The Tao: A recipe for Balancing Life:

1. The Tao: A recipe for Balancing Life: Applying Principles of the Tao to Family Systems and Movement to Self-Regulate Emotional Distress & Trauma

2. Learning Objectives • How trauma and emotional distress affect the body. • What is Chi? How to use it in a restorative way. • What is the Tao? How its principles can be used to achieve balance through Qi Gong and Tai Chi. • What are the medical benefits? Improved awareness • How to use slow gentle movements to self regulate. • To integrate Mind/Body awareness and Systems theory in sessions to balance tensions of life.

3. Ways of Connecting to Self and Non-Self Moving into Present Oriented Focus Through: • Creativity • Body • Nature • Spiritual Practice

4. How Trauma and emotional distress affect the Body • Fight, Flight, Freeze instinct to protect. • Neuro Plasticity and the Vagus Nerve • Limbic system: hippocampus (Memory) shrinks, Amygdala- emotional, increased activity (Detects threat) • Autonomic nervous system • Stress Hormones: Cortisol release causing inflammation, Adrenaline, & Norepinephrine • Pre Frontal Cortex shrinks including (anterior cingulate) • Imbalances Right and Left Brain, Movement rebalances

5. What is Qi or Chi? • Energy of which all things are made. Life Force. • Formless, Desireless and existed before heaven and earth. • Physical body is densest aspect of life force. • There are more subtle aspects of spectrum where the the life force is less dense. Ie. Body is comprised of several systems. • Chi exists at the Quantum level. ie. Bio-electric energy, Radiation, Dreams. • There is healthy Qi, (nature) and unhealthy Qi, (pollution).

6. Levels of Density Thoughts: Cognitive from top down Feelings: Emotional reaction from thoughts Sensations: Manifest in the body. Body is a container. Quality: Ties the emotion to Sensation. Visceral Meridians: Channels of energy flow in the body Chakras: Seven Energy Centers in the Body The body has wisdom the mind does not know.

7. What is the Tao? • Roughly described as “The Way of Nature.” • Based on the interactions of 5 Elements of Nature • Not readily definable but Describable. • Tao is a concept to describe something that goes beyond our capability to define. How do you define God? Abstract. • Beyond human logic. Along with reasoning, Intuition needs to be accessed, to live in harmony with nature. • It is the original Principal that underlies everything from creation of galaxies to interaction of human beings.

8. Five Elements Theory • A Chinese philosophy used to describe interactions and relationships between things. 770-476 BC • Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water are believed to be the fundament elements of everything between which interactions occur. • Generating processes - promote development. Overcoming processes - control development. By promoting and restraining, systems are harmonized and balance is maintained. These are Complementary processes –Yin Yang of 5 Elements

9. Interaction of 5 Elements • Generating Interactions: Fueling, Forming, Containing, Carrying, and Feeding. • Wood fuels fire, fire forms earth (volcanoes, ash), Earth contains metal, (pipes), Metal carries water, water feeds wood, (trees, plants etc). • Overcoming Interactions: Melting, Penetrating, Separating, Absorbing, and Quenching. • Fire melts metal, metal penetrates wood, wood separates earth, Earth absorbs water, water quenches fire.

10. Origin of the Tao • Originated in China - 400 BC • First described by Lao Tzu: Tao De Jing • Means: The Cannon of the Way and Virtue • A collection of philosophical, mystical poems. Emanating from the I Ching, Qi Gong, and Tai Chi. • Readings from the Tao De Jing

11. Philosophy of the Tao • Be in harmony not in rebellion with fundamental laws of the universe, (Natural order of things) • Explore your essence: Be peaceful and adaptive. • A system of beliefs, attitudes and practices set towards the service and living to a person’s own true nature. (The authentic self vs. false self) • Forcing, exploiting and manipulating by being over aggressive leads to imbalance. The ego can subvert the body and knowledge can interfere with the wisdom of the body. The mind is not always conscious of what the body knows.

12. Finding your Balance • Learn how to trust your intuition. Discovering and living in harmony with one’s true nature. • Let go of judgments and expectations • Remove conflict and anger by path of least resistance. Water as a metaphor by redirecting your energy. • Be kind to yourself and pace your life to match your essence. Balancing your needs and needs of others. • Connect to those outside my nature with decisive action. To those unwilling to accept me for my true nature, no action is required.

13. What is Qi Gong?Working with the body • Qi Gong means cultivating Chi energy and exchanging it with the environment through soft, gentle, and slow movements. • Came from China about 2500 years ago. • Origin from I Ching: The Book of Changes References Yin Yang 2200 BC • Movements were inspired by animals. A moving meditation. • Maintaining balance for a growth in the human condition. • Starts from Stillness (Wuji). A unity moving into effortless doing (Wu Wei) integrating the movement in the body as a whole in every move, balancing both sides of body.

