I am on fire about this topic and there aren’t too many things I get fired up about, so if I am more direct than usual, that’s why…. This fire deep in my belly arose after a potential client asked, “When does it not work?” I clarified by asking, “Do you mean the journey experience itself or after?” “After,” he said. Without hesitation, I shared, “When clients don’t do their integration work.”
A journey on its own can be a breakthrough experience; however, it only becomes truly transformative when it’s been integrated and informs a client’s behavior and actions. When a client interprets what they received and allows it to inform their choices with conscious intention, then it goes beyond just an experience. A friend in this space has called this “innerstanding”, which aptly captures how integration is about inhabiting the space within and living into it.
As Dr. John Churchill said in his recent podcast with Aubrey Marcus, post journey, we want to move from “state to trait development” and evolve our ego development, which requires integration. Otherwise, it’s just an experience like going to the amusement park; it may be entertaining, thrilling or even frightening, but it doesn’t change your life. If you want an illuminating and transformative experience, you need to innerstand and integrate what you received.
Not surprisingly, most clients do not know how to do this on their own. A few may because they have done some deep inner work already; others, with integration support, can find their way; and the rest, who choose not to receive or ask for support, are left wandering in the space of un-integration–where they go back to exactly the way they were–or even disintegration–where they can’t go back because they have let go of old patterns (come undone) and do not know how to consciously create the new patterns they want to live into on their own.
So, not only is a journey guide necessary to the actual experience, integration coaching as part of the overall process is vital. This is why my sessions include an integration call after always. Now, not every client chooses to have the call, which is where things can get tricky for them.
Integration involves not just capturing the experience in some way through voice memos, journaling, drawing and reflection; it is a deep exploratory and discovery process that requires decoding, translation and analysis to fully receive, understand and live into what has been “communicated.”
The reason it requires this level of under/innerstanding is that while the language of the experience can be almost glaringly truthful, it is not always so literal and direct. Sometimes, tricksterism may even be involved, where the message may be deeper than first thought or even inverted. Our plant allies can be jokesters and have a robust sense of humor!
Just like in a dream, your experience may involve symbolism and imagery, metaphor and archetypes, shadow aspects, and even word play. Nothing may be exactly as it seems and requires translation. Most clients don’t know what they don’t know.
The pitfalls of not going deeper and not fully understanding the message can show up in a myriad of ways: 1) nothing changes even though that’s what the client desired in their intention, 2) stuff shows up (usually as triggers) that the client does not know what to do with and falls back into old reactive behaviors, 3) the ego (or spiritual ego) gets inflated and behavior driven by that inflation creates disturbances in their life, seemingly out of their control. Without conscious practices, integration coaching and tools, life can get old and messy pretty quickly.
My co-facilitators and I are realizing more and more the vital importance and impact of pre and post inner work on healing/therapeutic outcomes. More soon on the supportive pathways and practices we’re going to be sharing.
©Soulscape Coaching LLC