What’s wrong with pushing people to crack and why always digging for your stuff can leave you high and dry?

I believe in what I am about to share here so much. In fact I believe in it enough to quit my well-paid job travelling the world and teaching in very exciting, fast paced, adrenaline fuelled spaces in highly exotic locations!

I knew deep down there was another way, and I knew deep down what we were doing in the organisation I was working in wasn't really supporting people to grow and thrive, it just felt off.

After 13 years being in, AND teaching in these spaces and since then 4+ years of deep enquiry, thousands of dollars on re- training, countless hours in existential crisis, reflection, more training, therapy, some moments of real financial crisis, I can fully breath and stand in my truth.

Which is, I believe wholeheartedly, and know after working with so many 1:1 clients in the last four years, plus witnessing the magical changes within myself - that we do NOT need to force, push or pressure people into finding their edges and pushing through them and 'cracking' in order for people to grow and heal.

In fact this is harmful and not helping people.

What I have seen is that this is keeping people in a dependant cycle of needing more support, wanting another high intensity experience, or worse of all leaving an experience feeling totally broken and that it's all their fault rather than seeing that the methods and teachers were at fault.

LGAT"s or large group awareness trainings are high intensity type experiences designed with a particular format that encourages people to 'crack'.

You can define an LGAT by the following criteria

Large group of participants

High pressure and intense emotional experiences

Strong group cohesion and group identity

Big promises of transformation

Charismatic leaders

Several days long and typically lack of sleep, personal space, down time & time to reflect and digest

LGATS often encourage participants to push their emotional and psychological limits sometimes leading to breaking down barriers, and sometimes leading to re-traumatization, dissociation or even psychotic breakdowns.(which I have witnessed, I am sorry to say, and also experienced myself)

Group pressure in LGATS can significantly amplify participants' experiences, often pushing individuals to conform to group norms or expectations. Participants can end up feeling coerced, maybe pushing themselves too far, or adopting new beliefs, even changing their entire lives when they get home.

The thing is change that is able to be integrated happens in doable steps.

And more importantly this is change you get to keep.

The reason why these workshops are so successful is that people get addicted to the high they feel in the experience and when it wears off after they go home for a while, like a addict they need another hit!

These spiritual businesses become peoples drug dealer when they are addicted to the high of the peak experience and intensity.

Note I use the word business here, they are not communities they are businesses. Appealing to the side of us that wants to develop spiritually.

The other part of this equation is that by taking people into places and spaces where we keep trying to dig up all their trauma, especially when people are under resourced, tired, emotionally spent, triggered, pressured, exhausted, we do not heal, or grow. It's just like taking a gigantic cathartic dump, we may feel relief for a while , but then the shit starts building up again.

We need ways that are digestible.

When we are outside of our window of tolerance (sometimes also called window of presence) the subtle changes needed for the nervous system to recalibrate can't happen. There isn't enough presence within the intensity. It's just like trying to unpick a tangled messy knot with boxing gloves on.

The nervous system doesn't know what to change-to, we need to be able to connect to an aspect of our wholeness for a recalibration and completion of the stuck survival response (trauma).

A big part of the healing work I do with people is to help them orient to their wholeness, their resourced self, what feels ok, stable, or some might call this blueprint.

Trauma gets all single point focussed on the problem as a way to try to stay safe. But if there is not enough access to resource the traumatic imprint will win. The momentum of stability needs to be greater than the trigger for the completion of the survival response to happen. Whether than is feeling the stability of the chair, ground or walls or the anchoring of a regulated present guide, or an inner resource of divine parent , something that is a layer of support. This enables the nervous system to disengage from its alarm bells. And with presence find completion of the stick survival pattern. This won’t always happen instantaneously . Other factors may be at play.

But from a resourced place with safe enough support then what arises to be met, can be met with greater ease, and accuracy.

When we are able to stay present to what is ready to be met without white knuckling it through (ie in small doable pieces) our sensitively attuned system can naturally in its own right timing re-orient back to homeostasis.

Whilst doing that we are listening and we come into contact with our embodied inherent knowing which knows the conditions we need to thrive and grow.

That means no forcing, no pushing, no trying to hack your nervous system, no going into overwhelmed states, no cracking , no digging, no penetrating to the core.

Instead.....

Softening

Melting

Unfurling

Re-orientating

Restoring

Regenerating

Recalibrating

With my clients what I have witnessed as they are met with the right kind of support both internally within themselves and externally - is that they feel relief!

Tears sometimes come....

Melting can happen as the frozen, shut down, overwhelmed states held within their physiology begin to thaw and come back online.

A common sequence is to then experience a need to express something. Sometimes it's just a silent scream, sometimes it's boundaries that were constantly overridden or never claimed.

And sometimes it's not like this and we are absolutely absorbed into a higher frequency state and the nervous system can slowly begin to recalibrate to it bit by bit using a method called titration*.

(* titration is used to contain an activation,in the system EVEN if its a change for the 'better' if the change is too drastic the nervous system can interpret it as a threat, and we won't be able to relax into that state, so we do it a bit at a time, in a gradual way, then it can be digested or absorbed)

I also want to take a moment here and say to you- if you have ever been gaslit in group spaces, or by a coach or 'healer' - felt coerced or manipulated, judged, made wrong, pushed too hard, felt pressured by the group norm. didn't feel included, went into a state of shock or dissociation and no-one supported you back, I am so sorry. If I was someone who was in that training with you, please let me know, I want to repair that.

It's been a humbling process to de-condition myself. I have had some amazing support, mentors and teachers and I am so thankful.

It feels to me like the LGAT style of facilitating groups is just another part of the unhealthy patriarchal paradigm that ignores and diminishes the more feminine/yin ways of healing

yielding,

holding,

caring,

attuning

Ultimately what is happening in this unbalanced approach is thinking that the penetrative force is all that's needed for transformation to happen, and when that is facilitated in a way where it feels like there is no choice, that is a violation.

What most of us need is more love, both from ourselves and from outside especially those we have paid and trusted to have our best interests at heart.

As for the constantly digging into all of our stuff approach, something that can happen for 'conscious people' on their journey to wholeness is they can get obsessed with working on themselves.

Nothing is ever ok for long, there is this 'piece' to work with, dark feedback to be had, or shadow to eat.

I get it, I have been there and christ, its exhausting and it just keeps us in a perpetual cycle of not enough-ness, making us hyper-focussed on what's not ok, what needs fixing, what is wrong - and our brains get hard wired to look for this.

What most of us need support with is to seek ways of feeling and embodying states of being that are connected to our goodness, stability, wholeness, our divinity even.

When we do this our entire neurology and physiology begins to shift and our 'traumas' re-organise themselves around that, eventually unwinding all together.

This is not a spiritual bypass ignore all your shit approach- this is - with presence embodying these states, feeling and anchoring them into our physiology and being present to what's happening through our direct experience as we do that.

I am really happy to be re-launching my facilitation career and I am teaming up with some wonderful people to ensure high quality, well held experiences. In all of these experiences there is a value for high level level of care, responsibility and good ethics.

I love the magic that can happen when we gather together with shared intentions for growth and healing- something really magical can happen when we come together in this way. And I am passionate about creating spaces BEYOND the LGAT system.

And if you're curious about the events I am involved with I invite you to take a look at these offerings and see if any of them speak to you, if so I'd love to see you there!! https://www.ellie-wilde.com/events

I will also be offering some smaller local events on Waiheke Island keep an eye on my website for those, coming out soon!

Please reach out if you have any questions or have any comments with what I've shared <3