The Inevitable
The Association for Hanna Somatic Education is the organization formally responsible for mainstreaming Hanna Somatic Education. How is it doing?
There is no Association for Hanna Somatic Education “out there”. The Association has its home in and as we, ourselves.
THE POTENCIES NEEDED TO MAINSTREAM SOMATICS
To “mainstream” somatics, we need four “potencies”*:
- integrity
- relationships
- communication that inspires people’s sense that something is possible and do-able
- persistent action (attention and intention)
First potency: integrity
Integrity isn’t honesty. Integrity is stable wholeness and completeness — what makes a collection of parts into something organized that produces an intended result. When we have integrity, we are pleased to be seen. We’re “playing with a full deck” — complete, competent, proficient. We have the fortitude to be honest. Without integrity, we’re too shaky to be honest, particularly where it counts — in cleaning up messes and dysfunctional situations — and we’re incapable of living up to our promises. Integrity is an essential principle that allows something to live.
Integrity is the nature of the second potency:
Second potency: relationships
We operate as relationships of all sorts. We connect. We cooperate. We get results. We share the benefits.
Relationships are resources. Relationships are the recipients of our gifts and abilities. Until we forge and activate relationships, we’re left only with our own resources and stay small.
Relationships are the setting for the third potency:
Third potency: communication of the advantageous possibilities
Communication isn’t, “talking to people.” Talking isn’t communication. Communication happens when someone internalizes what we mean to put across — and when we internalize what someone else puts across. Communication is the outer form of the intentions we are exercising.
When we’re in communication, people:
- Trust our integrity — so they listen and internalize
- Treat the advantageous possibilities we’re talking about as something new and unique — so they listen with fresh attention, rather than pigeon-hole what we say with what they already know. (“Is it like chiropractic?”…)
- Feel these new possibilities as something they can partake in.
- Recognize and be inspired (so they are drawn into enthusiastic action).
When others communicate with us, we experience the magic of another viewpoint that may alter and expand our own viewpoint and our potency for change.
Communication is the feedback look that connects us in the fourth potency:
Fourth potency: persistent action (directed attention and exercise of intention)
That means, do what Thomas Hanna personally told me to do, “Be relentless.”
“Relentlessnes” may mean, to communicate relentlessly until we get the desired result; to develop relentlessly so we can walk our talk (be the result we promise to others) and deliver results to others; to take steps to “mainstream” somatics (the proper mission of the AHSE) until it happens; to “Keep our eyes on the prize”, taking whatever steps necessary to stay on or to get back on track.
So, to have a chance to succeed, we need to enhance and exercise our integrity (both individually and as a group), connect, communicate and persistently take action — relentlessly, in mood of, “success is the only acceptable outcome.
How does that feel?
Here’s the juicy part: As we further our purpose, the energy we get back fuels us.
What We Can Do
- Discover and enhance our power by finding (creating) these four potencies in ourselves.
- Discover the resources we have to tap into the juicy flow that allows Somatics to tap into the world-culture — the five cultural streams, our own clients, our own abilities.
- Communicate
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* credit to The Landmark Forum-in-Action Seminar