Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Meditation
Meditation
Breathing Meditation
as a Tool for Peace Work
A Transrational and Elicitive
Method Towards Healing the Healers
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Masters of Peace
Masters of Peace is a book series edited by the University of Innsbruck’s UNESCO
Chair for Peace Studies. It has been founded to honour outstanding works of young
academics in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies. It is reserved for selected Mas
ter theses of the Innsbruck School and published twice a year. The Innsbruck School
follows the principles of Transrational Peace Philosophy. It defines peace as a plural
and regards all aspects of human nature relevant for the understanding of peace
and conflict. Its applied method is Elicitive Conflict Transformation, a pragmatic
approach to conflict rooted in Humanistic Psychology that entrusts the responsi
bility for finding alternative options of behaviour, communication and encounter
to the conflict parties. Facilitators provide a safe frame, tools and methods for this
quest without imposing their own solutions on the parties.
Edited by
Wolfgang Dietrich
UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies
University of Innsbruck/Austria
Editorial Board:
Josefina Echavarría
Daniela Ingruber
Franz Jenewein
Norbert Koppensteiner
Fabian Mayr
Andreas Oberprantacher
Johney Xavier
Austria
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Jennie Helene Sandstad
Breathing Meditation
as a Tool for Peace Work
A Transrational and Elicitive
Method Towards Healing the Healers
With a foreword by Roger Walsh, MD, PhD, DHL and
by Barbara Mitchels
Jennie Helene Sandstad
Innsbruck, Austria
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I write to transform and to allow transformation in others
Foreword
In many ways it is both the best of times and the worst of times. It is the best in
as much as we have the scientific and technical capacity to eliminate poverty,
eradicate starvation, live sustainably, and preserve our planet. It is the worst, in
as much as we continue to fight war after war, create ever more destructive
weapons, allow millions to starve and billions to suffer poverty, while degrading
the only planet we have.
So great is our technological power that we are shaping the world in our
own image. What we call global crises are actually global symptoms: symptoms
of our individual and collective psychological injuries, immaturity’s, and
neuroses. Our social and international conflicts reflect the conflicts within us.
What this means is that an important but often overlooked source of our
global conflicts and crises is a developmental imbalance. We have developed our
outer science and technologies to awesome world-shaping proportions. However,
our inner development – our psychological capacities and virtues for love and
compassion, wisdom and enlightenment – remain atrophied. We have become
nuclear giants and technological wizards while remaining ethical adolescents and
wisdom dwarfs, and this imbalance may destroy us. For as Robert Sternberg,
former president of the American Psychological Association lamented, “If there
is anything the world needs, it is wisdom. Without it, I exaggerate not at all in
saying that very soon there may be no world.” Humankind may be in a race
between inner and outer development, between compassion and conflict,
between sagacity and catastrophe.
Therefore, we urgently need to nurture a new generation of social and
global activists who not only feed the hungry and end conflicts but who also
address the psychological and cultural roots of these problems. Consequently, it
is heartening to see the University of Innsbruck Peace Studies Program
integrating these inner and outer dimensions, reaching across cultures and
disciplines, challenging students intellectually and psychologically, and fostering
both academic excellence and psychological maturation. And it is heartening to
see superb graduates such as Jennie Sandstad documenting their learning, taking
it out into the world, and using it to help, heal, and educate others.
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8 Foreword
I came away from this fine book feeling grateful to Jennie and the
University of Innsbruck, and feeling a little more hopeful about humankind and
our future. I think that after reading it you will feel the same.
In these days of political uncertainty and global unrest, the need to generate and
sustain peaceful attitudes and ways of being is essential to our psychological and
physical survival, on all levels as individuals, communities and nations.
Adam Curle (1990) wrote of the need for those engaged in peacemaking to
achieve an inner state of peace, because along with many other peacemakers,
psychologists, philosophers and spiritual leaders, he clearly recognised that inner
peace is essential to create the psychological conditions that enable individuals
to undertake outer acts. Many of us share the understanding that all living beings
and matter are interconnected, and therefore our attitudes and actions influence
each other and our environment in a myriad of mysterious ways.
When we think of inner peace, we can also see that the converse is true –
that inner psychological un-peacefulness, for example unresolved trauma, grief,
guilt and shame, along with the physical aftermath of war such as hunger,
poverty, homelessness, illness and medical needs can all generate and perpetuate
the conditions for suffering and acts of violence. This concept is important to the
activity of peace-making in so many ways: helping those affected by the
negative impact of conflict to heal their pain and hurt; enabling peacemakers to
make a genuine empathic and compassionate connection with others in the
process of mediation and providing the inner strength to withstand the stress of
their work in helping the victims of war; and ultimately in helping aggressors to
understand themselves better, transforming the attitudes which fuelled their
violence.
We can see with clarity the need for working towards inner peacefulness
operating at all levels when we consider work to heal domestic violence, family
and community conflicts, national unrest, and international war. Effective
peacemaking involves both a ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ approach, involving
both the leaders and the communities involved – when we think of it this way, all
peace ultimately stems from individuals, and transformation at all levels will
happen through our interconnectedness leading to a collective consciousness
influencing our actions. In all these situations, conflictual attitudes can only be
fully transformed when individual inner peace is achieved, which often requires
healing past physical and psychological traumas arising from all aspects of our
lives.
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10 Foreword
Meditation in all its forms is a helpful way of working towards inner peace,
greater connection between self and the outer world, and can give rise to new
awareness and understandings. The sense of interconnectedness arising in
meditation can lead to greater compassion for self and others. The breathing
meditation techniques described here are particularly helpful in physically
calming feelings of panic, stress, and anxiety, and carry many psychological
benefits which are so well researched and described in this book.
It is always exhilarating to come across new ways of thinking and
developments in the practice of peacemaking. This book, informed by the
author’s wealth of personal peacemaking experience and grounded in her per-
sonal experiences of trauma and her self-healing practice of breathing meditation,
combines a sound academic approach with a clear explanation of breathing
meditation techniques, providing an innovative contribution to practical peace-
making. Her writing is honest, informative and compelling. Now it is time to go
and try to put her ideas into practice …
Barbara Mitchels
Contents
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12 Contents
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List of Figures
James Baldwin, American author, poet and activist for the civil rights movement
stated that the main challenge for an artist is to transform the confusion and
chaos of life into art. My writing is ingrained in the cultural context I come from,
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18 1 Author’s Perspective
which has predominantly been a modern and Western context, where the focus
of being an 'objective observer' was one of the main goals in my previous
behavioristic oriented psychology background. Unlike most contemporary
university programs the Innsbruck Peace Program, where my current academic
foundation has been formed, understands that the students themselves are
valuable sources of information. Embracing the understanding that subjectivity is
not causing danger to academic work but rather is the main component in my
research endeavor has indeed bewildered me, and I will soon use this quiver to
engage with my own history to show where I come from and where I am
currently standing in the ever-changing moment.
Roland Barthes, French literary theorist and philosopher published in 1967
the article La mort de l'auteur 1 where he argued that any aspect about the
author's identity and what s/he creates is unrelated. He concludes the text by
proposing the death of the author; “[W]e know that to restore to writing its
future, we must reverse its myth: the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the
death of the Author“ (Barthes 1967: 6). Contrary to Barthes I will argue that the
author's perspective is a dynamic, but all-too often overlooked component in
literature and is of particular significance in research ventures. Aspects from my
ever-changing life will indeed affect my writing through personal dewdrops
upon the written pages, which cannot be extracted without causing a bleak,
insincere and characterless writing.
"I am not interested in the academic status of what I am doing, because my
problem is my own transformation [...]. Why should a painter work if he [/she] is
not transformed by his [/her] own painting?" (Foucault, 1997: 131). I first
encountered this quote by Foucault when reading Koppensteiner (2009) during
my first semester at the UNESCO Peace Program in Innsbruck, and it planted a
seed in me that led to asking a lot of questions; why should I write if I am not
transformed by it? Why should I, as a peace worker, provide a space for
transformation for others if I cannot provide this space for myself?
As I return to the beginning, my response to the question 'why write?' might
seem quite simple at first sight, but requires an enormous effort and courage: I
write to allow transformations. I write to transform my pattern of running away
and I write to put into words much of that which I have never been able to
express before. With a floating understanding of the self and the prudence of
writing genuinely I will try to paint a picture with some of the aspects that have
led me to where I am at the moment, and accordingly attempt to transform the
confusion and chaos of life into art.
2 Manglerud High School started a cooperation in 2008 with the New Palestinian Abraham
Center for Languages, where the initial thought was to teach Arabic to Israelis and Hebrew to
Palestinians and have mutual English classes, and thus create opportunities for cross-cultural
exchange and interaction. For more information see: http://www.npacl.com/
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20 1 Author’s Perspective
retelling was comfortable during the first weeks, but as the memories started to
become stronger and more vivid, denial turned out to be a fatiguing and demanding
coping strategy. I started a process of what I describe as self-grieving, in which I
learnt to both numb myself and at the same time dismiss my own process.
It has caused a lot of anger, resistance and tears to take the step of leaving
the victim mode, and the lack of self-love and self-compassion has made the
journey towards healing exhausting. Through the Peace Program in Innsbruck I
have learnt to work with these practices at my own pace and I am now, more
than ever, determined to work in conflict zones, to use my experience as a
wounded healer to create a safe space for others.
What I have learnt through the semesters in Innsbruck is that the whole self
cannot be disconnected from what we chose to do in this world, and since I want
to be part of a healing organism through peace work, I need to be aware of the
different aspects of myself and of my personal conditions. Breathing meditation
has provided me with a gateway to observe and understand more carefully how I
react in different situations and how I can center myself in the present, and I will
use the coming pages to look more closely at the relationship between peace
work and breathing meditation.
2 Research Interest and Research Question
2 Research Interest and Research Question
Modern peace theorists seem not to take sufficient account of the depth of the
impact of posttraumatic stress in their study of peacebuilding and reconciliation.
Peace theorists also fail to recognize the importance of addressing the effects of
posttraumatic stress with appropriate psychological support, and some see little
point in opening up the past as a means of healing hurts (Mitchels, 2006: 21).
Up until a decade ago, research focusing on the stress and mental problems
suffered by humanitarian workers attempting to help traumatized individuals in
complex emergency situations were scarce (Adams, Boscarion, & Figley, 2006)
and the main area of research revolved around the wellbeing of peacekeepers and
armed personnel, and the traumatic events they were facing (Cardozo et al.,
2005). Research on the mental health and wellbeing of peace workers is still
limited, but there has been a slight shift of attention.
My research interest rotate around peace work and self-understanding,
particularly related to preparation in advance of peace work, as well as self-
observation, both during and after fieldwork. As peace workers are prone to
experience burnout syndromes, posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTSD)
and compassion fatigue, the ability to monitor and observe oneself during such
work requires more attention. Narrowing the topic further down, I am interested
in how inner peace work through sitting meditation, with a close focus on the
breath, can be important features when engaging with 'outer' peace work.
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22 2 Research Interest and Research Question
The University of Innsbruck UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies has developed an
academic program that combines cognitive knowledge acquisition and personal
growth as grounded in humanistic psychology, where the preparation consist in
“adjusting oneself physically, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually to the
work, and recognizing one’s limits and boundaries” (Dietrich 2013: 12). The
students are offered methods such as Holotropic Breathwork, Five Rhythms
Dance and Theatre for Living as possible tools for exploring the deeper layers of
our selves. Not every tool may work for every person in the same way and
therefore they cannot be understood as a universal toolbox for elicitive conflict
work. Indeed this would be a contradiction to the non-prescriptive nature of the
elicitive approach (Lederach, 1995).
In the beginning of January 2015 I started working for the non-govern-
mental Norwegian Organization for Employees in International Operations
(NOFAIO), a network and support group for aid workers, initiated by three
former humanitarian field workers in 2013. The idea behind the project is to
build networks where former and present humanitarian workers can meet, share
experiences and exchange views.3 The organization also advocates that many aid
workers face challenges after having returned back home. Challenges related to
trying to reconnect with family and friends, feeling out of place, as well as
situating the challenges to stress, traumas, burnout, and other general mental
health issues of aid workers.
The elicitive conflict worker enters the conflict situation from a systemic perspective
acknowledging that by simply being in the conflict situation one has become part of
it. When universal prescriptive models have been abandoned, all one has to rely on
is one's own capacities and the quality and type of presence one can bring to the
situation in order to assist in eliciting the transformation of the conflict from within
(Taylor, 2013: 10).
Reflecting on what I have learnt about myself through writing this writing, I
know that if I try to suppress, hide or push away my wounds, they will only
manifest themselves differently within me. Breathing meditation has, as
mentioned, provided me with a space to acknowledge, observe and understand
how I react in different situations and how I can center myself in the present.
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24 2 Research Interest and Research Question
4 I am not arguing for an overcoming of scientific knowledge in general, rather questioning its
relevance in this specific research project.
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26 3 The Research Methods
methods within Peace Studies. Instead, I will refer to the specialized metho-
dological approaches that best reflect my process of investigation, noting
however that most of the data is collected and processed by the means of
qualitative methods, thereby leaving space for the consideration of difficult-to-
measure variables such as, among others; my meditation practice, transpersonal
experiences, emotions, intuition, shadow sides, bodywork, and states of mind.
To answer my research question (How can breathing meditation, as a
transrational method, be a tool for peace work?), I use a combination of theo-
retical and empirical approach of research, where both of the approaches are
guided and grounded in the transpersonal method of Embodied Writing.
The transrational peaces do not have only one meaning or interpretation but
rather exist in a diversity of expressions and manifestations (Dietrich & Sützl,
1997). The transrational perspective includes the embracing of the different
peace families and at the same time going beyond, as Dietrich explains it; “We
3.2 Definitions of Relevant Concepts 27
Energetic peace is thus never a state and it is not tied to objective conditions. This
peace begins on the inside of the self and spreads from there as a harmonious
vibration into society, nature, and the universe. The human being who does not first
look for peace within herself will not find it on the outside, because there is no
objectifiable peace there (Dietrich, 2012: 56-57).
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28 3 The Research Methods
The adjective elicitive that Lederach uses to describe the approach, stems
from the verb 'to elicit', meaning to bring forth or to evoke (Dietrich, 2014a).
This shift in conflict transformation is closely related to the transrational
understanding of peace and conflict, and as Dietrich puts it “elicitive conflict
transformation is the methodological consequence of transrational peace
philosophy” (Dietrich, 2014a: 53).
3.2.4 Transpersonal
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30 3 The Research Methods
[...] trans-rational practice ultimately takes us beyond the field of theory back into a
realm of experiential understanding beyond postmodernity, a weak transcendent
realm where (scientific, rational) knowing has to give way to the intuition of
understanding (Koppensteiner, 2009: 28, italics in original).
