FRANKLYN SILLS ARTICLES

CRI Level of Work

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As the practitioner orients to primary respiration, it may take a number of sessions for the client’s system to access the holistic shift. This may be due to the presence of autonomic activation, shock states, dissociative states and a density of the presence of inertial forces in the system. If a client’s system cannot shift from the CRI level of rhythm to the deeper tides, the appropriate clinical response is to help resource the client and their system so that this shift can occur. In the Karuna curriculum this is approached in a number of ways. Students are taught to help clients’ access felt-resources. We find that the work of Dr. Peter Levine, a leading trauma expert, is very helpful in this area. In this approach, the student learns to orient the client to an inner, embodied sense of felt-O.K.-ness and wellbeing within the midst of whatever is present. Commonly, as the practitioner deepens into stillness and an orientation to primary respiration, the client’s system will, over a number of sessions, also deepen into these territories via being-to-being resonance.

We also teach students to help the system deepen via biodynamic-oriented stillpoint processes. This initially entails a deepening into their own inner state of stillness and an orientation to Long Tide and Dynamic Stillness relative to the client’s system. Other approaches to stillpoint may be appropriate given the clinical conditions present.
It is common for layers of traumatic nervous system activation to clear as the system begins to settle into the holistic shift. This is commonly sensed as an energetic streaming from the core to the periphery and from cephalad to caudad through the nervous system and body. Except for resourcing work as described here, and first aid-work, it is generally not helpful to engage the system at the CRI level as traumatic cycling may then be activated without resources being present, with a concurrent possibility of deepening the traumatic activation without its resolution.