Apr 01 2019

Mythogenic Mastery

mythogenesis

mytho·genesis | ˌmithə+ variants: or less commonly mythogeny mə̇ˈthäjənē plural mythogeneses also mythogenies

Definition of mythogenesis

1: formation or production of myths

2: the tendency to make myths or to give mythical status to something (as a tradition or belief)

[From: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mythogenesis]

It’s interesting that when you Google “mythogenesis” Google asks you, “Did you mean pathogenic?” — potentially leading you away to a definition of something that means ‘causing disease’.

It’s also interesting to me that more people probably know what pathogenic means than mythogenic.

However, I’d like to take us beyond definitions and into experience for a few moments … to explore “myth making” as a way of approaching self awareness, self understanding and self mastery.

For years I’ve been on about mastery versus transformation. Many programs of the kind that I myself lead promise transformation. They suggest you need to be different than you are today, so that you can get/have what you don’t today. Yet, this seems to me self defeating, because whatever you think you may want that you don’t currently think you have is predicated on who you are today, and not who you will become when you have whatever it is you’re seeking. Therefore you may find that when you arrive … have whatever it is that you’re seeking … you feel no more satisfied than you were before you had it, because getting it changes you.

Years ago, around the early 1990s I had done some research and realized that people really want the feeling of satisfaction, and they want it to linger and not just as a transient experience.

So I designed a model I called the Satisfaction Cycle®.

This model was predicated on the idea that who you are in this moment right now hold all the keys to your potential through all time, and furthermore that you have immediate access to realizing that full potential instantaneously.

The only requirement …

You must remove that which limits you from experiencing yourself fully as whole and complete … right now.

Yet, most people have been trained to see themselves as only having the potential to be whole and complete in the future. This creates the endless desire for self-improvement, that some folks like to call self-growth or personal development.

Now I’m not against personal development as an idea. In fact I like the idea of improving, but I think of it as refinement, not necessity. To my way of thinking you express the fullness of being you are now seeking to experience by attending to the fullness of being that you already posses, and then you can’t help but to experience personal development.

You see, just attending to something fully and with rigorous focus refines it. I should probably make it clear here that when I use the word “attending” I mean “doing something” not “contemplating” … even if you first contemplate you must take action to complete the process of fully attending, putting the contemplation to rest.

Coming To Rest

Everyone ultimately wants to come to rest within themselves.

This doesn’t mean stopping your action or activity, it means being a peace within yourself, giving up the relentless sense of chasing something that you think you need or want, but don’t yet have.

Coming to rest means realizing this moment is complete unto itself, and stepping fully into it to experience it completely.

The paradox of coming to rest means that you begin have more time and energy available to do things you haven’t yet done, and you do them without any undue urgency or, sense of threat or overwhelm. You begin moving through the world from a position of self-mastery.

Others can’t help but to notice when you possess self-mastery.

Self-mastery expresses itself as an air of calm and control beyond the chaos of the moment. Regardless of the urgency of the moment, whey you possess self-mastery you aren’t urgent. Think of the surgeon who makes critical life and death decisions in seconds, and retains a calm deliberate certainty in the moment about the choices they make. Or, the naval fighter pilot who’s plane hurdles through space faster than the speed of sound, and calmly and deliberately controls their craft with the certainty required to land it safely on the rolling deck of an aircraft carrier in the middle of an ocean deep in the darkness of night.

I remember a story that I was told from when I was too young to remember. My grandmother, my father’s mother, who I spent a great deal of time with, was watching over me and I spiked a very high fever. My then young unmarried uncle, told me he was very concerned and felt like I needed to be taken to the doctor or the emergency room. My grandmother instead told him not to worry that the fever would break and I’d be fine. She repeatedly bathed me in cool water and then rubbed alcohol on my feverish body, three times … four times … until as she predicted, the fever broke and I “slept like the dead” according to the way my uncle tells it.

When I woke the next morning it was as though I had never had a fever, and as usual ran about leaving a wake of minor destruction in my path. Never though did my grandmother’s composure waver. Whenever she was engaged in a task of any kind she possessed and evidenced an air of self-mastery always as I remember her, even in those moments of lucidity that had become sporadic into her 103 year when she finally passed peacefully one night during her sleep.

When you possess self-mastery in the simplest moments you can extend it to the most chaotic moments. I like to think of this as keeping your head about you when all those around you are losing theirs. However, I find most people only look to access mastery of this kind when they are already in crisis, failing to seek it, practice it, and experience it in the mundane moments of their life when they more easily access it to make it a habit and pattern of being they recognize for themselves.

Stop And Smell The Roses

Mastery and mythogenesis meet where you experience your own autobiographical narratives.

