“Latency” refers to the latent wisdom within us and around us. This is part of our inherent potential. Over the time, participants in a workshop cognise that the images and processes Zsuzsi names are actually emergent from their own beings. Of course, you have to learn [or re-learn] how to listen.

Quite literally, however, our pathways or connections can become blocked. We have learnt not to listen, not to trust, forgotten how to work with the entirety of our potentials.

The most beneficial change comes from within an organism’s own wisdom. This leaves room for the organism to correct itself in the most comprehensive, systemic, and optimal way. BodyEcology and SoulBody work can provoke the reconnections, and provide support for the processes of inter-relating that are already wanting to take place.

This is where the Flash Treeman goes.

Once someone came to see me whose tract of land was poisoned, and by reading the “map” of her land from the energy in her body, I was able to help her plan strategies to cleanse and heal the water and soil. To a scientist, this might sound spurious, but I tell you: our body is also a landscape telling us how to heal its soils.

People come to me with questions arising from their senses, their intuitions, but which they can’t answer themselves. There is a blockage to understanding. Why can’t these things be seen?

Somewhere in us, or beside us, spirit sees all and knows. Like a hologram, our bodies carry the seeds of most of the information we need to achieve change, re-enter a place of flow. I see myself as someone who has trained her vision to see as much of the hologram as possible, to make it accessible for those with whom I work.

The role of the shaman has always been to cross the border into the realm of the not-yet-known, and bring it back into cognition. Along the way, the shaman may encounter cultural or emotional taboos. It is one reason why the healer exists—to cross the border, to retrieve missing information, to find links, heal divisions, act as guide. In an era where many systems are threatening collapse, it is more important than ever to re-discover how to search the invisible—the knowledge that we sense is around us but can’t quite see.

The whole universe is trying to communicate, to live in exchange. We have information to help us across every dimension. From microorganisms, to birds’ patterns of emigration and the habits of waterfalls, we have so much we can learn. It is useful to reflect on how much or little we have developed our perceptions.

I want you to look more closely at my logo. It is a map of the human body, according to healers in ancient Tibet. The reach of the energy meridians goes far beyond the confines of our physical outline. Such is the force of our energy fields, our influence; imagine therefore how much force and wisdom is within reach.

The principle of Equivalence is a very basic tenet of shamanism, and to many indigenous peoples. It is a way of being which is very different to hierarchies.

Living with this principle demands respect for all layers of existence. It is important to be mindful, to issue respect to every level. Where are our prejudices? Do we prefer body to mind, endings to beginnings? Ageing vs. birthing, motion vs. restriction, the self vs. the landscape around us…; we all carry prejudices of which we should be wary. Better inter-relationship can be trained, but the first step is acceptance of all layers as equals.

Longing is a natural condition to be more fully interrelated with the forces that create and re-make the universe. Anything which tends towards developing greater interrelationship, and an ability to respond to this complexity, is healing. This is whether the “field” we are talking about is the universe, our planet, our land, our own bodies, our friends and partners, or our children.

Instead, we live most of the time in world of divisions: I am not this, I am unrelated to that.

Under the force of love, co-operation, mutual respect, with an intention to fully meet, fully see, and be seen, Longing can be a positive force. Imagine if we can live in such love and respect with relation to the land, to animals, across countries and nationalities. A good training ground is to start that intimacy with our closest relationships—our families, our children, our own bodies.

We need to “feel for” the earth, for each other, but not be overwhelmed. “Become one,” whilst also retain the sense of being separate, distinct. We have bodies with which to act, minds with which to choose. We need to be distinct and aware. The fuller we can be in our relationships, and the more grounded in our selves, the more effective we can be [and the fuller our hearts, the kinder our gods]. It is a humble form of medicine—to live and act in a sense of mutual self-worth.

Working with Soft Time

Time is relative: one moment is dinner in New York, but breakfast in Australia. We live on one globe, but in many segments of time. Our bodies, too, whilst being present, are also forward and back in time. We anticipate, and we re-member; we look ahead, and back. In the now, we see a shooting star that exploded millions of years ago. So, too, in the body, we can witness the effects, the symptoms of an event which took place years ago. One moment is now and always. We can look forward: project the arc of the comet’s tail. This is not just the knowledge of poets, but of the human body. We live in a combination of soft and hard time.

Breath carries our thoughts, our ideas, the thoughts of whole cultures. How deeply do we breathe in our tight skirts and brassieres, or in the wrong shoes? Breath and body are interrelated. Every living thing breathes. In the universe, there are many breathing rhythms. Imagine listening to this symphony.

