Bio-Emotive Framework - An Advanced Spiritual Technique

[ardacigin]

These are my notes on Bio-Emotive Framework which is pioneered by Doug Tataryn. I'll be adding a lot of my own teachings and techniques.

This is a highly advanced shadow work practice that I recommend to people who are in intermediate-advanced levels of spiritual training. A beginner meditator has little to no tools to understand and contact the processes required to do bio-emotive work.

The Essence of Bio-Emotive Training:

1- Any intense, inter-personal encounter that is not fully experienced and expressed in 3 modalities - emotional, intellectual, experiential - will become a part of your sense of self and core worldview, instead of something that unfolds in consciousness or something that happens to you.

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Alexithymia means 'no word for emotions', a dysfunction where individuals who suffer are unable to experience and express their emotions (both intellectually and spiritually).

Mr. Spock or Data from Star Trek would be considered a good example of a person with alexithymia.

Psychologists and researchers of alexithymia estimate that just under 10% of the general population suffers from alexithymia. Alexithymia is highly correlated with many mental health conditions and also co-occurs with a number physical health conditions.

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Let's be frank here. All of us, to various degrees, are suffering from alexithymia.

Try this: Next time you are talking to someone who is upset by something, ask them (assuming you have a close enough relationship) how they are feeling.

Most people will talk all about the event, who did what, who said what, how mad they are, etc.

'She did this, She said that. Then she went to bring up that event from the past, that got me really triggered and then I said...' etc

If they do get past just describing the behavioural details of the event, most people tend to use words from one of these three categories:

General Activation Words: e.g. Upset, distressed, frustrated, anxious, mad, etc

Cognitive Counterparts: e.g. Confused, worried, concerned, etc

Behavioural Metaphors: e.g. Pissed off, trapped, heavy, feel the weight of the world on my shoulders, etc

None of these perceptions and techniques are productive or effective in the following recovery process.

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How to do Bio-Emotive Practice:

1- The Emotional Examination

Seldom will people use feeling words, like “I feel rejected”, or “used”, or “inadequate”, etc to describe how they are feeling about the interpersonal relationships or events that happen to them in life.

- First of all, you examine the sentence or the idea that rattled your psyche to generate fear, sadness, anger etc.  to the situation and then describe your emotional knee-jerk reaction as accurately as possible. This is usually said by another person or it can be your own ideas rising up from the unconscious mind. 

Let's say somebody told this to you in this in an argument - 'You might think you are better but you are actually a useless arrogant selfish fuck!'

The emotional reaction in the intellectual form: 'I felt inadequate and hurt with anger and tints of sadness'.

- To do this properly, examine multiple traces of your past experiences and childhood which imprinted 'an emotional impression' to your mind where your worldview and perception were significantly altered.

Ex. Someone with a perfectionist attitude needs to examine his childhood where his elementary teacher said 'You can do much better than that' to his painting where that response has generated a shift in self-perception and dissolved into causes and conditions where the OCD and perfectionist dysfunction was slowly formed in the next 10 years.

Then go deeper into the emotion and make sure no other key-emotion rests at the core of it. Then make the sub-emotions as clear as possible.

For example, you can do the identification of core and sub emotions in the following way:

Core emotion: The feeling of sadness where I feel powerless and insignificant. I feel that nobody pays attention to what I say or do! 

Sub-emotions: Anger and rage whenever someone doesn't listen to what I say or command me to do something in an authoritarian way.

After this initial imprint of idea and emotion is clearly seen through your past experiences and after you poinpoint the core emotion, the energetic and emotional pull of the trauma is reduced and the emotional mind is experienced more fully. (But not completely, yet!)

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This is merely a healthy emotional integration of the event. We still need to address 2 more modalities of conscious processing to complete the bio-emotive training - Intellectual and Experiential.

2- The Intellectual Examination:

The intellectual expression involves 2 steps:

1- External: Your forming of words, intentions and relationship with this person regarding the event that happened. If possible, you talk with this person.

How well can you express the true emotions you've felt to this person without activating emotions constantly.

2- Internal: Your systematic and contextual understanding of the causes and conditions that lead to the argument or event with this person.

This includes:

- Why this debate and argument came about and in what environmental conditions.

- How you've used your mind and emotions to interpret this person's words and actions. How this mental state and perception directly influenced your reactions and response.

- How you've viewed other person's mental state, emotions and thoughts at the time. How they really felt and thought after the fact.

The most important:

- To what degree have you been able to COMPLETELY let go of your own worldview and conditioning which allows you to completely see the perspective of the other person?

If not, it is time to do this entire mindful review and intellectual analysis to make it really clear why you and this person felt the way they felt and said the words they said.

3- The Experiential and Spiritual Examination:

The spiritual examination has 2 key components to it.

1- The Complete Experience of The Emotion:

In meditation, stop 'down-regulating' negative emotions with joy and happiness (which arises as a result of your continued practice) and allow mental states of sadness, anger, fear and anxiety to express themselves fully pertaining to the event that disturbs you.

All forms of conceptual analysis regarding the event are put to rest. We have already allowed ourselves to do that with the intellectual examination above. This will be a purely emotional observation.

Give yourself the space to feel the negative sensations pertaining to your core emotions above.

In meditation, allow yourself to feel the dukkha and suffering of wanting things to be different than what they are and find the dissatisfaction regarding the event. Remember the event, visualize it briefly and come back to pure emotional feel space.

- How do feelings and sensations arise in my body? 

  - Are they stable or moving? Permanent or Impermanent?

- What location do the feeling expresses itself and what emotions arise in my mind?

   - Chest? Stomach? Legs? Head? 

    - Anger, Sadness, Anxiety, Fear ?

- What sort of texture the discomfortable sensation arise with?

   - Pressure, smoky blurry myst, heaviness, blocky discomfort?

Try to have as much equanimity with sensations as possible and allow each aspect of the experience to fully express themselves.

2- The Insight Perspective:

Focus on 3 characteristics of the experience above:

1- Impermanence: If the sensations are stable looking, encourage yourself to see more of the arising and passing away of micro sensations and 'movingness' of sensations as a whole.

2- Craving: Realize that your suffering and dissatisfaction come about due to wanting things to be different than what they are on a momentary basis. Try to open up to each moment of experience and accept it without wanting it to change.

3- The Sense of Self: Realize that the self-narrative is your own making. Also, try to see there is no seer or observer to these negative sensations in a state of reduced craving. Attach less 'I'm experiencing...' mindset to changing sensations as they unfold.

This will generate equanimity and tranquility and allow for your trauma to resolve itself with continued practice.

You don't do this process once or twice but many times. As much as you need.

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This entire process is my re-working of bio-emotive framework taught by Doug Tataryn. 

Hope you get value from it.

Much love,

Arda

Edited February 3, 2022 by ardacigin