Everything functions in systems. Your body. Your relationships. Your workplace. Everything; everywhere. Even when we think we’re ‘alone’, we’re surrounded by air , vibrations out of visible sight. Throughout my career, and possibly my whole life, I’ve been drawn to ‘see the system’. It’s only recently that I’ve gotten comfortable enough to see myself as an active agent in those systems, for better and for worse. We can’t have one without the other.

It is common for experts to reduce a situation to a narrow box of linear thinking, cause and effect. If A, then B. It’s not wrong that we do this. It’s natural – everyone else is doing it. Marketing messages communicate all the time. Just use this lotion, your skin will glow. Medical professionals do it all the time. Take this pill, it’ll fix your symptom. It makes everyone’s life easier if we assume this way of thinking, this paradigm.

There’s only one problem. Things don’t actually work that way! We can put up the blinders, but the world just doesn’t work that way. So with our linear thinking, we deem ourselves the failure. The pill didn’t settle my anxiety. The therapy didn’t reduce my pain. Some thing must be wrong with me. I can’t do anything right. Linear thinking... if what they said didn’t work, then I’m the problem.

Systems Thinking can appear more complex. That doesn’t mean it has to be complicated. When you don’t lose weight by following a regimented diet, start by asking a few questions about the ‘surround.’

• What else in my life might have been contributing to my metabolism?

  • Hint: being in a state of stress will work against any ‘healthy’ habit. It’s a fundamental contradiction. Systems don’t resolve contradictions without intentional growth.

• Might a part of me have felt threatened by the regiment?

  • Hint: Is the diet supporting my inner critic that despises my body? Or the pity party host that believes I don’t deserve to feel good?

• Beyond your body, consider the people around you. How do others influence you and your relationship to your body?

  • Hint: Is there the friend who makes sideways comments about your commitment or perhaps even makes ostracizing comments when you do feel better, look better, are healthier?!

  • Hint 2: Are there past emotional traumas that have your inner systemic models nonconsciously guiding you to have some physical protection from being violated or seen as attractive?

This is how systems work. When A doesn’t result in B, there is naturally more to the story. Research reports averages and you, my friend, are not average. You are unique. Understanding you in the context of the systems you are a part of – that opens the path to what you want to become. This can be applied to not getting a promotion, why you and your partner can’t do what the other needs, or getting resolution to chronic pain. Nothing is ever as simple as it looks. So connect to the part of you that thinks you can’t handle it. Ask it to come along on the discovery. It can through the yellow flag when needed so you can request assistance. When we embrace a systemic view, we are never alone.

Systems Thinking is so fundamental to an integrated approach to health, leadership, life that it is in our name! Everything we do is rooted in a systemic perspective. Systemic growth is essential for all change to stick.

Key Principles

Circularity

Systems operate through implicit feedback (reactive) and feedforward (anticipatory) loops with multiple ‘A then B’ connections.

If A then B, then C and not D, and ultimately back to affecting A.

Tony is struggling with his math class but is afraid to tell his parents. He always feels like he’s bothering them and should just be able to figure it out. He starts feeling sick to his stomach before school. When he tells his mom, she checks for a fever and says “you’re fine. Let’s get going.” Tony pleads but it ends with her saying to stop being a baby and get ready for school. Tony holds back the tears, bites his tongue, and drudges along to his mother’s barking, getting through another day of feeling horrible about himself. The next day, anticipating his mom will ignore what he says and he’ll only feel worse, he just drudges forward unaware his connective tissues and abdominal muscles are adapting to the emotional overwhelm and shifting is inner patterns of regulating breathing and digestion.

Fast forward, Tony can’t figure out why he can’t ask his boss for help on a project where he is really stuck, adamant that he can figure it out. He has to figure it out – no one ever helps him. ISB and TMJ are close companions and he’s sick and tired of everyone moping around at the office because of recent changes. Why won’t they just suck it up and figure their s*^t out! The circularity from Tony’s childhood set a pattern out of his awareness that the biocomputer keeps replicating.

Families often play ‘anxiety hot potato’ until it lands on the person who is too young or unresourced, unable to find someone to pass the distress along to. This absorber either overachieves to expend the pressure or becomes the scapegoat of the family’s distress. The pattern is the same on production lines, leadership teams, and government agencies. Anywhere touched by humans and their nature. The independently chase cures for dad’s high blood pressure, mom’s migraines, one child’s weak immune response, and another’s child’s defiance. They are all interconnected.

Open

I wish I could say that people in systems are ‘open’ to new ideas, new information, new people. Unfortunately, that is more influenced by the principles below and works to the contrary.

An open system refers to being not closed. That it does not have boundaries to keep things in or keep things out. People and other resources can come and go in a system.

All components of energy can shift their connections out of one system and into another. So ‘leaving’ a system can happen by still physically being in the family or workplace and checking out. Also, someone can leave the organization and the energy of the person still influences the people even though he’s not there!

For us to be a healthy contribution to the planet, we have to see the systemic dynamic of humans as part of nature. Our effectiveness depends on self-imposed blinders to interconnectedness. Those that see it can struggle to see how their contribution (blaming the non-see-ers, attacking companies) only creates more anxiety and tension that gets passed around the system and amplifies resistance.

Disgruntled children can ‘cut off’ from their parents. An engineer can move to a different company. Yes, a person can quit because of a boss or because of assorted other things of which the boss is a contributor to the dynamics. More accurately, people quit because of dynamics. Sometimes it’s a protective move (only to find the dynamics re-occur somewhere else) and sometimes it’s intentional and stimulus for growth.

Likewise, it is not possible to change a system from the ‘outside’. Once you start interacting with the system, you become part of it! A woman cannot change her husband just as a supplier cannot change a customer. A woman can understand her dynamics with her husband and alter the patterns of interaction to move in the direction desired. Similarly, a supplier can conceptualize themselves in a dynamic with their customers and alter the interactions.

