A Secret to Sandpoint Men’s Group Success
The Healing Journey™
Have you ever asked yourself, why can’t I get over X or achieve Y? You’re smart, you make things happen, yet there are these X’s and Y’s that won’t move.
You aren’t alone. We all struggle with creating what we want in life.
The biggest things that get in our way are stress or trauma. I used to teach Mindfulness Stress Reduction to Type-A-personality professionals. Before the end of the 8-week class, these people learned how NOT to let stress take them out. Often they would surprise us with how their lives changed.
When one class began, I remember one woman, a VP for a large bank, bragging about how hard and long she worked. She claimed she often was on her two phones simultaneously. She didn’t take lunches or vacations and worked upwards of 60 hours per week.
Before the end of the class, she had removed her second phone, was taking lunches, and worked no more than 40 hours per week. What amazed her was not only how she was happier, but how she was getting more done.
Animals Do It
An old colleague of mine, Peter Levine, Ph.D. first taught me that wild animals don’t have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD); they naturally deal with trauma.
We all know we are hardwired to survive—fight or flight. Yet when we can’t defend ourselves or run away, we have a third option – we freeze. When a deer can’t outrun the mountain lion, she goes into shock and pretends she is dead. Hopefully for her, the mountain lion will believe she’s dead and leave to return for a later meal. Once safe, the deer comes to. She goes through recovering from the trauma, and runs away.
Stress and trauma progressively build in our body/mind from all those times we didn’t use fight or flight, and we just grin and bear it. However we can re-teach our physiology so it doesn’t default to freezing, but releases the stress. Then we’re back to behaving like wild animals.
But “releasing” does not mean we get into fistfights, or run down the street to escape stressful situations. In the vast majority of situations, it means we are breathing and speaking. To be able to release current stress, we often need to release the old stress and trauma.
The Quick Way
Many body/mind therapies indirectly remove the frozen stress response. The quickest could be a process called the Healing Journey™, developed for Sandpoint Men’s Group (SMG). In the course of 30 to 45 minutes, a man with the guiding of a trained facilitator travels back to the event(s) that created the trauma that was never fully experienced. The man physically experiences that frozen stress (trauma) as the block he can’t get over and possibly the cause of his PTSD.
We have a natural ability to regain balance once the block that prevented us from experiencing our resources is removed. It’s as if the stored energy converts into usable energy to move through our blocks. Beneath the block lies a hidden gift – a skill that was entrained as we learned to hide our trauma. The acceptance of our stress and traumas eventually leads to discovering the positive aspects of what the previous events created. Those gifts are powerful and only available if we journey through the trauma to our healing.
SMG and Sandpoint Women’s Group (SWG) use the Healing Journey™ developed by Owen Marcus as a way to expedite chang
Posts from the Road. SPMG member Phil Hough Hikes The Continental Divide
With pride, joy, sadness – feeling more introspective.
Greetings from Augusta – the challanges of the Bob Marshall did not match the fears/apprehensions I had of it. I wrote some about tha already in the trip report that will be posted to our website www.walkingcarrot.com so I won’t repeat that here.
I’m geting back in tune with the rhythem of trail life. During long stretches of forested trail I am drifting back, almost trance like to past events. Some sad, some glad – re-examining some, just re-feeling others. Old conflicts buble up anew. They are many of the same “placesL I’ve drifted back to before on my long walks. This time I’m trying to be less intellectual about themand just feel them; to recognize that my fear of feeling them holds me back from working through them and fully learning what they have to teach. Also trying to be less judgemental of my own past actions around them, whether those previous judgements were “bad” or “good”. This will be going on for the next couple months, as I attempt to ask myself the same questions you all would ask me, to take me deeper into the feeling side.
I’m going to go back to getting ready for the next segment now, groceries to pack, maps to read – we leave early friday am.
I’d love to hear from some of you – be sure to send messages to my “pocketmail” adress, NOT my hotmail.
