Accessing Wellness
Written August 2014
Themes:
Wellness Studies,
Governance, Behavioural Science, Clinical Psychology, Clinical Sociology, Non
Drug Community Psychiatry, Organisational Sociology, Futures and Epochal
Transition Studies
This paper explores
wellness in the presence or absence of access. Significant examples of lack of
access are the various forms experienced by people with disabilities of
differing kinds. Two obvious examples are the lack of wheelchair access and
lack of ready access to job opportunities for people with disabilities.
There are people with
capacity to provide and even to ensure access for those people without access.
These are the politicians, the law and policy makers and regulators, those in
charge and control of the public purse, and those in the vast public and
private sectorised service delivery policy and program apparatus, and wider
afield.
A core
issue is that this lack of accessibility extends
to affect even those
very people with capacity to provide and ensure forms of access for others.
These very people are also disconnected from many forms of access. Their
disconnecting takes a myriad forms. Disconnecting head from heart, rationality
from non rational aspects of being, left brain from right brain, what they are
doing from how they’re doing it, quantity from other forms of quality (the mighty dollar) , actions from emotions;
and silo type disconnect of self from people in other sectors of service
delivery and other programs. Any form of holistic processes does not fit narrow
sectorised criteria; the sectorised world is fundamentally disconnected. Refer Government and
Facilitating Grassroots Action
This disconnect list
goes on and on. It affects everybody. Everyone has lack of access. Refer Wellness Mantra.
And the bind is that
these people with capacity to provide access typically never comprehend or realise
that they too lack accessibility. They lack access to a massive amount of their
own potential and being; lack access to compassion, caring, nurturing, feeling
for self and others, passion, and the like. To repeat, the people with capacity
to facilitate access have no comprehension that they lack access to a massive
amount of their own being and their own being in the world with others. These
very people are disconnected from their own potential for many forms of wellness.
One form of bind is
that people may have a profound ‘blindness’ or inability to sense some
dysfunction or deficit, even if this is pointed out to them or shown to them,
say on a video replay. The double bind comes when they don’t know they don’t
know. As an example, top management was concerned
about the quality of the output of their middle management team and as these
middle managers were all very competent people, top management could not see
what was amiss. Laceweb People were brought in and engaged these middle
managers in discussing how they do
what they do. The differences between content, process and metaprocess were
explored. Content is what is
happening. Process is how it is
happening. Metaprocess is processes for exploring process (the how of the how).
These managers seemed to fully understand the concepts. Some brief video clips
were shown and we pointed out the processes and metaprocesses being used and
had them head nodding. We then had them engage in some real-play as a team of
managers while we filmed them. Upon replay, none
of these managers could identify the processes and certainly not the
metaprocesses that they had just been using. They did not want to even discuss the content. Any engagement with them had them
resuming the real-play and being totally absorbed in re-engaging in the
content. When these fellows locked in on task, they were tenacious. They were
very ‘task oriented’. They found it impossible to shift from engaging in content, to discussing the content, or discussing the
processes they were using in discussing the content, or the processes they were
using in doing the content, or discussing how
they were exploring their process. They could not shift to accessing these meta
levels; to being ‘process oriented’. For these managers this suggestion to
explore process was total nonsense. ‘We know what we are doing so let’s get on
with it!’
A key
aspect of the dynamic that was happening was that these fellows were
relentlessly using their respective competencies that they are very strong in,
even when the task is calling for the use of a different competence. These fellows are using their highly refined competencies incompetently. For example,
during a brainstorming task calling for creative imagination and suspension of
criticism, a talented persuader immediately interrupts everyone else’s
creativity. He starts to tenaciously sell his very poor idea that had occurred
to him almost instantaneously. Others immediately cease their brainstorming and
begin using their highly refined attending and listening skills to hear him collapsing
the brainstorming session, without
noticing that that’s what he is doing, and that that is what they are
contributing to. That’s what they are allowing to happen. The others are
using their refined skills in critiquing, to critique his ideas. Now everyone
is cooperating together in contributing to collapsing the brainstorming
session. These are very talented, highly educated, highly paid people and they cannot access and perceive the process
that’s going on. Even less can they access the processes that are
sustaining the process that’s going on, what’s termed, the metaprocesses. Additionally, these people cannot perceive
the implications of what they are
doing. Their poor outcomes may get them fired. Any attempt to have them explore
the process they were using had them immediately reverting to continuing with
their dysfunctional use of their
highly refined competencies. Unless strategic action to collapse the double
blind state occurs, nothing is going to change in this system. They are
disabled and they don’t know it and their top management do not know how the
middle managers are disabling themselves, and hence they top managers are
caught up in the same kind of disabling lack of access.
