Compassionate Inquiryâ Module One

Presence, Safety, Attunement

Module One: Gabor’s Teachings ........................................................................................................................ 2

The Origin of Compassionate Inquiry .............................................................................................................. 2
The Simplistic View ......................................................................................................................................... 3
The Purpose of Therapy .................................................................................................................................. 3
Our Minds Create the World ........................................................................................................................... 5
Three Perspectives.............................................................................................................................................. 7
My Mother’s Diaries ........................................................................................................................................... 8
Three Levels of Knowledge ............................................................................................................................. 8
Knowing the Truth .............................................................................................................................................. 9
Knowing Through the Intellect, Heart and Gut Feelings ..................................................................................... 9
Safety and the Nervous System....................................................................................................................... 9
How to Work with Dissociation ........................................................................................................................ 10
Co-Creation of Safety ........................................................................................................................................ 11
Safety, Social Engagement and Learning ....................................................................................................... 12
Interpersonal Neuro-Biology ......................................................................................................................... 13
All Our Relations ........................................................................................................................................... 14
The Power of the Group ................................................................................................................................ 15
Who Are You as a Therapist? ........................................................................................................................ 15

Ó Dr. Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur ND, Feb 2021 compassionateinquiry.com 1
 Module One: Gabor’s Teachings

The Origin of Compassionate Inquiry

When Michael and Sat Dharam first proposed this workshop, I was reluctant, because truly, I had never
developed a systematic construct of what it is I happen to do. I never thought about what I do. I just do it. They
said "Yeah there's something to teach, come and do it". I'm not exaggerating or joking, but I was hoping that
nobody would show up so that I wouldn't have to expose my ignorance. Needless to say, 350 people showed up,
with a hundred people on the waiting list. We did it and it actually worked. Since then we’ve done this a number
of times with lots of people. It was because of Sat Dharam’s encouragement, and she’s also the one who helps to
organize this course, so you’ll see me standing up here doing most of the talking, but behind it, the connective
tissue, and the overall vision, is really provided by my friend Sat Dharam.
For those of you who are trained formally, you might have certain methods and structures and a
framework in which you do your work, and you might follow that and improvise as needed. But I have always just
improvised.
The truth is, I have never had a stitch of training in therapy – I have never been to a class, taken a course,
anything like that. I've read lots of books, I've done a lot of work, but it's pretty much all spontaneous. The reason
I had got into therapy in the first place, was because, as a family physician, I began to notice, that whether I was
dealing with physical illness or mental illness or people’s problems, there was always a component to it that was
unconscious. Whether it was chronic fatigue, cancer, colitis, multiple sclerosis, depression, anxiety, ADHD - these
all related to the psychological dynamics of a person's life. You couldn't separate the mind from the body when
addressing human illness. The causation of physical or mental illness or any human dysfunction, was largely due
to unconscious dynamics.
Carl Jung said that if something is unconscious and runs your life, basically you would just call it fate. Until
you make it conscious you are going to call it fate. A lot of people think that things just happen to them, and I got
this disease for no reason at all, or certain patterns in my life are recurring that are not working for me but it’s
just my bad luck. There’s something wrong with me, or there is something wrong with the world – basically
people come in, probably to your office as well, saying, “either there is something wrong with me, or there is
something wrong with the world.” I began to see that there are patterns here, there are dynamics, there are
causations, and I came to that conclusion not only because of what I observed in my clients, and my patients, but
also because of what was happening in my own life.
I either had to accept that life is just a miserable vale of tears that we have to get through, or I had to
start thinking about what it was that was driving me so much in certain directions, without any intention on my
part. When it comes to people’s psychological or emotional issues, medicine is really lost. Because if I had to look
for a gynecologist, neurologist or cardiologist to refer my clients to, I could always do that and confidently find
someone who could do the work. But when it came to people’s emotional issues and unconscious dynamics,
where there are underlying physical or other issues, there was psychiatry, which is a dead loss, for the most part,
when it comes to actually helping people understand themselves. Not because psychiatrists aren’t intelligent or
well-intentioned, but simply - that’s not their training.
Medical students learn only to focus on disease. Doctors make pathological diagnoses and then find ways
of fixing the problem mechanically through surgical intervention or biochemically through drugs. Soon I began to
realize that I couldn't understand anybody's cancer, depression, anxiety or illness simply in biological terms, but
that the biology itself reflected certain life experiences, including emotional experiences. It also meant that it
wasn't enough just to hand out pills or to refer people to surgery. Those are necessary, helpful and sometimes
miraculously life-saving, but not sufficient. You also have to talk to people, and explore their lives.
I had all these patients and nowhere to send them, and working in the east side of Vancouver, people
don’t have a whole lot of money and many of them couldn’t afford private therapists, so I started counselling

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them. I developed a practice where at the end of each day I set aside an hour or an hour and a half for counselling
people. I learned by trial and error.
It became a spontaneously arising interest of mine. I was also going through my own psychological issues
around depression, ADHD, and my own addictive patterns. I was learning a lot through that as well, when I began
to practice counselling. I was totally untrained. And then as I began to research my own history and the literature
on psychology and childhood experience, the relationship between the mind and body, and the dynamics of
mental illness, I became more and more interested in the subject and ended up writing the books that many of
you are familiar with.

The Simplistic View

In the beginning, I had a very simplistic view of things – that everybody who has got a problem must have been
abused – something very traumatic must have happened to them. I really thought that all people needed was
some insight. If I could just give them some insight, that would liberate them. This is back in the 70s and 80s when
there started to be public conversation around childhood sexual abuse. I was almost disappointed when I couldn't
find a history of sexual abuse in an individual. How could I explain the suffering in people who had not been
sexually abused, though many of them had been? I thought, "If you just realized that you were abused and that's
why you are behaving the way you are behaving, then everything will be okay."
I had this simplistic view that all you had to do is find out what happened in childhood and that people
would know what was wrong and that’s it. Unfortunately, I gained a lot of insight as to what happened in
childhood, but nobody got any better. Then I had to deepen my awareness of it.