Compassionate Coyote, Phil Hough
The One Thing
Today I will do one thing I don’t want to do
It might not be a big thing to you
It might not even be a big thing to me
It might be a call that scares me
It could be finishing a project I started a month ago
It could be taking out the trash
It probably won’t be balancing the check book, but it probably should
It could be finishing a resume
It might be signing up for a class
I may play soccer with my daughter
It could be a date with my wife
It probably won’t be watching TV but I wish it was
I hope the one thing starts a revolution but I would be happy with evolution
Today I will do one thing that I think is a good idea but I convinced myself I don’t have the time or energy to do
Today I will do one thing that might change how I feel about me in this moment
One thing that may save a life
One thing that could save mine
One thing that could make my life just a little more stress free
Today the one thing, the one small thing, that I know I should
Today the one thing that I keep putting off
That one thing does not even need to be a big thing
It just needs to be one thing
Just ONE THING today I don’t want to do that could change a life
Maybe not now, but a thousand one things later
By Grateful Cheetah
The Invitation
I first came across this poem when my daughter’s 6th grade Sandpoint Waldorf School class recited it. Each child had a part. It moved me and a look around showed me it moved lots of the other parents in the room. I also liked what the author Oriah Mountain Dreamer had to say about the poem and about life:
“I went to a cabin owned by some friends and started writing, using each segment of the original piece as a doorway into deeper places-the longing, the joy, the sorrow, the fear- reflecting with ruthless honesty on the meaning and struggles of a human life. I wrote what I need to remember, what I need to hear again and again: that life is full of beauty and pain; that the world will break your heart and heal it, over and over, if you let it, and that letting it do both is the only way to live fully; that we are not alone but deeply connected to that which create, and sustains all life. ”
The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
by
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
copyright © 1999 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.
Posted by Grateful Cheetah
HIGH SIERRA SADNESS
The granite and snow sink into my soul,
While walking, I am one with the Sierras.
But, sad when having separated.
Leaving – a feeling of longing and letdown.
My heart has been stolen,
Ripped in parts by these mountains
What’s left inside always aching to return.
The end of the trek is the ultimate goal,
Exciting, but dissatisfying.
The journey built connections within,
Which fade away after the end.
Lofty mountain peaks I struggled to climb,
Then plunged deep into the valleys below.
The travel between these two extremes
Brought pain and reward – they are often the same,
And create harmony.
After the hike I am rested, but soon I am restless again,
Feeling unfulfilled and far away.
There’s a hole in my soul
That only these mountains can fill.
For now, memories are all that remain.
Visions and feelings
Of meadows carpeted in green
And a being filled with gold,
Of overwhelming joy and sweet sadness,
Of babbling brooks and brilliant blues,
Of jagged peaks that speak to me
Of snowy streaks across a granite face
And tracks of icy tears from ever present fears
And newfound joy.
I entered these mountains as a man
Humbled and alive, I come back as the boy.
Every summer the Sierras sing to me.
Awakening – a return, my spirit takes wing.
And I am made once again whole,
Sun shining to the depth of my soul
Smiling with sweet sadness and longing,
Feeling connected despite the separation.
Phil Hough
Chair – Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness
www.ScotchmanPeaks.org
Where have all the men gone?
It’s Wednesday night in Sandpoint. A lot of Sandpoint husbands and fathers aren’t home. So where are they? Drinking? Bowling? Watching “the game”? Nope. They’re gathering in houses and offices to enjoy the honor of being men.
For more than three years, a steadily-growing group of Sandpoint men have met every Wednesday night. The Sandpoint Men’s Group started with twelve men who wanted to recapture the camaraderie of youth, the feeling of relating to other men in a setting outside a bar or a baseball diamond. We all remembered the boyhood excitement of hanging out with our friends—the friends we looked forward to seeing, the friends we could count on to be there when we needed them, the friends who were honest with us, even with those hard truths.
With all the pressure these days, there’s not much opportunity to just be with our friends, where nothing is expected from us. We have roles to fill and responsibilities to meet for our work, our family, and even our friends. Don’t get me wrong: we chose these roles, and we enjoy them. But we need a place where we don’t have to perform, a place where we’re the only expectation is that we’ll just be ourselves.
