Welcome to SILT Training: Sitting In Love Together.
Love + Compassion Embodiment Mastery Program
Love is a powerful agent of healing our wounds—physical, mental and spiritual. The scientific advances of prayer groups showing positive impact on cancer survivors and individuals with what we previously would have considered hopeless, terminal conditions, beyond medical help and current treatment options, are remarkable!
This training hopes to uncover LOVE + COMPASSION within all of us regardless of our religious beliefs or non-beliefs, and regardless of our traumas or life experiences. LOVE is UNIVERSAL! And in the work of non-dual, somatic meditation it can easily be felt by ALL OF US, no matter what we have been through.
When we Sit In Love Together we can feel the mysterious, and beautiful power LOVE has. This can be healing to us and others in unspeakable ways. What do we have to lose?
John Lennon was right, “All You Need Is Love.”
Learn how to navigate the complex system dynamics of love + compassion and learn to live with wholeness. We feel most alive when we feel LOVE!
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Love + Compassion are oddly hard to teach, and they both seem to be something we need more of in this world and within ourselves.
I have found one reason for the difficulty in teaching the parts of the brain + body that support compassion, is that compassion is a cultivated skill. The complex body state of compassion and discovering love as a quality of the body, are not automatically registered if we have been harmed, betrayed, fragmented, traumatized, etc. in any way in our lives. And of course we all have endured such suffering; this is the human experience. If we are living our lives bouncing from fight to flight to freeze to fold/collapse, survival stress physiology then accessing love and compassion will not arise easily. Love and compassion may already be there (they are), but we are simply not able to open to them….yet.
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“Every mental state is supported by an underlying physiological, nervous system platform.”
—Kathy Kain
When we live in constricted, fragmented, stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, angry, unhappy, or traumatized bodies, it disrupts the lived experience of love and compassion. And the healing powers that can be accessed from these somatic qualities is severed. Continuing to give endlessly to others, to not love ourselves and live from a limited and fragmented self, will continue to separate us from our body and leave us feeling depleted, overwhelmed, frustrated, and burned out. It is a vicious cycle of giving endlessly and depleting exhaustively, unless we change something within.
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SILT Training aims to resolve this negative feedback loop by helping you get to the root of unresolved trauma, general unhappiness, or stuck-ness in your life. SILT is designed to help you or your clients address nervous system dysregulation, body constrictions and harmful thought patterns that undermine love and compassion. It aims to bring aliveness, wholeness, body + mind integration filling out your authentic Self with confidence and spontaneous pluck. SILT addresses internal and external felt boundaries which secondarily opens and primes you for true connection and intimacy in your relationships. We never have to lose ourselves (give too much or too little) in our relationships again.
Discover the healing power of love by first making deep contact with yourself. Then serving others compassionately from your pervasive, integrated being will be a whole new experience. Training in SILT can be one of the most fulfilling experiences available to human beings.
Go Beyond Your Ordinary Way of Thinking and Seeing.
SILT TRAINING IS DERIVED FROM:
EMBODIED SOMATIC PHILOSOPHY + EMBODIED PSYCHOGENIC PHILOSOPHY
Dr. Judith Blackstone Realization Process Methodology
Dr. Peter Levine Somatic Experiencing™ Methodology
Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory and Nervous System Regulation
Somatic Meditation Practices: Tantric and Vajrayana Principles of Tibetan Buddhism
Ayurvedic and Shamanic Medicine: (to clear difficult and stuck emotions and chronic emotional states)
Trauma Release Techniques - Body Based
Breathwork and Conscious Breathing Techniques
Love as a Quality of the Body + Compassion as a Complex-Body-State
Dr. Murray Bowen Methodology: Differentiation: Tools and Techniques
Attachment Theory
Somatic Theory with Systems Perspective
Examination of Cultural and Familial Belief Systems Impinging Health and Wellbeing
Resiliency and Compassion Science + Addressing All Kinds of Burnout
Trauma and the Brain: Taken from the Bio-Neuro-Psycho-Social-Spiritual Scientific Peer Reviewed Literature
Basic Principles of Physics + Quantum Physics, Energy and Chaos Theory
Jungian Psychology: Depth Psychology and Energy Work
Pedagogy of Non-Duality
What Everyone Should Know About Love + Compassion…
Compassion is the ability to lean into suffering, either our own, or others and become motivated to act to alleviate the distress or discomfort. It requires a balanced body and mind; endurance and sustainability amidst the vortex of torment, whatever it may be. A deep, fundamental requirement of compassion is to not lose ourselves in the process.