For the most part the world will impose certain narrative on you … stories about who your people were/are, stories about the place you come from, stories about how you look and how that fits the current fads of appearance and beauty, stories about how you should be and what’s important or not … it goes on and on.

For instance, one of the great narratives shared and told in many places refers to the story of education … either you’re one of the smart kids or you’re not one of them. This of course has less to do with being intelligent than it does with conforming to demands to do it they way you are told. In many measures of intelligence in education creativity becomes a detriment. Yet, the label of being a smart kid, or not, puts an indelible mark on many people before they have any sense of personal choice about it.

Another common narrative has to do with what “side of the tracks” you come from … was your family wealthy or not, are you the right kind of person, do you practice the ‘right’ religion, do you have the ‘right’ skin color, do you speak the ‘right’ language and pronounce it in the ‘right’ way, are your people from the ‘right’ place, do you were the ‘right’ clothes, to you eat the ‘right’ foods, to you practice the ‘right’ traditions … and on it goes, and the narrative builds about whether or not you are the ‘right’ kind of person.

The Hermenutic Option: Despite the impositions of the narratives imposed upon you, you always have a choice about how you interpret them … you get to set the meaning.

Trying to “fix” the meaning of the narratives that have been imposed upon them, beyond their initial control, keeps a lot of people chasing a dream about who they could be or should be … but in their own minds (and maybe by dint of cultural interpretation too) ain’t.

Many folks are lost in trying to manifest a life that matches some narrative that they don’t own … one that ain’t their own.

You always get to choose your own myth, the story you are living into, and the way that shapes how you interpret the narratives of your life, as long as you want it and make that choice.

Choosing your own myth frees you. Your myth is always bigger than any of the narratives it contains.

You really have no choice as to whether or not you’ll be living into a myth, if you’re very clever you only really get to choose the myth itself.

By the time you were seven or so, a myth was present for you … and you’ve either be A) living into it unthinkingly, B) resisting it desperately, or C) revising it and choosing one for yourself.

The book of your life was begun by others, but you don’t need to remain in that story.

Whenever you choose you get to take over the authorship of your own life, and begin scripting a new life if you so desire it.

The moment you take over the myth-makers role in your own life you immediately begin reshaping the entirety of the story that’s been told so far. You don’t need to rewrite your past stories …

The very act of deciding who you are now in this moment, and who you are becoming, imposes a new meaning on who you have been.

This simple act of taking control of your own story, shaping the narrative that’s being told, transports you into the beginning of possessing self-mastery.

Keeping it simple, you cannot possess self-mastery if you don’t possess your own story.

In many old fairy tales the hero’s/heroine’s heart is removed and keep in a box by some evil witch or sorcerer and to become whole, often even to live and prevent their own untimely death, the hero/heroine must discover where their heart is hidden and reclaim it for themselves.

The heart at the center of your being that you are seeking is your myth.

Once you’ve discovered your myth, the essential story of who you are, have always been and are becoming, everything about you will begin to coalesce and reform to accept this as the centering and guiding essence of your being. You’ll feel this happening within yourself, and you’ll see the manifestation of it without as well all around you. As you continue others will also begin to notice it and will respond to it in spoken and unspoken ways.

You will be known for your acts, but you will know yourself more because of the myth you are making, and the master you’ve become.

It is of little value to master all about you, if you have left the mastery of yourself behind.

Just some thoughts to ponder as a new dawn approaches …

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Somewhere on the East Coast of the United States at 05:32 AM EDT

Dec 17 2018

Seeing Wholeness

The Key To Transformational Embodiment

About 30 years ago I began searching for the universal ”skeleton key” to transformational change.

By the mid-1990s I had come to the conclusion that the ”key” to transformational change was part of what I began calling the somatic ground of being … embodiment … the foundation of ontological experience and awareness. This led to an approach using somatic interventions to instigate ontological transformation.

I remember sitting in the “Hypnotorium” with Roye at the front doing something with someone, a piece of profound transformational hypnosis.

This is very different from what many think of as hypnosis, i.e.: “You are getting sleepy … your eyes are getting heavy, tired, and they want to close … just let them close, NOW … going deeper into a deep, deep sense of relaxation … let yourself float down, even deeper, still …” and then some suggestions about stopping smoking or losing weight, or some other habit interruption and reframing.

It’s also obviously very different from stage hypnosis, (same script followed by), ”Now you will follow my suggestions … when I snap my fingers you will open your eyes, and when I mention the word “hypnosis” you will cluck like a chicken …” No, not anything like that at all.

Transformational hypnosis was … is … the art of shifting the ontological awareness you operate from about reality, what is real and how it is organized, and most importantly your place in relation to it.