What is in a meeting?
Letting go of my roles to “just be” was hard. There were a lot of things I needed to leave at the door, like my position in the community and my mask of being a professional. At Men’s Group meetings, I walk through the door simply as a man. A simple concept, but a challenging task. But in three years, I’ve learned to be the man I once dreamt of being.
As a kid, I imagined that a man was a person who possessed special qualities that I couldn’t see having. My father and other men seemed superhuman. I wondered how these men who once were boys became men. Conception was a mystery, but manhood was the mystery.
For decades, I was processing a belief that I was not one those men I saw as a boy. I felt cheated that I was not anointed into manhood. But I certainly was not going to admit that I was a fraud as a man. I joined the collective agreement: don’t question another man’s authenticity, and he won’t question mine.
But I let go of this agreement. I realized that my father and his friends were suffering the same fate I was. I understand how difficult it is to be a man. Through the pleasure of trusting them, my resentment and fear of other men transformed into compassion and empathy for them.
Men from the groups have experienced such powerful changes, their friends and family started to ask: “What have you been doing? You’re happier, you’re more fun to be with.” These men’s wives and partners wanted the same for themselves, so they started the Sandpoint Women’s Group.
The Sandpoint Men’s Group and the Sandpoint Women’s Group both support personal evolution. We’re working to evolve out of the boxes we placed ourselves in. We’re learning to just be ourselves.
We’re not therapy groups, and we have no religious affiliation or agenda. Participation in the groups is free. The groups meet weekly, following an agreed-upon protocol of confidentiality and honesty. But each man or woman determines his or her level of participation.
You are invited
If you’d like to learn more about the groups, you, your friends and family are invited to an open house on May 14th at the Sandpoint Community Center from 6:30 to 8pm. You will meet many of the groups’ members and their families, have the chance to ask questions, and enjoy some food and drinks.
To learn more about the groups view our web sites: www.SandpointMensGroup.com and www.SandpointWomensGroup.com. If you’d like to talk to someone, please call Sandpoint Men’s Group at 946-4266.
This article first appeared in the local Sandpoint paper, the Daily Bee on May 7, 2008.
Beautiful Boy
You run up to me with sad joy.
You have missed me. We have
missed each-other. Sometimes apart, sometimes
together we have missed each-other.
Why is it so hard for me to ease your anger?
How come I cannot find what it is in me that you need?
I was never guided into manhood,
just encouraged to stay in worship.
How can I see this in you and do nothing?
I feel helpless in the face
of my own past revealing itself.
At the times we don’t miss each other;
as we wrestle or share something that
links us. I own that sure knowledge of love
and reverence for this time and each-other.
At times it seems that this deep reverence only
emphasizes the space between us. How I wish
my spark was bright enough to transfer to you
the sure knowledge of your beauty.
How I wish that you could know, as I know that
you are a gift to us all, and to humbly let us
bask in the warmth of your skill and grace amplified
by our imaginations into the future.
My love is challenged by my own knowledge
of my inadequacy to provide for your soul,
and the bitter knowledge that one day you will
go on without me, perhaps angry and resentful
of my failings.
I will go forward with you, hoping to become
large enough to bridge the gaps between us
while allowing you to see my flaws, my humanity.
I will go forward hoping that
perhaps you will grow enough to love
me in a way that will forgive my ineptitude.
The joy of your creation came to me late and I fear
the full measure of it will not be enough. That you
will not know, as I did not, that you are my beautiful boy.
This poem was written by Kyle Mercer a Senior Teacher and Coach at The Garden Company, an organization dedicated to the awakening of human potential, and is a recently joined member of the Sandpoint Men’s Group. See his website at: www.thegardencompany.com. When he read his poem at a recent meeting, he had every man in the room in tears.
You Are Invited
Welcome to Sandpoint Men’s Group blog. The men of SMG invite you to journey with us through our evolution as men in this world of change.
We will be sharing with you our process, our loses and wins, our insights and our prospective on what it is to be a man on a journey of integrity.
Please come in join us on our journey.
