Somatic Emotional Clearing: A Unique Blend of Transpersonal and Somatic Psychology: Foundation Talk with Bruce Burger

Transformational Therapy: Energy Medicine with Bruce Burger, MA, BCPP

Burger’s Evolutionary Model offers a unique synthesis of Transpersonal and Somatic Psychology. From a Transpersonal perspective each individual is is nothing less that the personification of an instant of the unfolding of the creative potential of Being. Each life sacred, as the cutting edge of the unfolding of the creative expression of The Cosmos. Each being a temporal expression of the sacred and eternal mystery of Life and consciousness. Burger calls this an Evolutionary Perspective, as the dharma (the place in creation) of each being is to be present in their unique expression of the evolution of the Life Universal. Trauma Defined When the psycho-physical body is overwhelmed by an experience, it contracts in reaction and resists being present in the experience. Trauma describes a state where the bodies resources for integrating an experience have been overwhelmed and the body has contracted to the extent that the being is not present in the bodily experience. Trauma can be cleared by simply facilitating the experience that it's safe to be present in the body. Trauma does not have to be experienced emotionally or dealt with cognitively. The being simply needs to experience that it's safe to breathe, safe to feel, safe to be fully present in their body to clear trauma. We are mammals. As mammals our nervous systems have been dealing with trauma for hundreds of millions of years. Long before the neo-cortex, and cognitive processes or limbic system and emotional processes appeared in evolution mammals had evolved a nervous system capable of rapidly apprehending and reacting to experience. Our apparatus for apprehending and dealing with shock, stress and trauma is primordial and a level sui generous in the body/mind and independent of cognitive or emotional processes. Psychological techniques which focus on the mind and emotions are ineffective in dealing with shock and trauma. Profoundly meaningful, rapid, and lasting psychological changes are safely and easily achieved by facilitating the client’s experience that it is safe to be present in the body. Transpersonal Psychology understands Presence as the Divine Intelligence which underlies all life sustaining homeostatic processes in the body, nature and the cosmos. In the microcosm of the body this intelligence is experienced as lucidity, cogniscence, awareness, presence. Traditionally this presence is called “The Self”, “Atman”, or “Sat Purusha” and is understood to be omnipresent in the universal life. The Foundations of Somatic Psychology The work of Dr Eugene Gendlin and Dr Peter Levine reveals that trauma is held on a primordial level of the body which they labeled "The Felt Sense". The felt sense is the bodies way of registering and holding, experience. The bodies way of learning that is independent of the mind and emotions. The felt sense directly experiences its environment. Its experience is not filtered through the senses or the mind. The mind and emotions react through the senses but have no direct access to experience. The felt sense registers the experience of the totality of the body to its environment. The felt sense is in touch with the body as a field of energy, and registers changes in the field as it interacts with the energies around it. On molecular and cellular levels its valuable to realize that the body is a field of universal intelligence and intelligence only! The bodily language of the felt sense is sensation. The body reacts to its environment energetically. It contracts, expands, is disturbed or nourished in every moment by the totality of energetic forces in its environment. In an Evolutionary approach to Somatic Psychology the facilitator holds a safe space: 1) Respecting the client as the cutting edge of the unfolding of the evolution of the cosmos, their life a sacred evolutionary journey. 2) The clients head is cradled in in our Quiet Mind Cradle (aka 10th cranial cradle) with index fingers paralleling the spinal accesso