Homeostasis

The hidden dynamic of the system is to find paths back to status quo, homeostasis or equilibrium. It’s the simplest strategy for energy balance; keep passing it and landing it the same way. It’s not rocket science – literally! There is no propulsion forward. The set point of safety is predictability. Even if that predictability includes the boss yelling at every team meeting or Tony never getting his math done. The inherent dynamics support status quo – including the scapegoat becoming more of a scapegoat and everyone staying in their implicit roles.

This includes the internal system of being human. Each body system has a preferred set point of best functioning – body temperature, pH, respiration etc and constantly signals to the biocomputer how it is doing and the biocomputer sends signals to other parts of the system trying to get it back to setpoint. These are feedback loops.

Allostasis

A system uses allostasis to attempt to regulate back to homeostasis.

You might be trying to figure out how to change your housing, get a vacation, raise healthy children, and improve your marriage. Similarly, your body is trying to figure out how to use the interconnected systems to keep multiple subsystems at their setpoints simultaneously.

All the subsystems are trying to get needs met at the same time! Not to mention the threat response system that operates on a feedforward basis. It’s detecting signals internally and externally and predicting if a threat is present OR coming. This is about survival after all; there is no time to waste. Unfortunately, trauma imprints can lead to faulty and tangled regulation loops that land us with internal chaos.

Interregulation

Parts of the system can only work together. It can be healthy or unhealthy. Yet always interregulating and affecting each other. Period.

Yes, one person can be a regulating presence to another person. When this happens mutually, changing roles over time, healthy for both. When one person is dependent on another to be a certain way, take on a certain role for their benefit, not so healthy. It may appear on that surface to be ‘good relationship’ yet dependence beyond the initial years for which we are biologically limited in survivability, is a detriment to the system. Growth is stunted.

Isomorphic

What happens within a system is a mirror to the dynamics of the system around it and within it. This is why systemic change is so hard and yet so important. The suprasystem has feedback loops to get the system back to homeostatic role. The subsystem needs to pull resources from outside of it to endure change from the system. Sibling dynamics are an artifact of the adult dynamics. The internal dynamics of a person’s thoughts, emotions, micromovements, physiology, energetics is an artifact of the external dynamics that shaped it through developmental years.

The dynamics of the leadership team will be a microcosm of the dynamics between the teams the leaders lead. Typically the patterns are out of awareness – blinders help us stay in homeostasis – yet change and growth cannot happen with blinders on and risks left unspoken.

Why it Matters to ISG

Systems Thinking helps you see the forest through the trees and reveal your path forward. Just like a falling tree that eventually hits something – another tree, a shrub, the ground – any change you make will spark another change in the system. Add a medication and the body’s biochemical system will rearrange leading to (ideally) the intended change AND other interconnected adaptations. The body is always adapting, relying on its bodymind biocomputer.

Change is best understood as a process. ‘Side effects’ are not exceptions; they are to be expected. Others ‘resisting’ your new idea; natural. Setting a limit on your work hours will not only affect you (hopefully for the better), it will affect others you are interconnected with in implicit ways. Identifying these interconnections and helping you work with the resistance within and around you allow change to stick. And you have healthy adaptability to grow forward when changes happen around you.

ISG is here to be a guide for you to achieve the changes you desire AND maintain the things that matter most. Our tools lay out an approach and process for you to be the expert of you, gleaning all the wisdom of others’ expertise.

Harmonized growth goes beyond a growth mindset to a fully integrated growth dynamic of your whole being. We’ve done the complicated work so that you can follow a roadmap to self-understanding that includes the surround that keeps tripping you up.

Systems Thinking orients you to the forest AND the trees, revealing your path forward. We are not another quick fix solution. We are confident in the tried-and-true outcomes that come only from seeing the bigger picture and finding the right problem to solve now in the interconnected life that you have.

The Pioneers

The pioneers of systems thinking are as diverse as the applications. It’s been ‘discovered’ through the curiosities to evolve family functioning, engineering, geopolitics, organizations, the planet, the beyond.

Most notable for me, thus influencing ISG, are the following individuals and applications:

Norbert Weiner is considered the father of cybernetics. Observing the feedback loops in the nervous system (communication and behaviors of humans and between humans), applied to mathematical and engineering models

Cybernetics: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

“The nervous system and the automatic machine are fundamentally alike in that they are devices, which make decisions on the basis of decisions they made in the past.” From the Human Use of Human Beings

“What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead.” From Cybernetics

“The most fruitful areas for the growth of the sciences were those which had been neglected as a no-man's land between the various established fields.” From Cybernetics

“We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves to exist in this new environment.” From Cybernetics

Murray Bowen, the pioneer of family systems and systemic therapy for families

https://www.thebowencenter.org/core-concepts-diagrams

“If my hypothesis about societal anxiety is reasonably accurate, the crises of society will recur and recur, with increasing intensity for decades to come. Man created the environmental crisis by being the kind of creature he is. The environment is part of man, change will require a change in the basic nature of man, and man’s track record for that kind of thing has not been good. . . . I believe man is moving into crises of unparalleled proportions, that the crises will be different than those he has faced before, that they will come with increasing frequency for several decades. . . . The type of man who survives that will be one who can live in better harmony with nature.”

Edward Deming reinforced the importance of the human system in quality management of machine systems

Jay Forrester, expanded from applications in engineering to those in business

Here’s a list of pioneers honored by the Global Association of System Thinking

Creative Problem Solving is the backbone of structured exploration that uses evidence and is not limited by it. It’s systematic about procress, yet fluid enough to get to root contribution, traverse unexpected obstacles and new information, and naturally cultivate the curiosity and creativity that is within all of us. Maybe your life experiences diminished your creativity or taught you to not trust it. Let’s restore its priceless value so that you can find ease through the struggles that inevitably surface in this journey of life.

