Caution to Worker Bees

Hello Comrades,

Thank you for sharing this work with this amazing population.
I have seen this in myself and others and I shine light to bring awareness.

When I work, with non verbal kids.
I have needs of my own. (I need to feel intuitive and connected.)
I use this lens to look at what is happening between the child and I, and inevitably I find what Imm looking for.
We all find or create what we understand to be true again and again. It validates us.

Here's the reminder:
They are their own person.
We are projectors.
They (if non verbal) are not in a position to set us straight.
So we need to stay aware of our needs, our lenses, and keep that in our consciousness while we do the work.

Matching their internal state

He's exacting on his environment how he feels.

When he's in pain or agitated, he may pull my hair. It seems he's trying to get my reaction to match his internal state.

It seems this way when bouncing, waving fingers or beads close to his face. He may be seeking the input, making the world more exciting for a moment, or he may be looking to create in the wotld a match for how he's feeling.

I choose music that highlights and intensifies how I'm feeling. Sometimes I seek out a sad movie because I need to cry. Sometimes I seek a hug b/c I need comfort.  Their behavior seems to serve this function too.

My goal is to hold the space, be deeply present, and have his state match mine.

A deep suspicion, you are perfect already

When Mike and I were talking I said God is in everything.
I said my daily prayer these days is, "May I be aware when God reveals himself to me."
Mike questioned, "But you believe God is in everything...?"

"That is precisely why he is so hard to see."
That is precisely why it is difficult to remain aware of the presence.

My deep suspicion is you are perfect as you are.
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in Eat, Pray, Love, " God shows up in you as you."
Yes, I believe so.
I am less interested in changing you, and more interested in coming to understand and witness your divinity exactly as you are.

Transpersonal Research on Autism... Yes Please

Will Transpersonal Psychology take a meaningful role in research? I know my area of study. Here's the first bud I've seen on this early emergence.

Do i get to create transpersonal research to support the autistic population?

Dan Gaylin from ITP Got me thinking about it

From the Department of Developmental Psychology of the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) it is being conducted an independent research to know the current state of transpersonal psychology worldwide and its relation with science and quantitative research.

Research on the current state of transpersonal psychology
Thank you, we have registered your answer.
You will see the results of this research in a chapter of the forthcoming book edited by Douglas MacDonald and Manuel Almendro that will be announced in: www.oxigeme.com

Dance my inspiration

If you live from your soul/ heart a story will happen. Don't worry about making a story. - christina applegate sytycd

Casey did his best dance where he had to show up and be vulnerable. Christina asked him how do you feel right no, emotionally, spiritually after doing that dance? He says I can't describe it. She said, "you did your job, kiddo. " tears in my eyes. Be moved. Move. Act beyond words this too is your job.

The role of Rigidity and Choice

Acceptance and Committment Therapy explores the meanings people ascribe to a situation. ( What meaning do my ASD kids ascribe? Whatever it is, it rocks them to their core if they can't get their way.)

One thought: getting to choose and having it come to pass build self-efficacy.

Remember how preschoolers have to bounce off of you to know who they are. It's more like they bounce an idea/ self concept off us and if it doesn't come back as Yes, it's as if they don't exist. ( and this is disturbing) one child would say everything in the universe is off (gravity for ex) if he can't make sense of the situation and his role in it. Missing a well developed pre frontal cortex telling him. Later, first I need to deal w/ this error message is catastrophic.

Is it, not trusting he can deal with whatever comes up?
It's more... Not getting to print... Not recreating his rigidity is majorly disruptive. (Aren't we all like this. We live in routine b/c it's one less thing to think about, to perceive as new stimulus. And what if you were hyper sensitive to stimuli. You would use rigidity to exhale. At least this will be so. / it's as if it is not So everything you thought you could trust in the universe is also no longer true. Hmmmmm.....

Bk persons in context p.148
Effectiveness rests on a persons ability to adapt. (My children's bk. either this or that, both are okay) this is a cornerstone.

Be- coming

Speaking your truth is prayer, whatever you're feeling. Speaking your truth puts you in the center of God.

Keep to the moving truth within you
A pattern will emerge
Alisha

It's not just showing up in every room as me (some fixed externally perceptible version of me.)
It's showing up in touch with the changing tides of your becoming unsure of what will be revealed or hidden and ultimately how that will be received. The goal is to experience and express the current state of your soul even in the face of a bossy people harping & telling you to do it differently. - Brene Brown

Jesus always knew who he was.
And that might be the very characteristic that set him apart.  Never people pleasing, he knew he was amazing, the son of God ( as we all are), and he showed up as himself fearlessly , courageously, and consistently.
He experienced his divinity and expressed his heart in every moment.

Setting goals as Self Expression

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Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. --Omar Khayyam

Happiness Goals Countdown

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Pema Chodran on Love and Aggression

Pema
Profound well-being not determined by circumstance
God is an open space that holds the question. God is potential.
God is an open space of mind that allows for alternative possibilities.
People can be swept towards aggression they can be equally swept to lovingkindness because they have both potentials inside of them. Because they have the capacity for both.
You want everyone to de-escalate their aggression that will equal happiness and peace in the world.