With this focus in mind I will clarify the process of Experiential Understanding,
my breathing meditation.
Let your mind be spacious and your heart be kind and soft. As you sit, feel the
sensations of your body. Then notice what sounds and feelings, thoughts and
expectations are present. Allow them all to come and go, to rise and fall like the
waves of the ocean. Be aware of the waves and rest seated in the midst of them.
Allow yourself to become more and more still. In the center of all these waves, feel
your breathing, your life-breath (Kornfield, 2016: para. 1-2).
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32 3 The Research Methods
Our breathing has the added virtue of being a very convenient process to support
ongoing awareness in our daily lives. As long as we are alive, it is always with us.
We can't leave home without it. It is always here to be attended to, no matter what
we are doing, or feeling or experiencing, no matter where we are. Tuning in to it
brings us right into the here and now. It immediately anchors our awareness in the
body, in a fundamental, rhythmic, flowing life process (Kabat-Zinn, 2013: 41).
When discussing the spiritual element of the art of the transpersonal self, Norbert
Koppensteiner explains how the practice we engage with is not to be “mistaken
with a narcissistic or egocentric form of self-love, but on the contrary always
related to some kind of work one performs on oneself” (Koppensteiner, 2009:
62). He further emphasizes that “The work of care is undertaken first for the
spiritual and physical well-being, but secondly also for transformative purposes”
(Koppensteiner, 2009: 62).
When engaging with transformative practices, I have often found words to
be a mediocre substitute for the experience. Through the peace studies in
Innsbruck I have encountered a writing method that has opened up for a
newfangled way of describing my processes. The transpersonal method of
Embodied Writing is both grounding and guiding my theoretical and experiential
understanding, and is helping me express that which is hard to put into words.
With and through my body I inhabit this world and therefore I cannot and do not
want to disconnect my body from my writing. Inspired by the work of Rosemarie
Anderson whom, together with William Braud, has created the field of
3.6 Embodied Writing 33
Introduced into the research endeavor in an effort to describe human experience and
especially transpersonal experiences more closely to how they are truly lived,
embodied writing is itself an act of embodiment, entwining in words our senses with
the senses of the world (Anderson, 2001: 83).
Embodied writing as a method facilitate how I can illuminate for the readers the
lived experiences and sensations that come up during my breathing meditation,
and consequently provide the frame for my research and guide me in using
intuition in the writing process.
I want to share excerpts from my research journal that depict what I was
experiencing in the moment the words were penned down on paper. My thoughts
are flowing better when I am surrounded by the sea, while walking in the forest,
sitting on the bus, or in the moment that I wake up, and thus not necessarily
when I am at the library. By taking field notes and writing analytic memos I
develop my own ideas, therefore I am carrying a research journal with me all the
time, to get my ideas pinned down. John Paul Lederach writes, “Artists are on a
journey to find and reflect the beauty that surrounds them” (Lederach, 2005:
122). I write to echo the sounds that surround me and the humming I feel inside,
I write to transform and to allow transformation in others.
My research journal is continuously accompanying me on this journey, and
I have chosen to share a excerpts and passages with you, to illustrate parts of my
voyage. The pieces from the journal are written in italics, so that you more easily
can distinguish it from the rest of the text. During the semesters in Innsbruck, we
wrote reflection papers to echo our experiences within the program. These
reflection papers now provide a peek into my process through the program, and I
will similarly share some of the reflections in chapter 12 “My Healing Process”.
The months of engaging deeply with trauma and healing is affecting me on
every level, and since I cannot show you the exact moment of how I move in my
dance, in my singing, and in my stillness, I will use my writing to put more color
to the line contour drawing of this text. In the next chapter I will dive into the
literature that is relevant for my work, presenting the authors and the theories
that are significant for the journey ahead.
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4 State Of The Art
4 State of The Art
This chapter presents the authors whose writings and ideas I twist throughout
this work. Mutual for these authors are their contributions to transrational peace
philosophy, elicitive conflict transformation and the art of transpersonal
experiences. Their work form the stem from where the leaves of this text can
grow, and it is by exploring this cross disciplinary soil that I have understood
how fertile this field is.
No longer protected by anthropocentric gods and goddesses, reason gone flat in its
happy capacity to explain away the Mystery, not yet delivered into the hands of the
superconscious- we stare out blankly into that dark and gloomy night, which will
very shortly swallow us up as surely as it once spat us forth (Wilber, 1995: 271).
The world [...] needs more than one peace for concrete societies and communities to
be able to organize themselves. The peaces do not become mutually compatible the
moment everybody understands one another, but when all live in their own peace,
that is, treat others like the members of their own kin, and so respect them even if
they do not understand them (Dietrich & Sützl, 1997: 15-16).
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4.2 The Transrational Approach 37
(2013) he elaborates upon the conclusions from the first volume and translates
these conclusions into methods of elicitive conflict transformation, explicitly
breath, voice, and movement oriented approaches. I will discuss breath-oriented
approaches in more detail after looking a bit closer at the transrational
perspective.
To go beyond [...] does not mean to fall back into a prerational, magic, or mythic
spirituality, but implies the integration of spirituality into a transrational,
transpersonal, and more complete image of peace. A peace research that takes itself
seriously will thus recognize transrationality and transpersonality as given figures
within research interest and will accept that the dissociation or omission of any
aspect of human reality from the question of peace leads toward peacelessness and
violence (Dietrich, 2012: 258).
This has consequences, in particular, for the methods that can be applied, and
furthermore accentuates the need for a toolbox which is not presented in a
prescriptive manner as a cookbook of conflict work, but rather one that
understand the complexity of social interrelations and the relationality of conflict
work. As a consequence of this,
[T]ransrational peace research can not limit itself in its applied methodologies to just
rational conflict engineering. It needs methods that address all aspects of human
nature because they all define conflicts and the way we deal with them. Conflict
workers need a toolkit that allows them to apply rationality and also methods that
work on the sexual, emotional, mental and spiritual layers, which correspond to the
familial, communal, societal and policity layers (Dietrich, 2014a: 53).
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4.3 Transpersonal Psychology 39
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4.4 Elicitive Conflict Transformation 41
In The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace from 2005,
Lederach describes healing and reconciliation within the context, and also attend
to the importance of combining creativity, art and peace work.
Building adaptive and responsive processes requires a creative act, which at its core
is more art than technique. The creative act brings into existence processes that have
not existed before. To sustain themselves over time, processes of change need
constant innovation (Lederach, 2005: 73).
Dietrich's selection of tools is neither a complete nor a fixed listing, but rather an
assortment that illustrate some of the diverse methods that can be applied within
the framework of elicitive conflict work.
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4.6 Breath Oriented Approaches As Tools For The Peace Worker 43
Despite the fact that it has a longer history than almost any other psychotherapeutic
endeavor, it is only within the last few years that meditation has attracted significant
scientific attention. Meditation of one type or another can be found in a wide variety
of cultures and traced back for at least two-and-a-half thousand years (Walsh, 1982:
69).
Moreover, also the use of the breath as a transformation tool can be traced back
in time, as researchers Kathryn Lee and Patricia Speier explain; “Use of the
breath to enter nonordinary states of consciousness spans many cultures and
dates back thousand of years” (Lee & Speier, 1996: 366). Lee and Speier also
notes that “modern breathwork practitioners have developed techniques for
exploring and healing the psyche based on ancient traditions of working with the
breath” (1996: 375), which is, to a large degree, what I do when I am having a
focus on breathing meditation as a transrational method for peace work.
In the chapter on breath-oriented approaches to elicitive conflict trans-
formation (Dietrich, 2013: 45-73), Dietrich explores holotropic breathwork,
vipassana and quantum light breath as useful practices and methods of elicitive
conflict work, and he describes the difference between the approaches in terms
of conflict work as follows,
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4.6 Breath Oriented Approaches As Tools For The Peace Worker 45
breath works as an anchor. In the book Pust for livet8 (2008) author and nurse
Marianne Magnelssen describes the connection between the breath and our
autonomic nervous system, and how the breath can be our lifebuoy in traumatic
events. Both Caponigro's and Magnelssen's work are central in cultivating my
own breathing exploration.
Lee and Speier have noted that the usefulness of breathwork is multifaceted
and they write; “At the most basic level, this technique lets one experience
oneself and the world in a different or nonordinary way [...]. From a therapeutic
standpoint, breathwork may help access repressed memories and experiences”
(1996: 371). This is of value for my view on trauma work, especially for
connecting the topic of healing the healer.
When exploring the psychological aspects of trauma, I engage with the
book Principles of Trauma Therapy- A Guide to Symptoms, Evaluation, and
Treatment (2015), written by trauma researcher and clinician John Briere, and
medical director of the USC Psychological Trauma Clinic, Catherine Scott. Their
work is based in clinical, biological, neuropsychiatric, and psychotherapeutic
information on the subject of trauma, and will contribute to the introduction of
the psychological understanding of trauma. Trauma researcher Bessel A. van der
Kolk was born in the Netherlands during the Second World War and has been
active as a clinician, researcher and teacher in the area of posttraumatic stress
and related phenomena since the 1970s (Trauma Center, 2017). His work,
together with that of Peter A. Levine, has profoundly influenced my under-
standing of the effects that trauma has on the body and how the brain is shaped
by a traumatic experience. Van der Kolk's research explains how the different
areas affected in the brain can be reactivated through yoga and mindfulness, and
he emphasizes that this knowledge has to be integrated into healing practices. 17
years ago, van der Kolk wrote that “the human response to psychological trauma
is one of the most important public health problems in the world” (2000: 1), and
today he is still one of the greatest contemporary contributors to the under-
standing of how trauma unfolds in the body. The book The Body Keeps the
Score, Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma (van der Kolk:
2014) has profoundly changed my view of healing from the cycle of trauma.
I furthermore utilize the works of Peter A. Levine, mainly In an Unspoken
Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness (2010) and
Waking the Tiger: Healing trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Over-
whelming Experiences (1997), for delving into an embodied understanding of
trauma. Levine has researched and worked with trauma and its embodied
manifestations for the past 30 years. He is the developer of the method Somatic
Experiencing, where he turns to both the animal world and studies the brain's
functions, to create a body-based treatment that specifically aims to regulate the
autonomic nervous system. He also underlines the importance of body awareness
in successful treatment of trauma. In Levine's own words, “[…] you initiate your
own healing by reintegrating lost or fragmented portions of your essential self. In
order to accomplish this task, you need a strong desire to become whole again.
This desire will serve as an anchor through which your soul can reconnect to
your body” (Levine, 1997: 61).
For connecting the topics trauma and compassion, I draw upon the work of
psychologist Kristin Neff. Neff's book Self-compassion: The Proven Power of
Being Kind to Yourself (2011) is important for my exploration of self-
compassion and compassion fatigue (secondary traumatic stress). Of additional
significance is the book Mindful Compassion: How the Science of Compassion
Can Help You Understand Your Emotions, Live in the Present, and Connect
Deeply with Others (2014) by psychologist Paul Gilbert, founder of Compassion
Focused Therapy (CFT), and practicing Buddhist monk, Choden. These authors
are prominent researchers in terms of the Buddhist psychological aspects of self-
compassion, empathy, and healing of emotional pain.
Chapter 11, Healing the Healer, is grounded in the work by Joan Halifax
and Michael J. Maley, connected to that of Wolfgang Dietrich, to explore the
connection between the wounded healer and peace work. The chapter thus
revolves around shamanistic foundations related to the elicitive tool breathing
meditation. While Halifax is a Zen Buddhist teacher and a medical anthro-
pologist specializing in psychiatry and religion, Maley is a psychotherapist with
a focus on trauma and healing.
Chapter 13 'Love – A Practice for Awakening the Heart' is, as the title says,
inspired by the work of Thích Nhất Hạnh. Two other authors that contribute to
my knowledge on this field are Erich Fromm and John Welwood. Erich Fromm
was a praised social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and humanistic
philosopher. He grew up in Germany, but emigrated to the United States after
The Nazi seizure of power (Egidius, 2006). Of particular interest in this work,
are Fromm's writings about love. To have or to be (1997) and especially The Art
of Loving (1956) influence my understanding of love as a doing instead of a
being or having.
According to his own homepage, John Welwood is “a psychotherapist,
teacher, and author, and has been a pioneer in integrating psychological and
spiritual work for the past thirty years” (Welwood, 2016). Welwood is currently
an associate editor of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, and central for
my work is, as with Fromm, his writings on love. Together the works Perfect
Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart (2006) and “On
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4.7 December 28, 2014 47
I don’t know. Pause from writing, step back. Take in the words “not yet”. Why?
Why not yet? Because..
Because I don’t remember what it was like before. This is what I know now. I
know pain, I know sadness, it is in me. I am sad and scared. I don’t remember
what it was like to feel completely safe in my own body. I don’t know what it is
like to be free of fear. I do not trust myself, I do not feel safe in my body, I have
betrayed myself, but I also repeat the betrayal by hiding in here.
It is stuck in my chest. Grey lumpy, heavy, sticky. Gluey mucus that cannot be
coughed up. And again grief. Grief, desolation and warm salty tears, running
down my cheek and down my neck.
48 4 State of The Art
I want to cry one last time, to empty the nooks and crannies of my body that has
been filled with objects that does not belong to my body. I want to be able to
stand in front of a mirror and truly believe that nothing has been taken away
from me that I cannot myself refill.
∼ December 28, 2014.
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5 Peace Work, Traumas & The Here and Now
5 Peace Work, Traumas & The Here and Now
'Nothing exists that is not Divine' says an old Tantric principle, and I ask you, as
a reader, to keep this aphorism in mind through this chapter. Since I will use the
coming pages for exploring and explaining trauma related to peace work, I take
this as an opportunity to carefully approach and embrace my own traumatic
episode. As much grief, anger and at times self-hatred that followed (and still
follows) the assault, I would probably not choose the path that I have chosen
without experiencing the attack. My healing process has already had beautiful
repercussions, although I still carry a heavy load within that I cannot seem to
fully understand rationally. As I have grasped through my own process,
traumatic experiences can, when being considered as part of the divinity and
given time and energy, be transformed. Encapsulated; experiencing traumatic
events can be an eye-and heart opener, if being handled and felt with sensitivity
and tenderness. In Peter Levine's own words, “Trauma is a fact of life. It does
not, however, have to be a life sentence. Not only can trauma be healed, but with
appropriate guidance and support, it can be transformative” (Levine, 1997: 2).
As with several of the theoretical fields that this writing builds upon, the
systematic study of human responses to trauma is relatively new. The field grew
out in midst of the aftershocks of the Vietnam War, and “the term posttraumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) was introduced into the mental health lexicon only in the
mid-1980s” (Briere & Scott, 2015: 1). There are principally two international
diagnostic systems used in Norway that list criteria connected to various
psychiatric disorders, both of them situated primarily in a modern and Western
context. The World Health Organization (WHO) compiles the International
Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), and the
The definitions by the APA and the DSM, both widely used by psychologists,
psychiatrists and therapists, are in my opinion insubstantial and narrow.