My appreciation for CPS grew as I learned the limits of solving problems with data and logic. Humans have logical thinking AND so much more. Some problems can be easily solved in a narrow view of what is already known and can be measured. Quantitative research serves purpose. AND it always depends on context – the surround. There are always lurking variables that were not controlled or measured or even known to be happening. There is always the influence of the humans designing and conducting the research. This doesn’t negate the research or the information gained. It is important to remember context matters.

When two contradictory pieces of relevant information come into CPS process, the natural next step is to ask “How might these both be true?”

Product A was preferred over Product B in test ZZZ. Product B was preferred over Product A in test YYY. Two different groups of consumers (what is known about the differences), product from two different batches, ZZZ was scored in the home/YYY at a store.

This works as well with two different expert opinions as it does with two different research conclusions. Tell us more about the thought that it won’t work. Tell us more about the thoughts that it will work. How did you each get to that understanding?

As I was using this in my work finding solutions that met both marketing and product development criteria, I was finding it equally or more valuable in my life at home!

~ How might I find a childcare solution for a sick kid when both of us have big work commitments today?

~ What is the right problem to solve: How to take more vacations? How to have more time with the kids? How to reduce money stress? Note: They are interconnected!

~ How might we identify the right activities for the kids? Or is it the right amount of activities for our family?

Key Principles

· Understand the problem before jumping into solutions.

· Identifying contributing factors and root causes leads to sustainable solutions rather than band-aids.

· Data and information are part of the process without limiting it.

· Brainstorming is as important for defining the problem as it is for generating solutions.

· Diverging and converging are both needed to define the problem and find solutions.

· All ideas are good; most need some refining, crashing, extending, clarifying.

· Exposing your own biases is nearly impossible. We get there most easily through differences, dissent, and contradictions.

· Involvement of outside perspectives gives exponential benefits.

· Creativity is sparked, not known. Everyone is capable of creative thinking and accessing it depends on feeling secure with it.

· Give yourself permission to question everything and you’ll get clarity on all that you know.

· There’s time and place in the process for all types of thinking…and all feelings.

· Implementing solutions without first understanding the problems result in unintended consequences.

Why it Matters to ISG

Innovation and win/win/win solutions come naturally when we can explore dissent, paradox, and contradictions. It leads to new understanding that opens new pathways to solutions, regardless if at home, work, or the community. Slowing down the process is the biggest hurdle. We have to overcome our fear of differences, being wrong, and being more transparent.

ISG is here to develop and strengthen you and your abilities to get through struggles, seeing them as stimulus for growth. The context is always changing! Keep flexibility of thought - creative, curious, critical, or contemplative - to meet the moment.

Using creativity to find win-win solutions moves you from leveraging what you think you or simply going through motions of what others tell you to do) to nurturing your wisdom. Creativity allows us to solve multiple problems simultaneously, meeting the needs of the system, not satisfying the boss at the expense of the report OR dad being happy while the child is feeling unseen.

At ISG, we teach and incorporate a flavor of CPS that

(1) includes more intentional use of diverse data and information and good critical thinking at the right points

(2) includes a systemic framework that works with how humans actually change and grow. This is quite different than how we think we change. I have yet to see a solution to a human problem that does not involve a human (themselves or others) having to change. It’s not rocket science. It’s harder; it’s human science.

The flavor of CPS that ISG uses for harmonized growth continues to evolve given my own use of the approach as an integrative trauma therapist. When the tools we are using don’t resolve the root cause of the symptoms, how might I expand my understanding of the human system and find a solution that does? The knowledge and restoration keep expanding.

The Pioneers

Although I currently use my own iteration of CPS, the pioneers who most influenced me over the years were:

Alex Osborn, along with Sidney Parnes. There work continues through the Creative Education Foundation.

“It's much easier to tame a wild idea than invigorate one that has no life in the first place.”

“Worry is essentially a misuse of imagination.”

“Create a judgement-free environment and you'll unleash a torrent of creativity.”

Edward de Bono, known for Six Thinking Hats and Lateral Thinking

“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.”

Within this broader framework, I integrate synergistic use of Six Sigma and scientific method frameworks from decades of guiding people to better decisions with data and information. They are interconnected, not in conflict.

Being a systemic thinker and modeler before I pursued a therapy degree, family therapy was a natural selection. It wasn’t until my practicum that I learned how individualistic and pathologizing the mental health system operated. Behaviorists and psychologists were encouraging young adults to cut-off from their families of origin, as if that would heal their wounds! Yes, in situations of ongoing abuse this may be a phase of restoration and growth. Yet, in a systemic view of interconnections that develop naturally out of our imperfections as humans, a more collaborative and compassionate approach is possible.

So regardless if it is through their presence or their absence, familial ties are in operation within us.

You can hold an outdated belief to separate work from home, yet it only fragments your internal system.

As social mammals, we are interconnected and function as systems. No physical presence required.

Have you ever worried about irritating your boss if you didn’t work all night to get the report done?

Have you ever heard your father’s voice speaking words of wisdom as you bought your first house?

We are inherently connected to our family systems and we inherently bring that system with us wherever we go.

Key Principles

Here are some of the primary points distilled from my studies of Bowen’s writings:

• Triangles develop naturally when a 2-person system is unable to manage emotions between them.

• Differentiation is a primary developmental task that allows someone to feel secure being their unique person without risk of being unaccepted. Most family systems struggle with this, affecting the health of the system and the individuals. We tend to partner with individuals of similar levels of differentiation which further transmits the patterns and causes conflict of one partner seeks differentiation and the other is threatened by it.

• Nuclear Family Emotional Process refers to the patterns from which problems (patterns of mutual dysregulation) manifest in family systems.

• Parents project their emotional unwellness on to their child(ren) and then refer to the child(ren) as the problem.

• Emotional patterns are passed across the generations. These can be difficult to see when in the patterns and illuminated when a family genogram is organized.

