When entering into a transformational / healing space, the role of the facilitator is to work themselves out of a job.
This isn't because the tools, skills, perspectives, or support of the facilitator is not valuable (in many cases it is essential), but because the true authority - the true healer - is INSIDE OF YOU.
This isn't just a manner of speech.
It is true.
YOU ARE THE AUTHORITY.
Often our disease, distress, and discomfort originates in our inability or unwillingness to feel what is already present within us.
A big part of the "healing" process is to open back up to the full spectrum of physical and emotional sensations within us (both intense and subtle), and relinquish control over to the innate intelligence that is seeking to arise from within.
The facilitator's role is to hold you in unconditional positive regard, unrelenting curiosity, unbroken presence, and deep compassion, so that you can finally feel safe and supported enough to expose and express that which has been kept hidden.
By co-regulating with you, guiding you, encouraging you, and loving you unconditionally, the pain-stricken parts that have withdrawn into a defensive fortress can slowly emerge, revealing and expressing the festering wounds that have been long held in isolation.
Because the great secret it this:
Feelings know how to process themselves.
When they aren't being controlled, contained, or managed - when they are finally allowed to reveal themselves fully - they initiate an internal resolution process all on their own.
In the case of trauma, these feelings (which are actually memories of painful past experiences) can be overwhelming, and so we approach gently, with patience and compassion, giving as much time and space as needed for the bundles of bound-up energy to slowly unwind.
And unwind they do.
Once you get the direct experience of your body and feelings initiating spontaneous movement / energy discharge, a whole new world opens up.
One that recognizes and acknowledges the profound intelligence that exists beyond the reaches of your mind.
Your body knows what to do for the most effective, efficient healing possible, when it is given the freedom, trust, and safety to follow its own impulses.
THE FACILITATOR DOES NOT KNOW WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN.
The intelligence residing within YOU does.
Every person is a unique, complex arrangement of personal, familial, collective, and ancestral conditioning that shows up in infinitely varied expressions.
And while maps, tools, techniques, and methodologies are helpful to draw upon for guidance, assistance, and support, none of them are universally applicable to every person or situation.
At best, facilitators are making educated guesses, offering a variety of helpful experiments for you to explore yourself, that you may come into deeper contact with your own internal wisdom.
Do not look to others to offer you answers.
Take the facilitators, teachers, healers, guides and leaders off of their pedestals.
They are your servants.
Your supporters.
Your advocates and allies.
But the real authority,
The true power
Is within you.
Remember that.
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