Although these definitions can be useful in creating an overall picture of various
psychological states, the requirements in the newest edition of the DSM (5th
edition) are limited and inadequate, and highly underestimate the range and
variances in traumatic experiences within the overall population. The DSM-5
defines trauma as:
Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in one (or
more) of the following ways: (1) Directly experiencing the traumatic event(s); (2)
witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others; (3) learning that the
traumatic event(s) occurred to a close family member or close friend, the event(s)
must have been violent or accidental; (4) experiencing repeated or extreme exposure
to aversive details of the traumatic event(s) (e.g., first responders collecting human
remains, police officers repeatedly exposed to details of child abuse) (Note:
Criterion A4 does not apply to exposure through electronic media, television,
movies, or pictures, unless this exposure is work related) (American Psychiatric
Association, 2013).
John Briere and Catherine Scott argue along the same lines as above, and
emphasize that the earlier DSM (3rd edition) also included threats to psycho-
logical integrity as valid forms of trauma, and consequently question the current
DSM edition.
The DSM-5 does not consider events to be traumatic if they are merely highly
upsetting but not life threatening- for example, extreme emotional abuse, major
losses or separations, degradation or humiliations, and coerced (but not physically
violent) sexual experiences […] The issue of whether an event should have to satisfy
current diagnostic definitions of trauma in order to be, in fact, “traumatic” is an
ongoing source to discussion in the field (Briere & Scott, 2015: 9-10, italics in
original).
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5.2 Trauma And The Following Reactions 51
Traumatic events such as family and social violence, rapes and assaults, disasters,
wars, accidents and predatory violence confront people with such horror and threat
52 5 Peace Work, Traumas & The Here and Now
that it may temporarily or permanently alter their capacity to cope, their biological
threat perception, and their concepts of themselves. Traumatized individuals
frequently develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a disorder in which the
memory of the traumatic event comes to dominate the victims' consciousness,
depleting their lives of meaning and pleasure (van der Kolk, 2000: 1).
The different terminologies that accompany the suffering, distress and traumatic
experiences that peace workers might encounter are usually referred to as Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), secondary trauma, vicarious traumatization,
or compassion fatigue. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) denotes the
symptoms of the repercussions of an experienced/witnessed life-threatening/
overwhelming event. Levine, however, argues that PTSD is not a useful
paradigm for trauma and healing, since the D (disorder) discards the experience
that created the wound and should therefore be replaced with an I (injury).
“[T]rauma is an injury, not a disorder like diabetes, which can be managed but
not healed. In contrast, posttraumatic stress injury is an emotional wound,
amenable to healing attention and transformation” (Levine, 2010: 34). This
corresponds with the etymological roots of trauma, τραῦμα, (wound).
Kristin Neff uses the term compassion fatigue in her work on caregivers
who focus their energies on helping others.
Alleviating others' trauma can be a grand part of trauma work in the field, and
one of the recommendation typically given to persons who struggle with
compassion fatigue is to engage with self-care strategies. As a part of the
UNICEF guidelines and tools within the human resources department, the
booklet 'Stress in our workplace' was created, which defines self-care as “what
we do to manage our physical and mental health, as well as nurture our
philosophical/spiritual balance on a day-to-day level” (MacDonald & Curling,
2009: 12).
Peter Levine draws attention to how the mind has become the main focus
when discussing trauma, and highlights that we are habitually inattentive to the
bodily sensations connected to the traumatic experiences. “Most people think of
trauma as a 'mental' problem, even as a 'brain disorder'. However, trauma is
something that also happens in the body, we become scared stiff, or, alternately
we collapse, overwhelmed and defeated with helpless dread” (Levine, 2010: 31).
Focusing on the bodily manifestations of secondary trauma and compassion
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5.3 Peace Workers Encountering Trauma 53
Given the centrality of the body in the healing process, and how much pain and hurt
it may be carrying (the root meaning in Latin of the verb ‘to suffer’), it is not
surprising that we devote a good deal of attention to the breath, which you could
think of as the bridge between the body and our emotional life (Kabat-Zinn, 2013:
184).
In the upcoming chapter (Meditation as a Tool for Elicitive Peace Work) I will
focus on breathing meditation as a transrational method for peace work, whereas
in the forthcoming sub-chapter, I will unearth the connection between peace
work and trauma, secondary trauma and PTSD.
I left Bosnia…three years ago. What I didn’t realize then is that Bosnia…will never
leave me. Loud sudden noises still make me duck for cover as if there were shellfire
nearby. I still dream, from time to time, about a foot clad in a tennis shoe that I saw
poking from a mass grave. I now always sleep lightly, one ear cocked for danger.
But most of all what stays with me is the guilt… (Neuffer, cited in Danieli, 2002:
286).
Since many peace workers are working with humanitarian crises or relief work,
and consequently are increasingly and continually exposed to suffering without
sufficient understanding of the wounds this can create, numerous peace workers
experience compassion fatigue and secondary traumas (Neff, 2011; Connorton et
al., 2012; Pigni, 2011b). Because emergency workers often encounter potentially
traumatic phenomena, including fatal injury, traumatic amputation, disembowel-
ment, severe burns, and extreme victim distress, it is not surprising that those
who help the traumatized may become traumatized themselves (Breire & Scott,
2015: 21) and, as Mitchels writes, it is not uncommon that professionals and
54 5 Peace Work, Traumas & The Here and Now
The challenges faced by the contemporary peace worker are many. The sheer size,
scope, and complexity of most conflict systems can be overwhelming. Such work
places tremendous demands on the peace worker's personal power, which can also
be understood as physic/psycho/spiritual energy. It is of no surprise, then, that peace
workers engaged in the field are especially prone to burn out. These energies are
depleted because they are the fuel for interpersonal interactions, the key relational
tool in elicitive conflict transformation work (Taylor, 2013: 17).
PTSD, secondary trauma, compassion fatigue and burnout are thus some of the
possible outcomes if the peace worker has not been properly trained in the pre-
deployment phase. Alessandra Pigni, psychologist and consultant, launched in
2011 a discussion in a LinkedIn group (the Humanitarian Professionals Group)
around a statement and its following question; “Humanitarian aid workers are
often psychologically unprepared for field missions. Any views on this from
field and headquarters staff?” (Pigni, 2011a: 2). Hundreds of comments poured
in and were used in Pigni's White Paper Series, where she makes use of the
LinkedIn discussion to illuminate the concerns about the current state of
humanitarian aid work and the lack of proper preparation. “Preparing staff
psychologically for these kinds of issues, plus recognizing stress and burnout as
an occupational hazard is the real challenge for humanitarian and development
agencies” (Pigni, 2011b: 11).
The human response to trauma is extremely complex. Rosenbloom and
Williams present this illustration: “If you have experienced a trauma it can be
like having stared directly at the sun. Even after you look away the glare seems
everywhere and prevents you from seeing things clearly. It can keep you from
even opening your eyes at all for a while” (1999: 6).
How much we are affected by the work we do depends on a myriad of
variables and fluctuate from moment to moment and person to person. It
depends, amongst others, on how well prepared you are, the type of work you set
out to do, how much experience you have had previously, how receptive you are
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5.4 Irresponsible “Heroes” 55
and how much you see, experience or are being told. Everything can and will to
some degree shape you. As for now, the focus shifts more towards the
irresponsible peace worker, and how harmful such a workforce can be.
In our culture there is a lack of tolerance for the emotional vulnerability that
traumatized people experience. Little time is allotted for the working through
emotional events. We are routinely pressured into adjusting too quickly in the
aftermath of an overwhelming situation (Levine, 1997: 48).
On the one hand I agree with Levine when he ties together the society's
expectance of a quick 'heroic' recovery, on the other hand, I see the individual
worker's believed needs as important facets of why traumas are being
suppressed. It might be an easier coping strategy in the existing moment to
suppress that which haunts, nevertheless, this strategy can in the long run be
extremely destructive. Dietrich argues along the same lines and additionally
explains potential consequences of suppressing traumas.
Dietrich and Levine have quite a similar approach to traumas and the fallacious
glorification of emotional clampdown. “Most modern cultures, including ours,
fall victim to the prevailing attitude that strength means endurance; that it is
somehow heroic to be able to carry on regardless of the severity of our
symptoms” (Levine, 1997: 62). This view contributes to create an obstacle
within peace work, as withholding, thenceforth, becomes the prized behavior.
“Peace work of this kind is a matter for heroes”, Dietrich writes in the first
chapter of his second volume, and further clarifies his statement.
56 5 Peace Work, Traumas & The Here and Now
By hero, I mean one who has come far on the path of breaking free from confusion.
Heroes are capable of separating themselves out from the work they do. They do not
mistake recognition for self worth or criticism for hostility or competition- nor their
insights for political or social power, their contribution to transformation with
saving the world, their feelings of guilt for motivation (Dietrich, 2013:13).
You can exhaust yourself running around 'doing good' and helping others, and in the
end be so depleted that you are incapable of doing any good at all and unable to help
even yourself. It's not the doing things for others that is the source of the stress here.
It is the lack of peace and harmony in your mind as you engage in doing all the
doing (Kabat-Zinn, 2013: 491).
Wolfgang Dietrich has written extensive literature on this topic and explains
overtly how suppression of memories and energies affects peace work. He
additionally explains the importance of being fully aware of one's self in the
present moment as a guiding concept fundamental to elicitive conflict transfor-
mation (Dietrich, 2013: 72), which corresponds to Levine's description of trauma
sufferers. “[They] live in a world of chronic dissociation. This perpetual state of
disembodiment keeps them disoriented and enable to engage in the here and
now” (Levine, 2010: 355-356). With this in mind we embark upon the last sub-
chapter, which involves the power of the presence, once more related to elicitive
conflict work.
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5.5 Power of the Presence/ We Can Be Heroes 57
In general, the capacity for self-regulation is what allows us to handle our own states
of arousal and our difficult emotions, thus providing the basis for the balance
between authentic autonomy and healthy social engagement. In addition this
capacity allows us the intrinsic ability to evoke a sense of being safely “at home”
within ourselves [...] (Levine, 2010: 13).
58 5 Peace Work, Traumas & The Here and Now
Awareness is the first pre-requisite in the 'ABC for elicitive peace workers', more
explicitly awareness of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual limits of the
peace worker. Breathing meditation, as a breath-oriented method within elicitive
conflict transformation, enriches this awareness. 'Nothing exists that is not
Divine' was the opening phrase of this chapter, which reminds me about a
dissolved dichotomy between mundane and spiritual. I also connect it to the
divinity of all. Clarified: The wound that first appears to be an utmost curse may
with love and care become a garden from where the most wonderful fruits can
grow.
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6 Peace Work As Art
6 Peace Work As Art
I am sure the practitioner will ask: How exactly does this translate into practical
skills? While I speak in some chapters to that question, the nature of this book does
not seek to provide a technician's manual. In fact it proposes to break beyond such a
view. I invite the practitioner to suspend the need for tools, answers, and techniques.
If possible, let these pages flow toward the deeper question of why we do this work
and what sustains us (Lederach, 2005: ix-x).
The peace program in Innsbruck builds upon this thought, both in going beyond
an exclusively rational approach, as well as searching for the deeper questions of
why, which is reflected in this work. Why write? Why this topic now? Why
tuning into our breath? Why should I as a peace worker provide a space for
transformation for others, if I cannot provide this space for myself? The question
of 'why engaging with peace work?' is also a central query in the peace program,
and as with my case, wounds tend to play a central role.
What would it mean if we could use art for expressing the inexpressible?
Within the frame of writing this work I am using my creativity in a different way
than before. I am using my body as a tool, my breath as a caretaker, friend, and
instrument for homeostasis and thus additionally for remaining stable and
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6.1 The Peace Worker as an Artist 61
separated. “The aim of the Art of the Self is not the creation of an extrinsic
object but the transformation of the self, through a risky process which does not
culminate in a finished piece of work but continues perpetually throughout one's
life” (Koppensteiner, 2009: 92). Koppensteiner further twists the notion of art by
embracing the elements of intuition, embodied and transpersonal experiences
(2009), and thus expands the art of the transpersonal self to include both
cognition and spiritual practices.
Instead of scrutinizing the concept of art9, it will perhaps be more fruitful to
look at the peace worker as an artist in this context, and subsequently ask the
question; what is an artist? James Baldwin (1998) stated that the main challenge
for an artist is to transform the confusion and chaos of life into art, while John
Paul Lederach claims that artists are “on a journey to find and reflect the beauty
that surrounds them” (2005: 122). In my opinion, these two statements coincide
delightfully in the sense that they reflect the challenges in transformations, both
grasping the beauty and the confusion. Koppensteiner describes the artist in a
wider approach, and consequently manages to include the risk segment
incorporated in the life of the artist.
An artist now is somebody who risks the own transformation, who enters the
creative process in order to change oneself, to change what one has been towards the
intermediate horizon of new beginnings with uncertain outcome and open future. No
results are guaranteed in this game (Koppensteiner, 2009: 90-91, italics in original).
An artist is accordingly one who is on a journey to find and reflect the beauty
that s/he is surrounded by, one who risks a transformation of the self, and who
transforms the confusion and chaos of life into art. Artists can therefore be
everyone, everywhere as Lederach notes;
Since everybody can practice the art of the Self, and “everybody can become an
artist of the self” (Koppensteiner, 2009: 90), there has to be some common
denominators for the artists. According to Lederach, “Artists live an everyday
9 For a more thorough interpretation of art, see Koppensteiner, N. (2009): The Art of the
Transpersonal Self, Transformation as Aesthetic and Energetic Practice. New York: Atropa
Press.
62 6 Peace Work As Art
The challenge of the artful connection is how to respect what we create, nurture love
for what we do, and bring beauty to what we build, even in the simplest tasks. We
have come to see our work for social change and peacebuilding too much in the line
of an intellectual journey, the cognitive processes of getting the analysis right and
developing the technique that facilitates the management of the change process. We
have failed to nurture the artist. To nurture the artist however does not require
becoming whom we are not. The opposite is true. It requires that we pay attention to
what already lies within us, within our capacity (Lederach, 2005: 162).
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6.2 Art as Conflict Work 63
The goal of bridging art and peacebuilding is not that we endeavor to become
something we are not. Nor is it the pursuit of the 'Arts' in order to find a way to
somehow become miraculously gifted in one of the forms, like music, poetry, or
painting. Experimenting and working at those can create tremendous insight, inner
strength, and sustenance. But I am not appealing for, nor advocating that peace-
builders must be artists in the professional sense of the word in order to connect art
and social change. The key is simpler than that: We must find a way to touch the
sense of art that lies within us all (Lederach, 2005: 161).
