James

“Do animals understand what we are saying? Yes, but you have to make sense” Vicky Hearne "Adam’s Task" I am deeply moved by discovering the Trust Technique. I am a Jungian psychotherapist and over the years each learning path I have taken has been a rediscovery that presence and listening are the foundation of what I can offer. I have come to see more fully that human disruption from what we have called nature (as if it is something other than human) and human nature are of course not separate. Eco-therapy has taken me some of the way, what I am learning from the Trust Technique now, joyfully, falls into place. Trust Technique addresses relations of humans and the animals they are responsible for; it also reaches into human/nature relations in the wild. Essentially it is a well taught practice of meditating alongside an animal and discovering that when the human enters a meditation and is in a state of utter presence and listening, the animal relaxes and can enter a peaceful state that is ,also, healing. When this is repeated, sometimes in small doses if the animal is very sensitive and/or traumatised, the animal comes to recognise it is this human that is enabling the peace, and connection and trust become possible. However, the method completely gets that the relationship is actually an inter-actional state that the animal may have initiated by catching, ("flirting with", to use Arnold Mindell's formation in Quantum Mind) the human. And, that there may be a wound in common. The growth of the relationship, or the process of healing, whichever is the intention, may well depend on the human healing her/his traumas. This is explicitly taught and it’s beautifully shown that the Trust Technique offers healing to both human and animal. In the first place it is clear (delightfully) that it is humans that needs training! The teaching of the method, initially online, clearly draws on a wealth of psychotherapeutic knowledge and good practice, on spiritual traditions and indigenous knowledge. And, it has synthesised this with clarity and apparent simplicity, but the kind of simplicity that comes from deep understanding. Following the videos makes me laugh with pleasure as I see them explain in accessible language earnest conceptions of psychoanalysis and all its derivatives. It seems to me the teaching comprises an excellent psychotherapy training, made the more possible by beginning with human/nature relations. The videos are a masterclass in how to present online. James Barrett