Warm Fall greetings from the Voice Dialogue Institute!
The world has been such a strange place for the last year and a half and we’re sure that you have had your share of adapting to seeing through new eyes and learning how to operate in unfamiliar ways!
The Covid pandemic collided with the Voice Dialogue Institute right as we were to begin our 2020 year long Facilitator Training. We had the choice to cancel the training or figure out a way to adapt to the new state of the world. We chose to adapt and take our training online with the plan that we'd meet in person when Covid abated. We had hoped to meet in June, but after several months we realized meeting in person was not going to happen in 2020.
Given that Voice Dialogue is such a body-based, energetic process, we never imagined that teaching this training online would even be possible. However, with the help of our wonderful assistants and our willing and intrepid students, we hunkered down to convert the Facilitator Training into an online class. We figured out how to work on the Zoom platform (who says old dogs can't learn?!), and in addition to meeting regularly with students, we created 50 teaching videos as supplemental learning tools. We definitely saw through new eyes, and learned as much as participants did!
Out of this experience came the realization that in the future we could actually teach our Facilitator Training in a hybrid format including in-person and online elements! The beauty of this is that it offers more flexibility, reduces travel expenses and opens the possibility of working with students beyond North America.
We don’t have dates yet, and of course Covid is still in the mix, but we'll let you know our plans for our 2022 Facilitator Training as soon as possible so you can reserve your place if you are interested.
Come January we'll also be offering an online series exploring advanced Facilitation practices for graduates - dates to be determined.
In the meantime...
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Journey with us to a New Land... |
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Once upon a time — a time in the future — the people of the planet Eitheror bravely organized a delegation to travel to the seemingly far far distant planet of Bothand. Emissaries from Bothand had been arriving in Eitheror for some time, centuries actually. It wasn’t so hard for them, being flexible, adaptable, curious, and able to breathe in so many different atmospheric conditions. Not so for the folks from Eitheror. They can be intimidated by trying to talk with someone from a different neighborhood or a different political party or church, let alone a different planet! Everybody on Eitheror is either one way or another, either for or against, and it almost doesn’t matter what the issue is. What’s important is taking sides. |
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People of Bothand are essentially open and able to find value on both sides of most every opposition. In fact, issues that Eitherorers will dig in and fight to the death over, Bothanders see as fertile ground to grow new perspectives and broaden everyone’s understanding. No ideas ever get thrown out on Bothand. If they don’t work the way they’ve been conceived, out to the compost pile they go to enrich the soil for growing a bigger consciousness. Bothanders are experimenters — they see parts of the truth in everything and love to see what might result from their experiments. They love the unknown and perceive it as a resource rather than a threat.
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On Eitheror everyone is pretty cautious about trying anything new. What if it doesn’t fit what they’re supposed to believe in? What if it challenges what’s known, or even worse ends up in ambiguities? Oh, to be sure, sometimes people do a 180˚ flip to the opposite side, but giving up having sides altogether?? That seems terrifyingly unnatural! |
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As you can see, it would take a LOT for an Eitherorer to muster up the courage to travel to Bothand. Only the fact that life on Eitheror has become more and more contentious and embittered, not to mention downright dangerous, has brought the people of this planet to such a point of desperation that they are willing to risk discovering a reality beyond what they believe to be true. |
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If this sounds a lot like what is happening on our own planet these days, yes it is. For many people even listening to someone with a perspective different from their own feels as risky as a trip to the moon or Mars. Every day in the news feeds, on the TV, in the chat rooms, at the grocery checkout people are shouting their beliefs and opinions with not a smidgen of curiosity about people who think or feel differently than they do. We are all terrified, worn out, and walled in. Even my dentist’s office has posted a notice saying, “Please don’t ask the staff about our personal health choices — we are exhausted.”
If you are already familiar with Voice Dialogue and the Psychology of the Selves and the Aware Ego, you know that it’s possible to take a breather from all that. Moving to the planet Bothand doesn’t require a rocket ship or a moon suit — you just need to step away (even slightly) from your most entrenched and familiar position and stand somewhere new.
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First, though, what’s required is to become curious, genuinely curious, about our own selves — the parts of us that believe what we believe, that wave the banners we wave, that espouse the truths we’re sure we know. In a Voice Dialogue session, the person being facilitated physically moves over to fully become their most adamant and righteous persona. That’s the part that gets a lot of air time every day, but mostly we never question it about anything. We never get to know its whole story. |
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How did this very primary part of us come to believe what it believes? When did it first appear in our personality and who were its strongest influencers? What’s at stake if we were to think differently than it does — what’s the fear or vulnerability underneath it? Without fail when we really listen to this inner self we come to realize that everything it believes and says makes total sense within its own framework (on its own planet). We also typically find out that the protection and safety of being right and staying away from what are perceived to be dangerous alternatives are more important to this self than discovery, consciousness, complex understanding, and often even relationships. It’s definitely an Eitherorer.
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If we go to the other side, the part that holds the opposite view, we find we don’t know much about that self either. We usually don’t even believe the other side even exists in us. Moi?? Not on your life. We’re sure the other side belongs to all those people, behaviors, ideas we judge to be harmful, risky, and wrong. We don’t know much about them, and we mostly don’t want to. When have we ever really been curious about their story and open to hearing their view? Usually only just enough to have a visible target to fire back at. What if we were to step over just a tiny bit toward that side — maybe into the energy of someone we truly love but don’t agree with? What if we were able to let the part of us that is our “wrong-headed” friend speak and share a new-to-us story? |
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If we do that and then move back to the physical space where we started, it may look like we’re in the same place, but we’ve actually traveled all the way to a new planet. We’ve moved into the truly new and unknown. We’ve landed easily and simply on Bothand. It feels different here in the body — we can breathe more air, not less. We haven’t lost our powerful, primary and righteous self. It’s right there next to us still feeling what it feels, knowing what it knows, believing what it believes, but we can feel the other side there too. Best of all we can feel a spaciousness that gives us freedom from and openness to both with the possibility to imagine and make new choices in life.
These are difficult and sometimes frightening times here on our planet. We wish you health and peace and safety, and when things get to be too much we invite you to consider even a short visit to Bothand. Some of the views there are surprisingly beautiful and extraordinary.
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Warmest Wishes,
Cassandra & Miriam
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Cassandra: 425-753-2490 Miriam: 206-932-1151
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Address: 704 228th Ave NE # 841, Sammamish, WA 98074, USA
Phone: (425) 753 2490
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