The Purpose of Therapy

Healing comes from the word wholeness. How is it that people are not whole? There is a disconnection that is in
all of us. There is a yearning for truth, purity, and innocence. When we are not connected to truth, we know we're
not connected. Then we experience longing and sadness, and can feel broken. It's that brokenness that we work
with. Because we know that something is broken, we can actually work with it. If we thought that the reality that
we live, the emotions that we experience, the dramas that we go through, the losses that we endure and the pain
that we suffer were pure reality or the way it has to be, we wouldn't actually suffer. The suffering comes precisely
from the awareness somewhere, dimly, within us, that the suffering is illusory. There is a truth underneath it that
there is something to be learned that is deeper and more worthwhile.
The very purpose of suffering is to take us from our brokenness to our wholeness. Reality manifests itself
in many different ways. The spiritual teachings are very clear. The Buddha says that life is suffering, but he doesn't
mean that it has to be. He just says that it is. He and all of the spiritual teachers impart the knowledge that there
is a way out, or a way through, or a way in. We don't have to stay on the surface of reality where the waves of
suffering rankle and drive us.
When people come to us for help, why do they come? They are suffering. Why are they suffering?
Because they are disconnected from the truth of themselves. They are not suffering because they made a
mistake, or somebody hurt them. They are suffering because they are disconnected. That is my basic premise.
The primary suffering is disconnection. When people come to us for help, our job is not simply to help
them with coping strategies, better behaviours, advice about how to approach a relationship, how to deal with a
bad habit or addiction, how to respond to physical health challenges, how to negotiate relationships - this is the
usual stuff of therapy. Underneath it, the real goal, I believe, is to help people connect to the truth of themselves.
The identification with the core emotions and self-beliefs is what dominates the person when they first
come to you. The point of therapy is to bring people into relationship with their feeling, so they don't identify
with the feeling, but they are in relationship to it. Our job is to help them recognize an emotion as something that
is arising in them but it isn't them. That's when we succeed.

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 Being in relationship with the emotion means that when it arises, it no longer takes over, or it takes over
for a relatively short amount of time, and then we are in relationship to it. We say "Aha! There it is again". But
there it is, not there I am. In other words when an emotion comes up, you allow the feeling to be there but you
don't identify with it. You look at it, you hold the feeling. There's a difference between saying, I am angry, and, I
have anger in me. Do you see the difference? Because I am angry means I am the anger. I'm not saying in real life
people can't say that, but I'm saying for the purpose of therapy and healing we make that distinction. When
Buddha was teaching his monks, he didn't say that a realized being never feels anger. He said that a realized being
is someone that when they feel anger, they know there is anger in me. When there is sadness in me, they know
there is sadness in me. There is joy in me, pleasure in me, pain in me, suffering. A realized state isn't an absence
of human experience, but it's a non-identification with the emotion. That's the whole point of therapy. We can
actually be free. It's about liberation.
The ultimate goal of therapy is also to bring people into the present moment. “Present moment” means
that I am actually observing what is happening here, and I have full response flexibility so I'm not constrained to a
certain pre-determined set of reactions.
We're inviting the birth of whatever is real about us. Jesus says that unless you are born again you can't
get into heaven. The fundamentalists interpret that as an awakening of faith in Jesus, so you are born again. It has
another meaning, which is the emergence of that part of us that is like a newborn - present, open, curious, and
full of wonder and faith.
With physical illness, mental illness or psychological problems, there is always a component that is
unconscious. Most of us live lives that are largely unconscious, and we don't know what is actually driving us. If
we become aware, we can make decisions that are not driven by dynamics that we are not even aware of. Our
primary drivers come from coping mechanisms or adaptations we took on as young children in order to survive.
We become identified with the personality. That's the dilemma, in that the personality helps us survive, and we
become identified with it. It doesn't only help us survive, it helps us attain success in the world. But because it's
based on really a pretense of some kind, a role that would be assumed, it doesn't satisfy our needs for vitality,
self-esteem and self-compassion, so it makes us suffer. The role of therapy for me is very much getting
underneath the personality and finding out who are you really, what is actually your truth.
There is freedom when we are our true selves. It's actually about the freedom. We just want people to be
free. Why do we want people to be free? Because we're meant to be free. That's who we are, we're meant to be
free. It's not a question of, we don't suffer anymore when we're ourselves. It's a question that when we are
ourselves the suffering is no longer meaningless and we're no longer generating it for ourselves. Suffering may
happen, but we are no longer generating it ourselves. When we are not our true selves, we generate suffering
and it all seems so meaningless. We may or may not suffer when we are our true selves but now there is meaning
in it, now there is freedom in it.
Your most noble task is to liberate people from the nightmares that they create themselves, which means
that you are actually holding them responsible. This does not mean that you are blaming them, guilting them,
judging them or criticizing them. It means that you actually believe in their capacity and ability to respond
differently. Our job ultimately is not merely to empathize with our clients for the suffering that the world that
they live in imposed on them when they were small. Our task is to liberate them from the world that they are
now creating for themselves. They are creating it so that means they are responsible.
There is a perfectly good reason why we all create our own nightmares. We're not wrong when we've
done so, but in order to become liberated we have to recognize that we are the source. At some point I'm the one
who decided that I wasn't wanted. And out of not being wanted I decided I have to become this doctor who
everybody will need. Because I wasn't wanted, they're going to need me all the time. And I'm the one who
decided that was more important than a peaceful family life. I didn't make those decisions consciously but I did
make them. I'm responsible, which means that I'm the only one that can undo it. Holding someone responsible is
the most respectful thing someone can do. You're not the victim, you're not helpless, you're not the weak person
you think you are, and you actually have the capacity to respond differently.