Love is an innate quality of the body. It requires nothing from us. Whereas compassion typically requires an action, or non-action (which is a chosen action), love is constancy without any action required from us. Love is a pervasive, still, stabilized, and balanced quality within us at all times. I have experienced and discovered in my clients, when we tap into a felt-sense and experience an unflappable container of love first, compassion becomes much easier.
When bearing witness to suffering (compassion), losing ourselves can be categorized by either:
disconnecting or detaching from the painful moment (feeling too little)
becoming engulfed in the distress and suffering (feeling too much)
or dissociating from our core selves by going numb (feeling nothing at all).
When relating to others (contextual love), losing ourselves can be categorized by either:
shrinking to fit the other person’s beliefs, ideals, or expectations (becoming too small)
stretching to fit the other person’s beliefs, ideals, or expectations (taking too many risks, out of our comfort zone, becoming too big)
disconnecting or detaching from people (feeling too little)
becoming engulfed in the emotions and moods of other people (feeling too much)
or dissociating from our core selves by going numb (feeling nothing at all).
You can see that love in a relational context and compassion are like two sides of the same coin. In the moment of unbearable experiences, we can automatically default to our familiar fighting, fleeing, flooding or folding responses. So training to witness suffering and remain embodied is essential. And training to feel BIG LOVE, outside of any context or storyline can help hold and contain us so we can therefore hold onto ourselves in any relationship.
SILT Training uses advanced embodiment techniques that produce the power and strength of witnessing life on life’s terms without losing ourselves.
Compassion implies conscious willingness to be fully present with pain or distress. Love requires nothing from us, but can bring us back to our innate core embodied self and help us live in an unconstricted body..
SILT is more than just a training, it is a way of life.
Be a part of the solution to end pain and suffering and become your authentic best self in your life and relationships.
Do i have to believe in something to train in silt?
* Universal Compassion and Love can include spirituality of any kind, and is also not required. It is being used to point to something that goes beyond all of our use of words. It is in its essence very difficult to describe and is a lived experience of wholeness. Wholeness is separateness, but without separation from oneness (universal compassion and Love). Accepting and embracing universal compassion and Love can result in an embodied knowing of feeling complete connectivity, intimacy, a love beyond words, right at the heart of every present moment experience.
So, No, You do not need to believe in anything in particular, except maybe Yourself. SILT is only a somatic experience within your own body and is open to your own experiential interpretation.
Are You Ready To Begin?
SILT Training
Sitting In Love Together
Away From This Course | COMMUNITY
Contrary to popular belief, and the new bogus paradigm of "rugged individualism," we don't heal in isolation. When we Sit In Love Together we not only heal and grow ourselves but we become naturally empathic which amplifies others healing as well. It feels good.
Away From This Course | Safety
Tools and Techniques that establish inner safety, confidence and a childhood pluck. Differentiating is hard work, but it is worth it. One key take-away is how to feel really safe within your own body and skillsets. You can look all you want, but safety isn't out there. It is inside of YOU.
Away From This Course | change
The fact of the matter is, we cannot survive without love and compassion. It is a fundamental part of society and our existence on this planet. So to create deep, meaningful and compassionate change in this world, we need to connect to our own internal experiences first. It all starts with love.
The work of SILT can be applied to all People and all relationships.
Spouses, partners, children, friendships, co-workers, bosses, cities, communities, institutions, corporations, educational systems, nations, etc.
A FEW OBJECTIVES OF SILT TRAINING:
Restore wholeness and train in embodiment
Recognize your own obstacles, fears, and edges to compassion and love and begin to soften them
Release chronic fragmentations in your own being
Open subtle holding patterns that constrict your body and mind that hinder the giving and receiving of love and compassion
Discover within your body an innate, ever-present source of equanimity and happiness
Learn practices and techniques that help you receive the full intensity of life
Create meaning and purpose
Balance Body-Mind-Soul-Spirit
Cultivate empowerment and resiliency
Overcome overwhelm and burnout of all kinds
Establish self-confidence, internal safety authenticity and spontaneity
Love and referential compassion cannot be injured, and when it is embodied, you can free yourself from old wounds, cravings and confusion
Use the language of love and compassion to help build a bridge connecting people
Experience the spontaneous upwelling of love and compassion for yourself and others.
Increase wellbeing, vitality and health
What the Course Is About
SILT is a 9 lesson curriculum. 9 Transmissions of cognitive theory will be accompanied by somatic exercises to experience. The course sessions are designed to build upon each prior lesson, and in this way it is strongly suggested to take the lessons in consecutive order. However, each lesson is hearty enough in material and practice that it can also stand alone. This gives participants the freedom to engage how they wish in the practices and meditations.
It is strongly encouraged to repeat the transmissions, exercises and meditations over and over until they have become truly comprehended, instilled and embodied. (It would be quite unrealistic to think we can sit down to meditate once or twice and then expect our life to change.) A regular commitment to SILT is a regular commitment to YOU.
