Students Crying In Your Sessions

I was within my sadness for over 6 months, yet my girlfriend at the time described my mood as “exquisite”. She loved being around me while I was in that state. What was she talking about!?! Yet, I had the same experience of me. It was exquisite to be there: I was with me, totally. I wasn’t going anywhere. This period was preceded by end of my drunkenness, when I finally made the decision to stop anaesthetising my Self with alcohol and plans for the future. I had been going to AA, watching John Bradshaw videos and reading Alice Miller - all of them conspiring to put me in touch with me. Interestingly, I also had my girlfriend. A partner for the first time in years. Hmmm. She loved my quietness, my deep inner silence, and so did I. My silence arose from being preoccupied by a conversation with me. A mediation on my heart, on who I was being in the moment of being it. And then something really odd started happing: students started to cry in my sessions. It had never happened before, and now it was happening all the time! Huh? It’s the Alexander principle: you can only lead others to the change you have made on your own first. The Space You Hold For An Opening Heart It can happen in your session - the student’s sudden evocation of a deeply held pattern that unravels in consequence of your interactive touch. How do you cope with this? What do you do when a student starts howling in a lesson, curls up in a corner, and shakes uncontrollable? You had not been trained to cope with this (so you say to your Self) but the truth of it is this: when it happens, it means you are ready for it to happen. You have become the creator of a space that allows a person’s past to unravel in your presence. Luckily, it won’t happen to you until you can hold that space, however clumsily you do so. It doesn’t matter about clumsy - this is about their need, your presence. Your students know, it’s worth trusting their process. Their system lets this happen in your presence because instinctively - if not consciously - they know it can, they know you will let it. And there are others who don’t need you for this, and they are fine too. So let them. You don’t need to counsel, you just need a box of tissues. You don’t need to speak, you just stay in the room. You don’t abdicate reality, you let them know when it's time to finish. One of my favourite expressions for this moment: it’s their chemical bath. Hormones are coursing through their system, producing water, emotion and healing. Let it happen. Be the witness. Hold the space, and end your session in your usual way.