• Bowen recognized the pattern of ‘cutting off’ from siblings, parents, or other family members as an attempt to lessen emotional pain from the above phenomena. Unfortunately, it may get suppressed but does not resolve with distance, blocking, ignoring. It’s like drinking poison and expected the others to suffer. The one that cuts off suffers the most.

Why it Matters to ISG

Emotion, an abstract, human-defined construct is seen as the connector between people. Research to ‘measure’ emotion objectively has uncovered its interconnection to thoughts, embodiment, energetics, electromagnetics within and between individuals. Bowen’s understanding of human connectedness through emotions is foundational to understanding dynamics within and between individuals necessary for living in harmonized growth ™.

When it comes to humans, we are blended families everywhere we go. Even at work, church, or walking through the grocery store, your inner dynamics underneath your communication, feelings, and actions are rooted in your developmental journey with your family of origin. And that of your parents in their family of origin and so on. Regardless if we are looking at change between people or change to benefit the health and wellbeing of an individual, the inclusion of principles of family systems is paramount to success.

Similar to IFS and PVT, it’s the conceptualization and understanding of the situation that allows us to identify an effective solution for sustainable change. Emotional dynamics are essential for harmonized growth ™; they pull us back, fling us forward, or fluidly flow to our fullest potential.

Contrary to the focus the medical community puts on our physical development, the reality is that our physiology and psychology develop in parallel. It’s more influenced by the interactions with caregivers and others than conventional medical model conveys. It’s not that the information is new. The pioneers in most of our foundational pillars have been documenting and communicating their insights for decades. However, systems are difficult to change. No information can be scary and lead to personal risk that can easily be left in the nonconscious space, affecting the whole system.

The Pioneers

The original work of Dr. Murray Bowen is presented in the Murray Bowen Archives

“You have inherited a lifetime of tribulation. Everybody has inherited it. Take it over, make the most of it and when you have decided you know the right way, do the best you can with it.”

“The main finding of our study at NIMH (1954-59) was the concept of the family as an emotional unit. It means that symptoms in one person reflect emotional processes involving the entire unit.”

The Bowen Center strives to evolve his work.

Other pioneers whose teachings influenced my understanding of the dynamics of family (and societal) systems:

Gregory Bateson coined the double bind (the inner upheaval of being stuck in “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position)

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.”

“Without context words and actions have no meaning at all.”

Salvador Minuchin focused on structure versus dynamics in family systems

“Certainty is the enemy of change.”

“The touchstone for family life is still the legendary 'and so they were married and lived happily ever after.' It is no wonder that any family falls short of this ideal.”

Virginia Satir emphasized a humanistic approach to family change with delineation of roles, connected to the emotional stability of the system.

“Every word, facial expression, gesture, or action on the part of a parent gives the child some message about self-worth. It is sad that so many parents don't realize what messages they are sending.”

Polyvagal Theory (PVT) is another ISG foundation rooted in curiosity towards paradox. In the exploration to resolve the “vagal paradox”, Dr. Stephen Porges discovered two segments of the vagus nerve, the dorsal vagal commonly considered the part of the autonomic nervous system for ‘rest and digest’ as distinct in brainstem origin from the ventral vagal complex referred to as the ‘social engagement system’. Both have the potential to slow respiration and heart rate, balancing the sympathetic nervous system often oversimplified as fight/flight, yet they do it quite differently with differing outcomes.

I came across polyvagal theory in my curiosity to resolve the conundrum that we could isolate emotions for reprocessing in therapy and yet the client would experience an immediate shutdown of the emotion when reprocessing. Incorporating PVT into my practice was a game changer, as was the inclusion of the Safe and Sound Protocol via Unyte, created by Dr. Porges. The SSP is incorporated into nearly all Institute for Systemic Growth Coaching Programs.

PVT helps us understand that biologically, we have more than ‘fight/flight’ response to detected threat. Our system is so sophisticated that it can assess when ‘fight/flight’ is not likely to be success in our attempts to survive and utilize the inhibitory freeze response or even collapse mechanisms that feign death in an attempt for the threat to pass. As we understand the broad range of threat responses and how they work to be more and more efficient (note: not necessarily accurate!) based on our life experiences, we have a whole new level of self understanding. In addition, we have direct access to a root cause of many physical, emotional, cognitive, and energetic dysfunctions and undesired behaviors.

Key Principles

Dr. Porges original work is very complex and applicable to all branches of medicine and human development. Along with Deb Dana, he has simplified the principles for mental health applications. A thread throughout all applications is the value of how we interact. In human services, it goes beyond rapport. Our nervous systems are always in relation with each other and we all have capacity to be a safe, gentle presence to others which is different than simply not being threatening.

Neuroception

Have you ever felt the tension when you’ve walked into a room? Had a sense that someone was looking at you? Been unable to hear the person sitting right next to you but can hear all the noise in the space? These are examples of your neuroception at work. Neuroception is functioning 24/7, while asleep or awake, assessing inner, outer, and social cues for safety, threat, or life danger.

Hierarchy

When neuroception detects threat, there is a hierarchy to the response systems to restore regulation and restore felt sense of safety. At the top of the ladder, is access to the social engagement system of another person as a coregulator. Children are dependent on coregulation of caregivers as a foundation of their neurodevelopment.

If unavailable, unable to receive it, or not trusted, the threat response can slide ‘down the ladder’ and utilize a sympathetic nervous system response of fight or flight. Although in the hierarch this is down the ladder, it is actually a hyperarousal state that activates the body to ‘win’.

If the detection system assesses that the hyperaroused fight/flight state would not be successful (per the programming that develops in lived experiences), it may activate a dorsal response to inhibit the sympathetic activation (known as freeze when physiologically predominant or fawn when socially predominant). As a last resort, in the most threatening of situations (at least per the inner regulating models), it may activate a dorsal collapse, pulling energy from the system physiologically, emotionally, and relationally. The state of hypoarousal is immensely helpful in helping people make sense of situations where they did not fight back. It is an autopilot protective response. The dorsal state is considered the bottom of the ladder.

