Partners In Dialogue

NZ Spring

October 2004

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WELCOME
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Dear Friends,

Another three months have gone by at a speed that is frightening. We have challenged ourselves by extending ourselves.

Travelling with Servas brought us into the homes of people from very different walks of life and cultures. Any remaining judgment or assumptions in us were dispelled by the discovery of a common ground in our humanity. What also was highlighted for us was the preciousness and the joy that rises when people take an interest in each other.

I, Rudolf have started to offer Gestalt workshops/groups on my own again. Here I share some thoughts on “Being real”.

Students from the Sydney Gestalt Centre gave us generous feedback that describes the nature and the impact of our Couple therapy.

I, Mirjam delved into DNMS, a new ground breaking approach to therapy, that strongly resonates with our own discoveries.

Enjoy reading

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INDEX
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- Taking an interest

- Being real

- Gestalt Group

- Couple Therapy

- Developmental Needs

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TAKING AN INTEREST
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The best remedy that cures loneliness is taking an interest in another.

This key statement, that Michaela Gloeckler gave at an Anthroposophical Conference a few years ago, still holds true and inspires me. Especially in our times of individualism, it seems to become increasingly hard to develop a true interest in another. People are generally so busy with themselves and see others only in terms of how they fit into their scheme of things. No wonder then, that many people suffer from loneliness. Despite all the activities of modern life, in the end many of these are just distractions that hide the fact that deep down many people are lonely.

In view of that, travelling with Servas was a special experience for both of us. We joined this peace organisation shortly before we travelled to Australia. We had not been hosts ourselves, we first were travellers and enjoyed the warm welcome of our hosts.

The whole idea with Servas is that people from different cultures, religions, walks of life meet and get to know each other. This will then less likely lead to war, if people manage to meet as people. You are expected to stay for 2 nights – not less or more - and get to know something of each other's way of life. (See also: www.servas.org)

We were met not only with great hospitality and generosity, we were also met with a real interest in us as people. Over a meal, we would have long dialogues. Within a couple of days strangers became acquaintances and even friends. It felt nourishing to our souls to be met with such open-heartedness and curiosity.

This is rare and special in our times of individualism and loneliness.

Rudolf Jarosewitsch

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BEING REAL
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What I like about Gestalt is that it brings together the personal and the professional, the individual and the social. It attends simultaneously to my need for personal freedom and my need for connection with others. Gestalt unfolds at the boundary between self and the world. I am who I am in relation to my environment.

Gestalt as a holistic concept acknowledges the need for completion, the urge to become whole. It is the recognition that natural processes are alive in us. In the same way as a tree, we continuously grow and change. This is our destiny. We cannot force growth or change, nor can we completely stop it. However, we can stun it, block it, in the same way as a plant is blocked from growing if kept in a confined space and in the dark.

To flourish, we need a nurturing environment and we need light. These will support us in our development.

Few of us have had an ideal environment as we grew up, an environment where we experienced safety and support paired with encouragement and the freedom to explore. Whatever we have not yet developed, we need to catch up on.

What is it that we are meant to grow into? Fritz Perls talks about 'maturation'. It is our destiny to grow up, to fulfil our potential, to become more of who we really are.

“Be real” is one of the catch phrases in Gestalt. Yet, in the same way as other internalised messages – introjects – that prevent us from living our potential right now – this message too can become an introject. I might end up trying really hard to be real and in the process of this pursuit move further and further away from myself and instead trying to live up to a particular image of myself.

The fact is, I am real the way I am, I can't be more real. All I can improve in is in narrowing the gap between myself and my image of myself, the way I present myself to the world.

In the end, this process is not an action, not a doing, but rather a being, an allowing, a relaxing.

I am gaining more and more ease by relaxing. I would like to describe the process of personal growth to maturation as “relaxing into being myself more fully”. It is not so much a doing like trying hard to be real, but allowing myself to be me, the practice of self-acceptance. This for me is the goal and the process of Gestalt. What helps me on the way is: awareness, being in the present moment and curiosity.

Rudolf Jarosewitsch

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GESTALT GROUP
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Over the years, I have again and again been asked to offer Gestalt training in one form or another. My experience with the recent Gestalt day was a positive one. For next year, I intend to offer informal training to integrate the personal and the professional.

The intention is to form a group that will meet 6 weekly for a day. According to the needs of the participants its main purpose can be to provide Gestalt supervision for practitioners and/or ongoing training.

If you want to be considered for this group, please indicate your interest to me.

Tel: 03-3885292

rumijabu@inet.net.nz

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COUPLE THERAPY
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We don't always find it easy to describe our work. During our recent workshop in Sydney, we received the following detailed feedback describing participant's experience of our approach that we want to share with you with their permission:


Dear Mirjam and Rudolf
Thank you thank you thank you!
Attending this weekend workshop has been both an extraordinary privilege and a great and most precious gift, and I am most profoundly affected by it.
I have so often struggled with my feeling that taking care of myself (by giving deep caring attention to myself) is somehow self indulgent. I have tried to make myself 'do better' by criticizing and rebuking myself, and regularly failed by taking this approach, and tried to cope by suppressing my needs or desensitising myself to them. You have given me a taste of something entirely different and vastly superior to these ineffective strategies!
Experiencing your work, even as a spectator, was a watershed moment for me - I actually FELT what I have long strongly believed about the value and importance of this work, that it is a way to increase the freedom and capacity to love, and is not merely for the purpose of strengthening the ego. I absolutely resonate with your focus on the heart, and it feels to me that the way you work, and the way you ARE, puts the parts and activities of the self in proper perspective and right relationship to each other, such that attention to self is in service to the heart, and not just for its own sake. This feels absolutely 'right' to me and my conflict and dilemma dissolve and disappear as my hunger and need for self care no longer vies with my (mistaken) idea that that is only self indulgent. Your full embrace of the shadow (within, as I see it, this right relationship of the parts) is also a revelation to me - I begin to see this full acknowledgment of the shadow as a necessary part of growth, and feel the beginning of a falling away of my desire (and compulsive attempts!) to try and ignore it (in the hope that it will just go away and die and stop bothering me!).
I feel a deep and strong shift in my being, an integration I have been desperately longing for. I feel a deeper and more complete self respect than I have ever yet experienced, and the intuition that this will be an enormously powerful support of my capacity to relate in a deeper and fuller and freer and more genuinely and compassionately loving way with others.
I felt your unwavering and deeply caring attention to those 'working', to the work itself and each other. Your loving and wise gentleness and humour made me feel your 'challenge' to grow as an attractive invitation and precious opportunity rather than as shaming criticism or demand.
All of this feels like an extraordinarily significant and precious gift. I am wanting that it stay firmly anchored in my being. (And a little fearful that I will allow it to evaporate out of me - methinks I must carefully tend and nurture this fledgling emergence of a greater heart wisdom and knowledge and completeness!)
In addition to relishing and feeling nourished and taught by your big beautiful and wise hearts (AND the great space and bigger picture that you invoked for me) I felt you to be enormously skilled and insightful and perceptive therapists - a powerhouse combination of qualities!
I wish that you may reach many many many people with your work.
I wish that I have the opportunity to see and learn from and feel with you again, and wish also that one day I might do some personal work with you.
In the meantime I will carry with me (and work with!) the Welwood quote - 'Exploring what closes the heart opens it.'
With love, honour, respect and great gratitude........
Ann-Maree Rundle
Sydney 08 08 2004

Dear Mirjam & Rudolph,

What an honour and a privilege to have met you both and to have been part of your workshop! The work that you did with Barry and myself was so powerful and yet so subtle at the same time. I very much felt that what was created was a 'sacred space' for us to explore the deepest part of ourselves and we felt safe, nurtured and encouraged. You helped us to find a key that day that has been eluding us for a long time and has broken us through to a new level of intimacy and commitment in our relationship - we did indeed find the key! We have talked heaps since then and expanded on what we discovered and the shifts in both of us individually and in our relationship is astounding. Thank you so, so much for being willing and available to do this work with others and to share your love and knowledge.

Your encouragement for both us when you said you can 'see us working together' so uplifted me and renewed a sense of passion and excitement for what I believe is our purpose on this planet - and I so needed that encouragement right now when I have been feeling a little 'unseen' and discouraged. Even though you didn't know us I felt completely 'seen' and 'heard' by you both and that feels like such a gift.

You are truly gorgeous, amazing people and I feel a sense of delight in having met you and travelling even one day in your company - I feel blessed and nourished. Your work is so full of love, respect, compassion, warmth and strength and I resonated with it completely. I am inspired to keep seeking those qualities in my work also.

I do hope that we can meet again ... we would feel honoured.

Dinah Buchanan

Counsellor & Psychotherapist, Sydney.


My Reactions to Workshop

Trish

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DEVELOPMENTAL NEEDS
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I have been fortunate to attend a training workshop with Shirley Jean Schmidt who teaches a powerful psychotherapeutic process (Developmental Needs Meeting Strategy) that helps clients to strengthen and develop a set of unique personal resources (nurturing adult self, protective adult self, and spiritual core self that we all have). Clients can apply those to meet their emotional or physical needs that were inadequately nurtured or supported at an earlier time, usually during childhood.

Why is this so important?

If our needs were not met well enough, there could be emotions, beliefs, or behaviour that we have now that we do not like or want. Have you experienced feeling like an adult one moment – then something upsetting happens and you are suddenly seeing the eyes through the eyes of a sad, fearful or angry child? Or have you experienced feeling burdened,somehow blocked in your body, yet unable to pinpoint what it is about?

You are likely to be stuck in childhood. If you are, a wounded child part of you is at the risk of being triggered, charged with powerful emotions and intruding in your daily living.

What inspired me about DNMS is that it can help us to get unstuck by using resources parts of self to meet the needs of child parts of self now in a compassionate, supportive and validating atmosphere.

What is completely new for me is the use of ABS (Alternating Bilateral Stimulation) throughout the steps of the DNMS process to strengthen all positive experiences. Shirley Jean uses a tapper that sends alternatively a small pulse into the hands of the client (however the DNMS works also without it).

The theory behind ABS is based on Neuro Psychology. The brain is composed of billions of individual cells called neurons. Neurons form simple and complex neuron networks that hold specific information about meaningful experiences. Some neuron networks hold emotions, body sensations, beliefs and behaviours frozen in a given moment or moments in time. It's pretty mind boggling.

Shirley Jean also uses carefully mapped meditations to help clients connect to the three specific internal resources, the nurturing adult self, the protective adult self and the spiritual core self. In practice sessions I very much enjoyed identifying and enhancing my existing internal strength, and I am very curious to explore this method further.

If you would like to know more, you can contact the source: http://www.shirleyjeanschmidt.com

Mirjam Busch
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