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Our Minds Create the World

The Buddha said in the Dhammapada that with our minds and thoughts we create the world. He was the first
great psychologist, who understood the power of implicit memory, perception, and interpretation.
First, we need a theory of what mind is. The mind is really not an entity, it's a process, it's a function. As
Dr. Dan Siegel points out, it is relational, it is interactive with other people and the environment, and it is
embodied. It's not just up here in the head, but in the whole body. So, it includes our physiology and our
emotions. It processes energy and information. The more fluid, resilient and dynamic the mind is, the more it can
handle new information and regulate energies. The more constricted it is, or the more traumatized it is, the more
limited it's capacity to handle the present moment.
What creates the mind is the natural propensities in our nature, in combination with relational
interactions with people and the environment. It is heavily influenced by our childhood experiences. We can call
this the small mind, which usually runs our lives. The part that Buddha didn't say is that before our minds create
the world, the world creates our mind. The mind by which we create the world, was first created in response to
our early experiences. The world programs us. From then on, we are doomed to live in that world, until we see
that “now we are the ones who are creating it.” That doesn’t make us guilty, that doesn’t put us at fault, it just
says that there is a dynamic in us that we don’t see and don’t understand. The nature of that programming, how
to recognize it, and how to disengage from it, is what can free us.
If we talk about mind in the larger sense, the universal mind, the divine mind, that's a different story. But
that is not what runs our lives in the moment to moment sense.
People create a world with their perceptions, and then they respond not to what's happening but to the
world that they created in their minds.
Here’s a song I play before many of my workshops. It's by my guru, Johnny Cash, and is called In Your
Mind.

In your mind
In your mind
One foot on Jacob's ladder and one foot in the fire
And it all goes down in your mind

Livin' at the bottom of the stairs of life

Never a smile knockin' on your door
The air is blue and so are you
Prehistoric monsters on the floor

Last verse of your last song

And God don't hear dead men
The end of the line is in your mind
Then you'll be stayin' in

In your mind
In your mind

Bone for bone and skin for skin

Eye for eye and tooth for tooth
Heart for heart and soul for soul
Somebody said "What is truth"?

Lock it up and close it down

The sound of mournin' like a dove
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High beyond the rattlin' roar
Lookin' to the face of love

In your mind
In your mind
It all goes down in your mind

One foot on Jacob's ladder and one foot in the fire

And it all goes down in your mind

In your mind
In your mind

Sunday words are back again

And you eat your fundamentalist pie
But just a piece you understand
You get the rest up in the sky

Praise and glory, wounded angels

Shufflin' 'round the room
Eternity is down the hall
And you sit there bendin' spoons

In your mind In your mind

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

Sacrificial drops of pain
On a silver plated cross
Sanctification on a chain

They say redemption draweth nigh

The storms of silence from above
Stop your ears and close your eyes
And try to find the face of love

In your mind
In your mind
It all goes down in your mind

One foot on Jacob's ladder and one foot in the fire

And it all goes down in your mind

In your mind
In your mind
It all goes down in your mind
One foot on Jacob's ladder and one foot in the fire
And it all goes down in your mind

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 One foot on Jacob’s ladder is the stairway to heaven, one foot in the fire is hell. Whether you are in
heaven or hell, it goes down in your mind. Your mind creates your experience. The whole inquiry is, how does the
mind put us into hell or heaven and into every space in between, constantly?
The Buddha said this 2500 years ago. The very first saying in the Dhammapada is that everything is
thought, and I would say, with unconscious thought in the lead. It's like the ox before the cart, it pulls the cart of
our lives. He is saying that how you see the world creates your experience in the world. If someone sees the world
as a horrible place – how are they going to behave? They are going to have to be defensive, aggressive, selfish,
and acquisitive. They are going to want to be powerful. Because otherwise in this horrible world how are they
going to survive?
Compare this to somebody who believes that the world is fundamentally benign, that there is good and
evil, and wholeness, healing, support and connection is available. People live in entirely different worlds and
respond entirely differently to the same stimuli. The person who said the world is a horrible place is now the
president of the United States. That's the world he lives in and that's the world he's going to create. How you see
the world creates your world. It all goes down in your mind.
The Buddha suggested we find a way of being that puts us in touch with that deeper space in which the
mind is only one particular phenomenon, but it's not the truth. It's not reality. The truth is not restricted to what
the mind is telling us. How do we work our way back so that we recognize that it's all going down in our minds
and that we have the capacity to find a deeper truth about ourselves than what the world would have us believe
or what our experience in the world made us believe? That's the inquiry.

Three Perspectives
I'll read parts of three different letters that we received after a Compassionate Inquiry Workshop in Edmonton.
There are three different responses: one person who really loved it; someone who was totally disappointed; and
someone who writes about an aspect of their experience.
The first person didn't like it. She says, "I am writing to request reimbursement of the registration funds
for the Compassionate Inquiry workshop with Dr. Gabor Maté. I spent over $500 of my own money to attend. I am
on long term disability and I live on 70% of my salary so you can appreciate the decision to attend was very
carefully made. I had hoped to learn about Dr. Maté's work, especially the mind-body connection, and apply it to
my own healing. Instead I was provided with a theatre seat designed for 2 or 3 hours of sitting, not for an entire
two-day seminar. There was no table, no desk, no writing service of any kind." She is making legitimate
comments. When I walked into that space, I was rather appalled myself. My idea of this workshop is not that it
should be in a dark theatre. She was upset about the circumstances. She says, "While I was delighted for the
opportunity to learn and hear more about Dr. Gabor Maté's work, the opportunity was absolutely destroyed by
how it was managed." That's one person. She did receive a partial refund. Her genuine experience was that she
was so governed by her disappointment and dislike of the physical setup that it destroyed the experience of the
two days for her. If I could talk to her about that, we would find the roots of it. There was some reason that she
experienced it that way.
Somebody else writes about the same workshop, "Dear Gabor, I am still reverberating with the
experience of the workshop in Edmonton. It was much more powerful than I was expecting." She comments on all
of the things she loved about the workshop. She is full of gratitude and appreciation and she's all lit up about it.
That's the second letter.
Now the third person writes, "Dear Gabor Maté, I attended the seminar in Edmonton today and when I
left, I was crying so hard that I could hardly drive. During your presentation I truly enjoyed everything that you
revealed to us. I was getting frustrated and repulsed by the questions from the audience and their emotions."
Somebody comes to a psychotherapeutic workshop and she's repulsed by people's questions and emotions!
That's her experience. She continues, "It was only at the end of the day that I finally got it. I took great
notes and when I got home, I read them and that's when I was able to put things in perspective. Your last guest
really opened my eyes. I want to thank you for this awakening."
Here we have three people and three entirely different experiences, which is the point I'm
illustrating. Does that mean that one of them was wrong and the other were right? No, it just means that three

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people all had their own experience. I can invite you to not suppress your reaction, whatever that happens to be
at any time. Don't make yourself wrong for any kind of reaction, but be curious about it
It all goes down in your mind. This is the basic teaching that I have come to understand. The Buddha was
a brilliant psychologist, and said that everything is thought. Everything is mind in the lead. We create the world
with our minds. It's a tough lesson to learn, and if you get it and your clients get it, they are free. Because then
they realize that it's with their minds that they create the world that they live in. This happens with their
marriages, their work places, their relationships and their internal dynamics.

