Grief and Healing

Some months ago I was asked to write a “healing narrative” as part of a larger project with some Integral Coaching® colleagues. Through our work together, which is ongoing, I came to see that I have negotiated, and continue to negotiate, grief and healing in my life through 5 practices or modalities – writing, meditation, physical exercise, being/wandering in nature, and relationship/conversation.

More recently, I was invited by Dr. Robert Wright, Jr. and Christine Wright to explore grief and healing in an interview as part of their ongoing series for Stress Free Now.

The interview is just under 33 minutes, downloadable, and accessible by clicking here.

In upcoming blogs, I will explore each of the 5 healing modalities individually.

Thanks for staying tuned.

“Stress Free Now” Interview

My interview with Dr. Robert Wright, Jr. and Christine Wright, founders of Stress Free Now, began with a focus on Integral Coaching® and Healing, and took us in a variety of wonderful directions.

Over the course of our time together, we explored a brief overview of a comprehensive, balanced (integral) approach to coaching, and to living a full life,and touched on self-awareness, self-compassion, “why ‘integral’?” and even what might bring folks to a bar to watch the Super Bowl or World Cup together.

Click here to listen, or cut and paste into your browser: http://stressfreenow.podomatic.com/entry/2014-07-21T17_35_29-07_00

Interview is under 23 minutes.

Enjoy!

Transformation, Poetry and Integral Coaching®

How might Integral Coaching® and poetry, respectively and collaboratively, facilitate true transformation, you ask?

Lindsay Kelkres and I explore these questions and others in her show, Art Actions: Featuring Newtown Art and Artists, which aired in June on CTV 21 in Connecticut. Thanks to Lindsay and the folks at CTV 21 for sharing the show with a larger audience now.

See the bullets below the screen for some of the areas we explore.

A deep bow of gratitude to Lindsay, who asked me wonderfully open-ended questions and allowed me to reflect, riff, respond and rant in an open-ended way, and who captures the essence of our conversation through her skillful editing – no small task.

If you like where we go in this exchange, please like and comment on the show on Lindsay’s Facebook page, on YouTube, and on this page as well.

Here’s a taste of some of the areas we explored:

  • The respective benefits of reading and writing poetry
  • What is a poem? (yikes)
  • How poetry differs from other forms of writing
  • Why bother writing poetry
  • When is a poem finished (how I “know”)
  • Common obstacles to learning to write poetry
  • How poetry helps us learn about ourselves
  • How other poets and poems affect and inspire
  • Inspiration: when, where and how it may come
  • What is Integral Coaching®
  • Why Integral Coaching® and why ICC
  • How Integral Coaching® helps people
  • How certainty and fear inhibit development
  • Does all art lead to self-transformation
  • One life skill for everyone in the world???? 34:50 (YIKES!)
  • Are we all artists?
  • Two poems for you…

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Integral Coaching® and Integral Master Coach™ are registered trade-marks in Canada owned by Integral Coaching Canada Inc. and licensed to Reggie Marra.

Integral Going “Mainstream-ish”!?

This Thursday, March 20, at 9 PM Eastern Time, 6 PM Pacific, Ken Wilber will be interviewed as an introduction to the Your Superhuman Potential online program. Anyone can sign up to listen in for free. While I admit the title is a bit hyperbolic for my taste, it seems to be working as a marketing tool, and that’s good, because I’ve found Ken’s work to be invaluable over the past 18 years (and perhaps could use a bit of hyperbole-with-integrity in my own marketing).

Ken’s integral framework has been adopted and adapted for use in education, healthcare, psychology, spirituality, politics, and business among other disciplines. He has often said that he began with the premise that “everyone is right” and that everyone is partial – i.e. each discipline of human endeavor provides us with a partial map of our experience – neither biology nor psychology, anthropology nor sociology covers it all; his work, which continues to evolve, deepen and broaden, attempts to show how each and all fit together.

My own study of Ken’s work, which began in 1996, took me to a two-year certification, from 2009-2011, as an Integral Master Coach™ with Integral Coaching Canada (ICC), whose coaching method is grounded in part in Ken’s work, and which is the most powerful model, method and process I’ve come across for attaining, and helping others attain, embodied change.

Click here for an extensive conversation between Ken and ICC founders Laura Divine and Joanne Hunt. Conversation is on YouTube–audio only.

I don’t know what the brief March 20 interview will cover, in light of Ken’s 40+ years of work, but I do know that his AQAL (all quadrants, levels, lines, states and types) framework is a powerful guide for helping us understand our human experiences and the lenses through which we all interpret those experiences.

My understanding is that this free call will be a lead-in to an online course for which tuition will be charged. I have no affiliation with the course, and am writing this post because of the value I’ve found in Ken’s work over these past 18 years.

Feel free to contact me at 203-456-3023 or rmarra@paradoxedge.com if you’d like to speak about Integral Coaching™ or the integral framework in general.