This article sets out the background, mostly in a descriptive way, of a small group structure which has proved useful in both personal development and training situations. So far, this structure seems to provide a way of working both psycho-therapeutically and also with the potential for a heightened awareness which derives from aligning with a sense of Spirit. By “sense of Spirit” I mean a sense of connectedness both inter-personally and also with what lies beyond us - the Transpersonal. I am indebted to all the individuals who have been exploring and contributing to the evolution of this method.
About eighteen years ago in a workshop I came across a small group structure called the Seed Group. The workshop was being run by Tony Crisp and was essentially about emotional expression via the body. The Seed Group was later developed by David Boadella into his form of working with small groups, and certainly up until a few years ago when I last had contact with him, formed the basis for his trainings in Biosynthesis. Tony Crisp's Seed Group may also have been one of the first structures for working with people therapeutically in small groups. Most groupwork up to that time, as I recall, seems to have been within the context of a whole group.
It is worth describing how the Seed Group works. It is still an excellent structure, and leads well into the context of what I shall be describing in what follows.
The Seed Group requires five people. A Seed Bed is prepared out of cushions, one member elects to be the Seed, and the other four each take the role of one of the Elements of Fire, Air, Earth and Water. The “Seed” stands in front of the Bed, and when ready allows themself to drop into it. Fire, Air, Earth and Water allow themselves to take on the qualities of those elements, and to interact non-verbally with the Seed in whatever manner seems appropriate. Just what is “appropriate” emerges as the Seed begins to move in response to what their body seems to want to do. The Elements might use touch, stroking, physical holding, pressure, blowing, body contact, etc., in order to provide what seem to be the right conditions for the Seed to grow into a “plant”.
This structure is the sort of thing one could easily use with children. In fact, I think it was developed that way. Yet it is surprising how powerful it can be, and how the feelings associated with the struggle of the Seed to grow can mirror familiar patterns in the person's life. The Seed becomes a symbol for the way the person manages their energy and provides a safe context for exploring habitual patterns and new possibilities. It is a “safe” structure precisely because it is symbolic and no reference need be made to any specific “issues”. It is powerful because it encourages the wisdom of the body.
So here we have a small group structure, drawing on the Four Elements and focusing on the Body. More recently I discovered, in a workshop given by Harley Swiftdeer, another structure with similarities to the Seed Group but which this time focused on the Four Elements in relation to Spirit.
This is a game that certain Native American tribes (Crow and Cheyenne, I think) teach their children in order to help them develop their psychic abilities, or at least, to trust them. It involves aligning with the Powers of the Four Directions, on which the whole system of Native American wisdom in the form of Medicine Wheels is based. The game needs six people. One person sits in each of the four directions - North, South, East and West, one sits in the North East, and one in the centre. The aim of the game is for each person occupying one of the cardinal directions to “send”, or transmit, to the person in the middle an image, thought, feeling or sensation. The one in the middle has to guess what is being “sent”.
The person in the North attempts to align themselves with the “powers”, energies or qualities of that direction. So “North” focuses on Mind and Air, with the intent of “pulling” their qualities from the North, and perhaps visualises a mountain. “South” pulls in Emotion and Water, “West” - Earth and Body, maybe visualising a cave, and “East” - Fire and Spirit.
North East (in the position of “Design of Energy”) directs the game by telling “Centre” when they need to close their eyes and selecting and pointing to who is to be the “sender”. The “sender” centres and aligns themself with their direction as above, and when ready begins to transmit. The holders of the other three directions, who have not been selected, do nothing. In fact it works best if they withdraw their energy.
“Centre” can use whatever method they like to detect the nature and source of the transmission." Centre's” ability to receive what is being transmitted is a function of their sensitivity, or ability to receive, and also the sender's clarity of transmission. They may detect the transmission via images, sensations, feelings or thoughts. This will depend partly on what the Sender may be transmitting, and partly on the mode of access with which Centre is most comfortable. So a person in the centre who is a good imager may tend to find it easier to detect images from the East, if that is what is being sent, than, say, sensations from the West.
When setting up this game, I usually suggest that the Four Directions (N, S, E and W), transmit in the manner appropriate to the direction. (So, Thoughts are sent from North, Sensations from West, Feelings from South, and Images from East). Everyone gets a go in each direction, so they can find out what comes naturally. I also say that it is fine to cheat. After pausing to allow people to wonder how you could possibly cheat in this context, I explain that I find it easiest to put my left hand out, palm facing forward, trying to sense from which direction the transmission “beam”, or energy, hits my hand.
