Week 38 - learning to be happy

There was a moment as I stood limp, desperately trying to conjure real feelings while stuck in an awkward embrace, cuddling six strangers, when several things went through my mind: One: when can I stop cuddling?  Two: am I at the right workshop?  Three: Is there something wrong with me?  Because essentially, I found it difficult to know whether I got anything at all from this workshop on compassion but it seemed like everybody else did.  So what's wrong with me?  Am I dead inside?

I would like to think that I have made a concerted effort over the last few years to expand my mind both spiritually and holistically.  I've been to a wellness retreat, done a meditation course, NLP course, read books on mindfulness and have generally tried to be more open.  So I wanted to be sure that during the year of the monkey, whilst hopping around from week to week,  I learn some things that help with my continued quest for enlightenment.

Alternatives offers talks, workshops and courses focusing on the mind, body and soul. After a bit of deliberation I booked onto a one day course entitled "Compassion: How to be Happy" with Caroline Latham, a therapist, healer and coach.  As I came face to face with her and her remarkably warm and inviting flat, I genuinely wondered what the day was going to hold.  I knew there was going to be some mindful meditation, which I have been practising FYI, but other than that I was fairly in the dark.

Caroline began with a brief introduction on her teachings, learnings and discoveries over the last 30 years.  She found her calling after becoming fed up with the fast-paced business world and moving to India where she discovered Tibetan Buddhism.  Her teachings are all about being in a state of compassion and identifying the ego-blocks that prevent us from accessing this freedom and compassion that is available to us all.

The next hour or so began with us doing some standard meditations interspersed with compassionate practises.  So for example, a meditation where you visualise someone in your life that needs help in some way and you focus on them, breathing in their pain and breathing out light and support on to them.  Essentially what Caroline was saying to us, is that to get out of our own egos, helping people helps to get rid of that.  When you are stuck or unhappy, you should reach out to someone who needs help more than you.  Yes, for sure, I absolutely believe that.  Doing nice things for others is a beautiful thing and it makes you feel really good inside.  So far so good.

She touched on some points that reminded me of a fantastic book I've read called The Chimp Paradox by Professor Steve Peters.  We all have an inner chimp in us that's running the show that can often sabotage our own happiness with all its discursive chatter that is blocking us from seeing the big picture. We need to learn how to manage the chimp and know when to break free from it.   So it was at this point that Caroline wanted to take us through some processes which help melt those blocks.  

One of us was picked at random, not me, a young girl and asked to share their big issue with the group, it was an opportunity for them to just talk and for us to listen, while Caroline ever so slightly guided and directed with a few key questions.  After Caroline had got a good sense of what the girl's struggle was and where she wanted to be, Caroline then asked the girl to use each of us to represent either, one of the people in her life that has added to her struggles or a version of herself that she would like to be.  This reminded me a little of perceptual and meta positions in NLP, which enable you to look at emotions and feelings of people from different perspectives.  

So at this point, I thought that potentially Caroline was going to get the girl to talk to each of us, as if we were the people in her life, so that she could say what she really needed to say and imagine the world from their point of view.  Instead, she was asked to hug each of us, deeply, longingly and without question.  She would go through the line and hug all of us individually, ending with a large, group hug at the end.

Now call me pessimistic and negative, but I couldn't help but find this just a little bit trite.  Yes of course there is scientific evidence that hugs are good for you and we all love a good hug, they do make us feel lovely and warm inside.  But, being forced into a situation where you are hugging strangers in an intimate way just didn't appear genuine to me.  I just didn't believe it.  I absolutely understand the theory behind it; its getting rid of internal complexes by bringing them to the surface and giving them compassion.  Its a dynamic therapy where each patient is absolutely engaging with those complexes and they are then being met with love.  

Now for some people, it clearly does work: some of us in the group were crying and really connecting with each person's process and there were people there that have been going to these workshops for over ten years, so for them, it absolutely serves a purpose.  But for me, it felt forced and something that I'm learning with my own personal therapy is that you can't force change, you have to just allow it.  

For me, the thing I want the most is to viscerally feel better about myself, but it has to be genuine and transformative.  I would have got a lot more in that situation if the six people I had been hugging had actually been my family and friends - then at least I would have felt connected and a real sense of love and compassion.  But don't get me wrong, the will and the desire of this type of workshop is utterly benign and good - being compassionate to yourself and others is what every single one of us needs and whatever you do to realise that and make it happen is genuine and wonderful.