Breath can change time. It can change emotions, the force of an event.

I perceive the body as a microcosm of all this. I believe the body’s polyrhythm [complex of rhythms] is a key to health, to flow. I hear the rhythms of the internal body as a kind of orchestra. It doesn’t all play in the same time or tone. I tune into this orchestra and try give a kick-start to sluggish bits, parts which have forgotten their distinctive charge.

Trauma and authoritarianism block these tunes, force unity and stagnation. Normally, if given its sense of rightness and strength in itself, the body knows how to function well. The organs like to hear their differences next to each other, take delight in their complexities. When all parts know themselves, it really comprises an extraordinary, self-generating, sustaining tune.

We stop breathing under trauma, in the face of death, or under fear. And like a Great Chain of Whispers, our children carry the burden of our Not Breathing. Full Breath is a great key to full healing, not just for our generation, but also the next. This is why River Junction Curly's phrase is so very beautiful: he is speaking from an understanding that everything speaks, everything breathes, everything is equal, everything needs the respect to fully be. When this is the situation, true cooperation is a possibility. When it is not, there is a reduction, a wearing-down, a bitterness, a compromise. Do we want to live with bitterness, or with full-throated expressions of joy?

The principal of equivalence refers not just to an attitude to things outside of ourselves—respect for nature, and others--but to components within as well. Developing this principle as an active consciousness can help develop our Response-ability—the ability to respond with more resilience, more options, more variety and ingenuity. We can expand our repertoire of things we can do and achieve. Each organism, each element can move towards its own more Optimal Function. It is much more productive than living with ideals. It opens doorways to very creative thinking.

Training in BodyEcology and SoulBody work is thus a life-practice, an ethical practice, and a creative practice, as well as a practice which can help in times of illness or dis-ease.

Sometimes, though, the work can be very ordinary: provided relief from muscular pain; a change of thinking. The difference in these instances lies in the depth of transformation and how supported, effective and integrated such healings can be.

Some medical models think of the body as a system waiting to fail. Pains attack us, diseases too; the body is there to dissect, dessicate and divide. There is a place for this kind of healing, particularly in an emergency, but it is not helpful on a soul level, and can leave many underlying tensions in place.

I rather believe our bodies and souls are moist, interrelated, involved with flow, like rivers finding their paths down mountains. SoulBodies [or,“Souled bodies” ] are involved in exchange and interchange much as is all natural phenomena around us.

I believe the body itself holds the information it needs for healing. I believe we can trust it knows how to do the work.—in fact, in a more subtle and deeply inter-threaded way than we generally understand. My training and discipline allows me to read this knowledge—much as if it were a hologram.

Working regularly with very young children can have great effect. Generally their bodies are so ready to re-connect, to understand. Their soulbody’s innate wisdom is a treasure. The changes and integration can be very fast, and in a way their bodies deeply understand. Most processes work with an artificial template against which their development is measured. I don’t believe our organisms work best under that kind of pressure.

BodyEcology works with the potential right in front of us, within each of us, waiting to be nourished and grown.

Sensory Development - Healing with Images

Like dreams, images are a potent force. Like an artwork, the right image can communicate with greater immediacy and effect than analytical words. I think art gives us space—for connections, for threads to work themselves out. It depends on whether or not you trust your psyche, trust your imagination, trust to the invisible. Although in my work I have trained myself to see what is invisible to most people [a kind of x-ray vision into the interior of the body, or along its meridian flows; or clairaudience to the language or rocks or streams], I believe there will always be what I can never see or hear. This is part of the beauty of what we are—we will never fully know.

Images can carry the force and intention of a healing. Even if I can see where an illness sits, how a healing takes place, and on how many dimensions, my conscious mind can never fully know.

It is part of our wonderful mystery, and I am not sure we have the right to try overdetermine a process, or its results. Even a neurologist can’t fathom the full wisdom of the synapse. It would be like crippling a river, trying to determine where every drop should flow. Who knows what else the river connects to? Only some of this we know…

I see my job as re-setting the conditions for healing--helping the body reconnect the wires, not overdetermine their scope. I believe this to the core of my being. I believe treatments that overdetermine the relationship between our components are arrogant and can be quite bruising--I would even say, have the capacity to damage our innate abilities. To numb and dumb them down. Healing should not be about crippling, but about helping us re-member. Plato says knowledge is re-membering. There is a wisdom within and about us that is far greater than we think we know.