Maybe I get to be a peace officer after all.

When the ground falls out example September 11 kindness is the only thing that makes sense. And then habit reemerges and we return to aggression and violence.

The kindness comes from not being able to escape from groundlessness.

When you're all groundless together kindness is the only thing that makes sense.

(like when I travel I am humble)

Hmmmm.....

David Whyte on work

Psychology
Philosophy
Poetry
Presence

Work gives us a sense of power over circumstance
The key human need is to know you show up in the world and you have influence
Like Lukey on the drums
We're loving presence brings out someone else's full expression
This expression includes work
This expression includes power over circumstance
To know them and their essences as it goes over waterfall or in the slow pool
The essence of water doesn't change but it's circumstance changes what aspect of its personality is highlighted
Work asks the question what am I going to do
How I'm I going to show up
Work can be a place to find yourself but you can also lose yourself
How will I help my autistic friends navigate these waters

Ram Dass on Behavior Change

The optimal strategy in behavior change, with yourself and every other human being, is compassion. That means, as far as I understand it, the ability to see how it all is. As long as you have certain desires about how you think it ought to be, you can’t hear how it is. As long as I want something, I can’t really understand it, because much of what I can see are just my own projective systems. You must come to see every human being including yourself as an incarnation in a body or a personality, going through a certain life experience which is functional. You allow it to be just the way it is at the moment, seeing even your own confusion and conflict and suffering as functional, rather than as dysfunctional.

The greatest thing you can do for any other being is provide the unconditional love which comes from making contact with that place in them which is beyond conditions, which is just pure consciousness, pure essence. That is, once we acknowledge each other as existing, just being here, just being, then each of us is free to change optimally. If I can just love you because here we are, then you are free to grow as you need to grow, because none of it’s going to change my feeling of love.

We’re used to having these special role relationships, thinking certain roles apply to one, yet not to another, because we’re very attached to externals – do you touch somebody, do you sleep with them, do you control them, do you collaborate with them, do you support them, do you pay them, do they pay you? That’s all stuff of the vehicle of the interaction between two beings; it isn’t the essence of the matter. As you work on yourself through your daily life, more and more you see your own reactions to things around you as sort of mechanical rip-offs. You get much calmer in the space behind it all, and you’re able to hear more how it all is, including your own personality as a part of nature. The deeper you are in that space, the more there is available for everybody you meet who is capable of coming into that space. You are the environment that allows them to do that – and from within this space all change is possible. The minute you identify yourself or anyone else with models, roles, or any characteristic, any individual difference, change is really fierce. Once you live in a universe where you experience even your living and dying as relative rather than in absolute terms, it’s all free to change. There’s nowhere you have to go to work on yourself other than where you are at this moment, and everything that’s happening to you is part of your work on yourself.

Paulo Coehlo writes in the Alchemist

Paulo Coehlo says the following through the main character in the Alchemist.
He is a shepard traveling in Northern Africa from Spain.  He hears two conversing, one speaks Arabic and one Spanish and they understood one another perfectly well.

"There must be a language that doesn't depend on words," the boy thought.

There is.  Behavior.

I have always held a place in my heart for this question.  I have attempted to learn Spanish, French, Italian, Sawahili.  But it doesn't catch it.  I want to speak the language that Everyone understands.  And I want to be as fluent in it as I am my own.

Behavior uses different mechanics.  You don't get to plant a concept using just the exact words that insinuate just the right feeling, but then again when these words land it may not be as you intended anyway.  People bring their own experiences, their own feelings to the words you say.  So, it's possible, even with careful delivery, you'll never be fully understood as you intended.

And then there is behavior.  At the outset to me, it seems brute in comparison to the poetry of words.  I'll push if I don't want it, take if I do want it.  But what about dance?  Dance is a series of movements that convey feeling.  What about a 12 year old boy in a wheel chair, cognitively delayed with no words, who pulls his cousin in for a hug spontaneously.  Behavior can be poetry, and it can be in response to the most subtle of cues that only the behaver has picked up on.  Let me learn and communicate in this language as adeptly as I do my first language.

Victor Frankle speaks

I found this 4 minute talk on Ted Talks of Victor Frankle, my favorite optimist-realist.  ; )

Here's what I hear:
" Presuppose the best in a person,
then you will elicit it,
then you will see what he's capable of becoming."

If we can interact with one another with this as our guiding torch, everyone will win!!!!
Love to you and all you're doing!

http://www.ted.com/talks/viktor_frankl_youth_in_search_of_meaning.html

Learning to see & Temple Grandin

Ted Talk
How the brain learns to See by Pawan Sinha
http://www.ted.com/talks/pawan_sinha_on_how_brains_learn_to_see.html

Temple Grandin
http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html

Helen Fisher: The Brain on Love  Ted Talks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYfoGTIG7pY
So many literary references about romantic love is what makes this extra fun for me.