14. What is Yin Yang Theory • Tai Chi is the natural pivotal force or energy that makes the Wuji state of wholeness divide into the Yin and Yang and also causes the Yin and Yang to reunite to the state of Wuji. • The theory of opposites. Tai Chi is the unity point between heaven and earth, i.e. Energy splits when action or movement starts into positive and negative energy. Male and female, hot and cold, soft & hard. Interactive process. • From motion, the body must separate into positive and negative energy, a split. Qi Gong and Tai Chi focuses the mind solely on the movements to bring about a state of mental calmness and clarity.

15. The Symbol • Male (active) and Female (passive) energy. • Alan Watts. “It is through difference and through every variety of differentiation that unity is discovered.” Yin Yang theory is at the heart of the Tao. The crossing point to Family Systems theory. • The symbol shows the decrease and increase in opposing energies and how these energies blend to be one and maintain the balance of nature. • Objective in Qi Gong and Tai Chi is to balance the emotional mind and rational mind, the polarities of life through the practice, working with physical balance.

16. Tai Chi Symbol

17. Medical BenefitsRestoring health • Improved circulation – lowers blood pressure. Move Chi energy around the body for healing. • Recovery from: Heart disease, strokes, back pain, Parkinson's, Fibromyalgia, Diabetes, Shingles, anxiety, depression ,PTSD, addiction recovery, asthma, sleep problems, stress management by discharging tension. • Burns calories, detoxifies organs, opens blocked chakras and meridians using breath and containing of Qi through balancing the energy on both sides of the body. Reduces withdrawal symptoms, Resilience to prevent burnout. • Improves flexibility, physical balance and lubricates joints.

18. Daoist Alchemy: Healing the self • Developing mindfulness integrating mind and body through redirecting thoughts to the body sensations of movement and breath stimulating parasympathetic nervous system. • The cultivation process for spiritual enlightenment: • By regulating breath, the emotional mind can reach calmness, then the rational mind can comprehend, the conscious mind is clear, the awareness is bright, leading to a stage of self–awakening of human nature, building a connection with the natural spirit, and reaching a unification of heaven and human. Dr. Yang, Jwing Ming

19. Self-regulating emotional and somatic distress using Qi Gong • Accessing the Qi energy at the Dan Tien using deep abdominal and diaphragmatic breathing. Qi flow follows the mind. • How to circulate it. Applies Yin Yang theory to movement. • Balance right and left sides of body and the brain by, connecting upper and lower, and front and back of the body. Focus on Central equilibrium. • A moving meditation. Improves awareness, harmony and understanding. Using body awareness to balance external and internal focus. How to use body awareness in your therapy practice? Ie. Posture, and breath. • Activate the witness and deactivate the judge to enhance the practice. Balances top down thoughts with bottom up sensations to access intuition to counteract fear and restore equilibrium. Let’s try some movements.

20. What is Tai Chi? • Means “Grand Ultimate” – A martial art form done in slow motion for health restoration purposes. • Develops self-awareness, self acceptance, and self-assertion. Improves muscle memory, and self-compassion. A series of connected moves. • Uses the soft against the hard to redirect energy. • Improvesawareness, balance, alignment, & breath. • Through slow gentle movements that are done without tension in the body.

21. Somatic ExperiencingPeter Levine • Felt Sense: Integrates awareness to moving sensation • Pendulation: A technique of shifting awareness like a pendulum between one “felt sense” and another, between positive and negative, contraction and expansion, and regulation and dysregulation. • Titration: Works with one feeling at a time to prevent overload. Sensations are perpetuated by fears by re-experiencing the original trauma. • Uncoupling fear from mobility: Help clients experience the physical sensations without fear, leading from immobility to discharging of immobility.

22. Balancing Family Systems Bowenian concepts • Emotional Fusion: A person with low level of differentiation between that person and a member of the family, due to a lack of interpersonal boundaries. They need to seek validation from others. Ie. Co-dependent. • Differentiation: Maintaining individuality as well as emotional contact with others when handling stress and anxiety. Equal value between self and other. • Emotional Triangles: Two sides in harmony and one side in conflict to relieve anxiety. i.e. a go between.

23. Other Imbalances in Family Systems • Emotional cutoffs: Unfinished business from family of origin can put more stress on current family relationships. • Family projection process: Transmission of anxiety, relational problems and emotional concerns to a child that has been triangulated. Recreates the familiar. • Sibling position: ex; Middle child syndrome, specific roles, parental responsibility by eldest, youngest being rebellious. • Nuclear family emotional process: Partner conflict, problem behaviors with one partner, emotional distance, impaired functioning in children, and serious illness all create imbalance.