Within the art of transformational hypnosis there is an intention not to change symptoms or behavior at the surface, but the structure of your perception at a deep and essential level, all the way down to the core of your sense of identity.

Now the way I was learning about how Roye worked was presented in what he referred to as “wholeform” … never truly broken down into steps to follow, but instead presented as a complete piece of work.

Someone would come in and present a life issue they were facing and within … a significant choice in a relationship maybe, or the need and desire to make a major change in their profession or lifestyle, it might be they were dealing with a major loss and were struggling with processing it fully, and as often it would have been someone who was simply stuck and yearning for a breakthrough to an imagined future that infuriatingly continued to elude them.

Roye would refer to whatever it was that the person presented as the ”presenting problem” and point out that it was simply the lens to a solution. The trick of course was to be able to elicit and discern the solution that had been obfuscated by the presenting problem and remained unavailable to the one presenting it.

So I would come, a couple or a few times a month, or even weekly, to sit in the Hypnotorium with Roye to learn the secrets of the deep art of transformational hypnosis. I have to admit that for months the entirety of it eluded me and all I could gather from what he was doing at the front of the room was bits and pieces of technique.

Maybe I would pick up a way of leading someone into an altered state with some bit of language. Or, I’d notice that Roye would alter his posture to be more like the person he was working with, and yet with all these bits and pieces I was gathering my skill remained mostly limited to working at best at the surface of things.

Then it happened …

I think maybe I was tired, or frustrated, but I’d given up trying to “get it” and I just sat there as Roye was doing a piece of work with someone and I saw the whole thing!

This wasn’t the process he was using, or what he was doing, it was what he was noticing about the person in front of him. They are the whole thing!

This is where the magic happens. I got that absolutely in that instant, as fleeting as it was and as difficult to recapture. By trying to “get it” … looking and listening for what it was, I remained unable to get the “whole thing” … the entirety of what happens moment to moment as you are with someone.

The “whole thing” is the entirety of how someone is organized in any given moment AND how they change moment to moment in an endlessly choreographed dance of dynamic movement.

This way of seeing became the essence of the work I do and teach in MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics models.

I proposed we have a fundamental, ontological state of being that is innate to us, because of the deep integration between the somatic and semantic structure of wholeform experience that treats the body-mind as an integrated singularity. This state of being always emerges in wholeform as a singularity all at once.

The wholeform ontological structure contains the entirety of the way we are within our bodies, how we use them, move within them and move through them, and the language forms that arise to inform us and others via the descriptions of the subjective experience we are having as we do.

One of the primary teaching distinctions of the MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics is the art of Seeing Wholeness.

Yet Seeing Wholeness remains elusive, as it did for me for months of my early training with Roye, only becoming apparent in that first instance as a wholeform experience of undifferentiated wholeness that was the true essence of the person I saw for the first time that day.

Seeing The Wholeform Of Wholeness:

To see wholeness you cannot be looking for the pieces or the parts, as wholeness only exists in the wholeform.

This is what makes it so hard for folks to learn … the letting go of trying to see what they cannot yet discern for themselves.

For most people to learn to see wholeness you must allow yourself to see it through the eyes of someone who can already see it, and see what they are seeing, not what you are looking for yourself.

This of course is a kind of trick you must learn for yourself, i.e.: to see through the eyes of another.

What you’re noticing for is the entirety of whatever you are present to, not the parts of the entirety. Of course the entirety includes you, since you are present as well.

Wholeness always includes whatever happens between you and what you are noticing, and it is there that the magic of the wholeform experience becomes most present … in the space between.

To put this another way, I always feel the wholeform experience before I can see it, but once I can feel it I can’t help but to see it as well.

What we call adumbration in the MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics training forms the basis for seeing wholeness … the ability to foresee what is emerging as it emerges, or even a microsecond or so before it is apparent in any ordinary sense of being able to see it.

As crazy making as this seems to see wholeness you must allow yourself to feel it coming before it’s there within yourself. Then you must allow yourself to stop looking for anything and just notice for everything, because when you are tracking for wholeness everything changes all at once.

When you are noticing for wholeness you do not only notice that someone has moved an arm or a leg, or that they smiled or frowned, or that their voice changed in someway such as increasing or decreasing in volume or pitch. You notice for the way they are now entirely different AND they moved an arm or a leg, or that they smiled or frowned, or that their voice changed in someway such as increasing or decreasing in volume or pitch.

By getting caught by the arm or a leg moving, or that they smiled or frowned, or that their voice changed in someway such as increasing or decreasing in volume or pitch, you lose the sense of the wholeform, and you lose any ability to see wholeness.

Wholeness flows.