To slightly alter theme - rational people typically take great
pride in their rationality. And yet rationality itself may become irrational -
where logic disconnects. The term 'logic' comes
from the Greek word logos meaning 'reason', originally denoting
'the universal principle through which all things are interrelated and all natural events occur’. In the
rational world relating well with others suffers – as in the above example.
Being hired for their ‘brains’, there tends to be massive focus on
only accessing the front of the brain - the frontal cortex – and not accessing
the balance of the brain. The cortex tends to become cleavered from the rest of
the body-brain. Along with the cleavering is disconnecting. H.G. Wells wrote in a chapter called ‘Primitive Thought’ in his book, ‘A Short
History of the World’ (1929):
And even
today those who really control and order their thoughts are but a small
minority. Most of the world still lives by imagination and passion.
For HG Wells, using imagination and passion is primitive,
and advanced people have controlled ordered thinking. What H.G. Well is terming
a ‘more advanced’ person, is what could be called the cleavered-disconnect
type; the type of people who control and order their thoughts while
disconnecting imagination and passion. H.G. Wells is sharing in a prevailing
view that is held to this day by many with capacity who are disconnecting their
Whole-Body-Brain functioning. For them it is ineffective to be emotional and subjective.
One has to be objective. This disconnecting entails violating their integrity
(being integrated) in many ways in relating to themselves and in their relating
with others.
Attention
typically attaches to or flits between parts and at the same time disconnects
from other parts and the whole. Few have a kind of connexity perceiving
that attends to the whole in its interconnecting, inter-relating and/or
inter-depending.
Along
with disconnecting there are a number of other processes involved. One is
rationalising – where one stays only in the rational and rarely accesses
non-rational aspects of life – where the rational mind has been trained to
ignore the pre-cortical; with little or no access to emotion and feeling,
including gut feeling. There is little access to embodied knowing; that is
knowing and understanding coming to the rational mind through body phenomena
and the senses. Another is disconnecting
inner and outer realities; disconnecting objective and subjective experience;
having a small ‘o’ objective that excludes the subjective, and having little
access to intersubjectivity and inter-subjective understanding – my inner
experiencing of your inner experiencing of me. ‘Advanced people’ tend to not
use the big ‘O’ Objective that includes the objective and subjective.
This
disconnecting comes with numbness. Numbness is accompanied by dysfunctional
detachment – out of sight – out of mind. Disconnect and detachment are accompanied
by dissociation so that while seeming to have sight and hearing, these types
have functional blindness and deafness relating to their lack of accessibility
to vital aspects of their being, and accessibility to the wholeness and
wellness of their being in the world with others. They have no access to how they are doing what they are doing.
They are disconnected from massive amounts of their own being and they have no
ability to access this. They too are
disabled. The big difference is that the disabled know they lack access. These advanced people lack comprehension
that they too are massively disabled by lack of access. And they do not know
they lack comprehension.
These ‘more advanced people’ have little or no comprehension of their plight. If they were to begin reading this paper they would soon stop. They would dismiss it as not applying to them. On this theme of people’s lack of comprehension that they do not comprehend, Martin Heidegger wrote:
To the common
comprehension, the incomprehension is never an occasion to stop and look at its
own powers of comprehension, still less to notice their limitations.
To common
comprehension, what is incomprehensible remains merely offensive – proof enough
to such comprehension which is convinced it was born comprehending everything,
that it is now being imposed upon with a sham. The one thing of which sound
common sense is least capable is acknowledgement and respect (Heidegger
1968, p. 76-77).
To
these advanced people, this paper may be largely incomprehensible and dismissed
as nonsense. They do not see that what they are experiencing is their own lack of comprehension. Therefore,
suggesting that they are disabled by their own lack of access is well nigh
useless. They typically have no capacity
to make any sense of any of this.
So,
what can we do about this? Massive societal processes are sustaining this
pervasive lack of access, ability-impoverishing and stripping of ability from
people’s lives, as well as shutting down experience and potential for
experience from both the wealthy and the poor; from the most powerful and the
most marginalised. Hard driving people with Type A behaviour and massive
preoccupation with their jobs are so divorced from wellness they are prone to
heart attack, ulcers, relationship break down and early death. Protocols of
mainstream engagement reinforce disconnect. Common folk resort to disconnect in
coping with a disconnected world. Think of the myriad ways people distract,
disconnect and disrelate themselves – drinking, smoking, drug taking, texting,
gaming, gambling, TV, loud music, etc.