“The human being who does not first look for peace within herself will not find it on
the outside, because there is no objectifiable peace there” (Dietrich, 2012: 56-57).
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66 7 Meditation as a Tool for Elicitive Peace Work
there already exist excellent works about meditation through history 10 , I will
focus more on the topic of meditation as a tool for peace work, than on an in-
depth guide of the history and variations of meditation. In sub-chapter 3.4 “The
Experiential Understanding – Breathing Meditation”, I gave a short explanation
of the Breath-oriented approach I am practicing, as well as a brief notion on the
motivation behind using this method. In this chapter I will present a short
overview of meditation to depict my current locus, as well as unfold the connec-
tion between meditation, transpersonal psychology, and peace workers.
The word meditation comes from the Latin words mederi (which means “to heal” or
“to look after”) and medicus (which means “healer”). This is no mere coincidence;
meditation quiets our mind and brings our consciousness into contact with the most
powerful healing energies in the universe (Caponigro, 2005: 27).
Meditation is often used as a collective term for methods that focus on expand-
ing our consciousness. My personal experience is that it takes quite some prac-
tice before the monkey mind is able to settle. As Gilbert and Choden writes
“Without training, our minds can be a chaotic mix of different motives and
emotions, but making deliberate choices of what motives and emotions to cul-
tivate can change our minds” (2014: 53). A quiet and conscious mind is in the
here and now. A quiet and conscious mind is aware of the inner current, of
tensions, rigidities and conflicts, and attentive to changes “[…] because meditat-
ing is bringing your true presence to the here and now” (Hạnh, 2004: 5-6).
The purpose varies between the diverse types of meditation, but typical
goals can be one or more of the following: relaxation (both mental and physical),
detachment from uncontrolled mental activity, enhanced awareness, greater
insight and understanding of the universe and a cognitive and/or emotional pause
from the everyday life (Caponigro, 2005; Kornfield, 2000; Walsh & Sapiro,
2006). The meditation techniques vary as well.
There are hundreds of valid techniques that can guide our mind into the realms of
meditative consciousness […]. Of the many techniques that can quiet our mind and
bring us into the meditative state of consciousness, meditation on the breath is one
of the simplest, most ancient, and most powerful of all (Caponigro, 2005: 28).
10 Recommended reading: Kohn, L. (2008): Meditation Works, Three Pines Press, New Mexico;
Gawler, I. & Bedson, P. (2010): Meditation: An In-Depth Guide, Tarcher/Penguin, New York
7.2 Beyond Modern Methods Of Healing 67
Walsh and Vaughan explain that meditation elicits measurable changes, which is
of great significance for those who crave to bridge meditation with the inflexible
frames of empirical science. Koppensteiner (2009) recognizes and gives space
for the debate between the supporters and practitioners of transpersonal methods
on the one hand, and those who dismiss these techniques as the latest New Age
trend on the other. It is vital to acknowledge this debate, to be open to discuss
and converse about the fauna of transpersonal experiences and transrational
methods. As much as we ought to acknowledge the fruits of the rational mind,
we should also be able to go beyond the rigid understanding of healing that are
prevailing, at least in the Norwegian health care sector.
“Trans-personal psychology acknowledges and preserves the spiritual virtue
of pre-rational cultures as well as the achievements of rationality” (Dietrich, n.d.:
19). This recognition of the pre-modern civilizations' approach to healing is
fundamental for this chapter, particularly when compared to the modern
understanding of healing. Peter Levine describes how the modern, and especially
Western, medicine's have disregarded and viewed alternative methods as back-
wards and obsolescent, whilst prescribed medication has been the highway to
heal sufferings.
Since time immemorial, people have attempted to cope with powerful and terrifying
feelings by doing things that contradict perceptions of fear and helplessness:
religious rituals, theater, dance, music, meditation and ingesting psychoactive
substances, to name a few. Of these various methods for altering one's way of being,
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68 7 Meditation as a Tool for Elicitive Peace Work
modern medicine has accepted only the use of (limited, i.e., psychiatric) chemical
substances (Levine, 2010: 10).
In the Western and modern context, the scientific methods are exalted. The
modern peace family campaign for a mindset where 'the one God' is replaced by
'the one Truth', a singular truth that is superior of everything. “This type of truth
is accessed by reason, making rationality the prized capacity as it is the means by
which one approaches the truth” (Taylor, 2013: 6). This is where the concept of
transrationality becomes essential. By twisting the limits of rationality and
reintegrating energetic concepts of peace, a transrational understanding of peace
becomes available. “The rational elements have their place and necessity, but
neither are they sufficient as explanations for concrete transformations, nor will a
transformation occur whenever such an explanation is attempted” (Koppen-
steiner, 2009: 152). We must dare to go beyond our rational minds to experience
peace.
As I wrote in Chapter 3, The Research Methods, the transrational
perspective includes embracing the different peace families as well as going
beyond them, as Dietrich explains it; “We called this trans-rational, because it
appreciates and applies the rationality of modern science while it transgresses its
limits and holistically embraces all aspects of human nature for its interpretation
of peace” (Dietrich, 2014a: 48). Since modern medicine has based the process of
healing predominantly on the use of limited (psychiatric) chemical substances,
the modern societies have to a large degree been taught to be skeptical of
alternative methods to heal traumas. “Until recently, the very word meditation
tended to evoke raised eyebrows and thoughts about mysticism and hocus-pocus
in many people” (Kabat-Zinn, 2013: 7, italics in original). As much as we must
dare to go beyond our rational minds to experience peace, we must dare to be
open to that which can heal, and it is through breathing meditation that I
experience peace, the energetically flowing harmony that supports me in healing
trauma at my own pace.
ment arts, such as Butō, Qigong, 5Rhythms and Aikido, definitely fit the medita-
tion description as well. Hence, various practices can be explored to find a type
of meditation that to the best degree satisfies the practitioner's needs.
Meditation, as a method for expanding our consciousness and cultivating
our awareness, guide us to be present and see things as they are. As peace
workers are prone to experience posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTSD),
burnout syndromes and compassion fatigue, the capability to monitor and
observe oneself during such work is essential. Jon Kabat-Zinn explains how
being present in the moment can create a space. This space, or pause, can also be
applied when differentiating between e.g. mimicry, emotional contagion,
empathy and compassion.
As you bring mindfulness to a stressful moment, you can see if, in effect, it winds up
creating something of a pause, a moment in which it feels like you have a bit of
extra time to assess things more completely. By intentionally orienting yourself in
this way to the present moment, challenging as it may be, you have an opportunity
to buffer the impending effects of a major stress reactions (Kabat-Zinn, 2013: 340).
Being able to create this little pause in stressful and demanding moments
requires, as previously mentioned, quite a lot of practice beforehand. Like an
athlete learns to adjust and attune her body and mind, the meditator learns to
inhabit her body, calm the mind and be present in the here and now. However,
they both need commitment to the practice to experience the harvests of their
sowing.
In a qualitative study, psychologists Richard Harrison and Marvin
Westwood identified various protective practices that might mitigate risks of
secondary traumatization among mental health therapists (2009). Sections of
their findings can be transmitted to the elicitive conflict worker, as both
facilitators are working with trauma healing and both are prone to experience
secondary trauma or compassion fatigue due to the potential heaviness of their
work. There is especially one segment of their study that I find relevant for the
connection between the elicitive conflict worker and the transformative effects of
breathing meditation.
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70 7 Meditation as a Tool for Elicitive Peace Work
stay calmly focused and grounded, which allows them to be less reactive and engage
with greater equanimity. This contributes to increased ability to embrace complexity
and tolerate ambiguity, as well as enhanced capacity to hold multiple perspectives,
engage in both/and thinking, and remain hopeful in the face of suffering (Harrison &
Westwood, 2009: 209).
Mindful awareness […] helps participants recognize if and when their interpersonal
boundaries are at risk of becoming overly permeable, as well as other times when
they need to take action to restore balance in their lives (e.g., employ imagery or
ritual, engage in self-care practices, seek consultation, and reach out to personal
community) (Harrison & Westwood, 2009: 209, parenthesis in original).
Resting in an awareness of breathing, even for one or two breaths, can also remind
you to check in with your thoughts and feelings and become aware of them and how
they may be expressing themselves in particular regions of the body in the form of
tightness or tension of some kind. Perhaps you will see how reactive they are.
Perhaps you will question their accuracy (Kabat-Zinn, 2013: 343).
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8 Inhale, Exhale – The Breath In Breathing
8 Inhale, Exhale – The Breath In Breathing
As long as we breathe, as long as we take in the air from around us, let it spread
in our body and then exhale it again, we will not remain the same (Koppen-
steiner, 2009: 93).
Dear reader, before you embark upon this chapter, I invite you to breathe with
me, to let fresh oxygen enter your blood, to carefully step on your brake pedal
and simply slow down your pace and breathe. Gently place your hands on your
belly, close your eyes, and focus on the connection between your diaphragm and
your breath for a couple of breaths as your belly goes through two or three
risings and fallings.
In the ancient Indian literature, the term prana meant not only physical breath and
air, but also the sacred essence of life. Similarly, in traditional Chinese medicine, the
word chi refers to the cosmic essence and the energy of life, as well as the natural air
These coinciding features show how humans, through various languages and
different cultures, have had a deep understanding of the transforming powers of
respiration and correspondingly attempted to identify symbolic representations
of the life force within the languages.
12 A prolonged exhalation and calm inhalation all the way down to the diaphragm (The Here and
Now breath) trigger the parasympathetic nervous system, the body's "brake pedal" and
stimulates a relaxation response. The relaxation response calms down the heart rate, the blood
pressure, the brain waves and feelings. The sympathetic nervous system is activated in
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8.2 The Breath And The Body 75
As both the 'brake pedal' and the 'gas pedal' of our nervous system is affected by
our breath, and vice versa, we can facilitate a recreation pause by focusing on
our respiration.
Our physical body is thus affected by how we inhale and exhale and reciprocally,
our current experienced state of mind affects the way we breathe, whether we
have a shallow breath, hold our breath or use our breath to activate the 'brake
pedal'.
Nonetheless, the physical body is not the only element that is affected by
our pneuma, and the awareness of the breath's vitality is far from being a
newfangled focus point within areas regarding healing. “Since earliest times,
virtually every major psychospiritual system seeking to comprehend human
nature has viewed breath as a crucial link between nature, the human body, the
psyche, and the spirit” (Grof, 2014: 8). What Grof here titles link, Kabat-Zinn
calls bridge, a bridge between our body, mind and spirit (Kabat-Zinn, 2013).
Thích Nhất Hạnh correspondingly explains how conscious breathing creates this
bond.
Our breathing is the link between our body and our mind. Sometimes our mind is
thinking of one thing and our body is doing another, and mind and body are not
unified. By concentrating on our breathing, “In” and “Out,” we bring body and mind
back together, and become whole again. Conscious breathing is an important bridge
(Hạnh, 1992: 9).
Through practicing breathing meditation, I have observed how the breath not
only bridges my physical body and mind, my breath also facilitates my healing
process, connects me, among others, to my inner peace, my feelings, shadows,
chaos, emotions and fears.
different stress, threat and training situations. The sympathetic nervous system is the body's
"gas pedal". Shallow breathing triggers the "gas pedal" (Translated by author).
13 To breathe with a focus on the diaphragm / stomach can be very relaxing for the autonomic
nervous system. When we inhale deeply the muscles of the diaphragm are drawn together and
pushed down. Breathing this way, there is space to fill both lungs completely with air
(Translated by author).
76 8 Inhale, Exhale – The Breath In Breathing
I am completely immobile, but the whole body wants to move, shake, get rid of
the words that the brain keeps on formulating. I feel like a four year old child,
forced to sit still when the legs are full of imaginary ants, crawling, creeping,
pushing to move. At the same time my body is heavy and exhausted. Focusing on
the breath.
Inhale, exhale.
I feel the air entering my right nostril, the temperature is shifting slightly. The
air follows the stream towards my lungs, but it feels like a tight ribbon is around
my breast, making it impossible to really expand and take in the air. The ribbon
starts to tighten up even more and the muscles in my stomach, right behind my
navel, starts to contract. I notice how I am moving the glottis, and the throat
passage is narrowed to the point that the airway is almost blocked. As I am
pushing out the air, I sense that there is a lot of voice inside of me. Strong, loud
humming is suddenly leaking out between my heavy lips. As I am holding the
note, I feel how the vibrations are coming from the outside, as if the trembling is
shining in from the outside. My tongue is vibrating, together with my throat,
loosing up the pressure on the glottis, sending pulsating rhythms downwards in
my body. With each humming the vibrations are growing stronger and the
ribbon around my chest releases a bit. ∼ April 10, 2015.
Biologisk sett er angst en alarmreaksjon der kroppen på et øyeblikk gjøres i stand til
å reagere fort og kraftig. Denne alarmreaksjonen hjelper oss å overleve […]. De
store arm- og beinmusklene får en økt tilførsel av blod og oksygen og pusten
forsterkes 14 (Hoffart, in Magelssen, 2008: 107).
14 Biologically speaking anxiety is an alarm reaction in which the body in an instant is able to
react quickly and vigorously. This alarm reaction helps us to survive [...]. The large arm and
leg muscles get an increased supply of blood and oxygen, and the breathing rate increases
(Translated by author).
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8.4 Why Tuning Into Our Breath? 77
Det er i dag en helt ny bevissthet rundt pustens dyptgripende virkning. Vi kan også
se at den tradisjonelle delen av Vestens helsevesen begynner å ta innover seg dette
78 8 Inhale, Exhale – The Breath In Breathing
virkningsfulle verktøyet som vi alle er i besittelse av, og som naturlig følger oss
gjennom hele livet. Når du er oppmerksom på pusten, tar det fokus fra tankene og
skaper rom. Det er en måte å frambringe tilstedeværelse og bevissthet på. I
stressituasjoner vil du aktivt kunne bruke pusten for å trigge avspenningsresponsen,
og det er da du oppdager av pusten er en gave – du blir tilstede i dine oppgaver og
kan sette mer pris på hverdagen 15 (Magelssen, 2008: 53).
The need to push the brake pedal at some point can be quite a strong need for
peace workers employed in a challenging field. Breathing meditation, as a
method within elicitive conflict transformation, creates a convenient space for
nurturing the daily awareness. “Tuning in to it [the breath] brings us right into
the here and now. It immediately anchors our awareness in the body, in a
fundamental, rhythmic, flowing life process” (Kabat-Zinn, 2013: 41).
Tuning into our breath activate what Magelssen calls the brake pedal, or the
relaxation response, that calms the physical functions of the ANS. Van der Kolk
has been researching the connection between the brain and the body. In his book
“The Body Keeps the Score”, van der Kolk explains part of the relationship
between the brain and the body in the following manner:
Some 80 percent of the fibers of the vagus nerve (which connects the brain with
many internal organs) are afferent; that is, they run from the body and into the brain.