Wholeness doesn’t exist in any moment and it does in every moment. It is the ability to see the grand pattern of change and transformation, and to notice for how that pattern organizes itself in alignment with some future, teleological wholeform possibility.

Using the information that is present by tracking the Soma-Semantic (whole)form you can then assist whomever you are working with to align themselves with that wholeform possibility as the possibility of choice. This then becomes the trajectory along which they propel themselves into their chosen future.

NOTE FOR MYTHOSELF PROCESS FACILITATORS AND TRAINERS:

When you can do this you are doing the MythoSelf Process, and only when you are doing this, doing anything else is something, but not the MythoSelf Process.

Merry Christmas 2018!

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D., Parsippany, NJ
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process,a SomaSemantics and Generative Flow

Dec 01 2018

Profane Coaching:101

pro·fane – prəˈfān, verb: grossly irreverent toward what is held to be sacred.

Coaching often tries to present itself in one of two ways by many of the major practitioners of the craft …

Socratic – very mild, gentle and nurturing, as the ultimate helping intervention that never interferes with the personal process of the individual being coached by adding anything or offering anything to them that they haven’t presented first themselves.
Serious – very precise, impactful and professional, as a way to awaken and access higher levels of performance and especially interpersonal performance for executives, entrepreneurs, professionals and anyone seeking to lead others in any way.

Okay, let’s agree … those are two ways to consider coaching, and perfectly valid ones at that. Let’s also agree that it wouldn’t be too hard to find training or mentoring as a coach following one of those two paths either.

Now let’s set both of those ways of presenting coaching aside completely and look at the whole thing from another perspective entirely …

For three decades I’ve been developing an approach to working with clients that almost completely disregards the conventional thinking about coaching, and how it’s to be done with clients.

For instance here’s some of what I don’t often do …

Let my clients tell me about their problems/issues/challenges, I don’t need or want to know what’s wrong as the place we begin working together
Listen to them tell their story for too long, since it’s not the story they want to be living anyway
Keep my observations, opinions, and experience to myself, instead I apply all three liberally
Ask a lot of useless questions to establish rapport, just to allow my clients to feel they’ve been heard
Speak with deference and delicateness to protect my client’s sensitivity, or their shame, guilt or otherwise protected emotions
Treat my clients as equals in the coaching process, after all they come to me because I’m an expert not an equal
Mollycoddle clients or parse language, because it might offend or upset them to hear the truth
Try to remain professional at all times, meaning never showing emotion or revealing myself to them

That’s the short list.

It’s what makes my approach to coaching a bit “profane” so to speak (the other thing is the way I freely and joyfully use “colorful” language that may be more common coming from a stevedore than a coach or consultant – I have family in the stevedore business, so you can believe me, their language is remarkably colorful).

Here’s the bottomline right up front … my approach to coaching is a bit different, it starts out differently, it happens different, and it usually ends different too … with my clients wondering why they hell they came to see me in the first place (not because they didn’t get what they came for, but because they can’t remember what interfered with having it in the first place, or not having its all along).

My approach begins here …

WHADDA YA WANT?

It’s the simplest question in the world and one that ain’t always easy to answer.

It’s also the question you’ll get from any waitress in any NJ diner as she places a cup of strong, hot coffee down in front of you too.

The difference between me and your waitress is that she expects you to know what you want when she asks the question. If you don’t you’ll get an eye roll, and the next thing you’ll hear is, “You want me to give you a little more time honey?” as she walks away not to be seen again for the next thirty minutes (next time you’ll be ready with your order when she puts the coffee down, right?). She’s also more patient and kind than I am too.

I start already knowing that you don’t know what you want … even if you think you do. At least that’s true like 98.725 percent of the time (I just made that number up of course, but it’s probably remarkably accurate).

BUT … I also know that in answering the question, “WHADDA YA WANT?” that you have to access what it is you really want from getting what you think you want (that’s the truly secret sauce in the mix, and why I don’t listen too much to what clients have to say to me when I’m working with them).

Hey, I’m not trying to train you to be a Profane Coach here, I’m just laying out the structure a bit, so if you’re a little confused by that statement it’s okay, maybe someday we’ll meet up and it will make a lot more sense to you then.

What I’m actually paying attention to is how you are when you are answering the question.

How you are is what it’s all about!

What I mean by that is that there’s something we all access when we think about what we want, it’s the way we expect to be when we have it. This way of being is essential as well to what it take to get it, but it’s simply not available in the way of being that’s associated with longing for something that isn’t present.

You can only access what you really want when you aren’t longing to have it and thinking about how it’s missing.

Once again, this is that secret sauce I was mentioning, and to tell you the truth, most people need a little kick in the pants to let go of what holds them back from getting it.

