Somato Respiratory Integration
– Stage Two, Building on Stage One

Why the SRI stages are numbered.
The goal is not to get to stage 12 or some higher stage. What’s most important…Read more

How To

The short & skinny for moving through Stage Two, if all you need are the basics to get started

Keep in mind, stage two is about relationships between two parts. As it happens, same general principles seem to govern all relationships, whether the relationships are between body parts, people, families, countries, etc. Often, when the relationship is activated, one part dominates while the other part tends to weaken, become passive, or “drop out” in range of motion. Whenever stage two moves towards some conclusion, each part gets to speak with “full voice”.

* Easiest position for stage two is lying on your back, knees bent, feet flat.
* In stage one, your touch and movement in synch with your respiration rhythm is focused in one area. In stage two, you alternate the stage one procedure between two areas with your touch, movement and respiration, with one hand in one area of your torso while the other hand is on another part of your torso. Give one full movement and breath in one area – letting it breath for you, then same in the other area — back and forth between the two. One full breath and movement being breath in while lifting the area, then breath out as you let the same area sink back down into your spine. We’ll call that one cycle. Then same breath-movement cycle in the other area. Alternating between the two areas — one full cycle in each.
* See if there’s a strong connection in each area as you alternate between the two.
* A strong connection means you are at peace with your experience, the movement does not seem mechanical because it’s in rhythm with your natural respiration (remember, this is all about rhythm, not breath work), and your movement is growing in depth while the other area is staying still. (What? Other area staying still? Have you ever tried to talk to someone who kept interrupting you?)
* Success of stage two requires that you don’t hesitate to make liberal use of stage one. If, at any time you notice any sense of the connection phasing out in one of the areas, go back to placing both hands in the area that seemed to be dropping out. See how the connection with stage one in that area compares when it’s alternating in relationship with the other area during stage two – alternating between each area with both hands separated. Or you might first want to try going back and forth between the two areas but with both hands staying together, hands alternating in rhythm with where the movement is being focused.
* It’s often best to go back and forth between stages one and two in this way several times as you progress thru stage two. The direction of progress is more depth of connection, not going for the higher numbered stage.
* However, aside from spending time with stage one in the area that might be dropping out of connection to see if it really is, it’s best to spend more time in the area that has the stronger connection. Then letting the area with the stronger connection “teach” the area with the not-so-good connection by doing say three or so breath-movement cycles in the stronger area, alternating that with one cycle in the weak area.
* It can often help to pick two areas that are not that far apart. Then, as the connection and rhythm between the two areas gets established, see if you can do the same as you very gradually increase the distance between the two areas you’re working with. As your care advances, we want to see that all areas along the entire spine can transfer energy and share information – i.e., relate to each other with each part being able to move as a precise mirror image of the other. Not just for balance but all aspects of functioning. For this to happen, stage two is where the rubber meets the road.
* In both SRI and Network care, observation is all that’s required for your success. The coordination comes automatically just by virtue of your observation. Discover, observe – that’s the key ingredient!
* As stage two progresses thru care, eventually, later on in care, you’ll be able to feel the spine rolling against the surface you’re lying on between the breath-movement cycles. Each breath-movement cycle in the alternating areas takes it time to be in rhythm with your respiration (give that guy some time to talk), while the movement between the areas quickly dashes up or down the spine towards the other area (like messages goes thru the air or over the wire in no time flat). Spine pressing against the surface you’re lying on in a rolling fashion, almost with the speed of… think laser gun, pretty much between exhalation and inhalation. As opposed to a see-saw like movement between two ends of the torso.
* As in all the stages, the breathing and movement rhythm may change as you move thru the procedure of that stage. Often gradually quickening as the intensity of the connection grows.
* The belly laugh mentioned in the book doesn’t have to be every time you do stage two, though very useful to even fake the belly laugh every now and then to introduce deeper, more efficient rhythms that wouldn’t come otherwise.

What’s This All About

Up & down, here we go again – Stage Two

How to steer clear of prolonged suffering – Stage One

The very act of acknowledging and accepting what’s inside – the stage one connection – is liberating in itself. It can become even more of a breakthrough when we appreciate the opportunities that become available for every peace made with the wounded self. Every fiber of the self, along with every cell in the body, resonates with our personal identity. Through our behavior, our body language and even the electro-magnetic field, we broadcast our thoughts and feelings, with everyone and everything responding in kind. With the wounded-self finding a new sense of peace in its re-claimed wholeness, the world responds in kind.

Quite often, as the peaceful sense of self expands its domain of what feels like home, stage one feeds into stage two and vice versa. In all twelve stages, a bigger sense of self-trust is developing for what we can freely live in the world with as our second nature.

About the Somato-Respiratory Integration – SRI – Practice

Each stage of healing, besides having its unique consciousness characteristics, has its own physical rhythms, in which there can be a developing coordination of timing between focused movements and respiration characteristic of that stage. Hence the name Somato-Respiratory Integration, or SRI, a skill set that can be developed over time, especially with practice members under Network Care. As with all twelve stages of healing, this skill set will promote the connection, deepen the experience, and enhance the movement through each stage.

With regards to stage two, we acquire keen adaptation strategies more readily, more quickly advancing from feeling at the mercy of time, to flowing dynamically and gracefully between the changes. Each time we complete a cycle of stage two with regards to any of the polarizing players that come on to the stage of one’s life, we become more of a master for that particular terrain.

The polarizing characteristic of stage two can manifest as two places in the body, which, over the course of an SRI practice session, can start to move rhythmically with each other, even as precisely timed mirror images of each other, serving as a physical and emotional anchor for experiencing the connection between ‘the two players on stage’ in stage two. As life would have it, being that we live in physical bodies, this creates the space for our wisdom to evolve, following in unexpected ways our newly developed coordination.

Not that it can’t go the other way around. That is, with wisdom manifesting as a physical expression in how we posture ourselves. Once the novelty is anchored in the physical body, we own it.