This means that we can directly train our arousal system by the way we breathe […].
Learning how to breathe calmly and remaining in a state of relative physical
relaxation, even when accessing painful and horrifying memories, is an essential
tool for recovery (van der Kolk, 2014: 207, parentheses included in original).
Observing our breath furthermore involve the opportunity to separate oneself out
from our work, and accordingly create a sufficient distance to be able to observe
a situation without giving nourishment to our inner movies, and correspondingly
avoid putting our own conflicts into the working space. As an elicitive conflict
worker, I become a part of the conflict by simply being in it (Taylor, 2013) and
therefore centering my attention on the present realities, through breathing,
supports me with balancing myself more deeply in demanding situations. Hạnh
15 Today there is a new awareness of the profound effects of the breath. We experience that the
traditional part of the Western [modern] healthcare is beginning to grasp the effects of the
powerful tool that we all possess, and that naturally accompanies us throughout our lives.
When you are aware of your breath, it takes the focus from the mind and creates space. It is a
way to bring forth the presence and the awareness. In stressful situations you can actively use
your breath to trigger the relaxation response, and that is when you discover that the breath is a
gift – you are present in your tasks and can appreciate the more your daily life (Translated by
author).
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8.5 Breathing And Being With Pain 79
gives a beautiful picture to how mindful breathing help us stay connected to the
here and now.
While we practice conscious breathing, our thinking will slow down, and we can
give ourselves a real rest. Most of the time, we think too much, and mindful
breathing helps us to be calm, relaxed, and peaceful. It helps us stop thinking so
much and stop being possessed by sorrows of the past and worries about the future.
It enables us to be in touch with life, which is wonderful in the present moment
(Hạnh, 1992: 11).
Even years after the actual danger is past, the trauma, undigested and locked in our
body, randomly breaks through into consciousness. A person who has been
traumatized may continue to relive the same event as if it were occurring in the
present (Brach, 2014: para. 9).
Trauma can dissociate us from our bodies, disconnect us from the presence and
remove us from the people we love and care for. Albeit this reaction may be
protective for a certain time, it will create more suffering that healing. “By
rejecting pain and pulling away from the ground of our being, we experience the
dis-ease of separation—loneliness, anxiety and shame” (Brach, 2014: para. 12).
Irresponsible heroes ignore traumatic episodes, leave the unprocessed
wounds forlorn and fill up body and mind with different substitutes to ease the
pain. However, “Unprocessed pain keeps our system of self-preservation on
permanent alert […]. Whether or not there is any present danger, we feel
absolutely at risk and compelled to find a way to get away from the pain”
(Brach, 2014: para. 10). Consequently we keep full throttle at the 'gas pedal' the
entire time and create mental movies in support of this agitation.
Learning to observe oneself by using the breath as an object of awareness,
does not necessarily mean that we have to, as Magelssen writes above, move
forward. Being present in the here and now also supports the ability to accept, to
halt or to let go, but with the additional flavor of letting it be a conscious choice.
“[W]hen we breathe consciously we recover ourselves completely and encounter
life in the present moment” (Hạnh, 1992: 9).
80 8 Inhale, Exhale – The Breath In Breathing
In addition, you will discover that it is possible to direct your breath with great
precision to various parts of your body in such a way that it will penetrate and
soothe regions that are injured or in pain, at the same time it calms and stabilizes the
mind (Kabat-Zinn, 2013: 50).
The countless effects that breathing meditation can have, will all start to blossom
in the present moment. “As you practice, your breath will become peaceful and
gentle, and your mind and body will also become peaceful and gentle” (Hạnh,
1992: 8). Tune in to your breath to grasp how your patterns affect your daily life,
how you can make conscious choices, how you can work with your breath for
healing pain and checking in on yourself in this present moment.
Focusing on being fully aware in every situation and aiming for an expan-
sion of my consciousness has brought up many painful moments of suffering. I
have deliberately approached meditation knowing that whatever comes up,
comes up for a reason, and subsequently tried to be open and warm to whatever
expressed. Jack Kornfield's way of understanding the loops of human pain has
guided me to through difficult times, and to open up to the beauty, which is also
related to suffering.
We cling to some hope that in spiritual life we can rise above the wounds of human
pain, never to have to suffer them again. We expect some experience to last. But
permanence is not true freedom, not the sure heart's release. Every wise voyager
learns that we cannot hold on to the last port of call, no matter how beautiful
(Kornfield, 2000: 125).
Anger, heat, red. Sweaty hands, jaws squeezed tightly together. SCREEEAM,
tears running down my face, bitter, angry, colorless tears. The anger shifts with
my breath. Hopelessness, frustration. I cannot do this!! I cannot hold all of this
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8.6 Breathing Connects Us 81
inside, it is too big, too much, too painful. My body is full, it overflows, and there
is no space for all of this. All I contain is pain. All I am is sorrow, grief and
disappointment. ∼ January 09, 2014.
This passage is from one of my first nights walking home alone in Oslo after
returning form Innsbruck. When I started noticing the changes in my body, the
tingling sensations, I began whispering a gatha16 by Thích Nhất Hạnh that I have
been practicing for reconnecting to the internal observer.
I have been whispering the lines as I walk home alone from late nights out in
Oslo, I have pronounced it before speaking up in front of crowds and I have
written it down on paper time and time again to memorize it and make it part of
my own practice. What the aforesaid excerpts demonstrates for me is that this
too is part of the practice, pain and suffering is part of life. “The capacity to
respond mindfully develops each time we experience discomfort, pain, or strong
emotions of any kind during formal meditation and we just observe them and
work at allowing them to simply be here as they are, without reacting” (Kabat-
Zinn, 2013: 338). Kabat-Zinn here stresses the importance of simply being, and
to respond mindfully. I am trying to welcome these outbursts with warmth and
openness, so that I can direct my energy where I want it to go, but it is a very
challenging part of my practice.
With each lungful of air we take in, we blur the boundaries to our surroundings,
making a piece of our environment – and, at times, other people's pnauma – part of
ourselves. Each time we exhale we charge the atmosphere similarly with a part of
ourselves. With each breath we change as our bodies blur (Koppensteiner, 2009:
169, italics in original).
Peace work is relational and it is the connectedness through our respiration that
helps me open up to both my surroundings and myself more profoundly than
before. I have found breathing meditation to be the most powerful tool for
observing and working with the relationship with yourself and others, and I will
describe this more in detail in the coming chapter. As for now I will leave you
with a quote from Kabat-Zinn that shows how breathing meditation can create
greenhouse-like conditions for the trust-seed to grow.
[Through breathing meditation] you are practicing taking responsibility for being
yourself and learning to listen to and trust your own being. The more you cultivate
this trust in yourself, the easier you will find it will be to trust other people more and
to see their basic goodness as well (Kabat-Zinn, 2013: 26).
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9 A Practice For Inner And Outer Peace Work
9 A Practice For Inner And Outer Peace Work
[T]he fact that you can learn to respond to stress with awareness does not mean that
you will never react anymore or that you will not sometimes be overwhelmed by
anger or grief or fear, We are not trying to suppress our emotions when we respond
mindfully to internal or external stressors. Rather, we are learning how to work with
all our reactions, emotional and physical, so that we may be less controlled by them
and see more clearly what we should do and how we might respond more effectively
(Kabat-Zinn, 2013: 348).
Up until this point I have written about meditation and its history, benefits and
difficulties. In this chapter I will share an introduction on how to meditate and
dip into some of the possible tussles related to beginning a practice. The guide
entails insights that might be useful for a person wanting to start a practice. This
chapter is shaped by reflecting upon the following question “How can an
elicitive peace worker use breathing meditation as a transrational method for
peace work?”, and is hence created for peace workers preparing for deployment,
in the midst of working, and for personnel returning home. What I want to state
at this point, however, is that meditation should neither be practiced at the
expense of a consultation with a doctor or psychologist, nor replace any
recommendation provided by your doctor.
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9.2 And Then... 85
I use a meditation cushion, as I find it easier to keep an upright and alert position
with some height under my buttocks. The cushion also supports me to expand
my chest, tilt my pelvis a bit forward and maintain a vertical posture. If you
prefer sitting on a chair, try to keep your back straight up (Fig. 2), not resting
your spine on the back of the chair. I use a meditation timer available as a mobile
phone application in order to keep track of time, and with the sound of a Tibetan
Singing Bowl I am gently coming back from each session.
When you have found your sitting position it is time to bring your aware-
ness to the breath. I am once again referring to Buddhist monk, author and
teacher Jack Kornfield and the practice of feeling your life-breath.
Let your mind be spacious and your heart be kind and soft. As you sit, feel the
sensations of your body. Then notice what sounds and feelings, thoughts and
expectations are present. Allow them all to come and go, to rise and fall like the
waves of the ocean. Be aware of the waves and rest seated in the midst of them.
Allow yourself to become more and more still. In the center of all these waves, feel
your breathing, your life-breath (Kornfield, 2016: para. 1-2).
For the first couple of weeks I meditated for 20 minutes each morning to get into
my practice. With the beginning of each new month I added ten minutes to the
sitting time, and currently I practice one hour every morning. I also practice
breathing meditation throughout the day, in short sessions that reminds me to be
present. It does not matter how long time you sit, what is important is to make
each moment count, bringing back your attention to your breath and stay
present.18
18 For a more thorough guide on meditation, I recommend Full Catastrophy Living, Using the
Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn 2013.
86 9 A Practice For Inner And Outer Peace Work
to motivate the group that is falling behind, while the Second in Command is
screaming that we need to keep running down hill, and then...
b) The soldiers are looking at me in the interrogation room at the airport. No,
looking is the wrong word, measuring. They are measuring me. Their eyes travel
up and down my body and I try to hide my sweaty palms. I am asked to take off
my clothes for a security inspection, to spread my legs, raise my arms and to
bend forward. Later they take me to another interrogation room and start
screaming to me, and then...
c) I close my eyes and the pictures, smells and sounds are coming back to me.
My pulse increases rapidly as the ache is crowding up from deep within,
expanding first around my chest so tightly that I want to throw myself to the
ground, and then...
And then... I breathe, a long deep breath. Feeling how the air is entering
through my nostrils, how my lungs are expanding and how my stomach is
growing slightly with the air I inhale. As I exhale I focus on how wonderful it
feels to be able to witness this breath that keeps me alive, and with these seconds
of practice I return to the here and now, being fully aware and centered.
∼ February 17, 2015.
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9.4 Beginning Breathing Might Be Difficult 87
The internal observer looks at the persona's ego layers such as they are in the present
in a loving manner, without judgment, comparison, reward, or punishment. The
internal observer is conscious of his or her existence, but does not comment or act.
[…] Observers working from the spiritual layer remain silent and love uncon-
ditionally, as there is no duality in transrationality (Dietrich, 2013: 220).
Using the breath as a tool can facilitate the process of twisting our awareness
from habitually being impenetrable and out of reach, to carefully open up to the
crispness of the present.
Beginning meditation may be difficult. Just sitting immobile for a half hour can be
arduous at first and intensive practice over a period of days can be powerful and at
times disconcerting. Any unresolved psychological conflicts tend to surfaces soon as
attention is turned inward and the restless agitated nature of the untrained mind
rapidly becomes apparent. Powerful surges of arousal and emotion may alternate
with deep peace and joy (Walsh & Vaughan, 1980: 136).
Certainly had it not been for these expectations prior psychotherapeutic experiences
and the encouragement of more experienced practitioners, I would never have gotten
beyond the first couple of weeks. The nature of meditation seems to be especially at
first a slow but cumulative process, a fact that might be useful for beginners to know
(Walsh, 1977: 153).
Gilbert and Choden write that without training, our minds can be “a chaotic mix
of different motives and emotions” (2014: 53). As I began to meditate I noticed
more attentively the aspects of my monkey mind; the planning, judging, day-
dreaming, fearing, all in a frenzy. I also started noticing how I distinguished bet-
ween various emotions and motives, and how I embraced only the qualities that I
wanted to identify with.
Getting smart also means that, unlike other animals, we are able to think about our
own inner emotions and motives, and we can judge them along with our behaviors
and efforts too. The problem is, we might not like what we experience inside of us.
We might not like the surges of fear or anger or our tendencies to get irritated with
people or be submissive to them. We might be alarmed by some of the sexual or
aggressive fantasies that flow through us, and instead of having compassion for
ourselves for having such a tricky brain, we might become critical and at war with
ourselves (Gilbert & Choden, 2014: 44).
The more sensitive I became, the more I was forced to recognize that what I had
formerly believed to be my rational mind, preoccupied with cognition, planning,
problem solving, etc., actually comprised a frantic torrent of forceful, demanding,
loud and often unrelated thoughts and fantasies which filled an unbelievable portion
of consciousness even during purposive behavior (Walsh, 1977: 154).
Nevertheless, the difficulties and challenges of the meditation journey are often
the same aspects that are transforming, heart opening and that shake up your
equilibrium. “The best advice for any kind of question in the meditation practice
is to keep practicing, to just keep looking at whatever arises in nonjudgmental
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9.4 Beginning Breathing Might Be Difficult 89
In sub-chapter 1.2 'A Wonderer and a Wanderer', I wrote that the lack of self-
love and self-compassion has made the journey towards healing exhausting. The
foundation of the subsequent chapter continues to be 'being present through
breathing meditation', however, the main focus will be how the breathing space
creates an opportunity to enhance (self)compassion.
19 Petrichor is the scent of wet earth formed when rain falls on dry soil.
10 Peace-work Interconnected With
Self- Compassion
10 Peace-work Interconnected With Self- Compassion
Take a long deep inhale through your nose, linger for a few seconds and release
the air slowly through your mouth and contemplate on the following: how do
you relate to suffering, to the suffering of unknown others, of acquaintances,
close friends and family, and likewise how do you relate to your own suffering?
Do you close your eyes and heart to it, or do you take everything in? Related to
the B in the ABC of elicitive peace workers' pre-requisite, namely “B-alance
between compassion and self-protection” (Dietrich, 2014a: 53), I am using this
chapter to explore the balance, and to understand what might happen if the
weight scale is tipping towards either side. I will furthermore explain how my
breathing meditation practice is helping me to become more aware of what is
mine (and what is not).
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92 10 Peace-work Interconnected With Self- Compassion
[…] while empathy involves feelings that are isomorphic to those of the other
person, sympathy, empathic concern, and compassion do not necessarily involve
shared feelings. For example, empathizing with a person feeling sad will result in a
feeling of sadness in the self, whereas sympathizing with, being empathically
concerned, or feeling compassion for a sad person will result in either pity or
compassionate love for the person, but not sadness (Singer & Lamm, 2009: 84).