That’s also in part what makes my approach to do the work we’d be aiming at together “profane” in the first place, I take off the kid gloves. We’ll be digging into places that are likely to be uncomfortable, but nonetheless essential to get to so we can get past whatever limits you today from having what you really want.

Let’s just put our cards on the table … what makes more way of working with clients profane is that I’m going to be intentionally provocative about pushing the buttons that normally unsettle the clients I’m working with to get to what’s beneath whatever they find unsettling.

It’s a really fascinating thing to create a context that’s simultaneously both unsettling and safe … another profane idea … that it’s possible to be both intentionally unsettling, provocative and disturbing in a coaching setting, and create a space that’s undeniably safe to explore the themes we’ll be discussing within.

What’s so powerful here is that the “secret sauce” reveals the underlying code that you use to access yourself at your best, when you are beyond being plagued by any limitations that prevent you from achieving what you intend and deeply desire.

The “Profane” Somatic Code

This “code” is somatically organized, held in the way you use your body at the micro-muscular level, literally the way your body prepares to respond before it even does.

Many somatic approaches address the idea that they way you use your body profoundly influences how you think, how you respond and what you do. Most of these somatic approaches look at the more gross movements and postural adjustments that we make and how these are affecting us in other ways beyond the question of the movements themslves.

At the core of the “profane” approach I use is going to movements that are so small that they are almost imperceptible … almost. Truth be told, these micro-muscular movements are in fact imperceptible from the outside, but they can be reverse engineered by the movements that emerge from them.

Once you know how the human body works you can figure out what has to happen for whatever you’re experiencing, or observing, at the level of micro-muscular pre-movements to happen. For arguments sake we could be pointing to individual muscle fiber twitches.

There’s another presumption in approaching coaching profanely, that the semantic structure, i.e.: the structure of meaning we create from what we perceive and the sense-making that arises from it, arise from the somatic ground of how we are within ourselves … literally the way we are in our bodies.

This is a profane concept to all those folks who hold the mental processes above or superior to body-based processes. Yet, within the consideration of the profane approach I’m outlining here what arises first in the body is considered at least equal to, and often superior to, what we become aware in mind … and, always ahead of the language we use to describe it.

This is a really big deal …

By being “profane” with you, you’ll get to what you won’t on your own, because you’d avoid it otherwise … either intentionally or unintentionally … but, with the right kind of provocation, the right kind of push, you’ll go where you normally won’t on your own.

This way of coaching isn’t for everyone … either coaches or clients, but it may be something you’d want to explore as a coach to add into your snatchel of tricks, or as a client to get past whatever it’s been that you keep bumping up against and ordinary “pedestrian” respectful approaches can’t bypass.

I’d love to hear from you with you’re thoughts about being “profane” as someone who works with clients … or, as someone who’d consider working with a “profane” coach.

All the best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process, SomaSemantics and Generative Flow

Jun 27 2018

This Ain’t No Zen!

If it ain’t Zen, WTF is the MythoSelf Process then???

Essentially the MythoSelf Process is the “the ability to freely play and take action” it’s about “being childlike and creative in the way you experience, approach and show up in the world” … but, it ain’t Zen, or any other frackin’ thing either … we’ll come back to all this, but first we need to lay some groundwork.

Sometimes folks who come to experience the MythoSelf Process or to learn “how to do it” meaning that they want to become proficient in running the process with others as well as for themselves, assume that the MythoSelf Process is “like” Zen or something.

Here’s the first rule of the MythoSelf Process (NO! The first rule of MythoSelf is NOT: “You do not talk about MythoSelf.”):

The first rule of MythoSelf is: “THIS IS NOT THAT.”

Let’s start there things are themselves, i.e: what they are, no more, no less and not “LIKE” something other than themselves, regardless of what we’re referring or pointing to, things are just themselves … objects, people, places, events, ideas, and yes, the MythoSelf Process is just the MythoSelf Process … it ain’t Zen (or any other bloody thing you can imagine in the distortions of your mind “it’s LIKE” … ‘cause it ain’t!).

Okay, so then what “IS” the MythoSelf Process???

The MythoSelf Process is dynamic, i.e.: it’s a process:

proc·ess

ˈpräˌses,ˈprōˌses

noun

a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.”military operations could jeopardize the peace process”synonyms: procedure, operation, action, activity, exercise, affair, business, job, task, undertaking”investigation is a long process”

The MythoSelf Process “happens” (NOTE: it’s never “DONE” to someone, it “HAPPENS” with someone or a group of people).

The MythoSelf Process reveals what we call the “source code” that a person uses to know themselves to be alive. It uses an “if/then” algorithm, “if THIS, then THAT” … if “this” is present then I am alive.

