If you’d like to tap your hidden super power, please join me for my upcoming event for therapists, depth practitioners, coaches, and workshop leaders, The Deepest Power. https://www.kimhermanson.com/events/
coaching
Listening to the Underworld
The Underworld is brilliantly intelligent and with this pandemic, it’s orchestrated so many good things. For most of my clients, they’ve silently yearned for some of these changes… less pressure on external appearances, more self care and focus, cooking meals as a family, working from home, solitude, less running around…
And aside from the lifestyle modifications, there’s been a deep, unmistakable shift in the direction of what’s genuinely important to them.
Most of us know our inner world is where true guidance and answers lie. But to really make that shift of focus? I guess many of us needed a pandemic.
The Underworld is ingenious, resourceful and wise… and NOW is the time to listen to it. In my upcoming seminar, you’ll have the chance to do that for yourself. If you work with clients, lead workshops or hold space for others, please join us.
For more information or to register: https://www.kimhermanson.com/events/
Radically Deepen Your Work Experiential Training
This Saturday April 28th, I’m offering a special 3-hour training tele-class for eco-oriented practitioners, therapists, coaches, healers, and change makers.
To REGISTER: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ef1wgxj2d9a8ac2d&oseq=&c=&ch=
NOTE: This event will be recorded. If you can’t attend, you can still sign up to receive the recording.
Radically Deepen Your Work: Experiential Training Teleclass for Eco-Oriented Therapists, Healers, & Coaches
Saturday April 28th 9:30 am – 12:30 pm PDT (12:30 pm EDT, 11:30 am CDT, 10:30 am MDT)
$48 includes audio recording
To register: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ef1wgxj2d9a8ac2d&oseq=&c=&ch=
This experiential, interactive seminar is for ecologically-oriented coaches, therapists, healers, workshop leaders and cultural change-makers who feel called to reconnect our cultural ways of knowing with the natural world.
“Radical” means to go to the roots. In this seminar, you’ll learn a method for connecting with shamanic earth energies that are under the surface of consciousness, and can’t be perceived in a traditional way. Participants may use this training to learn a practical technique, as well as inspiration and a foundation for developing their own unique methods and visionary work.
- tap into potent Source energy to launch & expand your work
- develop your own methodology for working in harmony with the earth and earth energies
- connect with inner guidance to clarify next steps
- refine and clarify the broader vision for your work
- connect with others who are collectively “pushing the wall”
While this training is oriented toward those who identify as eco-therapists or eco-psychologists, anyone who wishes to learn methods for deepening their connection with the natural world is welcome. If you identify with being part of the collective shift of consciousness and wish to engage with Other world energies in a visceral way, please join us. This is an opportunity to participate in a unique, low-cost training experience.
“Not since Carlos Castenada’s books 40 years ago, have I had such a strong reaction. Kim’s work is pioneering.” ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, New York Times bestselling author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Creating third space when you teach, train, coach or mentor
Third Space is one of the things that I find most captivating about teaching, or any other situation where a group of people come together for an intentional purpose. The philosopher Hannah Arendt called this space “an in-between,” theologians define it as a “Divine Third,” and Martin Buber called it “Thou.”
When we form a relationship with something that we care about, that thing is no longer an “It.” There is a depth that is present, a sense of mystery. We are in relation with something that is “other” and it’s clear that we don’t have all the answers, we can’t figure this out ahead of time. All we can do is put whatever we have to say out there, see what comes back, and use feedback to alter course. Working with other people in this way is a deeply creative process. (And this concept doesn’t just apply to teaching or mentoring, it applies to any meaningful relationship in your life.)
To honor the wisdom that is available in this third space we need to focus on creating space when we teach, train, coach or mentor. This is often hard to do because it’s counter-intuitive. When we are in a situation of teaching or leading others, it’s common to presume that our job is to “fill” the space with our agenda, information, and so on. But to honor the deeper wisdom that is present in the group or between individuals, we must focus on creating and holding a larger space. The agenda is always secondary in importance to that space.
Here are some other ideas (in no particular order) for inviting third space. They seem quite simple, and I think perhaps that’s the point…
1) Create a space for yourself to be inspired. Teaching is a creative process and in order to access third space, you need to be in your own creative flow. Go somewhere where you feel expansive, somewhere you can look out on a vista—climb a mountain, hike along ocean cliffs, and so on. Stay until you feel your heart open and can breathe this expansiveness back with you. In order to inspire others, you have to stay inspired yourself. It’s a process—you may lose it for awhile, it may shift, it may be buried under your fear, and if you’ve taught something several times, you may have to work a little harder to find it. But in order to touch others, you need to be present with what it is that moves your own heart.