My Mother’s Diaries
I have had an interesting dynamic with my younger brother, in that he has always supported and celebrated every
one of my successes, and I have always hated and been jealous of every one of his. This has to do with me being
the first son, and having to suffer the indignity of somebody else coming into the house and stealing the limelight,
and being a lot cuter than I was.
I have diaries that my mother kept from a few days after I was born. That was wartime Hungary. My
mother's writing is totally illegible. I wasn't able to read much of the diary all my life. Whenever I opened the
diary to look at it, my eyes would close and I would almost go to sleep. There was something very painful that my
nervous system just wasn't ready to face. Recently Hungarian television did a documentary about my work. They
photographed the diary without me knowing about it, and as a gift took it to someone in Hungary who laboriously
read through every word and typed it. For the first time 2 months ago, I could read my mother's entire diary.
My father wrote in the diary later as well. My father was away for the first year-and-a-half of my life in a
forced labor camp, and then came back. One of the last entries is my father's writing, which is more legible, about
when my brother arrived home from the maternity hospital with my mother. Apparently, I was standing on the
balcony with my dad when I saw my mom walking down the street with my brother. I let out this huge yell and I
ran to her. Then I was really cold and aggressive or unfriendly towards my younger brother. My dad with his
brilliant psychological insight writes, "This will not do. A family must love each other."
He had zero understanding of why a 2 ½ year old who had a very difficult first year, separated from his
mother for four weeks, when after a separation again, would not welcome somebody else into the home who will
now take more attention away from him. What's interesting is how that dynamic persisted for many decades.
This is how programmed we are. With our minds we create the world, but first the world created our minds.
I'm inviting you to participate with a really open mind. Eckhart Tolle says, "Be at least as interested in your
reactions as in the people or situations that evoke those reactions". When you have reactions, get really curious
about them. Our tendency when we have an inner emotional reaction or strong thoughts about something is to
believe that it's about what's happening out there. But it's never about what's happening out there, or hardly
ever, except in extreme situations. It's usually about what we are carrying inside. Be really curious about your
reactions.

Three Levels of Knowledge

Who is the one historically who asked, "What is truth?"

Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator or governor of Judea, in the New Testament confronts Jesus, who
was brought in for trial. He asked him, "Who are you?" and Jesus says. "I am here to show the truth." Then Pilate
says, "What is truth?"
What does that conversation involve? Who is Pilate and who is Jesus? If they are not individuals, but
represent parts of us, then there is a part of us that represents truth and a part of us that says, "What is truth?"
Jesus doesn't answer him because the question can't be answered. The reason the question can't be
answered is because it comes from the wrong place. It comes from the egoic mind. Pilate represents power,
egotism, materialism and the denial of deep reality. The egoic mind cannot understand the truth. In the Western
world we spend much of our time trying to find the truth through our egoic minds. The egoic mind was created in
the first place as a denial of truth. When you ask the question, "What is truth?" from the position where you are

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denying truth, there is no answer, because you will not understand any answer you get. The truth comes to you
on a different level.

Knowing the Truth

Jesus says, "You will know the truth and the truth will liberate you". He doesn't say the truth will liberate you. He
says you will know the truth and the truth will liberate you. The truth doesn't liberate anybody unless they know
the truth. It's the knowledge of the truth that frees us.
Why is this called Compassionate Inquiry? People have to experience the truth of themselves within
themselves. That's when the truth liberates. Jesus didn't say, "You will know the facts and the facts will liberate
you." He didn't say that. He said, "You will know the truth and the truth will liberate you." The experience of truth
is much deeper than just an intellectual awareness. Very often, the truth is painful. All of our suffering comes
from our attempts to avoid the truth. There is a good reason why we want to avoid the truth, but all of our
suffering comes from avoidance of truth. That's why we want to avoid it. The more we want to avoid it, the more
we suffer. Given how painful truth can be sometimes, what does it take for people to open themselves to face it?
Almaas, my teacher says, "Only when compassion is present will people allow themselves to see the truth." That's
why it is a compassionate inquiry.

Knowing Through the Intellect, Heart and Gut Feelings

So much of what we know comes to us intellectually and through our education. The language and facts we learn
are helpful, but they are not the truth.
Knowledge happens on at least three different levels.
One is on the level of the intellectual mind. As long as we stay only at that level, we don't see what's in
front of us. This level of knowledge is important but insufficient.
The second level is at the level of the heart. At the heart level you allow yourself to feel what is
happening. There are many psychologists and psychiatrists who I have known personally who simply are in their
heads. They have degrees and are empowered by social approval to work on the human psyche or soul. When
they only come from their head, they have no competence, because they are not connected in the heart. It's not
because they're not good people. It's not because they don't mean well or don't have the best intentions. It is
simply that they've lost the heart connection.
The third level is the level of intuition. Gut intuition.
If the three are working together, then you have no problem. In your own work with clients, you will find
that some clients will show you that your heart is shut down. You're working in your mind to know what to say
next, and how to manage the person, but your heart is closed. With other clients, you might find that your heart
is quite open, and then it goes much better for some reason.
All throughout you might have certain gut feelings that are telling you what is really going on. This is true
in our lives as well as in our work. We either pay or don't pay attention to those gut feelings. Sometimes we don't
even feel them. Sometimes we feel them and they're giving us a very clear sense of what's happening but we
ignore them. Sometimes we go with them. Knowledge has to be aligned on all those three levels.
I invite you as much as possible to bring all three of those in and to be aware of when they are not
available to you.