This is the essence of awakening, becoming aware that you are alive, you are present, this is happening right here, right now … and you are able to remain present to it as it unfolds and is coming into being, moment by moment by moment responding to what “IS” …

”Like THIS …”

We often say, “Like THIS …” as a way of referencing what is present that acknowledges the presence of being alive to the individual experiencing the “this” of their own internal awareness.

Unlike many other approaches to “awakening” the MythoSelf Process bases the way to awakening in the experience of the body, the somatic experience, or how you notice yourself being in your body in this moment right here, right now.

Ultimately with training and experience you become able to track this experience almost unconsciously, but fully competently, making adjustments and compensating to be at your best at all times … or at the very least to know when you are not, and give yourself permission to get back to yourself before you make any major commitments or take any major action. (We usually recommend, “WHEN IN DOUBT, DON’T!”)

Signals in the System

The skill I’m referring to above is a subtle awareness to notice for the way you are in your body, or how your body is responding in the moment to what we call “The Signals in the System” or all the stuff that’s happening right here, right now, including all the stuff that’s happening internally for you … your thoughts, how you feel, where you are tense or relaxed, what urges you’re feeling, all those internal signals are part of the totality of what we call the signals in the system.

What you need to get for now is that the signals in the system we’re mostly concerned with are the ones that mostly go unnoticed, e.g.: what’s not being said, or the breeze that’s blowing as you’re thinking about how to invest the inheritance you just found out about from your great uncle George, or whatever. Signals in the system points to that stuff in the background, that’s there not just imagined or projected magically, but so often is left out of the calculation of what’s going on and how that’s affecting you and how you’re responding to what’s happening.

Okay, that might sound like a lot to keep track of, we know. Here are a couple of things that might help you relax about all the possible signals in the system that you could be noticing for:

You don’t need to do anything about the signals in the system, just let them be for now
You don’t need to even pay any particular attention to the signals in the system, as long as you know they are there even when you are not paying attention to them

What you do want to do about the signals in the system is pay attention to the ones you do notice!

If something stands out from the background to you, regardless of what it may be or how insignificant it may seem, just agree with yourself to notice it … trust us, there’s a reason you noticed it, there’s a reason your system responded to it. Now immediately check how you are in yourself, what are you doing in your body?

The easiest way to learn to check what’s going on within yourself, what you’re doing with your body, is to check for where you are holding any kind of tension. For now try to relax that tension and notice what happens as a result. You’re not trying to make a change in terms of what you notice, other than relaxing wherever you find tension in your body. Then, just notice what you notice. If it’s nothing, let it be. If you find you’ve changed the way your thinking, or what you’re thinking about, or how you’re feeling … or, if a sudden seemingly random thought pops up in mind … pay attention to that and consider what it means to you in terms of adjusting how you’ll respond to whatever is going on as a result of noticing what came up for you.

Eventually, with practice and some discipline, you’ll begin to “notice for” the signals in the system automatically, and the “distance” between the incoming signals as well as you internal signals, and your response will be virtually nonexistent, essentially you’ll begin to respond instantly and highly effectively with regard to moving in the direction of the outcomes you intend.

Taking Action … Playfully

So this brings us full circle.

When you are able to be present to what’s happening in the moment … right here, right now … you’ll find you’re able to respond to things in a way the feels like playing, as well as instantly and effectively, regardless of the context or circumstance.

This is the beginning of freedom, i.e: the freedom to take action.

Most people experience times where they are hesitant, or get caught and freeze, or maybe they wish they had responded differently after the fact.

Yet, when we watch children at play, while they may not like the outcome they seldom if ever go back and think, “I wish I had done that differently.” or get stuck in their play unable to act at all. They simply act out of their innate nature.

This is the idea of what we mean by becoming “childlike” … having access to your innate, natural way of taking action freely.

When you “arrive” at the point where you are both able to track the signals in the system in regard to your intended outcomes and you also have the ability to respond creatively, as though you are at play, you are free in a way very few adults will ever experience.

This is essentially what the MythoSelf Process leads to … “the ability to freely play and take action” it’s about “being childlike and creative in the way you experience, approach and show up in the world.” …

So, when someone asks, “Is the MythoSelf Process like Zen.” I get how they can be confused … but, regardless of where there may be similarities, THIS ISN’T THAT.”