The state of the nervous system is a predeterminant to our interoceptive sensitivity, cognitive patterns, and emotional/relational defenses. Although we use all autonomic states in the course of healthy functioning, the threat response patterns can underlie a multitude of psychophysiological issues.

When restoring our sense of safety, after sliding down the ladder, there is a need to pass through sympathetic to return to ventral ‘safety’ and security.

Coregulation

Coregulation refers to the state of one person being in ventral and available as a resource to another person’s sense of safety. Ideally, in adult relationships, roles are mutual and both people can be available to the other. A sign of unhealth is a dependence of one person on another to attain a regulating state.

Role of emotions

Within polyvagal theory, emotions are understood to be a by-product of neuroceptive appraisal (external environment and visceral). The theory purports that the autonomic state mediates the expression and regulation of the emotions.

As vagal tone increases social engagement and there is sufficient safety to be seen/hear emotionally, we have access to increased health through increased ventral control of heart (“vagal brake”), inhibition of ‘false’ sympathetic activation, and develop self-soothing.

Why it Matters to ISG

Principles from polyvagal theory give our harmonized growth approach a fast track to understanding bodymind interactions. What Internal Family Systems describes conceptually, Polyvagal Theory describes physiologically. Through mapping your patterns, we can drop judgments and find compassion for life lived and the adaptations that were necessary. Dysregulation is the autonomic nervous system is often a root cause to the symptoms and undesired behaviors.

Establishing social safeness in our coaching circles is natural through the use of PVT backbone, opening space to explore social and emotional defenses in a nonthreatening, nonjudgmental environment.

Toning the nervous system is one of the solutions addressing the root cause of many problem behaviors and emotional dysfunction individually, as couples and families, and organizations. The Safe and Sound Protocol, patented by Dr. Stephen Porges, provides an auditory stimulus for a neural exercise that tones and restores balance in autonomic functioning. Including SSP in a coaching format accelerates the pace of self understanding, extends growth, and fosters self confidence and courage to be systemic leaders of change with ease.

The Pioneers

Dr. Stephen Porges has an extensive bibliography and multiple collaborative efforts in application of Polyvagal Theory.

Deb Dana, LCSW had authored and co-authored several books making polyvagal theory more accessible for psychotherapy and resources for general use to “befriend the nervous system.”

Through the Polyvagal Institute, you can learn about and from change leaders incorporating polyvagal theory in a wide range of applications.

Other influences on my integrated view of the role of the autonomic nervous system in whole person wellness, along with the foundational pillar of Integral Somatic Psychology, include:

• Peter Levine, PHD and his seminal work on biological threat response of mammals and the importance of completing the ‘incomplete’ cycles that left trauma imprint. Waking the Tiger provide an introduction to this.

• Trainings by Dr. Arielle Schrwartz were also instrumental in my bridging from conventional EMDR methods to somatic EMDR and polyvagal theory.

Model for Dual Learning is a collaborative program of Institute for Systemic Growth for early childhood educators. The model guides ECE practitioners and leaders to see autonomic regulation through coregulation as a foundation for the development of security that is precursor to social and emotional development. The dual learning is for practitioners to learn their regulation patterns and see challenging moments with children as stimulus for their own restoration and growth.

Others advancing the importance of autonomic regulation and feeling safe as precursors to learning include

• Claire Wilson and the CHEW Initiative

Dr. Lori DeSautels and Revelations in Education

Internal Family Systems (IFS), founded by Dr. Richard Schwartz, was first a model for understanding the dynamics inside a person and then a psychotherapy modality. Now it is expanding to an approach for self-understanding and more effective human systems from business, education, legal mediation, and beyond.

• I love her so much and yet I just can’t stand her.

• A part of me wants to tell my boss what I really think and a part of me keeps my mouth shut, only to feel worse later that I didn’t say anything.

• I have to stay late for the meeting. But I really want to be at my kid’s game. Ugh, I’m such an awful mom. I can’t do anything right. Why does it even matter if I stay for the meeting.

Dr. Schwartz recognized the pattern of multiplicity, that there are multiple perspectives and feelings, that is true within all of us. They are not pathology. The inner patterns can become fragmented, yet that is only one form of relationship among the internal parts. The dynamics of our inner system developed naturally from the dynamics we experienced with and around caregivers. It happens out of our awareness through, connected to our developing social engagement system and regulating patterns for survival which is discussed more in the Foundations from Polyvagal Theory article.

When we can’t listen to each other, either escalating or getting into a pattern of escalate/withdraw, parts that need to protect get in the way of connection and collaboration.

There is plenty of evidence of the development of parts through relational trauma, yet helpful, well-intended interactions by caregivers and therapists can also result in the development of parts that, later, have unintended negative consequences.

An over-protective parent who manages their own anxious or over-responsible part by overdoing for their child can inadvertently lead to the child developing a part that believes they can’t handle things or that they are stupid.

Behavior-based therapies that teach people to use their thinking to change how they feel can lead to a part that further suppresses a difficult emotion, leading them to exceed their body’s capacity to feel and develop a part that shutdowns their emotions. And so on.

Key Principles

Multiplicity is natural and non-pathological.

First and foremost, the existence of multiple parts within a person is natural, not disease. The degree of fragmentation can lead to distress and difficulties in functioning. There are criteria for ‘disorders’, yet the fundamental of multiplicity is natural and, through a developmental lens, is our source of wisdom.

Multiplicity, different perspectives, develops within us through our life experiences. The dynamics we experience in our earliest years become internalized. We then, unknowingly, bring these dynamics into our experiences later in life. Until we pause to resolve what no longer serves us.

There are three types of parts in the internal system, which have relationships with each other.

* Manager parts have a proactive stance to keeping us functional. They can often be confused with our ‘personality’. Certainly it can be a strength to have an organizer part or a planner part, yet when they’ve been called upon to assume an extreme role or never take a break, it’s likely a protective part.