I heard, "Want, motivation, reward lives in the reptilian center of your brain, and when you are denied something your brain in the wanting center becomes more active."  6min 29sec.

You're feeling intense focus, motivation, willing to risk it all.  She's talking about love, but could it also apply to other intense desires.

How Boys are portrayed in cinema and video games

I was watching a video game that shocked me.
Here's the premise.  You start the game, a man on a wagon.  You don't know where you are, where you are going or who you are with.  The others are speaking.  You are listening, but you don't know for what clue.  You're a prisoner.  You're forced off the wagon, and inspected.  You don't know what the outcome will be, but it's desperate.  Then there is fire, fighting, an escape.  You run, you take weapons off dead people, maybe their armor if you like it better.  You swim with your hatchet on your back.  You're in survival mode.  You can take the wings off a butterfly.  (But why would you?)  Because it may be part of a magic potion.  Everything in this world is FOR you.  You need to survive.  The times are desperate.  You don't know who you can trust, and anyone else is a threat.

The entitlement is a relative of "Manifest Destiny".  It is my destiny to take everything for me, and kill who I need to get it.  To leave the butterfly dead, the land burned, is not my problem, I'm on the run.

The scary thing for me, is we do live on the run, with cortisol pumping through us.  Can we physiolgically differentiate between make believe and real life.  In real life, will we act with entitlement because we are practiced and trained to do so.

Sex, Drugs, violence sells.  Well...... maybe we should have a conscience and not make it to make money.  Maybe we should think about the children we are raising, and hold their well-being as the most important.  Raping and pillaging the land isn't a far cry, from those willing to fill the minds of youth with "what sells" so they can make a buck, totally disregarding the life behind the dollar.

I love what Colin Stokes has to say about "How movies teach manhood".  He says we need movies that are role models for boys on Ted Talks.  Men that protect their sisters and collaborate with others; instead of fighting and going it alone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueOqYebVhtc

Body Language

Otherwise known as nonverbal communication.  In this field there is a need to leverage all kinds of communication with our autistic folks.  In case, they are not verbal, lets give them every tool in the shed.

On a different note, I saw an amazing Ted talk where a woman talks about how intentionally changing  your body positioning can change your cortisol and testosterone levels.

Here's the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc

First, I'm thinking as an Instructional Aide:
It is human nature to complement not challenge the body language in front of you.
(So, if our children make themselves big....we shrink?)

Men tend to take up more space.  It's a testosterone thing.
This talk says fake it 'til you make it.   Hmmmm......?
Would practicing power poses even in the comfort of my own home, or on break change my hormone levels?  Her study points to YES.
Can I use this technique to change the power differential between us with changing little else?
Maybe.  In my classroom, the children are 95-100% compliant with two of the guys.
Can I inhabit this zone?  Can I embody their low reactivity (cortisol levels) and high testosterone, and achieve the same results?  It's worth a try.

I know as it is.  My cortisol levels are high.  (Even if I try to keep a poker face.  I can taste the stress, and I notice it in the types of foods I crave after work, and the sleep as if crashing after an adrenaline rush.)  I do sometimes rub my neck.  This posture, is a particularly "low power" pose.  Knowing that I will be cognizant not to do with with kids.

Women tend to make themselves small.  This field seems to be 85% female in staff, and 90% male in autistic kids.  We may need to carry our energy differently.

"a self balanced for contingencies"

Walt Whitman writes of a "self-balanced for contingencies" as trees and animals are in "Me Imperturbe" from Leaves of Grass.

Isn't this what we are all trying to do?  Bring ourselves into balance no matter the contingencies.

Here is the verse:

ME imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
Master of all, or mistress of all—aplomb in the midst of irrational things,
Imbued as they—passive, receptive, silent as they,
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought;
Me private, or public, or menial, or solitary—all these subordinate, (I am eternally equal with the best—I am not subordinate;)	5
Me toward the Mexican Sea, or in the Mannahatta, or the Tennessee, or far north, or inland,
A river man, or a man of the woods, or of any farm-life in These States, or of the coast, or the lakes, or Kanada,
Me, wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies!
O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

"To live is so startling"

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."  - Emily Dickinson

Humility is...

Humility is making space for another's perception.  Carol Gray has a wonderful story about a boy who peed on his teachers lawn after getting in trouble at school.  How dare he retaliate!  Carol took him aside.  Why did you do that? 
"Well," he said,  "it's like the time we went Lama Trecking." 
"Do tell."  Carol Gray leaned in.  The student went on to explain how his whole community went camping and lama trekking.  He refused to pee in the woods because he knew pee belonged in the toilet.  After one night and the following day, it was decided everyone would pack up and go home because it was not healthy to never go to the bathroom.  As they were packing up, he went behind a tree and peed.  Everyone cheered, and they were allowed to continue with their journey.  So here again, when he didn't have acceptance and wanted it, he did what worked last time.

Remember: These sweet folks don't distinguish between context.  They have likely heard or experienced this before, and they are just recreating it at a time when we wouldn't.  Before you get frustrated, consider at what point there perception has held water, because most likely at some point it did.