Safety and the Nervous System

What is safety? Safety is a state of the nervous system. Safety is a balance between two parts of the nervous
system. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is that part of the nervous system which is autonomous, not under
your conscious control, as opposed to the voluntary nervous system which allows me to pick up this pen, put it
back into my pocket, throw it out, catch it. This is all voluntary, it is by volition.
For us to feel safe, two things have to happen at the level of the autonomic nervous system.

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 1. The sympathetic nervous system, which is a flight or fight division should be present and enabled. Enabled
doesn't mean active. A guard at the door doesn't have to be fighting with anybody. It just has to be there and
be ready to fight if needed. For safety, you have to have a flight or fight system that is prepared, but not one
that's paranoid, not one that perceives threats everywhere, not one that magnifies threats. One that can
genuinely recognize the threat and act to keep you safe in the face of that threat. That's the job of the ANS,
in that sense.

2. Your parasympathetic nervous system, which keeps you in a state of relaxation, also needs to be active. It
keeps you breathing in a healthy way, rather than hyperventilating or having shallow breathing. It
coordinates your breath with your heart. It relaxes your guts so they are not in a knot, and keeps your
muscles in a state of relaxation. There has to be a balance between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic
nervous systems. Within the body, lack of safety is experienced when there is an imbalance within these two
systems.

For the balance to be there, and for the parasympathetic nervous system to be dominant when it needs to be,
there have to be two connections. Trauma undermines both those connections. The first connection is for the
infant to be well connected to the nurturing environment. When this is present, the parasympathetic nervous
system can be active and do its job of repair and restoration. That's the job of the parasympathetic nervous
system. When that connection is not there, then the sympathetic nervous system gets too active and there is no
internal safety; there is no internal goodness; there is no internal sweetness. It gets overwhelmed by fear. There
has to be that external connection to the nurturing environment.
Now, there has to be an internal connection as well, to the self. To the self just means connected to their
bodies. Infants are naturally connected to their bodies, but when a trauma occurs, this connection can be lost,
and then there is lack of safety. For you to regain that safety, connect to yourself through the body. Pay attention
to what’s going on in the body in the present moment. Develop the capacity to hold yourself and the emotional
states that arise within you.

How to Work with Dissociation

Dissociation is a common phenomenon. For many years if somebody asked me “how are you feeling?”, the
question itself would drive me crazy, because I had no idea what to say. That’s because I had a certain idea of
what having a feeling would be like. It’s impossible for anybody not to have a feeling. It’s just that they might not
be able to put it into words.
You may believe that a client is dissociated from their body … but nobody is dissociated from their bum.
I’ve never heard of anyone being dissociated from their bum. If a client says, “I don’t know what’s in my body”,
ask them: “Do you feel the pressure of your bum on the seat?”. They will. Then, ask about other body sensations:
“Do you feel the coolness of the air on your skin? Do you feel your tongue in your mouth when you’re talking?
Are you aware of the pressure of your hands on the table as you sit here? Do you hear your voice?”. In other
words, introduce people to their bodies. Take the mystery out of it. They still might not be able to identify
emotions, but they can certainly tell you if there is tension in their chest or tension in their throat, or a queasy
feeling in their stomach, or butterflies, or anything else in their bellies. You can always guide people to their
bodies very gently.
There are good reasons why people become dissociated. It was too painful, it was too scary to experience
what was going on. For people to safely be guided back to their bodies, they will need to experience safety. That’s
the most important thing. It’s not a matter of a technique, it’s a matter of safety. If they feel safe with you, then
they can drop into their bodies very gently and very gradually. That’s what you do - gently and gradually, and
there’s no pressure and there’s no success and there’s no failure, it’s not a test they have to pass. You simply
guide them back into their bodies.
I wouldn’t begin to talk about emotions yet, because they may not have the language for it. It’s like a
language they haven’t got, but they will identify a tension, maybe in their chest for example, or a constriction in

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their throat. They will be able to feel that. Then you can ask them to pay attention to their tension. My mantra is
“Whenever there is tension, it requires attention”. Ask them to pay attention to that tension and ask the tension
“What are you trying to tell me?”, and see what comes up for them. Very gently, very basically, literally “basically”
start with the base of the spine, start with their feet on the floor, start with their bum on the seat, start just with
ordinary everyday sensations and get them to understand that there is nothing mysterious here. Just a gentle
awareness of whatever is there. The key again is safety, and that safety depends on you.

Co-Creation of Safety

Is it possible to create absolute safety for everybody? Over time it might be. There is a problem theoretically with
the question of safety, which is simply that we are all shaped very much by all of our experiences. If from an early
age, you experienced yourself as being assaulted, it will be very difficult for you to feel safe in any circumstance.
Your brain is wired to see danger. The brain can get confused and sometimes people will perceive safety when
there isn't any. Their sensors just didn't pick up on the danger. At other times, some people will see danger when
there also isn't any, because that's how they're programmed. For those people, it is really difficult to create 100%
safety.
All we can do is to remove whatever blocks to the other person’s safety that we are introducing. I can
take responsibility for whatever I do or don't do to create safety in any situation. What I cannot do is to make you
feel absolutely safe. That can't be done by anybody else. But that still means that there is a huge responsibility, a
necessary one, and a welcome one, on the part of those leading a group, to do what we can, so that you and
everyone else can experience safety. That is on us.
On you is the opportunity to explore when you don't feel safe, where that comes from, how you can ask
for help with it and what you do with that. The spiritual teacher Ramana Maharshi once said, that “If your feet
hurt when you are walking outdoors, there are two things you can do. You can wrap the whole world in burlap, or
you can get a pair of shoes.” What he meant by that is, that the protection, the safety, has to ultimately come
from within. You have to develop the capacity to be your own safety. That is part of the work here, to find your
own safety within.
In other words, to get your pair of shoes: 1) you understand what triggers you; 2) you see the situation
objectively; 3) you have the inner strength to handle a challenge. This is a two-sided process where one part is
about what we can do to create a space of optimal safety, without which the work cannot possibly happen. We
are also asking you to look at yourself and to get help if the sense of safety is missing in you. You get that help by
talking about it openly with someone who will listen. Or remove yourself from the situation and take care of
yourself. In other words, let's co-create the safety. This is what I'm inviting you to do.
When somebody says "I don't feel safe," and that's all they say, they are putting all their responsibility on
the other person. It may be a legitimate perception, but that's not enough. Then you have to ask yourself, when
you don't feel safe, what do you feel? Don't feel safe is not a feeling. You can't feel something that isn't there. The
feeling is fear, right? Own it!
I am afraid. 'I don't feel safe,' really is a trip you're laying on another person. The accurate way to say it is
'What do I actually feel?' Legitimately you might feel afraid. OK, good, you feel afraid. Well then, what is the fear?
The fear is that you'll attack me. The fear is that you'll laugh at me, and I'm going to feel bad. The fear is that
you'll criticize me. That you'll reject me. Ridicule me. Those are the fears. Those fears may be totally legitimate.
When Steven Porges talks about safety, he says that we have these receptors in our temporal lobe, that
tell us whether we are safe or not. But don't confuse 'don't feel safe' with a feeling. Look at the word don't. It
expresses what you don't feel. It doesn't express what you do feel. For the purposes of this CI process, isn't it
more pristine and more accurate to talk about what you do feel? I feel fear. I have anxiety, and so on. That's very
specific. Now there is something to talk about. When situations happen, we just need to clear them up. One
person can say, “This is what my fear was.” The other can respond, “Oh, OK, I'm so sorry. This is what my
intention was,” It can always be sorted out.