Why the need for protection? To protect the wounded parts. The younger parts that felt emotional overwhelm and lacked support for emotional processing and integration. In the extreme, a person will attempt to cut off from those parts, which are referred to as exiled parts.

Lastly, we can develop firefighter parts that quickly direct attention away from the vulnerable wounds or exiles – our own attention or that of others. Bingeing on alcohol, drugs, sex, social media as well as overworking and excessive workouts are common firefighter parts. Let’s not forget the basics of yelling, dissociating, fighting.

It’s easy to relate to wanting to change firefighter parts because their destruction is often visible. Many people try to change the behaviors, yet overlook the significance the part plays in the system. They either find a new binge or end up worse off through exposure of a vulnerable exile.

Manager parts are often confused with ‘personality’ or ‘just how we are’. Their harmful consequences can be more hidden often as physiological issues like GI distress, chronic pain, migraines or relational distress. With the latter, we naturally develop parts that blame the others in our relational problems and avoid responsibility. Lest not forget the scenario earlier where we develop parts to over care for others as part of own security and keep others from their own healthy development. And so on go the patterns, as best documented and communicated by Dr. Murray Bowen in family systems theory that informed Dr. Richard Schwartz’s discovery of the internal family system. Another example of systemic thinking at it’s finest, seeing the microcosm on the inside that formed from the macrocosm of the family.

All protective parts have the potential to soften into less intense roles. To fulfill their original intent before life situations developed them into protective stance. Wounded and exiled parts have the potential to restore and lessen the risk of being poked. Yes, through therapy but that is not always the case. Other forms of connection and support can be sufficient for restoration and growth.

Self, available within each of us, emerges as internal leader.

Parts do not go away. Self leadership shifts the relationship with the protective parts so wounds can be accessible for healing and integration. When significant and deep healing is needed, it is important to work with a qualified mental health professional. Yet much can be done within yourself and in current relationships when you develop language and process for Self to speak for our parts rather than letting parts hijack and run the internal system.

Imagine the difference when a partner can say ‘a part of me is done’ rather than the unintended and overstated “I’m done!”

Self is our most resourced, grounded center. It is not a part. Although similar to the nonjudgmental observer, it is also active participant – the leader of the internal system. Self inherently possesses calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, courage, and connectedness.

Why it Matters to ISG

Any model that is systemic and humanizing has a natural home at ISG! The framework of IFS is fundamental to conceptualizing the problems to solve before jumping to solutions. When we want to change an individual behavior or relational dynamic, harmonized growth ™ slows down to first understand the protective purpose of the behavior or dynamic. We always expand the view to what is happening within AND what is happening between.

Symptoms and problem behaviors, no matter how undesired or how bad the consequences, are first understood for their naturally developed purpose. This can be applied at a psychophysiological level in the case of physical ailments or in the protective patterns that interfere with nurturing children for emotional health or in competitive and discriminatory experiences in the workplace. The first step is to slow down and understand before casting judgment and expecting change that the system cannot support full circle.

IFS gives structure for the front-end conceptualization of ‘what is’ as well as self-understanding and acceptance essential for harmonized growth. It is synergistic with polyvagal theory, energetic psychology, and integrated somatic psychology that facilitate the desired shifts in the inner dynamics. For individual, relational, family, or organizational growth.

ISG has applied the integration of this framework into team dynamics, family business development, and leadership effectiveness.

The Pioneers

Dr. Schwartz graciously makes many of his interviews available on youTube. To start your exploration, visit the IFS Institute or check out the recent book, No Bad Parts.

“Imbalanced systems, whether internal or external, will tend to polarize.”

“Your protectors’ goals for your life revolve around keeping you away from all that pain, shame, loneliness, and fear, and they use a wide array of tools to meet those goals—achievements, substances, food, entertainment, shopping, sex, obsession with your appearance, caretaking, meditation, money, and so on.”

The integration of IFS into the ISG model of harmonized growth ™ was also influenced by Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy by Susan McConnell, CIFST as well as various trainings by Dr. Frank Anderson.

Conceptually similar yet lacking the simplicity of the IFS framework are the many wonderful works by Dr. Dan Siegel, his work on Interpersonal Neurobiology including child development resources like Parenting from the Inside Out, The Power of Showing Up, and No-Drama Discipline.

Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP) has an emphasis on the human nature, defenses and importance, of embodied processing of emotions. Is his work beyond Somatic Experiencing ™, Dr. Raja Selvam has expanded from processing sensations to navigating the messy world of processing emotions through the physiology. He doesn’t negate the importance of discharging the sensations of trauma held in the body; he lifts the importance of also moving the emotion of trauma through the body. It isn’t just about moving old emotional overwhelm of trauma. It’s also about integrating emotions felt in daily life situation.

Let’s not forget that many of us have had lived experiences that build defenses around emotions. So, naturally, a part of ISP is to expand our capacity for processing emotions through the body. With this approach, practitioners have the option to focus only on the physiological processing or can be inclusive of energetic influences as well.

Key Principles

Emotional Embodiment

Emotions, as an indication of our wellbeing, are a flow through the body similar to lymphatic, blood, hormonal, interstitial fluid. Embodiment refers to experiencing something through the body, through awareness in the body rather than of the body. A person can stay in a state of dissociation or disconnection from the body and ‘do’ body techniques like yoga, qigong, massage, etc. Others can do work on the body or to the body and your body can benefit, temporarily, until defense return.

Using concepts from ISP we restore capacity for emotions and open the flow for health and wellbeing.

Gross Body & Subtle Body

In the framework of ISP, there is understanding of both the gross body – the physical form and container of human biology and the subtle energetic body that flows within and around the human form. In addition to the roles of each, there is an understanding and appreciation for the interactions between these bodies within and individual AND the between individuals.