10.2 Self-Compassion
10.2 Self-Compassion
As with meditation, the concept of self-compassion is a relatively new concept
for Western psychology, although the philosophy behind it has existed for
centuries in Eastern philosophical thought (Neff, 2003). Numerous theories and
concepts have been associated with that of self-compassion in Western psycho-
logy, such as self-respect, self-efficacy and true self-esteem, most of them with
roots in positive psychology and social cognitive theory. These concepts do not,
however, give space for the scope and openness that I advocate self-compassion
to include.
To explore self-compassion on a deeper level, we have to first understand
more of what compassion is. The word compassion originates from the Latin
20 Empathy plays a crucial role in for example Carl Rogers' client-centered therapy, Marshall
Rosenberg's model of nonviolent communication, Fritz Perls Gestalt therapy and many others.
10.2 Self-Compassion 93
word compati, which means 'to suffer with' (Gilbert & Choden, 2014). Gilbert
and Choden further note that this is not a helpful definition, “[…] because the
key to compassion as we think of it today is not just suffering or even 'suffering
with', but the motivation to relieve it and acquire the skills to do so” (2014: 95).
Compassion is here defined as perceiving and relating to suffering with an
authentic desire to help. “Compassion involves understanding and acceptance of
suffering but not just sitting in it- like sitting in one's own dirty bathwater and
believing that acceptance means you shouldn't do anything” (Gilbert & Choden,
2014: 2). Neff argues that compassion involves recognizing our shared human
condition, “flawed and fragile as it is” (Neff, 2011: 10). In relation to this quote,
I would like to remind the reader about the importance of being aware of our
own motivation and drives for doing peace work. I reiterate: so-called good
intentions with an acclaim of altruism is far from being the prerequisite for being
an elicitive conflict worker.
Self-compassion is the ability to direct compassion inwards and is therefore
necessary for both trauma and peace work. According to Neff and Pommier,
self-compassion involves “being moved by one's own distress so that the desire
to heal and ameliorate suffering is experienced” (2012: 2). Being able to
encounter your pain and suffering with compassion and acceptance, in the same
way that you would be open to the suffering of another being, can help you
connect more profoundly to yourself as well as create ripple effects around you.
Self-compassion […] involves being touched by and open to one's own suffering,
not avoiding or disconnecting from it, generating the desire to alleviate one's
suffering and to heal oneself with kindness. Self-compassion also involves offering
nonjudgmental understanding to one's pain, inadequacies and failures, so that one's
experience is seen as part of the larger human experience (Neff, 2003: 87).
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94 10 Peace-work Interconnected With Self- Compassion
blocking of our own needs for compassion. “To give compassion to others but
not the self, in fact, is seen drawing artificial distinctions between self and others
that misrepresent our essential interconnectedness” (Hạnh, quoted in Neff &
Pommier, 2012: 1). This distinction becomes blurred when we engage with a
practice of compassion for all, including ourselves. “Self-compassion entails
seeing one's own experience in light of the common human experience,
acknowledging that suffering, failure, and inadequacies are part of the human
condition, and that all people—oneself included—are worthy of compassion”
(Neff, 2003: 87).
The previous sub-chapter carries with it certain responsibilities for the peace
worker to take into account, before, through and after deployment. An elicitive
peace worker should, for instance, be able to balance compassion and self-
compassion, as well as distinguish between empathy, sympathy, confluence and
compassion. Without this differentiation, we could easily let others' states of
being affect us, so that the other's despair becomes my despair, the other's
traumatic experiences become my experience, the other's fury arouse my anger
and so on. Thus, an overemphasis of affective or emotional elements could lead
us into an emotional confusion without the ability to distinguish between our
own feelings and those of others.
The German born psychotherapist Fritz Perls coined the term 'Gestalt
therapy' in the 1940s and 1950s, a “[…] here and now-therapy, in which we ask
the patient during the session to turn all his attention to what he is doing at the
present, during the course of the session, right here and now” (Perls, 1973: 63).
In the book The Gestalt Approach & Eye Witness to Therapy written in 1973,
Perls writes about discovering the proper balance and boundary between a
person and the world that surrounds her, and the ingrained mechanisms/neurosis
that might prevent a person from finding such a balance. Perls interpreted
neuroses “not as diseases in the medical sense, but as an impairment of an
organism's holistic development” (Dietrich, 2013: 35). One of the neuroses Perls
describes, confluence, matches the aforementioned struggle and can be linked to
the peace worker who is identifying him/herself too closely with those s/he
encounters. “When the individual feels no boundary at all between himself and
10.3 Elicitive Peace Workers, (Self-)Compassion and Burnout 95
his environment, when he feels that he and it are one, he is in confluence with it.
Parts and whole are indistinguishable from one another” (Perls, 1973: 38).
Confluence is thus a loss of distinction between the self and others.
When working with trauma and healing it is necessary to tune into and
observe our own feelings and emotions, which we often relate to our own ex-
periences, associations, intuitions and familiarities, and then use this information
as guidelines in our understanding of the other. Thenceforth it is essential that we
engage with reality checks of those feeling and emotions that are aroused in us,
reflect upon them and sort out which ones that belong to us, so that our
understanding of other beings are not restrained and/or controlled by ourselves
(by our feelings, expectations and needs).
In 'A Brief Introduction to Transrational Peace Research and Elicitive
Conflict Transformation', Dietrich presents a tool for analyzing the different
themes, levels and layers in a conflict. 21 Referring to this it is essential, and
additionally very difficult, to work on the mental-social layer. It is however, of
“[…] the greatest importance that conflict workers undergo a conscious
education of the heart, and that they learn to confront their attachment on mental-
social layer in a selectively authentic fashion” (Dietrich, 2013: 219).
According to Dietrich, who have worked with thousands of students in a
special field-training component designed to integrate academic excellence with
the skills required in real conflict situation (UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies,
2015), to be an elicitive conflict worker requires “[…] high awareness of the
Self, of the surrounding reality in the field and of the concepts of one’s own
mind in order to not get lost in fantasies, pre-concepts and values, but be able to
resonate to the parties’ statements, behaviors, feelings, needs and requests”
(Dietrich, 2014a: 53).
Balancing compassion thus corresponds with point 2 and 6 of Dietrich's' 20
central virtues of elicitive conflict workers, who: 2- Accept themselves, others
and human nature for what they are; 6- Are benevolent, empathic, patient and
concerned for the wellbeing of others (2014a: 54). Being compassionate does
require us to be attentive to the struggles of other beings, but if we, as elicitive
conflict workers, manage to be present and self-compassionate in the very
moment, we are able to nurture ourselves at the same time. Breathing meditation
can once more be a wonderful tool for balancing compassion and self-
compassion, and for being in touch with ourselves, as Neff states,
21 The third volume of Dietrich´s trilogy is available in print in German: Variationen über die
vielen Frieden, which presents Elicitive Conflict Mapping as a practical tool of applied conflict
work. English translation forthcoming in 2016.
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96 10 Peace-work Interconnected With Self- Compassion
[…] when we recognize how difficult it is sometimes to be there for people who are
struggling, and comfort ourselves in the process, we are able to be stronger, more
stable, and resilient when supporting others in their suffering. This is an especially
important skill for those who deal with others' problems for a living (2011: 191-
192).
Thus pain and suffering are a necessary condition of our understanding, of our
happiness. So do not say that you do not want to know anything about pain or about
suffering, that you only want to know about happiness—that would be an impossible
thing. We know well that suffering helps us to understand, that it nurtures our
compassion, and that for this reason it is vitally necessary for us. So we must know
how to learn from suffering, we must know how to make use of it to gather the
energy of compassion, of love, of understanding (Hạnh, 2011: 44).
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11 Healing The Healers
11 Healing The Healers
When body and mind are one, the wounds in our hearts, minds, and bodies begin to
heal. As long as there is separation between body and mind, these wounds can't heal.
During sitting meditation, the three elements of breath, body, and mind are calmed,
and gradually they become one (2012: 126).
22 Heal: Of Old Norse heila, derived from the adjective heill (whole, healthy, undamaged) which
in Norwegian has given the words heal, whole, not in pieces; natural; complete (Translated by
author).
In the chapter 'On Healing' Kabat-Zinn also offers a connection between whole-
ness, healing and meditation.
The notion of wholeness is found not only in the meaning of the words health and
healing (and, of course, in the word holy); we also find it embedded in the deep
meaning of the words meditation and medicine, words that are obviously related to
each other in some way (2013: 188, italics in original).
23 Kur: Systematic and regular treatment of disease; rough remedy (Translated by author).
24 Cura: Care, solicitude or deep consideration/attention of someone or something (Translated by
author).
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11.2 Self Healing 101
The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind –
of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel without
becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. For many people this
involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused (2) learning to maintain that
calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you
of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engage with the
people around you, (4) not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets
about the ways you have managed to survive (van der Kolk, 2014: 203-204).
Healing includes integrating and embodying and thus fully inhabiting yourself,
as Levine writes, “you initiate your own healing by reintegrating lost or
fragmented portions of your essential self” (1997: 61).
In the quote above Levine explains how healing, in a holistic sense, involves a
transformation from the cluttered to the whole. In Chapter 5: Peace Work,
Traumas & The Here and Now, I explored topics concerning peace workers
encountering trauma, irresponsible 'heroes', and the power of the presence. In
sub-chapter 5.5 I wrote the following: When the work environment is shaped by
102 11 Healing The Healers
war and deep cutting conflicts, peace workers and traumatic experiences will be
walking hand in hand. When walking hand in hand with trauma, peace workers
will likewise walk together with healing, and attempt to return to a state of
balance.
Unprocessed pain and trauma will, according to Tara Brach, “keep our
system of self-preservation on permanent alert […]. Whether or not there is any
present danger, we feel absolutely at risk and compelled to find a way to get
away from the pain” (2003: 110). This reflects the notion from Chapter 5
regarding the need, at times, to suppress the trauma shortly as it might be an
easier coping strategy in the existing moment. “In order to make it through such
sudden and severe pain, victims of trauma typically dissociate from their bodies,
numbing their sensitivity to physical sensations” (Brach, 2003: 11). However,
traumas that are ignored will not disappear. “Even years after the actual danger is
past, the trauma, undigested and locked in our body, randomly breaks through
into consciousness” (Brach, 2003: 110). The traumas that our bodies shelter
manifest throughout our lives in different ways, as fears that we experienced
years ago are embedded in the tissues of our bodies (Magelssen, 2008;
Caponigro, 2005). Maybe they manifest in a subtle manner by dripping into
muscular contractions or through thought patterns, or perhaps by bursting out
like seismic waves and erupting our life in a ferocious manner. However, we
must dare to encounter these frightening vibrations in order to begin healing.
Until the core physical experience of trauma- feeling scared stiff, frozen in fear or
collapsing and going numb- unwinds and transforms, one remains stuck, a captive of
one's own entwined fear and helplessness. [...] In order to unravel this tangle of fear
and paralysis, we must be able to voluntarily contact and experience those
frightening physical sensations (Levine, 2010: 73-74).
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11.2 Self Healing 103
compassionate in this process and give ourselves the space, gentleness and
patience we need to begin healing.
Every day will be different. In fact, every moment and every breath will be different,
so it is helpful not to jump to conclusions about either the practice or its value to you
after one or two sessions. The work of growth and healing takes time. It requires
patience and consistency in the meditations practice over a period of weeks, if not
months and years (Kabat-Zinn, 2013: 379).
We heal by reconnecting with those places in our body where the unprocessed
pain is sheltered (Brach, 2003), and in order to reconnect with these places we
need a tool. As a transrational method for peace work, breathing meditation is
precisely such a tool for learning to reconnect your broken peaces/pieces. Kabat-
Zinn illuminates how breathing meditation “involves helping people to see and
feel and believe in their wholeness” (2013: 186). Breathing meditation also
support practitioners to:
[…] tend, befriend, and mend the wounds of disconnectedness and the pain of
feeling isolated, fragmented and separate, and helping them to discover an
underlying fabric of wholeness and connectedness within themselves” (Kabat-Zinn,
2013: 186, italics in original).
workers and trauma, including both encountering traumatic episodes in the field,
and experiences that cause trauma beforehand of fieldwork. In the coming sub-
chapter I will focus on the wounded healer, a figure that has come to manifest
within me and support my process, especially through challenges and resistance.
Michael J. Maley claims that the basic understanding of the wounded healer
is connected to the idea that “[...] we make no progress toward wholeness
without problems to address in our life, and that the so-called issues of the
therapist can be looked at as blessings or opportunities for learning rather than
something to remove” (Maley, 1989: 1). According to Wolfgang Dietrich, is the
figure of the wounded healer “[...] as present in psychotherapy as it is in
shamanism, and it means that people who suffered through a specific traumata,
such as violence or sexual abuse [...] acquire a heightened awareness of related
problems” (Dietrich, 2013: 213). I will further give a short overview of the
shamanic figures' relation to peace studies, and subsequently explore the concept
of the wounded healer.
Shamans are healers, seers, and visionaries who have mastered death. They are in
communication with the world of gods and spirits. Their bodies can be left behind
while they fly to unearthly realms. They are poets and singers. They dance and
create works of art (Halifax, 1979: 4).
Dietrich argues that the different definitions of whom and what a shaman is have
given rise to countless arguments (2013). Dietrich then provides a basic
definition that covers the heart of shamanism: “Shamans are […] healers,
teachers, narrators, singers, or poets who address the great themes of fertility and
death as well as healing of illnesses and social relationships” (2013: 46). What
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11.3 Shaman – The Healed Healer 105
Dietrich leaves out of this definition is the ability to healing the self, which
Halifax claims to be one of the core features of shamanism. “The shaman is a
healed healer who has retrieved the broken pieces of his or her body and psyche
and, through a personal rite of transformation, has integrated many planes of life
experience” (Halifax, 1979: 18). The life experiences of the shaman thus play a
great role and shape the tools the shamans uses in search for a connection to the
whole.
Maley argues that in many of the shamanic societies, “one does not become
a shaman without this fundamental sickness and withdrawal experience” (Maley,
1989: 3). In order to understand the territory of disease and death, a shaman must
have experienced illnesses and wounds and the complementary marks it has on
the body, mind and spirit.
The period of sickness and withdrawal forms the core of the experience that makes
the healer. From this experience comes the knowledge, wisdom, strength, energy
and commitment to assist the client in finding the connection to those parts of
themselves that actually do the healing (Maley, 1989: 4).
These arguments lead us to the figure of the wounded healer, a prominent, but
often ignored, figure in both psychology and peace work. Levine has researched
and worked with trauma and its embodied manifestations for the past 30 years,
and he argues that therapists should first recognize and work with their own
wounds before trying to give space for others to do the same. Levine compares
the practice of contemporary therapists with that of shamanic traditions, with a
footing in the quality of healing the healer.
