Joe Shirley

“Sucking Void” becomes “All This Love”

Joe Shirley — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 21:07:07 +0000

Trinity: “And here I felt abandoned, when actually, there was all this love.”

A quote from this video: “This hole in the middle was like…this sucking void. It was really scary, this horrible feeling. And Joe said, ‘what would happen if you reversed the flow?’ In an instant it was going the other way; it was all filled in, and then actually there was this solid white orb at my center, just beautiful, and generating all this snow, like crystals, floating through me, and on out of me. And it was amazing, this feeling of purity.”

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The work she is talking about involves moving a feeling called The Hole to become a feeling called Purity, and a feeling called Abandoned into a feeling called Nourishment. You can see the images she drew of these feeling states below.

The Hole…

…became Purity.

Abandoned…

…became Nourishment.

Trinity is one of my many clients who have thrived on the work. She had been feeling thwarted and overwhelmed trying to go to school full time while supporting her two children. We worked weekly over a period of three months, and this video was made toward the end of that time.

Note: Trinity refers at times to the “9 Joys” practice. This is what I called the work at that time.

Feeling vs. Emotion: What’s the Difference?

Joe Shirley — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 07:34:52 +0000

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

(This video was recorded a few months ago. The intro/exit were an experiment I’m not planning to continue, for a series to be called “Secrets of the Feeling Mind.”)

TRANSCRIPT:

I get a lot of questions about the difference between feelings and emotion. And in The New Feeling Psychology, there’s a real distinction between those two, and it’s very important.

Emotion is your body’s response to threats and opportunities. It’s your body’s preparation to meet your environment in an optimal way. It’s all about survival. Emotion is something that’s built into animals that go way back, very primitive.

Feeling is something is, I think, relatively new on the evolutionary scene. It is a conscious experience of something that is modeled on emotion, but goes way beyond emotion. And when we confuse the two, we miss out on tremendous opportunities for interacting with our conscious experience of feeling in order to move towards our best lives.

So we often tend to experience, to feel that feelings are something that happens to us. Emotions do happen to us. Feeling, we have much more power to engage with, interact with, inquire into. And the opportunity is there with feeling to invite it to offer a certain kind of wisdom that isn’t available through thought or any other source.

Feeling is created out of our capacity for somatosensory consciousness. From before we were born, we were immersed in a material body, living in a material world. And that’s been true, that is true throughout our lives. That’s our primary existence, is materiality. We are embodied beings.

And in our experience of embodiment, we have this rich treasure trove of experience, of solids, of liquids, or gases, or radiant light and energy. And we have developed this incredible capacity to not only perceive the materiality of our universe, but to imagine it, to engage with that world through our ability to create representations and multi-sensory images within ourselves.

So feeling is constructed of our somatosensory capacity for engaging with materiality. And it is rich, it is diverse; it extends way beyond the body. It is much bigger than the actual boundaries of the physical human body.

It’s an exciting territory. I’ve been exploring that using feeling state imaging for a long, long time, and that’s what I invite you, to come into this world and explore it with me using feeling state imaging and discovering this incredible world that is largely invisible to us.

I guess that’s my thought for today: Feeling is rich, way beyond our ideas of it. And it’s because we’ve failed to make a distinction between feeling and emotion. But when we do that, all kinds of possibilities open up. So join me there. Thanks.

The feeling compass points the way home.

Joe Shirley — Tue, 31 May 2011 06:10:13 +0000

The Feeling Path Mapping System reveals that feelings are our most reliable sources of authentic wisdom about our lives. Approached skillfully through tangible imagery, feelings point each of us infallibly toward our personal “magnetic north.”

Wouldn’t it be nice…

So many times in our lives we feel off track. Our “true” life, our calling, our authentic expression elude us. Perhaps we sense the general direction, but we feel unable to strike out to seek our truth because of conflicting messages.

Some messages come from outside, from those around us. Others equally conflicting come from inside. Those are the most confusing of all.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a way to sort through the clutter and the chaos of our interior world, to sift out the bright spots, to separate the gold from the dross?

To have a reliable guide…

The guides we have tried may have meant well. A parent, an elder, a friend, a teacher. A book, a class, a training, an intensive workshop. Perhaps we have sought guidance among many sources, yet we still feel adrift.

But isn’t there a way to turn within for that source of guidance, to a source that is always available, never out of touch?

For choosing the right path every day in life?

If we know how to establish a clear dialog with our feelings, we do have access to that reliable, steady guidance. Feeling has a bad reputation as a source of direction for anything we do. But it’s not because of any inherent nature of feeling itself. Our experience of feeling as irrational, unpredictable, untrustworthy is more to do with our learned relationship to it.

We learn to shun the wisdom of feeling at an early age. Our feelings tell us one thing, the adults around us another. And if we are to belong, to fit in, to remain safe, we must adapt to their version of reality. We learn to turn off our own inner knowing.

But it is easy to regain access to that wisdom inside. All we need do is first turn our attention to the actual, felt experience of feeling. Then we need to simply invite the feeling to reveal itself. It gladly and gratefully responds to our invitation, transforming to show its true nature and offer its deep insight and clarity.