Emotional Defenses

Depending on our life experiences, we can face situations that create emotional overwhelm in the system. The body develops defenses from emotions to protect other parts of the body at the time and then can become the new baseline. ISP focused on resolving defenses in the body (gross and subtle).

Emotional defenses can also exist in the mind, individually and collectively. Emotional embodiment works with them towards new understanding. On the other hand, it also respects the power of the collective mind through resonance that can support healing at all levels of society.

Integration

Integration is the natural phenomenon of coming together. It is a process that results in new understanding and perspective as well as feeling more connected and whole. Our thoughts, feelings, and action become more coherent; our being, more well.

Resonance

Resonance refers to feeling with another person (or other social mammal like a dog or horse). It’s the flow between the energetic systems. We can be unaware of it yet it is still available. Similarly, there can be energetic blocks that keep others out or we can be too open allowing others energetic flow to flood our system.

Developmental

Our health and wellbeing have been in development since conception and even since the things happened that effected the egg that would become your mother. Trauma imprints from prenatal and perinatal experiences of an overwhelmed system are often overlooked and assumed that’s ‘just how I am’. Yet it’s also interconnected with physical, emotional, and relational unwellness. AND, thanks to neuroplasticity in the nervous system (not just the brain), you can restore developmental gaps and shape your integrated wellbeing.

Why it Matters to ISG

First and foremost, Dr. Selvam’s ability to synthesize and integrate concepts across disciplines of study is inspiring to me personally. Everything has a scientific source of evidence. Yes, there is science to support electromagnetic fields in the human body. ISP is equally grounded in application and simple techniques. Dr. Selvam has master the art of ‘AND’ and holding paradox. That is mastery of integration – immersing in the complex so that simplicity can emerge. My hope is that harmonized growth extends that potential to you and your wellbeing.

Note that scientific evidence is different than having a stamp of approval.

How it has informed the ISG approach of harmonized growth is varied.

Training in ISP expanded my systemic (whole person) understanding of what is means to be a human being. The inclusion of the subtle body fills a significant gap in self understanding in the direction of disconnection, dissociation, and excessive fatigue. Harmonized growth integrated these aspects of ISP with Polyvagal Theory.

Harmonized growth ™ sees emotions as our early warning system for unwellness as well as the inner compass for purpose and fulfillment. Emotional embodiment, conceptually and practically, takes our relational dynamics to a whole new level of connection, creativity, and courage.

ISP provides a bridge between ancient wisdom and psychophysiological distress dismissed in western medicine. It opens the door to aspects of eastern medicine without a deep dive. Because of its flexibility, subtle energy is inclusive but not mandatory so it can align with belief structures and simultaneously challenge them.

In addition, emotional embodiment has a significant role in discernment of what feels ‘right’ to a person. It’s related to our instinct and intuition. Unfortunately, many of us lose trust in our inner system through our lived experiences of others ‘knowing what’s best’ or ‘telling us how to feel (or not feel).’ This is at the heart of harmonized growth where you are the expert of you, holding all of what is known and unknown, discerning a next step to experiment for harmonized growth ™.

The Pioneers

Dr. Raja Selvam currently IS synonymous with Integral Somatic Psychology. His initial book is The Practice of Embodying Emotions: A Guide for Improving Cognitive, Emotional, and Behavioral Outcomes.

Within ISP, Dr. Selvam has integrated concepts from several eastern and western frameworks. Most notable for the synergies to harmonized growth are those that bridge psychology/physiology as well as psychology/spirituality.

• Bodynamic Mapping

“The Bodynamic – Somatic Psychology and Analysis System – is a pioneering method of somatic developmental psychology and psychotherapy that integrates current research in the psychomotor development of children, cognitive and depth psychotherapy, brain research, and special emphasis on the quality of contact and on healthy relationship.” - per website, July 2023

• Polarity Process by Franklyn Sills

• Larry Dossey, mind-body-spirit interconnections. A couple of books to get you started are Healing Words and Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing

• Robert Sapolsky, psychophysiological phenomena as written in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers and Behave

Although not within ISP, the following wellness and therapeutic techniques are synergistic and referenced:

• Somatic Experiencing

• Craniosacral Therapy

• Breathwork

• Bodywork such as massage, physical therapy, acupuncture, and yoga to name a few

ISP along with these various therapeutic interventions have demonstrated significant healing of trauma when provided by a coregulating, trained provider. It is the intent of ISG to extract the applicable concepts into a learning and problem-solving context so that individuals can increase their success with therapeutic inventions by being the expert in themselves and matching their chosen solution to their identified ‘ready-to-be-solved’ problem.

We don’t have to look far to see the extent that energy imbalances exist in humans. From being too wired to sleep to chronic fatigue syndrome, we have before us an elephant in the room. There’s a major presence that prevailing models of care do not have answers for. Might we need to expand our understanding of human systems and how they work?

This pillar is the most recent influence on harmonized growth ™, currently in the synthesis phase of integration into harmonized growth programs and applications. On the other hand, these concepts have been around for the longest in the form of ancient wisdom in eastern traditions. Science, with methods of measurement, is just starting to catch up!

Thanks to Nick Ortner and The Tapping Solution, Emotional Freedom Technique of tapping has increased in popularity in the past couple of years. It has been my experience that this has resulted in yet another protective part (the tapper) this is going to downregulate and protect wounds from being poked. Like mediation or exercise, a healthy habit can be used as another protector with unintended longer term unhealthy implications. This is not to discount the plethora of research on tapping. On the other hand, I do see the risk, that similar to behavior-based techniques, we put on emotional band-aids rather than restore the inner system.

The opportunity lies in harnessing the understanding of our energetic being, the aspect of humans drawn to spirituality and consciousness, and identifying when our challenges might be an energy problem. HeartMath also has evidence supporting the electrical energy of the heart as a source of wellness and coherence, as they define it, a measure of wellbeing. These tools may be leveraged for short term managing of symptoms yet the value for restoration and growth is what brings energy psychophysiology into harmonized growth ™.

