There have been a lot of valid questions in the community about when do you bring your voice, and what to do if one’s input doesn’t feel heard or responded to in a way that one expects or would like.
There have been occasions where participants felt their voice wasn’t heard or was reframed in a way that didn’t feel supportive. We are aware that this can lead to all sorts of feelings, being scared, or rejected in some way, and these are valid, real feelings. We want to address this because our community is special and we would like everyone in our community to feel heard and feel seen.
What is really central here is that every voice needs to be heard. Absolutely. Your voice is welcome in the community, and is in fact necessary and vital to the growth and evolution of our community. And everyone is entitled to their own feelings and we support you having them and expressing them.
Everyone in the community has expertise in their own field(s), we respect and honor each of you and your expertise. Our expertise is knowing the physio-spiritual markers of the Natural Numbers, including, the core tenants and purposes of each Natural Number. We gained this expertise from working with close to a thousand people of each Natural Number, what we teach, how we word it and how it is expressed and experienced comes from our research and it is very specific.
As students we ask that you first master the specifics of the system as we teach it before you start to interpret and change the teaching. If we re-frame the words you use to describe Body of 9 it is to protect the integrity of our research because this learning comes from the generosity and vulnerability of the thousands of people that have all shared of themselves, so that we can pass the learning on.
It is never our intention to ignore, or make you wrong for your point of view. If we feel that you have added something new that fits in the framework of our research, we will test that information with others before we add it to our lexicon of Body of 9. This might take time.
We do our best to hear what you have to say and what you add to the community, and to stay open to new information at all times. This is a core tenant of Body of 9 – Body of 9 wouldn’t exist if this wasn’t a central principle of the work.
The first step in the transformation process that is part of becoming a Body of 9 Practitioner is understanding the difference between your nature and your nurture. One of our roles is to help people with this differentiation and to teach the use of their nature to lead them through life. People that have been physically activated in their Natural Number for less than 6 or so months are still building their understanding of and access to their nature, and the abilities that come with knowing and practicing Body of 9. During the period of time after learning one’s natural number, before learning to activate all the Natural Numbers in the body, our nurture is still the primary default for how we work with others, interact in groups and manage ourselves.
This means it can be a difficult time during which you may get triggered or upset by things that happen in the community. The good news is this is a completely normal part of the transformation process. There is often an internal struggle with ourselves that can get expressed as discomfort or discontent with Susan and Martin as teachers or with the community as a whole.
Experience tells us that one of the barriers to feeling heard is attachment. When one is attached to what the community does with what one said, anything other than immediate acknowledgement and acceptance can trigger us back to old Nurture based responses. It is very easy to take it personally.
We ask that you notice when you’re putting something into the community. Do you have an attachment to how it’s received and what’s done with it? If you feel attachment, that’s something you might want to examine. It’s so common for us visionaries ( and you are all visionaries) to experience trauma from a young age when our parents and our peers reject the truth that we know. This anti-Nurture (as Martin calls it) makes it so much harder to be effective as an adult. The period of time from identification to activation is a particularly challenging time as you are in the process of integrating the Natural Numbers and transforming your human experience.
The shift that makes giving your gift powerful is the ability to give it without attachment to what’s done with it, and to hold true to the central message without attachment to how it gets reframed / reworded or integrated into the whole. Speaking from your Natural Number’s wisdom, your Nature, will have a different impact in the community than your Nurture. This doesn’t make you wrong, or invalidated, even if that’s how it feels. What it means is that your Nurture’s wisdom is meant for different ears. If you can stay un-attached to the message, then the responses won’t trigger you back into an un-activated state,
When you are speaking from your activation as much as possible, you offer the information coming from your body’s wisdom. Our role as stewards is to make sure that the message is not diluted, but it may be translated in a way that can be heard by the community and outside, without triggering others, and we are very very careful about the separation between Nurture and Nature. It’s very easy to bring our Nurture into our Natural Number and it’s not the same. Nurture is the way in which our experiences shape our beliefs, and our beliefs, unless they’re conscious, can actually skew what we think is happening.