If you are interested in learning more about the MythoSelf Process I’ve got a short video I made here: MythoSelf Professional Training

All the best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

P.S.: If you’re also interested in getting trained in the MythoSelf Process yourself you can also get that information here as well: MythoSelf Professional Training

Mar 22 2018

L’Chaim …

“To Life …”

This morning I was inexplicably brought back to a memory of sitting on a small bench overlooking the bridge that crossed the pond at the Blue Dell Farm in Pemberton, NJ during a break, while at an NLP training with Roye Fraser. I’d gone there to study NLP with him, and discovered he was weaving a magical score with something he called “The Generative Imprint” using NLP to deliver and train in this model of transformational change he’d been developing for about a decade at that time.

This was an unusual way to teach NLP, not by a series of exercises to teach either concepts or techniques, like representational systems or swish patterns, but in what he called “wholeform” (something I’d come to appreciate more as I delved into the work of the quantum physicist David Bohm).

We’d all sit in the “Hypnotorium” Roye’s name for the room we worked in with him, that was a converted mechanics garage on the property he owned there in Pemberton. Roye would begin talking about something, then he’d ask us all “What do you want?” and someone would say or do something that would catch his attention and he’d “bring them up” … meaning he’d bring them to the front of the room and begin working with them. Not demonstrating a concept or technique, but using concepts and techniques to create profound transformational change with whomever he’d brought up tot he front.

Then we’d be instructed to “Go do the exercise.” … and, everyone in the room would be like, “What exercise?!!???” (even though the exercise was clearly spelled out on a flip chart with steps to take to do whatever it was that we’d be working on at that moment) … because, we’d just seen a seamless flow of concept and technique customized to the exacting needs of an individual that no one there at the time could hope to replicate. So we’d walk off, spellbound, to do our best to “Do the exercise.”

It was in the Hypnotorium with Roye that the phrase, “L’Chaim” uttered in a deep, resonant, voice with a ting of a South African accent, usually proceeded or followed by a deep, roaring burst of laughter, became etched in my mind.

“L’Chaim!” … TO LIFE!

The work Roye did was about “LIFE!” … discovering the wonder and joy of being alive … fully, completely and with abandon.

I took this on in my years of apprenticing with Roye, dedicating myself to helping others find for themselves “the wonder and joy of being alive … fully, completely and with abandon.”

“L’Chaim!”

Many times since those early years I myself uttered that phrase after completing a piece of work with someone … often to Jewish clients I’ve had who I hoped would recognize my toasting their new awakening to themselves, sometimes to gentiles like myself who I hoped would recognize the intention if not the literary meaning of the phrase.

A way I’ll often end a piece of work, or a training session, or even many of my posts is with the bastardized Italian-American, “Buona Fortuna and Abundanza!” … which I state as a prayer and a blessing, i.e.: “May you have good fortune and abundance in your life.” (there is no word “abundanza” in Italian, the Italian word is “abbondanza” meaning “plenty”).

Another phrase I picked up from Roye was his colorful way of sending folks off, “Go forth and fructify.” … said with a glint in his eye and a conspiratorial tone to his voice.

fruc·ti·fy

ˈfrəktəˌfī/

verbformal

verb: fructify; 3rd person present: fructifies; past tense: fructified; past participle: fructified; gerund or present participle: fructifying

1. make (something) fruitful or productive.

◦ bear fruit or become productive.

Origin:

Middle English: from Old French fructifier, from Latin fructificare, from fructus ‘fruit.’

You may think, “Ahhh, this Roye fellow was a very playful sort!” … and you my friend would be correct. But, you’d be missing the deadly serious side of him. He was playful only in respect to achieving the outcome, i.e.: to lead his clients to living their lives … fully, completely and with abandon.

More than anything that’s what I got from my years with Roye, first to, “ live my life fully, completely and with abandon” and then to commit to this as the first principal of the work I learned with him as I share it with others.

After some years I began to bring my own approach to this work to life, the MythoSelf Process. This model was born from drawing on some distinctions that came from my own personal history and the study of other intellectual and transformational giants … folks like the renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell, and the masterful somatic practitioner Moshe Feldenkrais, and seeing how our life stories are carried within us in word and deed.

I began to develop a unique way of working with folks using both transformational stories and subtle somatic interventions to shift the fundamental position of perception and decision making of the clients I work with today. This way of approaching transformational change that leads to breakthrough performance emerged from that early work I began learning with Roye in the Hypnotorium.

Roye taught me to attend to gross and subtle “idiosyncratic movement” aligned with “ideomatic phrases” … individualized ways people express something that is not easily captured in language and is highly unique to them personally. From this early training I began to notice something more about what I today refer to as “micro-muscular response” and “dynamic patterns of movement” … the basis of the Soma-Semantics model I’ve been developing and refining for the past thirty years.

In my observations with clients over tens of thousands of hours of doing work with them in training rooms, groups and one-to-one private work, I’ve noticed how deep values that guide perception, decision making and behavioral responses are reflected in the way the body configuration adjusts to reflect the mind of the individuals I’m working with irrefutably and absolutely.

