Being there.
A first-hand report of a Shen workshop by Judyth Greenburgh
SHEN Workshop
Saint Anselm
September 2002
This was my second workshop. I did my first one in the USA, Sausalito, California. I was taking it again to do some further self-development, and as the prerequisite for doing the intern programme to train to be a Shen practitioner myself.
Instruction
The workshop was a large group consisting of 28 students, 6 – 7 instructors, plus Richard, the founder of Shen, as lecturer.
We were handed a reference binder. Richard explained the energy or chi flows through and around the body as biofields. Emotions, when trapped in the body, contract, constrict the flow, causing tension.
He showed us that our hands also had a flow which, when placed on certain parts of the body, would relax and allow the trapped emotion to release. By placing his hands against ours, he could test whether we were a right or left-handed ‘sender’. I could feel the resistance of an energy force between our palms when I was tested. The strange hieroglyphics on the diagrams of the bodies were explained, and told that soon we would be able to follow them as maps to releasing energy in the body.
Practice
We took a partner and in turn ‘shenned’ each other. We lay on a specially made cradle that allowed the practitioner to place their hands above & beneath the body simultaneously.
We started with relaxation flows around the head and the body. Soon, all you could hear was gentle snoring around the room.
After each session, we would gather around to ‘check in’ with each other’s experiences.
Every day, we worked on different emotion centers in our bodies. The heart: holding grief and sadness, preventing feelings of love. The solar plexus: holding fear & anger instead of strength, and the Kath holding shame & insecurity instead of confidence. The throat & the root were also worked on to help our bodies not to resist the process of letting go.
Feedback
Physically, I experienced the feeling of a series of rusty locks, chains & hinges being worked free in a series of pops, gurgles & squeaks. Sometimes there was pain & intense heat or cold as the body relaxed. These would finally release the gate that was holding the emotion & set it free. Prickles of heat tingled between the practitioner’s hands.
How this emotion is expressed –depends on how easily the person can ‘let go’.
Sometimes it gets lost in analysis in the patient’s head – or choking, coughing or a tightening of the throat, literally trying to choke back or swallow the feeling.
Tears can flow when the emotion is felt, and sometimes an old memory suddenly pops to mind. Once the emotion dissipates, there can be a greater understanding, a new perspective on life. Other times, you find you react to certain situations differently, being calmer and neutral, the charge having been diffused from the situation. The processing continues even after the session is over – sometimes in the form of dreams. Day by day, as we would check in with each other, another layer would be shed, revealing that behind the cultures of the 25 nationalities represented, we all felt very much the same. After a week of Shen, we were back in touch with ourselves.