The whole point is for everyone to get a sense of their alignment with the Four Directions, and to experiment with their familiar and not so familiar modes of access to perception and communication. The ability to detect subliminal communication is a bonus, but secondary. The game is all about expanding awareness, and getting a sense of what it feels like to align intentionally with the Four Directions. I just call it a “Psychic Game” to get people interested, but that is not really what it is about. In much the same way, the development of Psychic Gifts can emerge on the path towards spiritual development, but it is not the goal. Indeed, if it becomes the goal, then it is not just a distraction, but a barrier. A secondary benefit of the game is that many people experience, through the act of disciplined alignment with the Four Directions, a sense of connectedness, rather like being the hub at the centre of a wheel.
“Psychotherapists are merely dabbling in Shamanism.” (Peruvian Shaman)
The Body is no more separate from the Mind than it is from Spirit or from the Emotions. It may be convenient to refer to these as separate aspects of ourselves, but our Body, Mind, Emotions and Spirit are interdependent and interactive. Even the use of the word “our” in relation to “our Body”, “our Mind”, etc., is misleading, because it implies a sense of separation that is illusory. When we begin to experience a sense of connectedness between these four aspects of ourselves - and of each other - then we also have the possibility of disidentifying with the small self that keeps us feeling separate.
Neither do we exist in isolation from the world of plants, animals, rocks and spirits - the other Four Worlds of Grandmother Earth. We are a part of Nature not separate from Her. We are part of a whole that extends beyond the narrow band of our perception. Becoming aware of our connectedness with Nature is expansive and naturally “spiritual”.
If we just focus on neurosis manifesting as, say, emotional disturbance, then that is all we shall see. If as a therapist I can align myself with Spirit, then Spirit has the possibility of entering into the therapeutic relationship, whether or not the client believes in it. If I imagine that as a therapist I can somehow “fix” my client, by knowing what is best for them, guiding them to some foreseen outcome, being an expert, coming from a pre-set point of view or belief system, using “appropriate interventions”, then all these things are merely serving to keep me separate from my client.
If on the other hand I can be open to my present experience, and theirs, and be an absorber and reflector of that, then together we may be able to journey through the maze of what keeps us separate. I do not know where the client needs to go, although I may have some hunches. But by staying with them in this moment, something may happen between us, something may enter into the relationship that was not there before. If we can both be present to what is happening now, then there can be a letting go of a barrier to seeing things as they are. And if we can see things as they are, then we open up the possibility of other realms of experience - the realms of what is unconscious within and between us, and the realms of what may lie beyond us, the Transpersonal.
“Spirituality” is about connectedness, about moving beyond the boundaries of the small self, transcending ego. There is also nothing so very special about it. Spirituality is “ordinary”. It is about being with what is. The problem of course lies in the possibility that what we mostly think “is” is only a fragmented and distorted vision of the whole. Most of the time, most of us are in blinkers. We perceive the world through the filters of our programmes and projections. So we don't see the world as it is. We come from a position of restricted awareness in order to sustain our position. And then all we can see is our own position.
On a number of occasions I have participated on Shamanic Healings. The thing that distinguishes these from conventional psychotherapy is the way in which the healer or therapist acts as a choreographer of energies entering the circle. The client is in the middle of a circle of people each of whom holds awareness of an aspect of that person. So one person will attend to what they are aware of at the level of the Body, another will attend to the Emotions or place of the Child, another to what the Ancestors are saying, another to what is happening with the Energy in the room, and so on. So the group as a whole operates as a hologram of the person in the middle. (The diagram shows all these positions - which correspond the Star Maiden's Circle.)
These healing circles seem to serve at least two functions. Firstly, the client gets feedback on dimensions of themselves of which they may be unaware. Secondly, The Healer, or Medicine Person, is able to call on or consult energies, or dimensions that may extend beyond what Western psychologists would call “normal waking states of consciousness”. In other words the field of potential awareness is larger than it might be if there were only two people involved in the Healing relationship. There is a focusing of wider energies. For the people sitting around the circle there is the benefit of only having to attend to one aspect of the person. If I am sitting in the West, then all I have to attend to is Body. I don't have to be concerned about anything else. I can also give myself permission to voice seemingly irrelevant or inconsequential sensations of which I may become aware, because they may contribute to the whole picture. And if they do not, then it does not matter, because they are only likely to distort the picture minimally if at all. The hologram evens out distortions.
Something rather special seems to happen at these Healings.
The boundaries between individuals become diffused. A sense of connectedness
develops. There is synergy and a sense of something greater than ourselves
in the room. As the recipient of this kind of healing, I have had a strong
sense of seeing many faceted reflections of myself as an individual in a context
that is wider than my usual perception of myself. There is also something
useful, I believe, about the disciplined way in which each person “holds”
a direction. The sense of ceremony brought to the healing gives a sense of
honouring of the person in the middle, and this in turn gives them an extra
feeling of support, responsibility and motivation for engaging with their
issue.
