By Paul Norden, RCST
My introduction to non-local work was in 2018 when I was asked if I would like to try a remote session on a friend's horse in Colorado. My friend, Andrea Datz†, an equine trainer and therapist who teaches communication and relational dynamics with horses, said at that time that her horse had asked her if I would like to try doing a session. What unfolded over a year from that day was more than 150 remote sessions at no-cost with horses, dogs, cats, rabbits and people -all who I had never met or in some cases seen photos of- living as far as Australia, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Poland, Tennessee, Georgia and Washington State.
Prior to COVID, practitioners generally kept quiet about doing remote work with others. It was mysterious to me and seemed to be reserved for 'special' people. Now, those of us who practice remotely know that anyone can do this work. The meta-physics is built into each and every one of us, and many of us know it is the meta-physics of all being and being-ness itself. We realize remote work simply is an extension of our biodynamic training that itself only needed drawing out through introduction and our patience in practicing it.
What we've learned about remote work is as we've learned about BCST, that it is its most potent in unrestrained and unmanipulated non-doing, non-directing and non-trying. It is the Mystery manifest as both the Intelligence behind and that which enfolds/unfolds itself, the awareness whose presencing is a transparence of any 'self', 'us', 'them' or 'other'. Simply put, it is the cozy place we settle and disappear into. There is no non-doing simpler than this. Here is there, and there is here and perhaps designations are the illusion and the Mystery itself is all there truly is.
I interviewed BCST's doing remote work who at the onset of their foundational training were introduced to stillness, fluid-tide and long-tide within cycles of primary respiration. All of them told me they perceive primary respiration within the perceptual field of their remote sessions. It's clear that all that can occur in hands-on session work can also occur in remote work: potency engaging density and inertia, resolving structural restriction and the imprints at early stages of life that have led to perceptual dispositions and 'stuckness' in relational ways of being.
This is how we have been able to help our clients in this time of COVID. But there are other possibilities that can also be explored. Recently I tried an experiment with three friends at the suggestion of one of them. One is a hands-on client, now a remote client living in Colorado. Another is a friend who I'd done remote work with, both her and her horse in Australia. The third is a friend and fellow BCST therapist living in Ireland. Knowing the seeming boundarylessness of remote work, I wanted to see how doing a session with multiple people at the same time might be. After the session, unsurprisingly two of them said it was as potent as remote sessions we'd done one-on-one in the past. Each experienced engagement in their body unique in location to the conditions they were holding. All of them felt grounded and calmer.
It was the suggestion of the friend in Colorado who does work with corporate teams that remote work with groups might be a way to ground anxiety on an individual level and so help open and clear the relational field of the group so they might be able to work freshly and more efficiently with each other.
So, remote work extends itself into new possibilities and ways to potentially help others in these times. My hope is that we can all take up and enjoy the exploration as well.
†Andrea Datz, who coaches others in relational dynamics with horses, and her work can be found on Facebook at Andrea Datz Tango with Horses: A Slow Horsemanship Revolution
Paul Norden is an RCST in Chicago, specializing in the resolution of trauma and chronic pain. You can find his work here.
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