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Safety, Social Engagement and Learning

Learning, or you might say growth, only happens in what Stephen Porges, the author of Polyvagal Theory, calls
the state of social engagement. Social engagement involves different nerves, different nuclei in the brain,
different brain centers, different muscles. Social engagement activates different processes inside the body such as
deeper and calmer breathing and a heartbeat that is coordinated with the breath.
Social engagement means you move your neck towards the other person, and engage your eyes. Once
you are in social engagement mode, you listen to the modulation and tone of voice of the other person and pay
attention to body language.
You have to be in social engagement mode if you want the client to be in social engagement mode.
Notice the direction of the client’s gaze and eyes at the beginning of the session.
Porges says that in the temporal lobe, there are sensors which gauge safety. Unless these sensors read
safety, the individual is not going to immerse herself, or experience the social engagement mode. In traumatized
people the brain circuits actually get confused. They will often not recognize safety when it is safe, or on the other
hand they might believe there is safety when there isn't any. Hence, they might enter into dangerous or hurtful
situations. When you are working with these people psychologically, you are also rewiring their brain. Their
sensors of safety need to be functioning on their behalf.
This is the ground, the basis that has got to be there all along. Be very aware of who you are and where
you are in the process, because you may get triggered.
You might get too focused on what you want to get across, and lose the attunement with the client. You
may be doing this purely out of good intention, but since the transaction happens at least as much on the
energetic level as on the verbal one, there's an incongruence. "I'm trying to help you, but I'm not really connected
with you". Keep in mind that the original trauma was the disconnection. Anything that we manifest, or do, that
undermines the connection will reduce that person's safety, and their capacity to be in a social engagement
mode. It will make your work less effective.
Safety is a baseline and has to be there, all the way through. Safety does not come from the removal of a
threat. A number of people spoke to me yesterday full of fear. They were in a perfectly safe environment and
they knew that they were in a perfectly safe environment. Consciously they knew they were safe, otherwise they
never would have come. But their nervous system didn't know it because again, the trauma puts the nervous
system into permanent defensive mode, or at least in recurrent defensive mode.
The lack of a threat doesn’t make an infant feel safe. For the infant to feel safe, he or she needs to be
held by the parent. Held not just physically, but emotionally. And it is in that safety that healthy development
takes place. It is that lack of safety, that lack of being held emotionally, that underlies the source of all trauma,
and virtually all pathology, as far as I’m concerned. Not all pathology, but virtually all.
Eckhart Tolle says, Children in particular find strong negative emotions too overwhelming to cope with
and attempt not to feel them. In the absence of a fully conscious adult who guides them with love and
compassionate understanding in facing the emotion directly, choosing not to feel it is indeed the only option for
the child at that time.
Unfortunately, that early defense mechanism usually remains in place when the child becomes an adult.
That emotion still lives in him or her unrecognized - and manifests, for example, as anxiety, anger, outbursts of
violence, a mood, or even as physical illness.
In some cases, it interferes with or sabotages every intimate relationship.
Safety is when you can move people out of their defensive mode into their social engagement mode and
that has to do with connection. In our society there is tremendous lack of safety not because there is threat but
because there is a loss of connection. That loss of connection with oneself and with others makes people afraid.
Why do you think the rate of anxiety is growing in our children? Anxiety is the fastest growing diagnosis in
Canada, because of the lack of connection. Politicians know how to exploit that fear, that has nothing to do with
existence of an actual threat. There is a sense of lack of safety and fear which then politicians will exploit as in
"let's get the druggies and the drunkies off the street, let's make our neighborhoods safe". That was the previous
federal government's attitude towards addicted people - to make them into enemies and threats. In countries,
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including Canada, when it comes to funding the military and oversees wars, leaders use that sense of threat that
people have, which has nothing to do with the external threat. Last year 2800 people died of opiate overdoses.
How many Canadians died of terrorism, ever, ever? I don't mean last year, I mean, ever. A handful.
What is the actual threat? How about the trauma that makes people addicted and then die of overdoses?
From a point of view of therapy for the listening ears, you can't assume that the person is safe just because there
is no threat. You actually get related to their nervous system. The nervous system shows up very clearly. You saw
that yesterday when I asked Kim to notice her voice, it was this little girl's voice. That means that, intellectually
she is right here with me but from the point of view of her physiology and her nervous system, she's a scared
child at that moment. We all get that way.
I asked Kim yesterday to consider what her commitment to serving others is costing her, what is the cost
of that? When I asked her, "What is the source of that," she said, "I don't know because I had this great family, I
had this great childhood." When we explored that, and this is always the case, what turns out is that here is a very
sensitive child who is actually quite alone, disconnected. Who gets bullied and can't tell the parents about it and
the parents don't notice. And she takes care of the younger ones and basically takes care of the relationship with
the parents by suppressing her own feelings and her own needs. Again, there is this absolute need for attachment
and if my emotions and my problems threaten the relationship, if the parents don't react well, then I'm going to
suppress all that. So then, out goes the authenticity.
Holding is the very essence of healing, the essence of therapy. The child needs to be held, and held
doesn't only mean physically but held emotionally. When a mother holds the child in her gaze and her emotional
presence, and then breaks the gaze, the child immediately becomes distressed. Removing threats doesn't give
security, because real security comes from connection. The baby feels safe when he is connected with. Safety is
essential for compassion to get through. You can feel all the compassion you want but if the client doesn't feel
safe with you for whatever reason, it just doesn't happen. Safety is how we hold the person.
What I attempt to do when I work with people is to just actually hold them. The motherless child is not
necessarily someone whose mother is not there, just somebody who is not held in the way they need to be held.
In our society because of the stress of family and the stress on women, there are a lot of motherless children, or
those who are not held in the way they need to be held.

