Last week’s email was about what I’ve learned to continue my efforts to become a good practitioner. Along the same lines, I have found there to be important ways to do my own work.

I was talking with a colleague about our personal healing process. We went through the SE training together and are also volunteering as training assistants for one training cycle.

Each of us continues the work alone. Once we grasped the basic principles and developed the nervous system capacity, we now stay curious and walk ourselves through small to medium activation cycles.

We both see our own practitioners at different frequencies. Frankly, I’m all in. I see someone twice a week when possible to work on the large activation cycles and traumas that need more holding than I can manage alone.

But there’s another element we were discussing. Healing together.

She and I have talked weekly for over 2.5 years, now, and it’s been fascinating and invaluable to share and mingle our own processes. We are very different, coming from different places and wanting different things, and still, we find beauty and commonality in healing.

When I asked her why she is assisting, she said it’s because she has been through her own process and has watched mine, but it’s deeply important to her to see other people’s processes. For her, without a client practice, that has meant signing on to assist. If there’s anything else I’ve learned through being around other people in their process, it’s that everyone has their own way of doing things!

Groups are another way to immerse yourself and learn from others. I’ve personally experienced this in training modules and in multiple group case consult series. Learning together, asking questions, and being present for others’ processes is alchemical.

I have watched the groups I run do the same for others. Ten sessions of working individually with me are fundamentally changing. But joining a group for 10 sessions, where everyone is working on their own stuff, can exponentially boost that. I have people who do both because that’s what feels important and right to them.

How, exactly, does being part of a group/community provide so much?

• Nervous system-wise, a group provides co-regulation, where we all slide into a similar state as the one who is most regulated.
• Intellectually? We are learning, seeing, and noticing that we are not alone in our distress or trauma. Everyone has their own gremlins and horrors, but we can find commonality in the diversity.
• Neurologically speaking, we are strengthening the “muscles” (neuronal connections) of regulation and completing activation cycles, together.
• Plus, if it’s hard for us, we also get to spend time doing all of the above without feeling the acute attention of one person at all times.

All my current groups are underway and closed to new members, but there will be additional cohorts opening up later in the year! Sign up below to learn when new groups become available.