24. Balance in Other Family System Approaches • Structural Family Therapy: Identifying family relationships, behaviors and patterns as they are exhibited in sessions to evaluate subsystems and family structure, assessing imbalance in the room. Enactments. • Strategic Family Therapy: Paradoxical interventions redirects energy towards the opposite. Moving towards fear instead of away from it. Reframing to collapse the story. How does the client explain it? • Intergenerational Family Therapy: Looking at patterns for insight Repeating the familiar vs. over-compensating. • Erik Erikson: 8 Stages of Psychosocial Development: Trust vs. Mistrust, Autonomy vs. Shame, Initiative vs. Guilt, Industry vs. Inferiority, Identity vs. Role Confusion, Intimacy vs. Isolation, Generativity vs. Stagnation,Ego Integrity vs. Despair

25. Applying Balance in other Therapeutic Models • Cybernetics: Systems that include feedback loops. Cause/effect, action and reaction. • Systems Theory: Self regulating systems, self correcting, through feedback. Found in nature, ex: physiological systems in body, and ecosystems. • Gestalt: The sum is other than the sum of its parts. Two alternative interpretations. Reproductive-thinking based on past. Productive thinking- based on insight, unplanned responses to environmental interactions. “New Procedural thoughts and Habits” Pat Ogden

26. Applying Balance in Other Therapeutic Models • Internal Family Systems: Richard Schwartz - Balance intra-psychic with interpersonal. Balance parts of the self using roles. Separating the inner critic, managers, protectors, firefighters and exiles (vulnerable parts that have been shamed). Integrating and harmonizing parts of the self. • Martin Buber’s “I and Thou”. Nagy’s Contextual Therapy of balancing give and take. Multi-directed partiality. • Balancing Pursuer/Distancer dynamic. • Balancing Master Conflicts: (Stephen Betchen)

27. Therapeutic tools to rebalance • Validate what isn’t working and explore what has been maintaining it. How they can redirect their energy. Whose problem is it? What has worked? • Role play as opposites in couples work for insight. • Witnessing others through curiosity without reacting by regulating the body’s reaction to emotional distress. Identify body sensations. • Move towards fear instead of away from it. Redirecting energy towards the desired outcome.

28. Interdependence • Thich Nhat Hanh: Looking deeply to what is visible and what is not. Breathing into the present moment • Everything comes into being as a consequence of multiple causes and conditions. • Invest in the loss to learn what doesn’t work. • A part of humility can lead to what does work. • What is not wrong? Is that noticeable? • Encouragement vs. Discouragement

29. Compassion TrainingThupten Jinpa PhD • “Understanding through hearing, seeing. Balancing understanding through active listening, and assumptions.” (Witness) From: “A Fearless Heart.” • “Continue contemplating the knowledge getting to critical reflection by first soothing emotional distress, to further process and integrate to our larger body of knowledge supported by conviction.” • “Understanding derived through meditative experience by internalizing our understanding to the point it becomes effortless, experiential, cognitive, to embodied spontaneous knowledge”. i.e. a part of us.

30. Tonglen • Breath in pain and suffering from others and breathe out love, compassion and happiness to them. Giving our virtues and happiness to another and to accept in exchange all their pain and suffering. Extending this from our partner to our enemies. • Metta Meditations: Pema Chodran – “Locate intensely loving feeling toward yourself and apply toward a valued other.” • Meditation

31. Suggested Reading MontakChia, (1989), Taoist Way to Transform Stress into Vitality. Healing Tao Books, Huntington NY. Hyai Chi Nan, Translated by Wen Kuan Chu PhD. 1984, Tao and Longevity- Mind Body Transformation. Samuel Weiser Inc., York Beach, ME. Gad Lev Golan Levy, 1968, The Key to Qi. Life Motion, St. Ives, NSW 2075, Australia. ThichNhatHanh, 1992, Peace Is Every Step Bantam Books, NY, NY. Benjamin Huff, 1983, The Tao of Pooh, Penguin Publishing Group, NY, NY ThuptenJinpa, PhD., 2015, A Fearless Heart Penguin Random House LLC. NY,NY. WaysunLiao, Compiled with Commentary,1990, Tai Chi Classics, Shambhala Publications. Boston ,MA.

32. Bibliography Alexander Lowen, 1994, Bioenergetics. Penguin Books Ltd. London, England. Pat Ogden, Kekuni Minton, Clare Pain, 2006, Trauma and the Body, WWNorton & Co. Lao Tzu, 1993, Tao Te Ching A New translation by Man-Ho Kwok, Martin Palmer and Jay Ramsey. Compilation Element Books Ltd. 1994, Barnes & Noble. Bessel Van derKolk, 2015, The Body Keeps the Score. Penquin Publishing, Group, NY, NY. Alan Watts, 2002 Taoism: Way Beyond Seeking. Tuttle Publishing. North Clarendon VT 

33. Contact Information • Ray Blume, MA, LMFT, APM • E Mail: Artson5@AOL.com • Web Site: Familymediationandcounseling.net