2) Be more interested in what the people in your group have to say than in what you have to say. Even if you’re teaching something heavily content-oriented, like how to read CT scans in a Radiology department, your students have questions, concerns, and points of interest. These questions, concerns, and points of interest are important. What you have to say is not so important. Take yourself and your own opinions, thoughts, and beliefs out of the group. If you have something you really want them to know, hand it out as written material for them to read. Your job is to facilitate what wants to happen, which doesn’t have anything to do with you personally. In order to get to third space, you need to drop not only your ego, but all of your ideas, expectations and attitudes, and teach from a place of emptiness. The English philosopher Douglas Harding calls it being “headless.” Check out his website at www.headless.org. A friend of mine believes that if you can’t do your work when you’re headless, then it’s not your real work.
3) Have a sturdy structure that gives each person equal time to share. This may seem obvious, but I believe great teachers are really sensitive about this issue and some people are more sensitive than others. There are people in your group who are shy and need encouragement and if you structure the group in such a way that they have space to share, it’s amazing how frequently they will offer the situation something brilliant, something that shifts the entire group in a deeper, richer direction. Of course, don’t push people to share if they don’t want to. Rather, have a structure that naturally gives each person equal time. It’s not true that the people who appear to have the “loudest” process need the most space inside the group. There’s a fascinating article that Jo Freeman wrote back in the 1970s titled “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.” Freeman describes in detail how in groups that don’t have proper structure, the people who are more dominant (more educated, more assertive, more well-spoken, more extraverted, and so on…) will move in to “take up” the group space. Don’t let this happen. You will definitely transform the group process if you just follow this simple principle. Alan Briskin gives a great example in his book, The Power of Collective Wisdom. In his example, it is 1966 and Cesar Chavez is holding a large community meeting with the goal of figuring out a way to reach the workers at a farm labor camp where his fledgling United Farm Workers have been barred from entering. The meeting was almost over when an old woman in the back of the room finally stands and timidly says that she knows she is “not qualified” to speak, but she has a little idea to share. This woman’s idea was what they had been waiting for.
Teaching is a great paradox. We’ve been trained to think that it’s about “leading” others, or filling up people’s heads with what we know. A friend and I often joke about how it often seems like we haven’t done anything at all. He’ll say to me, “Sometimes after a particularly amazing group, they’ll thank each other, but not me.” John Heider wrote this about group facilitators in his book The Tao of Leadership: “…their leadership did not rest on technique or theatrics, but on silence and on their ability to pay attention…They were considerate. They did no injury. They were courteous and quiet, like guests.” To reach third space, we need to remember we are guests in this experience, along with our students. What an honor.
Tapping third space when you teach, train, coach or facilitate
When groups of any size come together for a shared purpose, there is a “third space” of larger wisdom available to draw upon, a wisdom that lies within the center of the group itself. Third space is a place of intuitive knowing, a realm that lies just beyond our ordinary, everyday rational intellectual capacities. In his book Stillness Speaks, Eckhart Tolle writes, “Most people confuse the Now with what happens in the Now, but that’s not what it is. The Now is deeper than what happens in it. It is the space in which it happens.”
Tolle is referring to third space, and we can tap into it when we teach, train, coach or facilitate.
If you are a teacher, trainer, coach or mentor, I would love to have you join me for this upcoming teleclass on Tuesday December 8th. (I know this is a busy time of year for all of us…. if you can’t attend the event you can still sign up to receive the recording!)
In this experiential teleclass, we will go underneath the tools, mechanics and content of what you teach or facilitate, to uncover the realm of profound wisdom that lies below it.
- Discover expanded possibilities for your teaching, coaching, facilitating
- Honor & draw upon the sacred wisdom in a room, conversation or group
- Move through blocks and teaching challenges more quickly
- Be present with others from a place of your own deep integrity
I’ve always been fascinated by the magic of group spaces—those times when the group enters spaces of deep wisdom and deep beauty. There’s something that happens in group energy that couldn’t happen any other way. Those magical moments give us a deep sense of meaning and connection, and are what we remember for the rest of our lives.
Join us for this introductory class and get a taste of what’s possible.
To register: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ebppwiqr6ef1ea9d&llr=67r4iomab