Inspiration

Thomas Hübl: Today’s inspiration is about coherence building.

So what does coherence mean? One way to look at coherence is like a flow or stream of data. When we look into our own bodies there might be areas in our body where we feel streaming, flowing, pulsing and it feels lovely, warm, pleasant, enjoyable.

There might be other parts of our body where we feel, oh, it’s a bit stuck maybe in the solar plexus, maybe in the chest, the throat, the neck, the belly, somewhere else and and that areas don’t feel that so flowing—like we can feel that there is some stagnation or holding or maybe numbness. I don’t feel myself at all there.

Inner coherence

And, so, my inner coherence starts with a synchronization between my physical experience, my emotional experience, my thinking, maybe my spiritual experience and the experience between my inner world and my outer world.

And often where we are traumatized coherence is fragmented—I can think about things but I can’t live them. Or, I can feel them so it doesn’t fully make sense—I can think it but I don’t experience it. So we can read books about healing but not heal because cognition alone is not enough. And so when the entire nervous system starts to participate in that kind of healing, in that kind of experience, to develop capacities to be congruent or authentic then authenticity is a way to describe coherence, the coherence of a human being in their way of living and expression.

So that’s the individual part.

Relational

The relational part of coherence is when you look at me right now, I am happening in your central nervous system. The Thomas that you see is already deep in your perception, in your central nervous system. That’s why, whenever we do something that’s out of alignment and we hurt somebody, when we lie to some, when we do things that are actually painful, we need to shut you and me down.

That’s what every act of traumatization has a shadow trauma in the offender. Why? Because In order to hurt somebody I need to shut down the sense of that other being in myself.

Group impact

Coherence is more and more the noticing that we intra-exist in each other. And that intra-existence is something that we make use of in the individual and in collective trauma healing,

We can create larger group fields. When collectives come together, in order to heal together, then everybody of the group exists basically in everybody of the group. So when we look at the group, the whole group exists in me and I exist in everybody that is looking at the group too.

That starts to create nervous systems coherence. Of course, the trauma that is represented in the group will reduce or fragment that coherence. But, consciously practicing coherence building starts to create a collective resource.

The more a system—like a group, a part of society, an organization, a company, a NGO—when the coherence is stronger than the fragmentation the field will naturally heal. The field will naturally develop. If the fragmentation is stronger than the resourcing, then the fragmentation takes over. Then we see that conflict, more fragmentation, jealousy. And that fragments simply either the society or, the group or the organization.

Resilience

So that’s why coherence building is a very important part in developing resilience and also developing collective tools to deal with collective trauma. And that’s also why we do the summit, because it’s kind of a collective coherence building. And, that’s why it matters how we walk into our organization every day into the company where we work into our workplace, how we are in our family system, because either we bring more fragmentation or we start to bring more coherence.

Coherence is not the same as harmony. Coherence is actually the power that can include conflict. Either a conflict is so strong that it fragments the systemic coherence—but, good mediators or senior therapists have a strong enough inner coherence to actually be able to host together with other people the fragmentation of the system.

So coherence building is very important. It starts with authentic living. It starts with doing our own inner work to ground ourselves deeper, to integrate our own traumatization, then to create meaningful communities. That’s why we call the summit ‘creating a healing movement’ because we have to do it together. Nobody can do it alone.

The remedy

It’s a collective coherence-building function—that’s the remedy. We are all part of the remedy, potentially. And the more conscious we are of that fact the more we can actually consciously practice that. The way I am with my colleagues, the way I offer co-regulation—if somebody’s really stressed out—or sometimes to really listen—even if it seems it takes more time, time than I sometimes have, but that’s well invested time. Co-regulation, listening to fragmentation, being interested also in difficulties, problems and conflicts will bring more potential coherence or resourcing to that area.

All of that is something we can practice every day.

In our alignment—relational alignment and collective alignment or collective coherence building are very important functions.

One practice that we offer in our community is what we call global social witnessing,—a way that societies begin to pay more conscious attention to the potential, often traumatizing, situations or circumstances that happen within our society. Atrocities that happen, things that we read on the news, information about painful situations or crimes, fragmentation, polarization in the society, that through a conscious contemplative practice and a collective contemplative practice, we can actually start to become like a space that brings awareness.

Beyond awareness

It is not only about awareness, it is integrated awareness to a situation or ablities to see the limitations where we don’t bring awareness. Even if sometimes we cognitively hear about stuff that does not mean we are able to experience it. And that’s often compassion is missing. But compassion is the capacity to look at our world from whole. Judgment is looking at our world from hurt or through hurt.

That’s why growing the capacity of compassionate looking and sensing means I can do that only when I heal that part in itself so that I can bring generosity where we often meet scarcity. And that’s why global social witnessing is a collective contemplative practice. But coherence building as a daily responsibility of a citizen, I believe, are very important practices.