Another
source of ability stripping is that service delivery undermines mutual help in
protecting its domain. Processes limit experiencing, and limit awareness of
experiencing, and limit perceiving and sense making. Hence, for many, things
are meaningless and make little sense. Our very capacity to know and understand
is shut down and we don’t even notice that this is happening. All of this is
limits access to meaningful critique and limits scope for transforming action.
Essentially[1]
this lack of access extends to everyone. After 1000s of years we have a way to
go in connecting with our potential.
This
brief paper is to provoke awareness of, and interest[2]
firstly in the processes contributing to impoverishment of being in the world
with others, and secondly, and more importantly, to provoke awareness of, and
interest in processes for transforming all aspects of life towards wellness. The words 'Well and
Wellness' are used for the experience of wellness in the
Illness-Wellness Continuum. What constitutes wellness may vary
considerably between different cultures, communities and people in their varied
habitat and context. Forms of wellness may include (in no particular
order) communal, cultural, physical, family, clan, inter-family, personal,
interpersonal, spiritual, emotional, psychological, habitat, relational,
village, inter-village inter-religious, financial, inter-clan, safety and
security, geo-social, environ-mental, inter-factional, economic, and
inter-cultural wellness. Generalised wellness flows from the interaction of
the above forms.
Perhaps
one place to start exploring wellness is with the Laceweb, a
new form of informal networking
social movement evolving in the Australasia Oceania SE Asia Region since
the 1950s.
A
massive resource is the Laceweb Homepage,
an action research archive on wellness containing 121 papers, 19 audio
programs, videos, and E-books that are freely downloadable. For over fifty years,
Laceweb action research has been exploring the experience of wellness in the
indigenous cultures of East Asia Oceania Australasia Region with associated
networking and sharing of wellness ways among cultural and intercultural
healers and resonant others. For example, in 2005, this action research through
University of Philippines with the support of UN-Inma brought together in the
Philippines countryside 49 natural nurturers/healers from eleven countries in
the East Asia Oceania Australasia Region for Regional Emergency
Psychosocial Support Network August 2004 Regional Consultation Workshop with funding
support from UK. H.G. Wells’ so called ‘primitive’ people may well set the lead
in being profoundly connected to aspects of their being, their being in the
natural life world and their being in the social life world with others. ‘Primitive’ derives from ‘of an original
cause’. Our best learning is in our first 12 months and then learning tends to
become disconnected.
Another
place to start is with marginal folk at the very edges of dominant society.
Gatherings, Celebrations Festivals, informal get-togethers and parties provide
scope to evolve supportive friendships exploring all aspects of wellness and
how to connect and integrate these aspects.
The
night Market at ConFest – a conference festival going since 1976
Again,
mainstream people tend to dismiss the margins and yet nature abounds with
examples of innovations on the margins.
Following
Maslow, many top management people aspire to be ‘self actualised’. We will never be actualised if we are actually
disconnected from huge parts of our potential, especially if we do not even
know we are disconnected.
Another
place to explore these themes is the paper Realising Human Potential that
describes action research in the 1960s and 1980s on consciousness raising and
engaging with the unconscious mind..
A
collection of over 130 stories from life about transforming to wellness are
woven together in the freely downloadable E-Book Coming to One’s Senses – By
the Way. This resource continually weaves
together glimpses of transforming ways in action so you may explore them in
your own life. A number of these stories relate to engaging in transformational
action with senior managers.
For
many examples of transforming towards actual holistic self actualising, refer:
The
Life Work of Dr Neville Yeomans
Community
Ways for Healing the World
Un-Inma Atherton
Tablelands Inma Project
For
evolving wellness support networks, refer:
For
engaging in transforming of Wellness in bureaucrats, refer:
A
Process for Transforming Senior Bureaucrats
Natural
Learning Processes (perhaps start a
mutual-help discussion group based on Lexicon experiences)
Natural
Learning Processes (PDF version)
An
interesting collective of characters are the Australian Bush Mechanics.
These folk are exemplars of accessing their abilities and all of their
creativity and resources and linking these to the moment-to-moment changing
context.
Another
glimpse of issues in accessing abilities and sabotaging processes is contained
in Report
from the Pikit War Zone.
While
this paper has been referring to massive seemingly intractable issues, over fifty
years of action research linked to Laceweb Action provides compelling evidence
for transforming processes that work well to generate wellness. Coming to Ones
senses has a number of stories from life expressly relating to processes for
changing the processes used by top managers and bureaucrats in government and
large businesses towards wellness.
Laceweb
articles are not about theories. They are reporting transforming experiences
that have worked for others and they outline how to do the transforming ways.
Anyone may use these for wellness. They are all about you connecting with your
ability, psycho-emotional resources, resilience
and capacity.
All
of this is extremely hopeful.