In a common therapy [...] the therapist instructs the PTSD victim to assert control
over his[/her] feelings, to manage his[/her] dysfunctional thoughts. Contrast this
alignment to that of shamanic traditions, where the healer and the sufferer join
together to re-experience the terror while calling on cosmic forces to release the grip
of the demons. The shaman is always first initiated, via a profound encounter with
his[/her] own helplessness and feeling of being shattered, prior to assuming the
mantle of healer. Such preparation might suggest a model whereby contemporary
therapist must first recognize and engage with their own traumas and emotional
wounds (Levine, 2010: 35).
Maley makes the same connection as Levine and further understands the
therapist's wounds as possible advantages rather than obstacles: “[...] we make
no progress toward wholeness without problems to address in our life, and the
so-called issues of the therapist can be looked at as blessings or opportunities for
learning rather than something to remove” (Maley, 1989: 1). In the chapter
'Healing the Healers', Roger Walsh connects the topics of healing, shamanism
106 11 Healing The Healers
and wounded healers, and this quote will guide us to further explore the area of
the wounded healer.
Healing is not a one-way street. What heals the patient can also heal the therapist.
Even the desire to help another may benefit both people. This mutual healing may
be especially important for those shamans who undergo an initiation crisis. Some of
these were the original 'wounded healers', healers who had themselves once suffered
and were therefore enabled to relieve the suffering of others (Walsh, 2007: 217).
The individual with a broken heart cannot love. Some people cannot fight back,
others cannot receive, forgive, love themselves, surrender. All of us have these
missing pieces, not because we want them, but because we have not yet worked
through the steps to their development. It is certainly true that some are larger and
deeper than others and many are unconscious. It is also true that they have an impact
on others in relationship to us (Maley, 1989: 6-7).
In the State of the Art chapter I refer to Carl Gustav Jung as one of the first
clinicians who attempted to legitimize a spiritual approach to the practice of
depth psychology (Kasprow & Scotton, 1999: 13). Jung introduced the term
'wounded healer', to a concept that had already existed for a long time within
shamanism (Dietrich, 2013; Halifax, 1982). In 'Fundamental Questions of
Psychotherapy', Jung explains the concept of the wounded healer related to
physicians.
We could say, without too much exaggeration, that a good half of every treatment
that probes at all deeply consist in the doctor’s examining himself, for only what he
can put right in himself can he hope to put righting the patient. It is no less, either, if
he feels that the patient is hitting him, or even scoring off him: it is his own hurt that
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11.5 Dare To Go Deeper 107
gives the measure of his power to heal. This, and nothing else, is the meaning of the
Greek myth of the wounded physician25 (Jung, 1985: 116).
Usually – this is our observation – most people who are interested in peace work are
wounded, or have been wounded. The motivation for going into such a program and
such a job is that you want to do something because you have been through this or
that experience, which made you want to do things like peace work. And if this is
the case, you have a lot of potential. The wounded healer is a wonderful figure in
our world. However, the wounded healer also means that you heal your wounds
first, and then – because you know the pain – you can be empathic with others since
you went through something similar (Dietrich, 2014b: para. 23).
Michael J. Maley is of the opinion that it is not enough to briefly look into one's
own wounds when working as a facilitator. The therapist should preferably
continue the exploration, as suffering does not exist only on one level. “Hope-
fully, each therapist continues to pursue his or her journey into woundedness
long after the initial training experience is over. This continued commitment to
therapy is very necessary to encourage since there are so many levels to
woundedness” (Maley, 1989: 5).
25 For more information about the wounded physician, read C. Kerényi: Asklepios: Archetypal
Image of the Physician's Existence.
108 11 Healing The Healers
wanted to answer that I am going deep. Deeper and deeper I explore myself with
each meditation session and travel into wonder, pain, and nothingness. The
gentle confrontation and encouraging words “Dare to go deeper” left the mouth
of Koppensteiner, but the words, however, have already been aching inside my
heart for months. Sitting still, doing absolutely nothing for forty-five minutes. It
does not sound very difficult does it? To let go of the control and dive into full
stillness is challenging, but daring to disclose my experiences on pages that will
be read, has proven to be very challenging.
I am scared of exposing myself, scared of uncovering the contraries within
to others. I am afraid of standing naked in front of you, in front of my family, and
in front of my friends. Why? If the wounds I carry are part of that which made
me begin this journey, anxiety of not being accepted is what keeps me from
uncovering my experiences. Writing and drawing after my meditation sittings is
a way for me to keep track of the different sessions and also a therapeutic way of
expressing the sensations I have had. What I find immensely challenging is
including these excerpts into this work. One part of me starts criticizing my own
experiences when they are on paper and I start to worry how the passages will
be received, how I will be judged, how it might affect the readers understanding
of me and the overall work I have been doing. As I am writing these lines I feel
extremely vulnerable and sad because I let my fears push and drag me into
different directions. ∼ October 09, 2015.
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12 My Healing Process
12 My Healing Process
After an incident in the military training26 I broke down. When an event outside
the mission took place [a bus full of young soldiers drove past me and started
making inappropriate hand signs and yelled abusive words], and the zone
between the rules of 'the game' no longer were relevant, my tears came. When
talking to our trainer from the army, Samuel, he told me to stop pinching myself
when I was crying. During my crying phase of the integrative seminar I noticed
that I was biting my thumb. I have tried to reflect on why I am hurting myself,
and I think it is a sort of coping strategy creating pain somewhere else on my
body, so that I can avoid thinking about what is really hurting. It is hard writing
about this knowing that someone else will read it (Reflection paper, 2013: 6).
26 The military training is a special field-training unit for civilians with a background in conflict
transformation that is offered by the Austrian Armed Forces. The training is part of the MA
Program for Peace Studies in Innsbruck.
and it hurts. A panic attack. Making my nights sleepless and my days fatiguing.
The experience of anxiety is growing and descending in a circular movement.
The circular movement continues until the breathing reaches a peak and then
descends into the depth of silence. The loss of control over my fight-or-flight
response is part of my physical after-experiences of the trauma, lingering and
recurring.
During the first year after the attack, I pushed away people close to me, was
restless, angry, but at the same time, I was also coping with living. I was trying
to create and live a normal life; making dinner, going to the gym, working in a
kindergarten, figuring out how to get a job in the NRC, MSF or the ICRC. The
healing process for me has not gone through certain set stages. I cannot say in
hindsight that I have crossed of denial, anger, shame, outward adjustment phase,
integration phase and then, ultimately, reached a stable state of Healed with
capital H. There has been no checklist in my healing process.
[W]e noticed something about books written on healing and reconciliation. Almost
every author would say two things. The first is that healing and reconciliation are
not linear processes. Then they usually take a breath and go on to describe the
phases and stages of healing and reconciliation in a fairly linear way. I would call
that a paradox. A paradox is not a contradiction; it is about holding two truths that
may be apparently contradictory on the surface but that at a deeper level have a
connection. I do think that these are connected. When you are in the midst of healing
and reconciliation over deep violation, it is up and down, back and forth, over and
over again, round and round, and nothing, always nothing, makes full sense. If you
stand back and look at hundreds and thousands of these, it is possible to discern a
pattern or two that you could refer to as stages or steps. Once these get named, the
linear metaphors tend to dominate the discussion. So while authors would say that
healing is not a linear process, they do not tell us very much about the nonlinear part
of it (Lederach, 2013: 83).
The best metaphor I have encountered for my process can be found in the work
of Lederach, as he has suggested “a shift from a linear metaphor that views
change as a sequential movement described as progress, to a metaphor more in
tune with life – as a continuous flow of simultaneous and multilayered
experiences” (Lederach, 2010: 200). The Tibetan Singing Bowl, a type of bell
that gives a deep, vibrating sound, is the metaphor that Lederach uses in
describing a healing process. The sound given by the Tibetan Singing Bowl is
created through a circular movement at the rim of the bowl with a padded mallet.
The circular movement continues until the vibrations create a sound. The sound
descends into the depth of the bowl and then expands upwards and outwards. As
the movement is repeated, the vibrations continue and the deep sound is both
lingering and recurring.
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12.2 Acknowledging the Serpents 111
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12.3 Pieces Of the Processes 113
for long periods of time, they do not feel safe. How we create the space of safety
is an unending challenge in our work, one where we have to create a safe
container” (Lederach 2013: 84). My breath is my safe container; my practice of
breathing meditation is my tool for feeling safe in the moment.
During the last seven months I have learned more about myself than I
probably have learnt during my years on this planet. I have slowly begun to
embrace the painful experiences, and I am planting them as seeds inside my
stomach. I am visualizing how I give them enough light (attention) enough water
(tears and processing) and enough love, so that they can germinate, and maybe
one day they have grown into small flowers of experience that I can enjoy the
smell of. Some of these flower buds have been lying too far below the soil
(beyond my reach). As with delicate flowers I need to be extra careful with them
and remember that even the most beautiful flowers can have thorns (Reflection
paper, 2014a: 10).
Healing is a continuous flow. It has been difficult to describe my healing
process, since it is impossible to dissect the pieces of healing from the rest of my
life. As I wrote in the beginning of this chapter, life is always happening.
Everything is in everything. The same is true for healing; it is a continual
manifestation. My healing process has, to a large degree, centered on learning to
use the breath as a tool to be in the moment. When managing this, I am not
reliving the past, I am not constantly alert, I am able to monitor my body and
thought flow. The peace program in Innsbruck has been a healing kick off for
me. Not everyone has this opportunity, but everyone has their breath, their life
source and thus an opportunity to engage with reconnection. A healing process,
through the transrational tool of breathing meditation, involves a twisting of
consciousness and an expansion of the awareness, and is a tool for learning to
reconnect with our broken peaces/pieces and being present with our wounds.
The healing journey is always unique to the traveller. The sounds of the
Tibetan Singing Bowl is, like healing, about resonance, expansion, moving in
circles, renewal yet repetition. “I like the image of a container because it carries
a different kind of directional metaphor. It feels like the sound is being called
from somewhere deep. It is going deep. It is not trying to go from point A to B.
It is trying to touch something deeper” (Lederach 2013: 84).
Touching something deeper comes through the breathing meditation,
through being present and through giving space for myself to just exist. When I
meditate I feel that something internal is peacefully expanding. It is as if the area
right behind my eyes grows and soft rays of light and darkness embrace my eyes,
my forehead, and with each breath, increases just a bit. As I breathe I sense how
there is a small source of heat in my belly, or perhaps coming from the floor
where I am sitting, which is swirling slowly through me. In the beginning this
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12.4 Trying to Touch Something Deeper – Leading up to Love 115
experience made me feel dizzy and uncomfortable, but now it makes me feel
centered and connected to life. Although there is stillness, there is also
something greater, a wider feature of existence. A transpersonal aspect of being,
where I cannot fully grasp what I am anymore, touching something deeper.
As I was lying in bed, about to fall asleep, I got an epiphany. I opened my eyes
and was lying numb in bed, thinking-rethinking, until I sensed that words and
thoughts were not doing me any good. I put my feet down on the ice-cold floor,
dragged a blanket with me and hurried into the living room to sit down on my
meditation cushion. I am not lovable. The thoughts hit me straight in solar
plexus, I gulped after air. I tried to close my eyes and began whispering a gatha
by Thích Nhất Hạnh. “Breathing in, I calm my body”/ I am not good enough, I
am not kind enough, I am not smart enough. Stomach cramps were building up
inside of me, slowly getting harder and harder, until I started crying. The only
thing I wanted was self-comfort, holding myself, rocking slowly back and forth.
∼November 10, 2015.
All the most intractable problems in human relationships can be traced back to what
I call the mood of unlove – a deep-seated suspicion most of us harbor within
ourselves that we cannot be loved, or that we are not truly lovable, just for who we
are. This basic insecurity makes it hard to trust in ourselves, in other people, or in
life itself (Welwood, 2006: 4).
13 Love – A Practice for Awakening the Heart
13 Love – A Practice for Awakening the Heart
Love has not commonly been a topic of much discussion in the literature on healing
and reconciliation in settings of deep-rooted conflict. This may be due in large part
to the burden experienced by peace studies researchers and authors: that our chosen
field represents a 'soft' science struggling for legitimacy among existing disciplines.
To directly and openly discuss love enters the slippery slope of the intangibles that
lie outside the scientific endeavor. We beg to differ for a number of reasons
(Lederach, 2010: 231).
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118 13 Love – A Practice for Awakening the Heart
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120 13 Love – A Practice for Awakening the Heart
Both Fromm and Welwood describe different types of love, and various ways of
loving. John Welwood compares unlove, conditional love, and unconditional
love in his works, and in the coming subchapter I will devote some pages to
grasp and explain some of the differences within the love spectrum.
13.3 Conditional and Unconditional Love & The Energy of The Heart
13.3 Conditional and Unconditional Love & The Energy of The Heart
Conditional love is a feeling of pleasure and attraction based on how fully someone
matches our needs, desires, and personal considerations. It is a response to a person's
looks, style, personal presence, emotional support- what he or she does for us. It is
not something bad, but it is a lesser form of love, in that it can be negated by a
reversal of the conditions under which it formed (Welwood, 1985: 34-35).
'A lesser form of love' is how Welwood describes a love that is granted on
certain terms. Throughout this work I have questioned whether conditional love
deserves to be entitled as a form of love, since it is limited, restrictive and comes
with strings attached. However, I have come to see the human aspect in the
conditional; the uncertainty, insecurity and anxiety. The conditional love is to a
large degree grounded within me, as I tend to measure my own self-value against
certain criteria; if I can only get/do/look/create this and that, it will lead to love.
According to Welwood this thought pattern is based on our previous relation-
ships.
It’s important to recognize that all the emotional and psychological wounding we
carry with us from the past is relational in nature: It has to do with not feeling fully
loved […]. As a result, the ego's relational patterns have largely developed as
protection schemes to insulate us from the vulnerable openness that love entails
(Welwood, 2011: 170).
This raw wound of the heart of not feeling fully loved is being reflected in our
patterns and in our relationships. Comparing a love that is granted on certain
terms with the unconditional love, the differences are quite apparent.
Unconditional love is present in all of us, and we all have an intuitive sense of its
deep-rooted value (Welwood, 1985).
Unconditional love arises from and responds to an entirely different place in people
than conditional like and dislike, attraction and resistance. It is a being-to-being
recognition and acknowledgment. It is an expression of that which is itself
unconditional- the intrinsic goodness of our tender, open hearts, beneath all our
defenses and pretenses. It does not necessarily involve 'loving' in the narrow sense
of amorous, when the two orders do not mesh the revitalizing presence of
13.3 Conditional and Unconditional Love & The Energy of The Heart 121
My morning session is over and I have rolled down from the cushion to the hard
wooden floor. I am laying in shavasana 28 , with my head touching the soft,
woolen carpet. I am searching for my heart, longing for its rhythm. Breathing in,
a long and deep inhaling, that goes over in an exhale, pouring air out of my
lungs, slowly. Again inhale, the 'ocean breath' comes from deep within, and I feel
my heart pounding between my shoulder blades, touching into the floor. Hard,
clear and steady beats. When I have my full attention to the rhythm of my heart I
envision an expansion of my heart. I use the little warm sensation that is tingling
around my chest, and I visualize how this warmth is growing within me.