Now you have it!

The tangible imagery of The Feeling Path Mapping System provides an easy, 3-step practice for repairing your relationship with feeling. Using Feeling Path Mapping, you very quickly come to trust that every feeling you have is valuable, every part of yourself is good, and that you can trust your own inner guidance for anything in your life.

It’s not hard to do. It’s not hard to learn. You can get started right now. Just download the 3-Step Worksheet below. It will take you about half an hour to have your first experience of turning any challenging feeling you choose into a direct source of inspiration, confidence, or connection.

The 3-Step Feeling Path Worksheet

And for a limited time, I’m offering a Free, 30-Minute Tutorial to walk you through the worksheet for your first experience. Just call me at 360-399-6575.

“I can’t even remember what it feels like to have … that fear.” (Video)

Joe Shirley — Tue, 31 May 2011 04:40:04 +0000

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The biggest thing that I remember pulling out of the first experience was, we actually created in the session, new feelings for me. And I remember giving them names, an “identity.” So I had this list, I came home with this list, and I remember looking at it for the next couple weeks. And seeing that these feelings were always here and they were always possible, and by naming them and giving them an identity, I could go to them right away.

But there was a feeling that would pop up from time to time, an actual, physical, physiological reaction that totally paralyzed me in my life when it occurred. And it was the scariest feeling I have ever experienced. It’s like my body would just get trapped in the terror. That was what we addressed in the second session.

Your technique took me into it, and asked it what it needed to heal. That particular moment, when we transformed that feeling, was, I totally remember: It was like I just created a bridge to a higher power that is this amazing, unconditional love and safety, and just, everything is OK.

I can’t even remember what it feels like to have that space of that fear and that paralyzing feeling. It was a part of me, but the other is so much more powerful.

And that was the biggest stepping stone to where I’m headed now. I truly believe that was the biggest limitation I’ve had in my entire life. The result was incredible. From that day on, I’ve been resting easy and in excitement about my project and about my future. And it’s done, pretty much, we’re editing. All the stuff I was afraid of that I thought I couldn’t do, it’s done!

I think the biggest piece of it is, before that moment I was still hiding myself from the world. I kind of chose who would believe in me and who wouldn’t, and then after our session, it was like, it doesn’t matter who believes in me and who doesn’t, this is who I am, this is just who I am. It would be like taking my body and trying to turn it into something other than it is.

And I got that really clearly, so now everybody in my life and in the world knows me as a budding film director and that’s the way it should be. And that’s really cool!

Overcoming stage fright

Joe Shirley — Tue, 31 May 2011 04:04:16 +0000

Kyle (not his real name) is a young technical professional who also plays bass guitar in a Seattle band. Before the band’s first show, Kyle came to me with a serious case of stage fright. It was so bad, he had to play with his back to the audience, facing the drummer. I worked with him over three sessions in just a few days, a total of six hours to map and liberate a full set of nine parts.

When the band played their opening show later that week, they felt, looked, and sounded like superstars. One MySpace blogger who had seen them struggle in practice two weeks previously wrote that the group “floored” him with their progress. He said that if you didn’t know better, you’d swear they’d been on stage “a thousand times” before, playing with relaxed, confident poise and looking like polished professionals.

I was there too, and was impressed as hell at their debut.

Below is an overview of all the feelings we mapped on the left, with the liberated feelings on the right.

Overcoming Paralyzing Fear

Joe Shirley — Fri, 27 May 2011 21:30:10 +0000

Paul was referred to me because he had recently gone into business for himself, and he needed to be able to do sales presentations in front of groups. Trouble was, his panic attacks before presentations were so bad he found himself paralyzed, and a few times felt he was in bad enough shape to call 911. And they were getting worse.

As you’ll see, his experience after working with me was 180 degrees different. This video was taken less than two weeks after I worked with him for an intensive two days, 12 hours in total.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Two years later, I received the following note from him: “Joe your work has truly changed my life. I now look at my life as before meeting with you and after. I am now more of the person I have always wanted to be because of our 2 day session. Thank you so much.”

“Dropping deeply into the NOW.”

Joe Shirley — Thu, 26 May 2011 08:19:03 +0000

Michael Max: “A process of dropping deeply into the NOW”

“I really enjoyed how Joe’s process got me out of my head, out of my Alice in Wonderland language constructs, and their associated dead ends. And into a fluid feeling state that had nothing to do with therapy, judgement or concerns about how I got there in the first place. It was simply a process of dropping deeply into NOW. Appreciating the vast texture of the experience. And then letting it shift to the next step.

“I’m back on track now with a project that excites me. Thanks Joe!”

– Michael Max, LAc, Acupuncturist, Owner of Yong Kang Chinese Medicine Clinic

“A lightness has come over me…”

Joe Shirley — Thu, 26 May 2011 08:00:12 +0000

“A lightness has come over me and embraced me.”

