Processing vs Opening

"Processing" is a process. It goes on and and on. And usually does not work.

I never process with clients or encourage them to process with their partners. Instead, I teach them to open. 

TO OPEN IS TO AFFORD ACCESS 

Opening is being with what is. When we share what is, we open. OPENING is the practice of BEING WITH and REVEALING what’s happening — in you and for you, while also in a relationship. It's expressing the mental, emotional, physical, and/ or energetic world, all for the sake of coming into a deeper connection. Opening occurs at the speed of attunement, within a framework of listening, breathing, and eye contact.  

Opening while not always easy is effortless and simple. There’s nothing more natural.  

"I feel terrified and enthralled”

"I'm angry and anxious"

"I need love and reassurance”.

THE FORMAT FOR OPENING 

Is simple: one listens, the other speas.  

The speaker TRACKS the multiple dimensions of their emergent, present-moment experience. They prioritize what is most alive which is usually sensations,  emotions, and longing. Unmet needs. The more specific and precise the language, the more both parties can viscerally feel what is happening, and connect through that shared experience.

The witness nods and receives, feeling and following the speakers words, as well as the sensations in their own body. They gently affirm everything. If and when an emotional charge arises in the listener, the listener welcomes, feels, and allows.  Priority of attention is given to the speaker, in the trusting that in a few minutes, the listener will have a chance to express and open into whatever came up.  

When the speaker is complete, partners switch. There are many variations and expansions of this practice, and you can also open one-directionally. Opening when done well should take no more than fifteen minutes. It can often happen in five.  

BELIEFS FOUNDATIONAL TO THE PRACTICE OF OPENING

- There is nothing wrong with me, anyone, or anything. 

- Nothing needs to be changed or fixed 

- I am fundamentally safe inside myself, even when it doesn’t feel like it. - People are made of parts.  

- Nothing is ever personal. 

- Emotions, when felt and seen sans judgment change quickly. 

- Feeling is healing. 

- People don’t need advice. They want empathy. 

- Opening is a choice. 

Opening IS a choice. It is a practice and life orientation. To play full out and bear whatever is. In making that choice, one takes full and complete responsibility for one’s own experience, while surrendering to the vulnerable fact that we need each other to do so. 

In understanding that opening is a choice we see too that closure is a choice. And usually a choice to NOT share aspects of our inner experience, with ourselves and others. Which is natural and okay, and not what we want.  

A friendship or partnership oriented in opening renews itself a hundred times a -day. It is luxuriously wonderful. The companionship becomes a safe place to be seen, die into, and be reborn. As such the relationship organically recreates itself,  and there is little need to “know” what is happening because you are staying somatically current to what is. You’re allowing parts to metabolize in real-time and at the speed of speech. And trusting Truth to lead the way.  

SKILLS FOUNDATIONAL TO OPENING 

1. SOVEREIGN COMMUNICATION: easy access to “I” language that can hold and convey the complexity and paradox of what's happening inside.

2. SECURITY IN SELF: and a free enough emotional range to be with another without going away.  

3. RELATIONAL COURAGE: conviction to share clearly and directly, even and especially when it’s hard. 

It takes time to unlearn the implicit codependence most of us were born in to. And it’s well worth it, for real safety is opening. 

Real safety is knowing that you can open through anything.

And you can.

Blake