me enrich not only my thoughts about this, but more importantly my practice.  I dabbled here and there finally landing outside of the field of mental health becoming trained in Integrative Energy Medicine—a form of healing that utilizes subtle attune meant to balance and flow attending both within the body and beyond the boundaries of the skin.
 
It was a radical act to be trained in a modality with so little support from within my profession, but I had begun to see the trickles of water in EFT and energy psychologies as well as the scientific advances from quantum entanglement to epigenetics that was blowing open the well-defined boxes of what is possible, and so I felt empowered to risk my own precipice leap.
 
What I learned from my training was that there was a lot that I didn't know and more importantly a lot that was happening that I could not explicitly name but was creating radical shifts both for me and my IEM clients that were tangible and measurable.  People were getting better.  Physical ailments were relieved.  Psychological issues rectified.  When I allowed myself to enter the landscape of the unseen—actively having to battle my rational mind to let go—I realized or sensed into that I knew a lot more than I thought I 'knew' whether my mind could make sense of it or not. I was learning to know in a different way that was the stuff of the implicit—the space I sought to learn more about.
 
What I realized during my IEM training is that much of what I was learning was not "new" but quite ancient in origin.  Many indigenous practices and healing traditions move from the wordless landscape of the implicit to access the intangible for both spiritual reasons, but also as their primary modality for healing.  As a result of this, I traveled to Peru to interview healers to see for myself what this looked like from within their culture not transplanted here through our framework.  My host Dr. Theo Paredes Ypez, former politician, archeologist, and healer engaged us/me in ritual and conversation, as access to the expansive realms of the tangible unseen. 
 
All of these various strands have served as waymakers for me and encouraged me to begin what I have named Soul Song Institute—a gathering place to explore healing and growth from the inside out.  I know it sounds radical and at least slightly absurd to explore these uncharted realms.  I believe that I am in good company and surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.  This beginning is a continuation and I invite you to come, too, and explore.