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Organic Intelligence®
"Post-Trauma Growth"
"The Job is Enjoyment"
"Better is Better"
"Healing is possible"
Organic Intelligence (OI) is a clinical approach that utilizes positive psychology, complex systems theory, mindfulness and somatic awareness to regulate the nervous system and alleviate symptoms related to stress, trauma and PTSD. This looks like a free association conversation or an easeful discussion, guided by the practitioner to trend your physiology towards regulation. Some tools used are attunement, differentiating questions, positive reflection, somatic inquiry, body-scans and orientation.
What is Trauma?
When people experience a traumatic event a self-protective response kicks in to ensure survival. When this response does not shut off, we end up with a host of uncomfortable symptoms, i.e stress, anxiety, depression, digestion issues, PTSD and more.
How do we feel better?
We are often told that we need to face our feelings in order to be free of them, but if we don’t have the capacity to be with our feelings that advice can lead us to overwhelm. There is a crucial step before being with our feelings and that is regulating our nervous system. Regulation means creating more capacity in the nervous system so that it can be resilient in response to triggers instead of reactive.
How do we regulate our nervous system?
If our body is chronically in a state of survival, it is constantly looking for danger and therefore leans towards a more negative perspective on life.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why is this happening to me?”
These thoughts are coming from the survival response expecting danger. The key to nervous system regulation is presence and ease. Using mindfulness to let the body know it is here NOW where it is safe. We don’t need to dig through our past to heal, and in fact that may cause further discomfort. What we need is to regulate our body so we can have a clearer perspective to view the world from, and have the capacity to allow healing to happen.
How Organic Intelligence Works
The grounding belief in Organic Intelligence (OI) is that your body knows how and wants to heal. As a practitioner, I am looking to reflect your wholeness back to you. Emphasizing moments of presence and clarity. Highlighting what's right instead of what's wrong in order to help shift the system in a more regulating and positive direction.
Where attention goes, energy flows.
What we focus on, we feed.
Often in healing we are trying to fix or change things we don't like about ourselves. In OI, we learn that the focus on the problem IS the problem – a negative perspective that only allows us to see what is wrong and dangerous in the world. It's like looking at a rose and only seeing the thorns. We miss out on so much beauty and part of reality is lost to us. Instead, with OI, we slowly begin to shift the attention towards the support and stability that is already there inside and around us. This creates a solid foundation that allows healing to happen naturally.
A common concern may be that this approach is neglecting "the problem" or avoids facing hard feelings, but we have so much practice focusing on the negative and it isn't the whole picture. It can feel scary to start focusing on what feels good when we've felt bad for so long. There is familiarity in the discomfort. It takes trust to let go of the attention to what's wrong and look at what we find interesting and pleasurable. As we shift our attention to what's right, we send signals to our physiology that we are safe and okay. This allows our system to access rest and digest mode, where the real healing happens. Once we have strengthened our positive attention muscle, then we can look at challenging things that have or are happening to us and see more than pain. Now there may be an opportunity to grow, or allow the challenging feelings to move through without alarm. So much more growth and healing can happen when we can hold both the comfort and the discomfort. True healing to me is not the end of challenge and discomfort, but how easily we can come back to ourselves, back to center, when the hard things happen.