For my coaching school, we had an assignment last week to spend 15 minutes looking under the kitchen sink, being curious, and then to write about what we learned.

I learned a few things:

1. I had a preconcieved and limiting notion about what curiousity is. I had all these rules in place about what I was supposed to discover, many of which I was able to see through being curious about them.

2. My curiousity is often so fast that I'm not aware of it. At first I was noticing that I had already answered the questions I thought about asking. Thinking about this, I realized that I must have asked and answered those questions subconsciously before my conscious brain caught up.

3. The subconscious curiosity is often incomplete, wrong, or a stopping point to more curiousity. I found that when I consciously pushed, I found things that I had measured and assumed which, I was able to find much more depth about, and/or which were incorrect.

4. While I understood many things I looked at, I did get new information by looking around. Curiousity leads both to answers and more questions

5. I realized I was avoiding dwelling on questions which I did not believe I could access the answers to.

6. While I was not able to compete the answer to the questions I could not answer, I was able to access much more of a picture and/or questions by staying with them longer. Working with the Big Mind technique of speaking from a voice was useful.

For example, there was some of that sticky plastic sheet stuff covering the wood on the bottom of the sink. I'd wondered but quickly glossed over notions about the people who had laid it down. In looking more, I got to wondering about their perspective on perfectionism v.s. functionality. Some places the paper reached the edge, sometimes it was a bit jagged, places were uneven. Was the person upset about this lack of evenness? Were they simply happy with the functionality and didn't care? Why did it bother me so much that things weren't even or otherwise perfect? This perfectionism stops me from doing some very basic things, or even looking at some very basic things, which I find upsetting or painful from lack of order and beauty.

I see CTI's Process Coaching and dualistic voices in Big Mind as very similar. Which is not surprising since both are geared toward the path of enlightenment.

The way I see them both, in the way that I use them, is a method of untying knots. There are these places where there are balls of fear or sadness or other places within us where we don't go. We spend a lot of energy skirting around these things.

With Process Coaching, you delve into these scary places and see what's really there. In doing so, you create more blood flow and less that you need to tip toe around, helping you to integrate more of yourself and become stronger and more robust.

Today I had some important pieces click into place for me.

One very helpful piece was practicing Process with some other coaches. The coaches that I was working with weren't fans of Process, and therefore weren't going very deeply into it. It was an interesting vantage point to see them put a toe in and then pull it out repeatedly.

If you stay on the surface, the only place you ever go is the surface. Until outside forces intervene. I want to swim.

The best I can describe what it is that clicked, is that several times today I've been moving more deeply into my experience without actively putting myself there. And when I've noticed that I was in deeper, I've been able to reinforce it.

That is the word to best describe my day today.

I was pushing myself hard in class. And in coaching class, this means finding the places where I feel vulnerable and trying to rip them wide open. Some success. Long way to go. Sat there like stone while a leader coached me. Very rough on both of us. I made a serious effort to cooperate but wasn't there for most of it... made some progress toward the end, and then got crying when she asked the class to acknowledge me. I guess that's something. Tears are good in coaching.

And, I had tears a couple of times, so it was a very draining day. And then I had two intense phone calls with clients, and then I hung out with a group of coaches, who were doing things like asking me tough questions.

It was a good day, and damn am I ready to hit the sack.

This is my 5/5 weekend intensive class. There are about a half dozen of us who have gone from start to finish together, and many many more who have come and gone. Those who are part of my cohort have been making comments the last couple of classes about how much I've changed since the first ones. My bud Charles says that this day today is the biggest transformation he's seen in me yet. I dunno about me, but I can sure as hell see the changes with him, and I believe he and I are about on par.

I cannot recall feeling so thoroughly In The Bones exhausted as this. Getting off the computer for real this time.

I'm doing the last CTI workshop, called In The Bones.

I had a couple of people coach me today. At the beginning of class we worked on "What do I promise to be in this class," or something to that effect. I chose "Unfolding," or, "Unfold," since that's what I got on my name tag in large letters before I ran out of space.

This came out of still not feeling like I'm ready to commit to anything. What am I going to "be?" As I described later, I am authentic. Its not a question of that. Its more that there is so much of me that is hidden, to myself and others. I picture myself as twisted up in a ball. A new metaphor connection here is visualizing that twisting as blood vessels. Not much blood is flowing, like a kinked hose.

So as I unfold, there will be more of me to be authentic, and I will have more vitality.

While being coached I got some of the standard sentiments I get from coaches or therapists. "Coaching you is like playing cat and mouse." "You're the master of deflection."

Yes. It is true. My "sabateur*" likes to tell m that I can't make a very good coach myself given that I have this huge blockage. Other pieces tell me that it makes me an excellent coach, because I have a deep understanding of blockages. The feedback I've gotten is that I am a very good coach. I think I will be even better once I work my own shit out.

So, right now, I am making a commitment to myself, publicly, that I am going to open up tomorrow.

I honestly don't know what it is that I'm so afraid of. What comes to mind is that I'm going to start crying uncontrollably and not be able to stop. That answer doesn't really make sense, so I think I'm just going to have to wade into the unknown waters in order to find something that does make sense.

Given that I am the master of my deflection, I am the most capable person of pinning myself down.


* _{Coaching terminology for the voices in your head that tell you things such as "you're not good enough."}

What. A. Day.

Today was my first day of Process coaching training with CTI.

As discussed in class today, the first two styles I studied, Fulfillment and Balance, are about forwarding the action. Goal oriented, making progress. Process Coaching, is about being in the here and now. My understanding is that as a coach, it is my job to be a Witness for the client, and to keep them in their emotions, in the now.

Honestly I don't entirely understand it yet. But its the first of three days, and the leaders assured us that we weren't supposed to get it today, and that things would be much clearer tomorrow.

As to my own experience, I was once again brought to *that edge.* In class we alternate between being the coach and client with each other, and for the long stretch of coaching that we had, the guy who was coaching me was awesome.

I started off with a good self-referential topic: that I have a hard time picking topics. This went a lot of different directions, and eventually lead to him giving a visualization based on what I'd said. He saw me as:

Having encased myself in a plexiglass box, which I can see out of, but which doesn't give me any room to move and which I don't get out of. Outside of the box are many long knives swirling around, which are representative of my extremely harsh self-judgement. I don't leave the box because if I did I would get shredded.

That visualization is one that feels accurate. I love his metaphor. He got to the same places everyone else with psych experience gets to: that I'm really harshly critical of myself and don't live fully because of it, etc.

On one hand, every time someone hits on one of these sorts of points, I tend to dismiss it because I've been there so many times. I tell myself that I'm just being attention seeking and should knock it off. Or, I think that its pointless.

And of course, especially when working with someone who knows their stuff, the terrain is different with every pass. I learn a new piece to the puzzle, I get a new perspective.

In writing that all out, it seems like a clear conclusion right now that this work is not pointless. I am making progress, I am fleshing out my understanding. If I am patient I will gain the understanding and the tools to actually rewire myself. It makes sense that this process is proceeding slowly, because I've spent a lifetime getting to where I am today. Compared to my lifetime, this process is actually going quite quickly.