Interpersonal Neuro-Biology

The UCLA psychiatrist, writer and thinker, Daniel Siegel talks about inter-personal-neurobiology. To understand
neurobiology, you can't just look at it from the perspective of biology. You have to bring in the disciplines of
psychology, sociology, history, psychiatry and anthropology. To comprehend how a person's nervous system
functions, you need some input from all of these fields of study, because we are social creatures. Our biology and
the biology of our nervous system is modulated by the people in our lives and the culture in which we live.
Our brains are actually connected, wired together. If you enter a space where somebody is in a certain
emotional state, that affects your brain and nervous system. Human nervous systems are connected, similarly to
the way trees are connected. We are part of a large network that ultimately includes the whole world, but is
certainly shaped by our immediate environment. That's no truer than in infancy and early childhood, when we are
absolutely dependent on our environment. How we form is very much based on our environment, not just in the
sense of what our parents do or say, but who they are being when they say and do it. Their emotional energies
affect us and we download trauma from one generation to the next. Trauma is multi-generational.
I want to tell you about a study. It is entitled, “Wired to Connect: Physiologic Measurements Suggest
Biologic Component to Empathic Connection Between Patients and Therapists”. What this is really about is that
when you're talking with somebody and you're the therapist, it's not just a verbal exchange or a psychological
transaction that happens. Actually, it's a biological event. There is something happening in their brain and
something happening in your brain, as well. This is what has been called interpersonal neurobiology, where the
biology of one person affects the biology of the other. Your brain is being affected as much as the brain of the
person that you're working with. Particularly when scientists study brainwaves, they find that when people are in
empathic connection, their brainwaves will synchronize. The more their brains are synchronized, the more there
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is a feeling of satisfaction and empathy between the two people. What they're measuring is skin responses; the
electrical discharges in the skin. The more they're synchronized, the more their connections.
Now, what's interesting is that the observer's data showed that both patients and therapists expressed
significantly more positive emotion during moments of high physiologic concordance, than when in low
concordance. Low concordance is when the waves are not in sync and high concordance is when they are. When
physiologically the skin conductance of both the client and the therapist was showing the same wavelength, both
the client and the therapist felt more positive emotions. The positive emotions were the result of that
connection.
Interestingly enough, there was much less physiologic concordance when the therapist was talking than
when the client was talking. In other words, it had to do with the quality of listening. They concluded that it is
hard for clinicians to be empathic when they're talking. You're more empathic when you're listening. So, in
Compassionate Inquiry ask questions, but then really listen. Sometimes when I watch myself work, I find I explain
too much and am not listening enough. So, listen more. Listening more doesn't mean you don't apply the
stepping stones. It doesn't mean you don't interrupt when it's appropriate. It's just that when you listen, really
listen, and don't be so focused on your interpretations and your explanations.
Interpersonal neuro-biology also operates in the reverse. When I am in a triggered emotional state, your
nervous system is going to be activated into a similar state, unless you are very differentiated and really know
how to hold on to yourself. We are truly differentiated when other people's emotional states don't dominate our
own nervous system functioning. When you are an infant you have no differentiation whatsoever. If we reach
adulthood and are still not differentiated, other people's nervous systems will take over or dominate our
functioning. This is not a fault or a mistake. Development only happens when the right conditions exist. It just
means that our conditions of development were not supportive of our differentiation.
We live in a culture that shames some people, and then denies the shame at the very heart of the culture.
This has a toxic effect on people.
Our dilemma is: this is the culture that we are functioning in. What do we do as therapists and
counsellors? I don't know quite what to do. Other than, whatever platform I get, I talk about these things, but it's
far from being heard by most people. So, that's just how it is.
Krishnamurti said. “It's not a measure of health to be well adjusted to a sick society."

All Our Relations

I’ve had some exposure to First Nations traditions from my travels and reading. One difference I notice between a
First Nations approach versus the Western approach, is that the First Nations approach is truly holistic. It sees
everything in relation to everything else. It is not an accident that people say, ‘all my relations’ in a greeting.
When they say, ‘all my relations,’ they don’t mean ’all my relatives.’ They see ‘all my relations,’ as
‘everything that I’m related to.’ I occasionally have taken part in sweat lodges where they bring in these big hot
rocks and say ‘we’re bringing in the grandfathers and the grandmothers’, and in the beginning, I thought that’s
the nicest thing to say. But what are they talking about? When you actually think about it, where do we come
from if not from the Earth? Those rocks really are our grandparents. I mean we carry them with us in our particles
and one can intellectually understand that, but when I hear people say ‘all my relations,’ I don’t hear an
intellectual understanding. I actually hear an intuitive felt connection. Whereas the Western, Northern approach
is much more about separation, and everything is about individualism, competition, and getting ahead of others.
The Compassionate Inquiry approach is meant to be inclusive and holistic. It may not always succeed at
that, but it’s meant to be that way. When you are working with somebody, rather than seeing them over there
and you over here, look at it as a process that happens between you and the other person, that you are both co-
creating.
We always think of the other person that we’re working with as the problem, or as the one with the
problem that we’re trying to solve. What I want to get across to you is that really, the solution arises in a process
that you co-create. A comment that I often hear is that, at my workshops is “I thought I came here to learn a
method, a certain set of skills, but I actually ended up learning a lot more about myself.” If that’s the case for you,
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I’m glad because it’s what you bring to the process, and what you know about yourself that makes the hugest
difference to the success of that interaction, rather than which method you use or what your skills are. It’s not
that skills or methods are irrelevant, it’s that they’re not the dominant factor.

