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Peter Levine, of Somatic Experiencing fame, gifted the therapeutic world the terms titration and pendulation.

Putting aside the therapeutic contexts for a minute, I will say that I have long loved the idea of titration when it comes to the integration of shadow work into my AR practice.

Titration

Speaking as a practitioner, I just find that small incremental doses of rubbing up against my edges is the best way for me to learn, grow and heal. This is because it avoids me becoming so dysregulated that i cant think straight anymore. And there is also the risk that the retraumatization involved in becoming very upset by the work, actually sets me back, and worst case scenario, I become disillusioned with the work. Even walking away from friends and communities.

Speaking as a facilitator, i see an essential role there is holding a space of titration for the group. Some of the features of this, bringing shadow work to sessions mindfully, and in small gentle doses, offset by lots of balancing gratitude practice. Context, invitation, choice, consent etc etc. I wrote about this last year ( Trauma informated AR ).

The term titration, what does it mean, literally? I think its a chemistry term. When you add a strong acid to a strong alkali or base the resulting mixture tends to go boom. But if you add the acid one drop at a time, it gives the mixture a chance to disperse the resulting heat a little bit at a time.

I find this a lovely metaphor. The trauma is like the strong acid. The strong base is shadow work, ie. the friction, intentional or otherwise that occurs when we try to build new relationships when we have a history of adverse experiences in our past relationships. While we might very well long to rejoin the family, if we don't address the old unresolved experiences mindfully, things do rather tend to go bang. Really.

So AR gives us this way to reconnect in slow measured repeating doses, AR's structure serving as a plaster cast on the broken bone, so the new connection is a more aligned to a healthier version of relating. (OK so, yes, that means we aren't talking about circling, thats a topic for another time).

Pendulation

Which brings me to today's topic 'pendulation'.

We are 5 sessions into the pilot facilitation program, and these sessions, led by a rotating program member, are for many of us proving to be rich stimulation indeed, on so many levels.

The program is prefaced on the idea that the only way to learn to facilitate is to facilitate. This means approaching the practice with a spirit of play, experimentation, and being willing to make mistakes, and weathering each others playtime with lightness!. And that is made possible by hearing facilitators' meta experience of struggle and trial an error. In real time. Its actually very very cool, on so many levels. That feels like another topic too.

Coming back to pendulation, the AR games format adopted by ART international, was something that influenced my practice. I found it worked for my nervous system, for reasons i didnt really understand at the time, and as we developed the facilitation program, some of that became embedded into the program design.

Now bearing in mind that the program module aka curriculum, is a guide, early on the 12 member pilot group collectively decided to use the program document as a "loose guide", and it was up to each session host to decide how to approach their session.

The way i personally understood that, is that for some, while having AR experience, they may have never facilitated a session before. Having a prebuilt session plan to lean on means they can start by hosting a session, then later move toward designing their own sessions. OTOH for those with some facilitation experience, they can look at the program document, see what the objectives of that particular session are, and create a session more in line with their own gifts and edges.

So, needless to say when we combine the parameters mentioned above, the end result is tons of experimentation, and variations of style.

One session, a host was mixing things up in interesting and unusual ways, that put lots of pair practices back to back, with no harvests in between. Their intention being to lean into practice. Later, during debriefing, somebody mentioned how pair practices on their own are good, and group practices on their own are good, but too much of one at a time, becomes harder to hold somehow.

I found myself nodding, and this set me thinking. And i immediately thought of Peter Levine's pendulation.

What is pendulation? Well, within an overall titrated process, you can further subdivide the process by alternating, moving closer to your edge, and then pulling back to a safe place. Go closer, pull back.

So we might say that the pair work, group work, pair work, group work rhythm is actually a form of pendulation.

For some of us, pair work will be edgier, for others group work might be edgier. Chances are one of these formats provides more safety, or ease. This is yet another side topic (that maybe extroverts might favor group processes, maybe introverts might go the other way, and prefer pair work).

Hence the pair breakout with its specific practice to play with, followed by the group harvest, which is not only a place of optional sharing, but its also an integrating practice per se, a chance to debrief, and to name and explore new learnings. And hear the learnings of others.

BTW this format is also used by both TRC and TC in their beginner sessions.

Interesting huh?!