J. sent me this testimonial two months after working with me.

Since working with Joe, I have felt a profound shift in my being–physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. I feel like the weight of anxiety (big, dark, gray and black) has been lifted off of my shoulders. This weight that I have felt for a majority of my life has been replaced by a sense of lightness, vitality, and a deeper sense of compassion for my self and others. I feel a sense of calm, centeredness, joy, profound love, and positive energy.

“In my past, my pattern has been to be very fearful of conflict, as I quickly would go to a place of shame and blame and I would be engulfed entirely by my own feelings (anger at myself, shame, feeling of worthlessness, projections of how the other person might be viewing me negatively, etc.), that there would be no room for the other person to have their feelings too. I experienced what effects this had on my relationships, as they were never sustainable within this pattern of relating. It was so frustrating for me, because I knew what I was capable of! I knew I had emotional intelligence and strong abilities to communicate.

“But why couldn’t I get over this pattern? It just seemed more powerful than me…beyond my own ability to control it. I wanted to get rid of it, to fix it, to make it go away so that I could be “normal”. I have spent years in talk therapy, trying different forms of energy work, workshops, meditation, etc. And although these were all helpful, the patterns were still hanging on with dear life.

“What I have been experiencing since working with Joe is an ability to more easily speak my truth and express my needs, even my anger, without feeling the shame, blame, or worthlessness. There is a spaciousness for the anger or frustration and there is space for the other person’s feelings as well. I can have my feelings, express my needs clearly, and still have the love inside for myself and this other person all at the same time. I can more easily see and experience (and be aware of) our humanness, our mutual need to feel loved and worthy, our fear of rejection, etc. It feels so much more encompassing. Perhaps the lightness I feel, and the joy and the love, is about feeling more of a sense of Oneness with others, having more awareness that we are really the same inside, having similar wants, needs and desires that are basic to our humanness.

“Words cannot express my gratitude for what Joe (and the process he has developed) has helped me to open myself to. I do believe it was there all along, just waiting to come out and be expressed. The weight is not necessarily something that has left me, but instead there is a lightness that has come over me and embraced me. And in that, it has lifted me up! The lightness of my being is “embracing” the shadow parts of me, so that I can experience all parts of me with compassion and love. By embracing this in myself, I am more able to embrace the shadow and light in others too. What a relief this is, to know that nothing really needed to be “fixed” or changed, just seen and experienced from a different perspective. I am able to see that these shadow and light parts just wanted to help me survive, to have my basic needs met, to feel loved, and to feel safe.

“Thank you so much, Joe. I feel my life has been forever changed as a result of our work together. It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out in my life. I am excited to be creating my life from this new way of being. How fun is that?

“With gratitude,

“J.K.”

“A refreshing transformation…”

Joe Shirley — Thu, 26 May 2011 07:50:57 +0000

Mitch Hunter: “A refreshing transformation that freed me up and left me very very energized”

I worked with Mitch and received this testimonial soon after:

We talked about some physical distress I exhibited each time I presented a seminar or hosted an event. Through a series of guided imagery questions he had me actually visually place the feelings that came up during presentations in a specific place in my body. He prompted me to describe, locate, and get very acquainted with those feelings. He asked me to allow those feelings to transform into a different shape, space, and place.

“I immediately received a sense of lightening up, a refreshing transformation that freed me up and left me very very energized. He left me with specific instructions as to how I can re-create that transformation and recall the image I created prior to my presentations. I now cue myself before every presentation, client meeting, and networking opportunity to fortify myself with that powerful image of who I am and what I offer those I connect with.

“I found the experience of my session with Joe invaluable. I easily connected with the model of creating visual images and descriptions for the questions he used to guide my learning experience. I am a very visual and creative person. Though we did talk of some very intimate things that lead me to a fairly vulnerable place, I always felt safe with his guidance and support. One of the best things is that he took notes and had a way of recording our session so whenever I want to go back through a reminder or refresher on my discovery, I can. Even better, that I didn’t have to take notes during our time, so I was completely free to do the work necessary.

“I would highly recommend working with Joe to uncover anything you may have standing in the way of your becoming all of who you are and who you can be. And, even though my “serious flop sweat” hasn’t totally disappeared, it has greatly subsided and I have tools to use to bring myself back to a centered place where I can concentrate on the others with whom I’m connecting. Being freed from the focus on how I’m being perceived, or how am I doing, or what am I going to say next is invaluable. It has allowed me to truly listen and be present while presenting, whether to a group or just one person.

“Thanks Joe!”

Mitch is a financial services professional working with New York Life. You can look him up on Biznik. Mitch is a very solid guy whom I would trust to serve me with high intentions and competence.

Bereft

Joe Shirley — Thu, 26 May 2011 07:27:42 +0000

An empty atmosphere, dark, very still, very quiet, somewhat oppressive in an über-neutral way. Neutral temperature, lint-gray, very dense, almost opaque. Big silence.

An atmosphere of defeat, hopeless, lifeless, all around me; a kind of resignation of the universe. It doesn’t matter if humans are stupid or not, if they destroy themselves or not. It’s not just me who is bereft, it is all of us, drifting aimlessly through the galaxy. The universe has no need for us, no care whether we do well or not. I am on my own. There is no one to help me.