As a person accesses these values, that are the basis of their personal identity, i.e.: what’s most meaningful to them before any conscious awareness or processing take place, they automatically and irrevocably make somatic adjustments that are the physical manifestations of what they are accessing.

The resulting somatic pattern generates a state change, or a way of being, that is consistent with the values and identity position they have been accessing.

This is a physical declaration of themselves, like a bold pronouncement, “I AM THIS!” … or at a more fundamental level of awareness that is barely conscious for them most of the time, “I AM!”

This then becomes the basis, or the ground, from which all the work that proceeds is built upon.

From this most fundamental, unspoken declaration of “I AM!” we work to extract the narrative form in story and in idiom, often expressed in paradoxical form, e.g.: “supple steel” … “calm intensity” … this is the semantic expression of the Soma-Semantic pair.

When these are firmly inhabited they individual who possesses them has the basis for accessing how they know themselves to be alive in the most fundamental and primal way possible (NOTE: to get here takes a bit of expertise and tradecraft).

This has now become the starting point … beginning the journey that follows, remaining always grounded in and tethered to the fundamental distinction of being alive …
fully, completely and with abandon …
—
“L’Chaim!”.

It’s not always so easy for clients who haven’t yet experienced the wholeform way of learning that is the basis for the MythoSelf Process and the Soma-Semantics model to see the value of investing in getting to this fundamental position from which to live their life.

Far too often folks are consumed with the urgency of the immediate …

– resolving some crisis that has arisen

– paying the bills

– sending the children off to school

– getting the next promotion, contract or client

– growing their business or practice

– caring for an elderly parent

– insuring their own future or legacy …

whatever is staring them in the face in the moment.

Yet, doing all these things, even extraordinarily well, will not bring you peace or peace of mind. These things will not satisfy the deep existential and ontological longings you have to know and live your purpose, and to fully manifest and express all you are capable of being.

And, despite the deep, compelling call of the adventure Jospeh Campbell speaks of in the Hero’s Journey … i.e.: to become fully human and realize yourself in all your magnificent splendor … most folks will pursue the urgent and trivial at the cost of the significant and substantial.

But, I persist because I have seen the difference that establishing the fundamental awareness and access to this way of being makes in every other moment of one’s life.

Instead of trying to “get somewhere” the basis of the work I do with clients is to have them stop where they are and experience themselves in this moment … fully, completely and with abandon.

This is difficult, I know.

To simply slow down enough to face yourself and come to the complex realization of where you are, how you and who you are in this moment … before rushing off to the next thing, or just proceeding to get on with your life.

However, all the accomplishments, achievements and accumulation of wealth and material success in your life will never satisfy you if you are missing this fundamental grounding in being fully , completely and with abandon present to yourself and your life as it is … right here, right now.

Then you can make the essential and substantive decisions you need to that will both satisfy your existential and ontological longings, giving your life meaning, purpose and direction … and, also ”get on with it”, knowing that where you are aiming yourself is a destination worth arriving at in the end.

Not having this one distinction in place keeps virtually everyone stuck without the hesitation, concern, worry, anxiety or fear that stops them from being able to “get on with it” … and create the life they desire and dream of for themselves, and those they care about and love.

Even when all the other pieces are seemingly in place, ignoring this crucial foundation for everything else will leave you at the top of having climbed the wrong ladder, and possibly with no way of getting back down to start over or the time left to do it if you could.

In fact, the greatest challenge is having enough success to dig in and fortify the position you’ve established, even when you sense that the peak you’re standing on isn’t one that serves you or those you truly care about and love.

Here’s the good news …

I’ve worked with enough folks, from 5 – 95, to know that remembering the deep call to life … your source code to living fully, completely and with abandon … is available to you regardless of where you find yourself standing today.

You may have to give up some of what you have, to get what you truly and deeply want, but the reward is worth the sacrifice every time.

The realization of yourself, and the potency of action that comes with that release, will allow you to build the significance and substance you desire in your life, both on your own and with others.

If you are ready there is a way …

“L’Chaim!” … it’s still ringing in my ears after all this time.

With grace and humility,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Architect & Designer of the MythoSelf Process and SomaSemantics

(On a snowy morning from) Parsippany, NJ

P.S.: If you’re interested in exploring experience Foolish Wisdom with me live in Lambertville, NJ, 2-days Live, Saturday & Sunday, 31 March/1 April (or join me for just one day on Saturday, 31 March).

Find out more: Foolish WisdomLet me know what you think otherwise in the comments below or by sending me a private message …

BUONA FORTUNA AND ABUNDAZA!