Suddenly a thought interrupts the feeling, but with a couple of deep breaths I am
able to refocus on the enlargement of the heart and continue to nourish the
warmth that increases. When I sense that my whole body is containing and
28 Yoga pose, also called dead man's pose, where the body is placed in a neutral position on the
floor.
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122 13 Love – A Practice for Awakening the Heart
swaying in the balminess, I gently start to send out the heart-warmth. First to the
living room around me, filling the entire space, then further, to the whole
building. To the couple living above me, to the dogs in the apartment across the
hall, Oslo city is bathing in the light from my heart. I keep extending the light
until I envision that my heart is embracing everything and everyone, and I lie in
this wonder for a couple of minutes before I redirect my awareness back to my
heart. Sensing how the heart has expanded and how it is beating synchronously
with the breath of the world.
∼ January 21, 2016.
The source of love is deep in us, and we can help others realize a lot of happiness.
One word, one action, or one thought can reduce another person's suffering and
bring him joy. One word can give comfort and confidence, destroy doubt, help
someone avoid a mistake, reconcile a conflict, or open the door to liberation. One
action can save a person’s life or help him take advantage of a rare opportunity. One
thought can do the same, because thoughts always lead to words and actions. If love
is in our heart, every thought, word, and deed can bring about a miracle. Because
understanding is the very foundation of love, words and actions that emerge from
our love are always helpful (Hạnh, 1992: 105).
13.4 Self-Love
13.4 Self-Love
While it raises no objection to apply the concept of love to various objects, it is a
widespread belief that, while it is virtuous to love others, it is sinful to love oneself.
It is assumed that to the degree to which I love myself I do not love others, that self-
love is the same as selfishness. This view goes far back in Western though (Fromm,
1956: 52).
13.4 Self-Love 123
Self-love and love for others are not alternatives but mutually inclusive and
dependent expressions. A comparable reflection can be drawn to the chapter
concerning self-compassion, where the accentuation was guided by the belief
that working only with compassion outwards implies a blocking one's own needs
for compassion.
“The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any
other being” (Fromm, 1956: 53). This is a central concept within elicitive
conflict transformation, once again reflecting the Tantric principle: 'as above, so
below; as within, so without; as the universe, so the soul'. Hạnh is mirroring this
balance throughout his texts (2012; 2011; 2004 & 1992), and underlines in his
work that everyone is connected and interrelated with everyone and everything,
and that self-love is furthermore a source for being present for others.
Caring for yourself, reestablishing peace in yourself, is the basic condition for
helping someone else. So that the other can stop being a bomb, a source of pain for
ourselves and others, you really have to help him to defuse the bomb. To be able to
provide help, we have to have a little calm, a little joy, a little compassion in
ourselves (Hạnh, 2011: 33).
Self-love and love for others are thus not opposites that you have to choose
between; on the contrary, they are mutually dependent expressions. Neglecting
love inwards will affect your ability to love outwards, and vice versa. Welwood
points out that connecting with our own hearts permits us to also connect with
others, transrationally.
Touching the depth of feeling in our heart also helps us see through others'
imperfections, allowing us to touch their hearts more readily. Breaking open the
heart awakens us to the mystery of love- that we can't help loving others, in spite of
and including all the things we don't like about them, for no other reason than that
they move and touch us in ways that we can never fully understand (Welwood,
1985: 39-40).
The same apply for unconditionally loving yourself. Opening up and allowing
the heart to beat and blossom freely is the greatest gift we can give to ourselves
and the people around us. According to Hạnh is true presence the most precious
gift you can give to the one you love (2004).
To love […] is above all to be there. But being there is not an easy thing. Some
training is necessary, some practice. If you are not there, how can you love? Being
there is very much an art, an art of meditation, because meditating is bringing your
true presence to the here and now (Hạnh, 2004: 5-6).
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124 13 Love – A Practice for Awakening the Heart
It would be helpful to practice a few very simple exercises, as, for instance, to sit in
a relaxed position (neither slouching, nor rigid), to close one's eyes, and to try to see
a white screen in front of one's eyes, and to try to remove all interfering pictures and
thoughts, then to try to follow one's breathing; not to think about it, nor force it, but
to follow it—and in doing so to sense it; furthermore to try to have a sense of 'I'; I =
myself, as the center of my powers, as the creator of my world. One should, at least,
do such a concentration exercise every morning for twenty minutes (and if possible
longer) and every evening before going to bed (Fromm, 1956: 149).
Fromm presents three virtues that the practice of the art of loving requires,
namely; discipline, concentration and patience (1956), all of which is embedded
in a meditation practice. Welwood gives quite a similar recommendation on how
to practice, and further explains how the meditation can connect us with loving.
Through this practice, we can gradually realize that our existence is basically good
and wholesome, simply because we are present, awake, responsive to life, and
facing the world with a tender heart. Underneath all our confusions, we can glimpse
what is unconditioned in us- our availability for facing and experiencing what is. In
appreciating this unconditioned goodness, we can begin to let ourselves be because
we don't have to try to prove that we are good (Welwood, 1985: 37).
What resonates most deeply with me in the quote above is the last sentence; 'we
don't have to try to prove that we are good'. In practicing breathing meditation
there is nothing to prove, nothing to get feedback on and no standards to be
judged by. Healing lays in accepting things as they are, moment by moment,
13.6 Letting Love 125
loving and hence freeing others and myself. Through breathing there is love and
through love there is freedom.
The painful truth is that probably no one else can ever give us all that we need in
just the way we want. When we use that pain to help us touch what is most tender
and alive in us, we begin to wake up from the poverty of depending on others to the
majesty and richness we carry inside (Welwood, 1985: 39).
Sylvester Walch illustrates that the pain can also be a source for discovering a
healing potential. “We can often find the solution in the middle of hurting
experiences, where we can find healing powers of the transpersonal self such as
pulsating energies and all-embracing love that are flowing through the cosmic
consciousness” (Walch, 2006: 14).
Unveiling what I truly want to achieve with my practice, I wind up
picturing a captivity searching for liberty. I want to break free from the
constraints I have put on my heart and consequently let my heart move freely.
My process continues with each breath I take, but most of the time it feels as if I
am going one step forward and two steps back. My greatest challenge in these
moments is to realize that this too is well, this is exactly how it should be in this
moment, and to trust that the unfolding is following its own time, its own
rhythm. As Kabat-Zinn delightfully expresses; “You have to work gently around
the edges, a little here and a little there, keeping your vision alive in your heart,
particularly during the times of greatest pain and difficulty” (2013: 385).
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126 13 Love – A Practice for Awakening the Heart
That in us which is unconditioned, beyond all our images and stories about who we
are, is our pure primordial presence, openness, and receptivity to what is. Because it
is always present, if only in the dimly perceived background, unconditioned being is
not something 'special', or an ideal to be achieved. It is, rather, 'ordinary mind'. In
this sense, unconditional love is also quite ordinary, and so regarding it as a high
ideal to strive after can distance us from it by obscuring its basic simple nature
(Welwood, 1985: 36).
Pusten er et verktøy til å stoppe opp i øyeblikket og være så tilstede at klare tanker i
stedet for ubevisste gjentagende mønstre blir styrende for ditt liv. Pust er livet. Den
dype innpusten er det aller beste hjelpemiddelet til et mer energifyllt og gledesfyllt,
bevisst liv. Friheten i utpusten reflekterer vår evne til å gi slipp med letthet og vår
forståelse for hvordan vi kan gå videre 29 (Magelssen, 2008: 97).
29 "The breath is a tool to stop in the moment and be so present that clear thoughts, instead of
unconscious repetitive patterns, will rule your life. Breath is life. The deep inhalation is the
best way to a more energy-filled, joyful and conscious life. The freedom of exhaling reflects
our ability to let go with ease, and echoes our understanding of how we can move onward
(Translated by author).
14 Concluding Thoughts
14 Concluding Thoughts
It has taken me three years to complete the writings of this work, and I could
certainly have used ten more. Whenever one experience ceases to exist, another
seed starts blooming within which provides novel aspects and different twists to
my current understanding. In previous academic writings, I have always known
the main lines of the content and the outcomes even before starting to write. In
this work, however, I have been forced to find the path as I walk, comparable to
a journey without a roadmap. I have been following the sensations that come up
during the meditation sessions, I have been directed by the internal light bulbs
that suddenly blink, and by enhancing my awareness on the interruptions in my
breathing pattern. Including the empirical approach through an experiential
understanding has been immensely rewarding for my own process. Recollecting
sensory details after a meditation session is helping me relive the experience, and
thus become aware of additional inputs from my overall body sensations.
Capsuling my entire breathing meditation practice on a few pages is not
possible, but a little glimpse into my use of the breath as a tool of trans-
formations has been presented. Some of the experiences I have had are harder to
put into words. Converting transpersonal experiences into written language takes
away some of the fertility that accompanies an embodied experience. Using
words to describe parts of the process does, nevertheless, not reduce the ex-
perience; it is rather a welcomed challenge to use my senses for writing. As
Anderson and Braud delightfully express; “In the act of writing, slowing down
and looking for resonance within one's own body seems to reveal the tangibly
unique- and sometimes ineffable- qualities of the writer's experience and way of
being in the world” (2011: 268).
How can breathing meditation, as a transrational method, be a tool for peace
work? The question has been pulsating in my veins as I have focused on peace
work, trauma, healing, wounds and love. The key words for answering the
question are presence and awareness. By being present in my own life I am
learning to enhance my awareness, and by being aware I am learning to be
present in the here and now. When I practice breathing meditation I can connect
with and experience peace. Kabat-Zinn writes the following about experiencing
peace in the here and now; “If we can simply realize the fullness of this moment,
of this breath, we can find stillness and peace right here” (2013: 594, italics in
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128 14 Concluding Thoughts
original). In the third chapter of this book I gave a personal perception of peace
for me, a perception that I will repeat here, because it continues to resonate with
me.
Peace for me. Inner harmonious resonance and reflection of energy, both
without and within. Perceived in stillness and wind, ocean and fire, bathing in
colors and gratification. Peace is letting go and allowing. A flow, experienced in
the ever-changing moment, breathing in the worlds, dancing life, collective
creating and tranquility. Peace is melodious poetry vibrating in the awareness
as equanimity. ∼ September 29, 2014.
traumatized may become traumatized themselves (Breire & Scott, 2015), and
“[…] only someone who consciously feels herself/himself, can be conscious
about the suffering of others and will not do violence to them” (Dietrich, 2012:
241). Working in surroundings shaped by stress, conflicts, trauma, high pressure,
language and cultural barriers, patient/family grief and difficult contacts, require
preparations on self-reflection and awareness on all layers.
Breathing meditation as a transrational method for peace work is therefore
not limited to the peace worker. “In terms of elicitive conflict work, the trans-
formation of the external world begins with the awareness of one's inner life”
(Dietrich, 2013: 228). An additional statement that needs to be addressed is that
breathing meditation is not solely a practice for working with trauma and
negative elements. Koppensteiner explains the same notion connected to the
practices of an Art of the Self. “Rather than seeing them [transrational methods]
just as tools to help the injured and traumatized life, they additionally can also
function as the affirmative practice for an active life. It is needless to say that the
former cannot always be clearly distinguished from the latter” (Koppensteiner,
2009: 175).
As all the states of being, energies, words and expressions float freely in
spaces where people encounter each other, tools for being self-conscious and
aware, and for being able to separate oneself from the work one do is vital.
Awareness of one's inner life is thus important for all occupations where the
employee is working with individuals and societies, as we become part of the
situations simply by entering the space.
Art lies within all of us, however, it cannot be forced out by our rational minds.
In Chapter 6 I asked the question 'what is an artist?' and thenceforth united the
elicitive peace worker and the artist by highlighting the transrational approach
that is fertilizing both concepts, beyond the limits of the persona. Beyond is
another keyword in this work, as I have engaged with reaching beyond reason,
beyond my rational mind, beyond conditional love and beyond my own masks.
As elicitive peace workers attempt to go beyond the rational and thus use the
energy created in the creative processes for transformations, the aspects of the
artist play a crucial role.
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130 14 Concluding Thoughts
It might not seem surprising when reading through these pages, that one of
the main subjects of this work is love. For me, however, the inclusion of love
caught me off guard. I have come to understand that the assault (and my
life after) has reinforced and strengthened an understanding of myself as
unlovable. It is exhausting to be constantly scared and feeling relentlessly weak.
Through this writing process, I am experiencing a rediscovery and a
coming back to myself, working and integrating the Tantric principle within
Elicitive Conflict Transformation: 'as above, so below; as within, so without; as
the universe, so the soul'. Through these months, breathing with and being with
pain, I have realized that all I ever want is already inside of me. Through an
enhanced presence I have cultivated an increased quality of life. It has always
been about love, and even more so after the attack. Trying to track down
and achieve love from the outside has hampered me more from loving, as love
grows out of love. The more I dare to give of myself and my journey, the
more I feel is reverberating within.
I have learned the value of being alone, without any external stimuli, only
in the company of my own breath, turning inwardly. I have learned that
breathing meditation never opens up more doors than I can handle, but
even more essential, I have learnt that there is no shame in asking for help.
This journey would not have been possible if it was not for the wonderful
people around me. I am nothing without you, I am everything with you.
Several times during these years I have felt cut off from my networks and
experienced that I have wilted away from dear friends. I have made
choices that have affected important relationships and at times I have taken
shelter within instead of sharing what I am going through. This process has
certainly flowered into new knowledge and new understandings, illuminating
that it is important for me not to take refuge inside, but share the love and the
experiences.
In the beginning of Chapter 5 I wrote the following: “my healing
process has already had beautiful repercussions, although I still carry a heavy
load within that I cannot seem to fully understand”. Today I understand more
of the heavy load and have come to see that my journey has opened up
journeys for people around me. The main subject of this journey is by and large
connected to healing the healer and, as Roger Walsh writes in The World of
Shamanism, “Having been healed oneself may also inspire confidence in
potential for healing others” (2007: 218).
With a floating understanding of the self and the prudence of
writing genuinely I have tried to paint a picture with some of the aspects
that have followed and led me on the journey to where I am, and consequently I
have tried to transform the confusion and chaos of life into art. I began
this written voyage determined to use that which was already inside, no
matter which labels labels they were carrying.
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132 14 Concluding Thoughts
As this book comes to an end, a new door opens up and the journey
continues within a new frame. Wherever I go and whatever I do, my breath
will accompany me, and I will keep on practicing to sit, to breathe and to be.
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