What is the reciprocal field?

Whether as social beings, creative beings, problem-solving beings, or spiritual beings, human beings function within a reciprocal field of relationship -- a field of interaction, cooperation, give and take, and mutual recognition. Our highest brain centers govern not only our advanced cognitive abilities, but also our most advanced social and cooperative capacities, including insight, empathy, compassion, attuned communication, and emotional balance -- enabling us to thrive in the reciprocal field. The aspects of our inner self-system are also in a reciprocal rela- tionship with each other, seeking integration and harmony. We call that inner integration integrity. Healthy reciprocity promotes the development of healthy integrity; and our inner integrity, in turn, contributes to the integrity of the outer reciprocal field.

What do we mean by mastery?

As children we may grow and learn within a reciprocal field that, depending on the attunement and emotional health of our caregivers, either models or fails to model healthy reciprocity; and that either nourishes or compromises a healthy sense of ourselves and of our own capacity for maintaining integrity and reciprocity. Our culture as a whole also offers little priority, and poor models, for developing healthy integrity, reciprocity, or authentic communication skills. As adults, we can learn to take responsibility for over-coming our deficits; and for learning new skills that nourish our own integrity and that of the reciprocal field around us. It is a skill building in which we consciously master a re-circuiting and a strengthening of the neural pathways required for wholeness of presence. To "master" the reciprocal field means learning to be at home in that field by mastering the inner spaciousness, self-knowledge, and confidence that enables a balanced and attuned availability, and a skillful responsiveness, to its demands and opportunities.

Who is this training for?

This training is suitable and recommended for any and all community groups, clubs, business- es, schools, and the Congress of the United States. And for any who are intrigued, motivated, or inspired to strengthen their personal skills, and to deepen a satisfying and well functioning connection to their own selves and to those around them.

What does this training offer?

This series of one day training workshops targets three essential areas of integration, healing, and skill building. Together they contribute to the health, integrity, reciprocity, and effective- ness of our work relationships, of our learning relationships, of our most personal relationships, and even of our relationship to ourselves. Either we are learning to strengthen the brain circuitry that makes us more conscious, present, and responsive or we are relying on old circuitry that leaves us more automatic and reactive. "Conscious, present, and responsive" is not only more skillful and effective, it also leads to a more satisfying experience of ourselves.

Week One: Attuned Attention and Mindful Integration: The pre-frontal cortex of the brain mediates all our higher integrative functions, including non-reactive awareness, attentive presence, insight, empathy, balanced responsiveness, and attuned communication. Hence each of these sessions will help to strengthen the neural pathways of the pre-frontal cortex -- and hence each of these capacities -- in tandem. As a start, developing a modicum of mindful control or choice of focus in the use of our attention is fundamental to conscious self-development and self-integration. It begins to grant us freedom over our past conditioning, chronic distraction, and automatic reactions. The exercises on day one will support and exercise our mindful attention and awareness. And we will practice attuning our awareness to a deeper coherence of body, mind and emotions.

Week Two: Attuned Compassion and Heartful Integration: In week two we will learn more about the heart as an organ of harmony and reciprocity. The heart's coherent functioning -- both physiologically and spiritually -- contributes to a sense of well-being, unity, and compassionate presence. However, the influence of our reactive fear and stress programming, and mental and emotional negativity, creates an incoherence in the energetic field of the heart, which reinforces a sense of disconnection and absence of well-being. In this session we will learn to integrate the heart into our optimum functioning. We will explore and practice exercises that nourish the positive coherence of the heart, and that empower and make the best use of its capacity to heal and to contribute to the healthy maintenance of the reciprocal field.

Week Three: Attuned Communication and Mutual Integration: Our practices in week one and week two contribute to the skills we are developing in week three. The attuned   awareness of the prefrontal cortex acting in consort with the harmonious energy field of the heart contributes to a state of presence -- characterized by a sense of “wholeness” of self, and an availability to our own feelings and perceptions, simultaneously with a simple receptivity and availability to the presence of others, and a capacity to appreciate and support their wholeness and integrity. In other words, it is learning to master the unified field of integrity and reciprocity.

Thus the state of presence is also the foundation for truly authentic, attuned, functional, and non-reactive communication: communication that is dedicated to a genuine exchange of information with another, or to the desire to genuinely know or be known by another, without the interfering agendas or dysfunctions of attack, defense, judgment, 'rightness,' manipulation, or distortion. The foundations and guidelines of authentic communication can be taught as an extension of the practice of presence. Conversely, the practice of authentic communication contributes to the growth of presence. This is the ideal win-win, or reciprocity, of human relationships.

Week Four: Overall Integration, Practice, and Review: We have boiled an extensive training down to its essential elements to make it more accessible to a wider number of people. Obviously, the skills learned in our earlier sessions must be practiced and reinforced over time. But our fourth session gives us an opportunity for practice, review, and the further integration of all the elements. It is also meant to reinforce the safe environment, cohesion, and reciprocity within the group, so that all participants may best serve and reinforce each others' ongoing practice. Extended training and practice programs are also available.

Contact us and let us know of your interest and needs.