Key Perspectives

Biofield

Where there is electricity there is magnetic field. Despite the ease with which this is adopted in hard science, many in the care systems continue to dismiss it from human science.

Aura is seen as woo woo. Oh contraire! The limitation of the visible eye does not constitute inexistence. Measurement systems are being developed that can measure not only the electrical but also the electromagnetic vibrations within us and around us.

Along with this energy moving through the cells of human structure, they are detectable to around 6-8 feet beyond the physical (gross) body. As vibrations go, they simply continue out from there, infinitum, more difficult to measure. The paradoxes and debates will be left for future articles. This is simply to acknowledge human energetics as a foundational pillar of ISG and an impetus for systemic change in medicine. It’s been challenge enough to get acceptance in the medical community that emotional overwhelm through the course of life impacts physical health. Now evidence for the interconnections between emotions, energetics, and mechanics of the body are mounting. How fantastic for you, your self understanding, and your vitality.

Energy Centres / Chakras

Chakra means “wheel” is refers to an energy center in the body, predominantly associated with yogic and Ayurvedic tradition. Each chakra is associated with physical and psychological well-being.

In addition to the seven primary chakras, there are also beliefs around hand chakras and foot chakras. Consider it a paradox where chakras (or dan tians in Asian traditions) end and nadis/meridians begin.

It is particularly revealing that the chakra locations in the body coincide with nervous system plexuses. Beyond the mainstream understanding of the location and purpose of each chakra, flow and balance are integral concepts for chakra health and well being.

In the Polarity Process, Dr. Sills describes the nervous system as a more ‘dense’ step down from the subtle energy centres of the chakras.

Meridians / Nadis

Meridians are the pathways of energy movement through the body in Asian Medicine (recognition that eastern approaches extend beyond Traditional Chinese Medicine). Acupuncture relies on the same framework as tapping or healing touch, simply different approaches and training.

Why it Matters to ISG

My pursuit into energy psychophysiology will be of no surprise to those that have read about the other foundational pillars. It is my ongoing pursuit to under the solution space for problems of dissociation, lack of energy, and depression that led me to bioenergetics. If these tools can downregulate the energetic flow, might they also be at the root of a lack of energy in the system? Might they provide a means of upregulation and engaging passion, empowerment, and liberation?

My initial answer to this exploration is a resounding yes! With one condition - IF the belief and emotional systems are on board. In other words, if the inner dynamic is such that it is within self love and not threat to the autonomic system. IF emotional reprocessing and restoration are interwoven with the energetic restoration. A systemic approach.

Forcing energetic or spiritual practices can be a threat to someone who has contrary lived experiences, spiritual protectors, etc. Spiritual bypassing creates dissociation and disconnection when emotional healing is excluded from the journey.

It is open, acceptable, and expected that you will discern the inclusion of energetic components and which energetic components as you embark on harmonized growth™. Some prefer the scientific basis of electromagnetics, vibration, and quantum physics. Others find confidence in eastern practices of qi gong or yogic traditions. Harmonized growth does not tell you want to do. It provides an understanding so that your path emerges and you learn from everything you try.

Some Recent Pioneers

If I open my curiosity to my lived experiences, my earliest influence was studying Daoism in an undergraduate World Religions class. This was a breath of fresh air from being steeped in Roman Catholicism, from which I continue an ongoing restoration of my sense of inherent goodness.

Over the decades of my conscious awareness of being a change leader of human systems, here are a few quotes that have guided by way, and thus, have influenced the emergence of harmonized growth™ as it exists today –

• “Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” Lao Tzu

• “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” Lao Tzu

• “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” Lao Tzu

Pioneers in ancient wisdom go back thousands of years and are of great philosophical study. My intent is here is to attribute the significant of energy psychology/medicine into the approach of harmonized growth™. Here are some people I’ve found to present the synergy of ancient wisdom and science in modern day:

• Shamini Jain, author of Healing Ourselves: Biofield Science and the Future of Health and founder of Consciousness and Healing Initiative

  • “Our current models of medicine fall short of understanding the depths of our human healing potential. We are on the cusp of finally becoming awake to our human healing potential. A growing number of scientists are exploring a new path—a true expansion of science joined with understandings from ancient concepts of spirituality.”

• James Oschman, author of Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis

  • “pulses of electricity, magnetism, sound, heat, vibration, and light that are transmitted to every part of the body via the circulatory system and extracellular fluids and thereby reach every cell in the body (see Figure 15.6). These signals may serve a variety of vital regulatory roles.”

  • “In the past, we could define an individual as that which lies within the skin, but it is a fact of physics that energy fields are unbounded.”

  • “the greatest harm from drug treatment is not so much the toxicity or side effects as it is the suppression effect.”

• Charge and the Energy Body and Eastern Body Western Mind by Anodea Judith

  • “As you transform yourself, you transform the world.”

  • “Obstacles do not appear in your way in order to stop you. Rather, they appear in order to strengthen and hone you and your plans. They are not your enemy. They are your secret ally, but only if you treat them as friendly forces of nature.”

• Electric Body, Electric Health and Biofield Tuning founded by Eilleen McKusick

  • “Disease is the last resort of suppressed emotion to have attention.”

There are many sound therapies and sound/vibration healing techniques. I suggest this work because of the biofeedback nature of McKusick understanding and using vibration to create feedback loops for the body to restore vitality. In contrast, may other techniques use the linear ‘do A to get B’ which may be true, on average, just not for an individual in their specific state.

* Resources for Resilience have been organized by the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology. They also provide introductory information for consumers about various tapping and meridian-based techniques as well as broader energy psychology context in their blog.

* Feel drawn to Traditional Chinese Medicine, Reiki, or other eastern approaches? Peruse the world wide web for the right master, trainer, program that meets you where you are to expand understanding and challenge limiting beliefs.