When you have attachment that’s driven by un/conscious belief from your Nurture, that is not related to your Natural Number’s gift, there can be attachment to that un/conscious belief. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it is you and there’s nothing wrong with you, however what we’re doing is we’re weeding through what is our Nurture and what is our Nature, to find what is true and conscious and of service to the whole.
This is why sometimes Susan and Martin reframe something that is said, to regain the clarity between Nature and Nurture and protect the core essence of what we reflect back from what we have learned in our research. We do not view these re-framings as censorship – we have heard what you have said and if we don’t acknowledge or include it right away it is because we do yet see how it fits in the existing framework based on what we’ve learned over the last twenty years of observations and conversations, distilling the core of each of the Natural Numbers to make sure that messages can be heard, without being forceful or triggering to the recipients.
As a Practicing Partner you have signed up for this journey, we are here at your side to support you, to share our wisdom as we have garnered it over time, to learn more through our shared experience and explore the possibilities presented by our bodies through the understanding of how we are equipped. This means you have agreed to take responsibility for your own personal growth. The agreement is that we all do our best, with ourselves and each other, with grace and love.
We want to specifically address the question of darkness and shadow. This has come up many times with many students. We acknowledge that there is darkness and shadow. Our position is that this is related to your nurture – to your personal experience. Your nature, as expressed by your activated Natural Number is whole, perfect, and nothing short of a super power. This is why we do not talk about the shadow side of your Natural Number.
If you are having a hard time, please tell us. We are not trauma specialists and urge you to seek out help if you are suffering from your nurture. We have observed that activating your Natural number can help you get present in yourself and allow your gifts to be offered and received. That is what we are all practicing.
We love you. We are grateful for your courage and presence in the community.
Choose love
Martin and Susan
———————– Paolo Replied and Clarified as follows ————————–
Hello Body of 9 Community,
The discussion of nature versus nurture has always been of interest to me, and especially now that I’ve completed six modules of training in Somatic Experiencing Trauma Healing. Today I met with my Somatic Experiencing case consultant and coincidently, this same topic came up. My take-away as a Body of 9 Natural Number identifier and occasional group co-facilitator is, at any point in time a person can be triggered by any kind of stimuli or event. This includes the physical sensations of activating a Natural Number not one’s own. Depending on life experiences certain Natural Numbers can be triggering to the body, because that particular Natural Number happens to be the one possessed by a person who perpetrated some form of abuse towards us. To say it another way, the process of learning to activate and embody all nine Natural Numbers can create a risk that a particular Natural Number activation will trigger past mental, emotional, or physical trauma. When that happens a person will dissociate in some way.
The trauma response can be huge or minimal. It all depends. In March 2008, I participated in the identification process of about 100 people at a conference for hospital healthcare professionals. In the process I got triggered and became overwhelmed. Initially it was minimal. I began to notice every time a new person was identified, I would pick up more uncomfortable energy and eventually became overwhelmed. I excused myself and told one of my partners what was going on with me. She was empathic and told me that I knew how to handle it. Immediately I understood what she was talking about. I left the room and went off for ten-minutes to meditate in the Natural Number 4 posture. I was able to calm down, felt better, and went back to participate in the ongoing identification process. If I stopped focusing on my lower abdomen, I would feel the overwhelm returning when someone new was identified. Consequently I continued to focus on my lower abdomen for the duration of the time I was with others being identified.
What I take from Susan and Martin’s recent post is that we have to be responsible for ourselves when we are triggered. That responsibility means noticing when it happens to me, and then letting someone else in the group know what’s going on with me. It’s reasonable to take a break, to take a timeout and to ask for help. As an adult I need to find a way to regulate myself when I get triggered. Sometimes that’s easier said than done. Sometimes I need to ask for help. It’s certainly reasonable and appropriate to ask for help.
I encourage everyone in the Body of 9 training to practice self-care, to be kind to self and others, and to know that it’s natural and normal in a process of personal growth to be triggered by something that resonates with a past discomfort.
Learning about the nine energies with my former teachers at New Equations, and continuing to learn from Susan and Martin, has all been part of an ongoing 21-year process of personal growth and development. Being able to activate all nine Natural Numbers has been a continual resource for my personal trauma healing. Sharing the knowledge of the nine continues to be a joy for me.
Warmest regards,
Paolo
