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Foundation Three Discussion (WI/SP 2018)
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In summary, one of the things I’m taking away from this module is how important it is to surrender to the threshold. Entering the threshold is really like being in an altered state of extreme presence, awareness and connection to all that is. In reading everyone’s post and reflecting on my own experience, it is so important as a coach to help my client’s enter this state. I could see this happening through practicing sensory awareness to increase that capacity, talking about “the pull”, probing into how the client knows what feels like a yes and a no, and building up the moment before the client literally steps into the threshold, emphasizing that this is an altered state and to notice everything inside and out. In reflecting on all of this, I’m aware of how the threshold is incredibly powerful both in terms of connecting to nature and trusting her, and in connecting to ourselves and trusting our knowing… Getting to know how we know our knowing.
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Hi everyone, I am making up for some online modules I missed, so here is my initial post for this section.
When I experience being in a threshold as a client (or coach), I feel a thick presence settling around everything. My awareness becomes more heightened, I am more capable of drawing connections. I feel poised and curious, completely open to whatever will arise in the present moment with trust and anticipation in its intentions for goodness or healing or epiphany. It feels like my favorite place to play, like this is how I play with the universe, by engaging in the unknown and trusting the larger organism to have our best interests held. It’s like dancing, with wild everything. I often feel a huge amount of love coming through me when I’m coaching someone in the threshold, and as client I may feel any wild number of sensations or emotions. And yet, as best as I can, I trust that whatever shows up is meant to.
Honestly I don’t know how to explain it. I think travel and psychedelics and prayer have all given me tastes of this altered consciousness state and because of my becoming more comfortable with that place, I am more able to access it sober on command with intention, although there are certainly plenty of moments where I think “oh okay we’re in the threshold”, and then all of the sudden some voice of the soul breaks through and WHOOOSH we get taken down another step like a wave crashing over us and then I think “OKAY NOW WE’RE REALLY IN THE THRESHOLD!”.
More and more I am convinced that all healing happens in the present moment. It doesn’t come from thinking about the past or future differently, although new perspective can ease the mind. But true bodily experience is always happening, over and over again, in the now, and so if I want to make changes to my future or my past, my best access point is the present moment. To me, that’s what threshold is all about. Right here, right now, living out a new pattern. Telling a new story. Embodying a new choice, in the present, and trusting that it will ripple out to all the other places in life it is connected to.
And yet, this present moment experience and access point, for many of us in many times, is only accessible through intentional pre-steps that lead us there. It’s possible that the pre-steps are always required for success in this stage!
In the Coyote’s guide they talk about several models of transformation that follow roughly the same type of energetic flow. Whether its the 8 directions (where the intention and action of east and south lead to the surrender and celebration of the west threshold), or the classic “forming, storming, norming, performing” model, there are precursor stages to getting an individual or a group into “threshold”. The threshold is where the magic happens, like the cocoon stage, but all the caterpillar stages must come before the cocoon in order for the butterfly to be revealed.
I feel like the way I can best relate threshold to the Coaching chapters is that most of what Jenny Rogers spent time talking about were techniques to help clients get into greater self awareness. Without self awareness, there can be no threshold, because there can be no present moment. So A lot of what she’s talking about with 360 degree interviewing and helping clients out of denial seems to be another variation of the necessary precursor steps to arrive at the present moment – to which I still submit is where the moment of healing actually occurs!
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LOVED your post, Rachel! Man, so much energy in your words and your perception of threshold. I especially enjoyed this statement, “It feels like my favorite place to play, like this is how I play with the universe, by engaging in the unknown and trusting the larger organism to have our best interests held. It’s like dancing, with wild everything. I often feel a huge amount of love coming through me when I’m coaching someone in the threshold, and as client I may feel any wild number of sensations or emotions. And yet, as best as I can, I trust that whatever shows up is meant to.” And even more specifically, “engaging with the unknown.” What an awesome place to be. I had a similar revelation speaking to that during my significant session as client; there I was in fear of a certain unknown, but then it hit me that I am who I am because I LOVE the unknown! I love mystery and the truth that I am a cell in a much larger body that is living and breathing me to life! I am seeker who has been tracking the unknown; not to reveal it or name it, but to experience it and dance with it. And I love that you and I can play in this space together, yet have our own experience and speak our own truth of it.
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In conclusion, I’d say I already rely on and love threshold moments, surrender, listening, flow very much. and what I’m taking away is allowing myself and my client all the time needed in the stages before and after threshold, so that it’s held within a container that can truly intention and integrate the changes. That being said, coaching presence is still probably my biggest intention and strength as a coach and I will continue to cultivate it.