Over the last two years, I have developed co-operatively with several groups a small group structure that derives from this Healing Circle. More recently I have begun to see how the process also mirrors the awareness based practice of Core Process Psychotherapy. So I am excited, because here, in this small group context, I can begin to see, in a small way, a merging of Medicine and Buddhist ways. This way of working has been described as magical and powerful, and is also, I believe, an excellent training tool for working one-to-one.
It works like this:
The Client takes up a position in the centre, facing the Therapist who is in the North. The Client is free to use the session in any way they wish.
The Therapist engages in Heart to Heart communication with the Client, primarily simply attending to what is happening. (The North is incidentally the position of Heart-to-Heart Communication and the 4th, or Heart, Chakra in the Native American system.) The Therapist may ask “What is happening for you now?” and “How is that for you”. In other words, they focus on the Now and the How. They can also ask what is happening for anyone sitting around the circle, and are free to confer with their Supervisor/Support Person in the North East.
The person in the South holds the position of the Client's Feelings, and also the place of their Child. (Sitting behind the Client they are doing this in a very real way. In the Native American teachings this is the place of the Client's Child Shield, the portion of their energy field that perceives the world from the perspective of the Child.) In that position, South will attend to what is happening at the level of feelings. They may pick up what is happening emotionally for the Client, or they may notice their own emotional responses. When they are sufficiently clear what their response is, they communicate this into the circle. They communicate their Feelings rather in the spirit of Psychodrama's Doubling technique. So they might say: “I’m feeling sad right now” and the Client can accept that as an accurate reflection of what is happening for them, or reject it as a projection. It is up to the Client. South communicates the object of their awareness in the spirit of an offering. If they are not feeling anything or are unclear, then they can communicate that.
The people holding the positions of the Body in the West,
and Images in the East, do the same thing. So Body attends to sensations.
They may be responding to the client at a Body level, or they
may be resonating at a Body level with the Body of the Client. When they are
sufficiently clear about what their response is, they communicate this into
the centre. An example of a response might be: “I'm getting a tightness around
my shoulders and chest” or “I'm getting drowsy and my body wants to slump”.
Body may also feel it appropriate to make physical contact with the Client
and can check this out with them. Alternatively the Client can request it.
The person in the East attends to what is happening at the level of Images. No matter how seemingly irrelevant or bizarre, they communicate what they are getting into the circle. So the Client might be talking about their relationship with their Father, and East might say “I'm getting a bear shaking a tree”. This will either be East's own material - in which case the Client can ignore it, or it may be relevant for the Client. It never fails to surprise me (and Clients) how these images can be highly relevant - often quite magically so.
The person in the North East attends to the energy of the whole group and also acts as a supervisor and support person for the Therapist. If they feel that too much information is forthcoming, they can ask people to ease off.
My experience - so far with more than one hundred people - has confirmed the value of this method. Clients report feeling contained, supported, seen. The effect of the circle is to provide a boundary that is resonating at many levels with the Client's experience. The trainee Therapists/Facilitators say they too feel supported, and that they do not have to bear all the responsibility of “getting it right” for the Client. The other members of the circle say it helps to just have to focus on one aspect (or mode of access) of the Client.
One person saw how the ideal therapist would be able to operate from all positions on the circle, resonating with all aspects of the Client. So one benefit of the method is that it breaks down into manageable bits the areas of the Client's experience to which a therapist might attend. If I am in the West, I only attend to the body, and so on. When I am at ease with attending to all the elements, I can put it all together and attend to the whole spectrum of the Client's experience. In this way the circle has the potential for becoming a forum for the building blocks of awareness.
But there is another level at which the method is effective. By holding the positions of the Four Directions, the group is aligning itself with the energies or qualities of those directions. It does not seem to matter whether or not people actually believe in the Powers of the Four Directions because something happens anyway. Something happens which is greater than the collective awareness of the individuals comprising the group. All the groups I have worked with have noticed this. Most people say that it seems to be “powerful” and “magical”. The group becomes aligned with Spirit.
“When two or three are gathered together in My name I will grant their request.” (Book of Common Prayer)
The Buddha himself is reputed to have said to the goddess Vimala that twenty five hundred years after his death the highest doctrine would be spread in the “country of the red-faced people”. It has been 2,500 years since the Buddha's passing.
Guru Rinpoche, who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the
eighth century, is reputed to have said the following: “When the iron bird
flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will scatter like ants
across the world and the Dharma will come to the land of the red man.” (Joan
Halifax)
Charles Tart and Arthur Deikman, Mindfulness, Spiritual Seeking and Psychotherapy, The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, ibid.
Joan Halifax, Shaman's Journey, Buddhist Path, in Gary
Doore, Shaman's Path, Shambhala, 1988.
Jo May
April, 1993
(An edited version of this article appeared in Self and
Society, Vol 23, No 5, November 1995.)
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