Written by Joke Stassen | 26 February 2010

February 13, 2010, Milford, CT. Held as part of the CCI co-counselling House Saturday workshop series in New Haven (CT, USA). Bernice Marie-Daly, a Core Energetics practitioner and recent graduate of a CCI Fundamentals, facilitated a workshop in Core Energetics for CCI co-counsellors.

She provided everyone with several handouts, the first of which explored some of the similarities and differences between CCI and Core Energetics. Both processes share much in common including the sacredness of the work; honouring the integrity of the participants and encouraging release of emotions and transformation of continueBoth processes share much in common including the sacredness of the work; honouring the integrity of the participants and encouraging release of emotions and transformation of life patterns established in childhood.The most obvious difference is, that Core Energetics is not based on a peer work. Core Energetics is solely based on a client-therapist model, with the practitioner facilitating the processes throughout. Therefore, Bernice did not participate as a peer in the work. Besides explaining and overseeing exercises, Bernice repeatedly challenged people to stand and speak their truth. She looked for people's resistance and push them to take risks in the areas of their resistance in front of the group of six people in attendance.

Core Energetics (CORE) is based on a strong theoretical construct emphasizing the oneness of mind/body/spirit. It recognizes that humans are energy beings and that our body holds the unconscious memories of our emotional life. The primary work of Core Energetics is to consciously release the blocked energy stored in our body. One of handouts explained that we were all born perfectly trusting, spontaneous and open-hearted into an imperfect world of conditional love which is the source of all problems. Thus since we didn't know what to do with the unacceptable feelings generated in the clash between the trusting infant/child,

we hid them and eventually according to CORE theory rejected them in what CORE refers to as our lower self. Some of the lower self work we did that I particularly enjoyed was the simple cathartic release of energy through movements, shouting aloud and pounding on a large cube.
One of the group exercises included making a mask. (see photo). Our mask represents our false or idealized self-image we wear to feel good about ourselves, superior and/or fit in. We wrote on these plain white paper masks the self-images we created for ourselves as children to face the world. We walked around with our masks on reading what other people wrote on their mask while we read theirs. During the exercise I could imagine, that people were not seeing me, but seeing my mask and ended up wondering who I was without my mask.
Bernice is a very competent and aware workshop facilitator. It was a good workshop. She will be attending the April CCI in the USA and will be offering workshops.

Thanks Fred for sharing this with us. This proves perfectly - in my view - why CCI is willing honestly to try and experience all kinds of methods, views etc. honouring the CCI model. It is not because CCI does not cover enough or is missing something, but because everything that contributes to our personal process of emotional competence is utmost welcome!

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