**\#️⃣ Tags:** #Psychotherapy #Developmental #Healing #Wholeness > **🌱 Planted:** Sun 29 June 2025 --- ![[Organisation of Experience.png]] > [!quote] > “You can’t do what you want till you know what you’re doing.” — Moshe Feldenkrais Us humans are meaning making creatures. What sets us apart from other intelligent animals, like chimps, is our ability to ask "why?". Since we can make meaning from experience through asking why, we're able to solve complex problems that otherwise wouldn't have been able to be solved. This is our gift (and probably also our biggest downfall). We don't all make the same meaning from our experience, though. Two different people can be lying on the beach on a warm summer's day, and one person might feel at ease, like life's all good and they're exactly where they're meant to be, while the other might feel lonely, self-conscious, or overwhelmed by the brightness of the sun and noise from all the busyness. Same day, same setting, same weather... same everything. Now why is that? These two people are having two very different experiences because they are organising their experiences in different ways. # The Creation of Meaning This is what we mean by the "organisation of experience". It is the way we create meaning and feeling out of events. The way we put our world together, perceive it, think about it, [[Attunement|attune]] to it, and interact with it. The way our experience is organised and created is a complex, layered process, and it begins in our [[Nervous System]]. Through neuroception, the nervous system is constantly scanning our environment for signals of threat or safety, which is directly influenced by our [[Core Material]] (deep psychological and emotional structures which formed in our early relationships). If we've experienced early [[Developmental Trauma]] for example, our nervous system might be stuck in fight or flight, constantly scanning for threats in hyper vigilance. You can probably imagine the effect that would have both on how your experience is organised, as well as the way in which you actually experience your experience. This is all happening unconsciously and pre-verbally, before we even get the chance to experience what it is like for us in our normal waking consciousness. # Old vs New Ways of Healing The healing arts have come a long way since the early days. Western Psychotherapy used to be all about talking, but that's something that's shifted dramatically recently. Talking about our problems can be helpful, sure, but it doesn't often effect lasting change in us. We've all heard of those cases where people have spent years in talk therapy, only to walk away with little lasting change. Why is talking alone not great for facilitating lasting, transformational change? Because it simply does not always touch the deep issues we hold within the depths of our being. [[Core Material]] and deeply held beliefs are inaccessible through just talking. These things are beyond intellectual understanding. Plus, our human [[Defence Mechanisms|defences]] and protective mechanisms are way too powerful to just allow our deepest (often unconscious) emotional pain to come up to the surface. This pain is something we not only prevent others from seeing, but also ourselves. Another thing it doesn't typically do is focus on what is happening in present moment experience. When we speak about something using our normal everyday consciousness, we're usually using language to talk about experiences that have already happened (the past), or we're often talking about experiences that might happen (the future). The conversation often has an implicit problem solving feel to it. This is what a lot of work in the healing arts used to look like. Surely [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]] must've been exhausted with all that talking. Now, we're coming to learn that talking alone doesn't quite cut it. We're figuring out that if we want to heal, really deeply heal, we need to go into the body and work with direct experience in the present moment. This came about through the likes of [[Wilhelm Reich]] with his body-based therapy, [[Alexander Lowen]] with [[Lab/01 Incubator/Sleeping/Bioenergetics|Bioenergetics]], [[Eugene Gendlin]]'s [[Focusing]], [[Gestalt Therapy]] and many others to follow. But going into the body is not all we need to do to deeply heal. # Self-Study So we've shifted from just *talking* about experiences to actually *having* experiences. That's a huge step forward. But as mentioned, it isn't the whole story. Because even when we drop into the body and start feeling what's there... we might still miss *how* we're putting our experiences together. **How do we figure out how we're organising our experience?** We get curious, we get mindful, and then we study ourselves. We study exactly how we are organising our experiences in the present moment. We're not just asking "What am I experiencing", we're also asking "How did this experience get made, and why?". To be clear, self-study isn't an intellectual or analytical pursuit. It is something that is done with [[Mindfulness]], after we slow down and [[Setting a Presence Anchor|land in the present moment]]. **Why do we want to know about how we organise our experience?** A few reasons: - **We stop trying to [[Change Agenda|force change]]** in ourselves through well-intended motives like self-improvement projects that might evoke some change for a little while, but often doesn't end up sticking. - **We get access to the [[Core Material]]** which drives our actions, reactions and behaviours that we otherwise wouldn't get access to just by talking about it (because human protective mechanisms). [[Transformation takes place when we can give up knowing for experiencing]]. - **We gain true freedom to choose** our behaviour. When we see exactly how we're creating our experience, we can go back into situations that had us stuck with a completely new awareness of why things are happening in the way they are. And with this awareness comes space, and with this space comes the freedom to choose the way we want to be. - **We can actually evoke real, long lasting change and transformation** in ourselves. That's what Moshe Feldenkrais means when he says "You can't do what you want until you know what you're doing". **You might then ask, well what does that actually look like?** Let's say someone goes into a therapy or coaching session and they bring up that they notice they have a persistent tightness show up in their chest whenever they need to speak up for themselves or set a boundary. Instead of talking about it or theorising what it is, we slow down, get [[Mindfulness|Mindful]] and tune into what's going on inside. We simply stay with and be with the tightness, in curiosity, without trying to fix or change it. Maybe the therapist or coach asks "What do you notice as you sit with this tension?", or maybe they offer light touch to help with armouring and safety. Now something is starting to emerge. Maybe the client says "it feels like a really tight knot, and it's coming up to land in my throat", and as they say that, they see an image in their mind's eye of a small, scared bird that is locked in a cage. This is followed up by a voice (a [[Parts|Part]]) that says "who are you to speak?". And then suddenly, a core memory surfaces when they were five years old and they got yelled at for talking back. That's what we want to get to. That's the [[Core Material]]. Now with this awareness, next time this person goes to speak up or set a boundary and their chest tightens up, they can experience the tension and know exactly what it is and why it is there. It doesn't overtake their experience because there is a knowing, and so the intensity might settle just a little bit. Over time, the intensity might continue to decrease, and with this added awareness they've also got more agency to choose different pathways of action. After a while, they might be empowered to take a stand for themselves and set a boundary. So that's why we want to study the way we organise our experience, because simply talking, intellectualising or theorising is often not enough to evoke the real, long-lasting change that we seek.