What does it mean to get distracted by the gift wrapping? This is when I pay too much attention to the modalities and to myself. I get hung up on whether I'm using the modality correctly, whether I'm doing it "right," whether I've been successful. The time for that is not during the session but afterward, perhaps in the company of a colleague or supervisor. When I busy my attention with these kinds of thoughts during the session I'm not observing. I'm not giving my attention to Innate, which, when observed, allows the intelligent body/mind to unwind its kinks and fill in its gaps. I'm just "doing stuff" to my patients, not being with them as they heal.

Yet it's a great temptation to "do stuff." The patients that I "do stuff" to might leave my office feeling great! An evaluation might even show observable changes. But the changes and the feeling great don't last. This human being has been reduced to a passive recipient of my wondrous skill and insight! I've been the Great Houdini and they've been the metal safe whose combination I've managed to discern and open. We both feel puffed up by this magic trick.

But the next time they come to my office, they are in the same funk, pain, panic they were in when they arrived last time. If I continue to practice this way, I'm inundated with similar clients who want to feel good, and I develop a lot of hangers-on who are dependent on me to feel that way. If I'm not observing myself, I might blame this cyclic behavior on my patients: they are too dependent, they don't really want to get better, they want someone else to do all the work, or even that I've outgrown them and now they need to work with someone who's less "developed" than I am. I may even tell myself that I want to attract healthier people as I get healthier myself. (I think this means that my new clients, who are more involved in their own healing, just get better more easily. Of course, I might prefer this because I don't have to stretch or confront my own limited thinking about who can get better. I may have everything nicely stratified, and I'm in one of those upper tiers.)

But the very worst story I can tell myself is that I deserve this adulation. Because then I am tempted to put my energy into ensuring that I've got a following. This is the most harmful thing a practitioner can do because it maims people's capacity to be free. It turns people into pets.

None of these explanations that blame our patients are true. They are made-up stories in our heads. We make up these stories in order to feel better about our painful failures, and to fearfully wiggle out of facing our own limiting beliefs. The most common reason people come back with the same ailments week after week is because we haven't provided them with opportunities to learn how to observe themselves and make the changes they want in their lives based on their own observations. Without the benefit of self-observation, they keep engaging in the same behaviors, ruminating on the same thoughts, becoming dysregulated by the same triggers. Receiving the same treatments.

I think we don't provide these opportunities because we don't always know how to observe ourselves. From my psychotherapeutic vantage point, which values personal freedom, communal support, and self-awareness, we need to do a better job of this as a community of BodyTalk practitioners. I can think of two places to begin. First, start asking yes/no the moment a person calls you for an appointment. Continue asking throughout your contact with the person and disregard your own impatience. Trust Innate. Second, meditate to learn self-observation. You can't help others learn to observe themselves if you can't observe yourself. If you don't know how to meditate, please make use of the many online or local resources to learn. If you know how, but aren't meditating regularly, please make a commitment to do so, and find a way to remain faithful to that intention.

I'm still learning how to practice without occluding the powerful Present with an obsession about the gift wrapping. Maybe as you've read this you've recognized something in your own practice. We need each other's help. So here's a third thing we can do together.

Let's gather in peer supervision groups. We can also study, share information, view courses. But let's spend at least half of our group time talking about our cases, learning to observe our practice together, wondering together if we are observing with our clients, or doing stuff to them. Let's be accountable to each other for the important professional ethic to Do No Harm. That's when we will learn how to help our determined clients learn to observe themselves. That's when the miracles will ramp up to a whole new level.

Merry Stanford is a Certified BodyTalk Practitioner, BodyTalk Access Trainer, and Licensed Master of Clinical Social Work with a private practice in East Lansing, Michigan.