The Power of the Group

A well conducted, well guided group has a higher energy in a positive sense than an individual. The group will pull
people up, or it can pull people down, depending upon how compassionate the guidance is. When you are in a
group, it's literally like you are back in your family of origin, except that this is an intentional family, rather than an
unintentional one.
Every painful and difficult emotion you felt in your family of origin, you are going to experience in the
group. Some people in the group will be stand-ins for their mothers, their fathers, and their siblings, and the uncle
that molested them. There will be some painful emotions arising for you during the training. This is a trigger
warning. In fact, if no difficult emotions arise for some of you, we’re not really doing our job. We’re not here to
evoke or to dig into painful emotions. It’s just that’s what naturally happens.
If it is well conducted, that same setting can be the place where those wounds can be healed, or at least
tended to. For many, the power of a group experience, is more powerful than if you were talking to me alone in
my office. The energy of the group actually lifts everybody up in it. When there is good energy, and people are
committed, curious and compassionate, that generates energy inside every one of you. It is extraordinary that
people are willing to be so vulnerable and open in front of so many strangers. Some of you have shared more
about yourself in front of these "strangers" than you do with people in your actual lives. That's because of the
power and safety of the group.

Who Are You as a Therapist?

Who you are as a therapist is much more important than anything you say or do.
The therapist is a mirror. You can’t see your face without a mirror. You have no idea what you look like, if
you have never looked at a mirror. You don’t know what you look like now, unless you look in a mirror. Even now,
when you look in a mirror, you might not see yourself at all. You see some kind of a projection of yourself, which
is why we have all of these body dysmorphic disorders and cosmetic surgery.
If we want people to see themselves clearly, we have to be a very clear mirror. Our most important work
is to be grounded and clear and fully in touch. If you are not, then the task of keeping that mirror clear is an
ongoing one, in each moment of relationship with the client. We have to be in-the-present-self if we want the
client to do the same.
Sometimes I want to say something, I want to make a point, and I push a little bit with the client – when
perhaps they want to say something or tell their story. I have an agenda. I am not clear at that moment. There is
something in me, that is driving me at that moment – I’ve got to make this point right now. When I notice this, I
ask myself, “What’s happening here for me?” If I become too identified with my role, I cease to be present with
the client – watch out for that.
Where you are coming from, the energy you are speaking with, is far more important than the content of
what you actually say. When you're working with people, pay attention to the energy you are coming from.
My intention is to come from a grounded, compassionate, present, open-minded space. I will not always succeed
at that. It's my responsibility to keep myself in a space that's present and open-hearted. However, if others notice
it lacking, I invite them to call me on it. Participate, help to clear the ground, it will help everybody, and it will
certainly help me. The most important aspect of our transaction with other people is who we are being. This is
what we don't notice, when we are in an altercation, or a conflict with somebody that we love. It's a question of
where are we coming from in ourselves.
What people pick up on is not the words so much as the energy. When you are addressing your clients
with a need for them to get better, then really, you become again the person who needs something from them

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for you to feel better. You just re-created the traumatic figure in their lives. You didn’t intend to, but why does
somebody sexually abuse somebody? Because they need to use that person to feel better in themselves. I'm not
making the two the same, but I'm saying the dynamic of using the other, therefore not seeing the other as a full
person, is precisely what traumatizes us. Energetically, you're not saying - I think you're are a jerk if you don't do
this... you don't need to say it. Energetically that's what they pick up on, and guess what? It's going to increase
their resistance to you. The very thing you want from them, they will resist. Keep checking in with the energy that
you have.
I went to a number of therapists, and one of them I went to was reasonably well known in Vancouver,
and he was a student of R.D. Laing. I went to him for a number of years and I truly found It very helpful to see
him. When I first went to him, I had no idea how much anger there was in me. No idea at all. And with his
assistance, I did get a lot of insight. At some point two or three years into this, I had this dream. I had this dream
that I’m sitting in a restaurant in Venice where there is a canal right outside the restaurant, with a somewhat
older man who wants something from me that I don’t want to give him. I don’t know if it is sexual or what it is,
but I don’t want to give it to him. And I just jumped out of the window in the dream and I swam away.
And I woke up, and I went to see him and I said, “I can’t see you anymore”. It was very clear. Something
on a gut level was telling me not to see the guy anymore. At which point he validated my dream because he
freaked out. And he got very angry. And he said, “You are always hedging – you don’t know how to do therapy
properly.” He said to me, “You are always hedging.” And I said, “Well if I’m hiding behind a hedge, maybe I have
something to be afraid of.” And he said, “You don’t know how obnoxious you are at this moment.” In other
words, he had a terrific need for me to be his client. That’s the kind of person he draws. And some of them stay
with him and they stay stuck, precisely where he is stuck. He can guide them, but only as far as he has gone
himself. You have to watch that in yourself. You are going to draw a certain kind of client, and the kind of client
you are going to draw does reflect something about you, and that may be very, very positive, but you have to
watch the other side.
If we stay in our minds and only work with our clients on an intellectual level, we will miss seeing what is
in front of us. We need to also allow ourselves to feel what is happening and connect from our hearts. Thirdly,
listen to your gut feelings because they are telling you what is really going on. Bring all three of these ways of
knowing into your interactions with clients, and notice when they are not available to you. If your heart is closed,
that's okay but know that it's like that for you. Be curious about it. Realize that it's about you. Notice, “I've got this
tension here right now, this contraction, this closed-heartedness. That's interesting. What's going on?” This is a
continual inquiring. What you find is that the inquiry is as much into yourself as it is into the client. When you
engage in that inquiry into yourself, you really learn about the other person. Be curious all the time. Don't be self-
critical.

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