Sekhem: Feeling, Expression, and Rest After an Opening

Sharing: Feeling What Arises in the Group

Being ready to let something move through means being ready to let it go. Allow time for the process and for integration. If a process continues beyond a planned break, take the time needed rather than becoming anxious about the schedule.

Group work is a shared effort. Everyone helps and supports one another. Sometimes the feelings moving through the group can be felt by others, and the group energy can affect an individual.

To make the most of the work, whatever is being felt, imagine that it is yours. This is an invitation to explore, not a declaration about where the feeling originated. It is easy to feel anxiety in a room and conclude that someone else is holding on to something. Imagining that the anxiety is your own gives you an opportunity to reach your own feelings.

Sensitivity and What Is Held Within

This work often attracts very empathic people. An empath is someone who is highly sensitive and can feel what others are feeling. Within this teaching, that heightened sensitivity is often connected with things that have happened in the past.

Rather than deciding that a feeling belongs to someone else, feel into the possibility that it is yours. That shift can make your own material accessible.

An example from Patrick Zeigler’s work concerns someone who found busy public places overwhelming and described other people’s energy as too dark. The response was to find and release what was being held within. Other people’s material may then become less disturbing, because it becomes clear that everyone carries things of their own.

The movement is away from judging other people and toward feeling. It is not only other people who have something to work through. Everyone does.

In this process, nausea is treated as a sign that something may be coming through. A bucket can be kept nearby. Particular attention is given to the solar plexus, the power center, where there may be holding. Let what is coming arise.

Following Fear to the Younger Self

As one person enters a process, others can participate by feeling what is arising as their own material too. Breathe it in and enter the feeling. Each person still has their own process. Physical holding may not be helpful when it draws someone away from that.

The inquiry begins with the fear that is actually present. In this process, the response to the question about the greatest fear was “not being enough.” The next movement was to feel that directly and explore the person connected with that program.

Sharing: The feeling of not being enough was connected with a caregiver and an early childhood experience.

From there, the inquiry followed the timeline to the age at which the feeling was present. The instruction was to become that younger self in imagination, breathe into the feeling and feel the caregiver’s presence.

The question then became what the younger self wanted to say. “It wasn’t my fault” led to a more specific inquiry about what was not their fault.

Sharing: The caregiver’s anger was not the child’s fault. The remembered words were “Shame on you.”

Breathe into the feeling those words bring. In this process, the next feeling was sadness. Go into the sadness and let it have a tear. The invitation extends to everyone participating, not only the person at the center.

The words “I deserve better” were offered as the process continued.

Sharing: There was a wish not to remain a frightened child, but to feel beautiful.