Can’t make a lesson? No problem. All classes will be audio recorded and housed in your student portal.
Transmission One
Love vs. Compassion. Love and Compassion are looked at as two sides of the same coin but understanding their differences can make all the difference. In this transmission we will experience love as a quality of the body and understand compassion as a complex body state. We will practice basic steps of embodiment with attuning to Fundamental Consciousness (a clear space that holds everything including all of our experience) and end Sitting In Love Together (SILT Practice).
Transmission Two
Language of the Body. As we learn to come into the body understanding the language it uses can enhance our ability to fully inhabit ourselves. We will be learning basic principles of Somatic Experiencing™ (SIBAM), and practicing with a preliminary tool of energy psychology as well as engaging in an age old Tibetan breath work technique. We will end in SILT Practice.
Transmission Three
Self-Love. Love starts by loving Self. So what is Self? In this lab we will pull apart “mindfulness” and its typical use these days of training in awareness (top-down), and instead use a true, bona fide bottom-up, somatic practice of inhabiting. When we get below awareness we can actually feel our quality of Self. We will also engage in a foundational Realization Process Practice of Core Breath to connect back to our authentic, un-fragmented selves and end in SILT Practice.
Transmission Four
Self-Love + Soul Skin. Taking Core Breath Practice to the next level we will begin to work with the natural current of energy our body can actually feel and attune to. In Core Breath with Subtle Circuitry Practice we can enhance our sense of Self in space and this amplifies our boundaries. In this Love Lab we are putting our Soul Skins back on. We will close the lesson in SILT Practice.
Transmission Five
Working With Difficult Emotions. Strong currents of emotions are maybe one of the more powerful energies that sweep us off our feet and eject us right out of our bodies. Using the advanced techniques of Integral Somatic Psychology, the work of Dr. Raja Selvam, we can begin to experience our emotions as our allies. We will engage in a body-based release technique aiming to make our emotions more workable and less solid. We will also play a game I like to call “Hillbilly Judo.” A terrific way to see exactly how we are reacting to our own emotions and the emotions of others. We will close in SILT Practice.
Transmission Six
Calm Mind + Open Heart. In this Love Lab we will work on foundational grounding and prepping to become separate, differentiated whole selves. We will examine attachment, attachment styles and disruptions, so we can begin to repair with self-to-self healing techniques. If you won the jackpot and by luck and the power of “The Force” received secure attachment, you still won’t want to miss this lab as we will learn a very efficient release technique to begin our own transformative healing journey. We will Sit In Love Together, SILT Practice, at the end.
Transmission Seven
Becoming a Differentiated Self. In this lab we will decipher what differentiation means and learn how to become a separate, and fully differentiated Self. This is a crucial step to Holding Onto Yourself, which you will want to do in ALL of your relationships. Building on the basic release technique in lab six, we will engage in a spin-off version as we attune to our challenging relationships; putting our separate selves in real-time scenarios to test how differentiated we really are. Baby steps. We of course will end in SILT Practice.
Transmission Eight
Empathy and Empathy Distress/Fatigue. As we increase our connection back to our embodied, wholeness, we can begin to engage in compassion practices. We will practice with real-life scenarios and stories that provoke a strong sense of empathy and begin to work with where we still find ourselves getting stuck in empathy distress/fatigue. We will use a hands-on, fun practice that exposes our shadow narratives. These practices literally give-us-away, revealing our “tells” so we can aim to see ourselves with a new, clear view. At the very least, we will become better poker players. We will end in SILT Practice.
Transmission Nine
Finding Our Seat At the Table. As we begin to feel our wholeness more readily, and feel confident in our differentiated soul-skins, we can begin to examine what it feels like to expand and open to oneness. Oneness, or Fundamental Consciousness, creates an inner and outer space that we can feel and attune to in our bodies. By easily going into our bodies at this point in the curriculum we can become more spacious, more conscious, more ourselves. When we are embodied in this very connected way, we tend to be able to let go of more, release more constrictions and past somatic traumas. We trust in the space itself, Love, can take care of it for us. We will close in SILT Practice.
Transmission Ten
Rescue Inhaler. When things get HARD! HARD! what can we do? In this lab we will learn tools and techniques that essentially help tie us to the mast when the ocean storm is lavishly underway. We will return to simple breath work and somatic practices to keep us safe during very difficult moments. We will end in SILT Practice.
Transmission Eleven
Relax, It Will Be Alright. In this lab we will not be engaging in toxic positivity, positive woo-woo psychology, denial, cognitive dissonance or other unhelpful current and mainstream philosophies that say everything is FINE. We will understand that everything will be alright in a much bigger context. In our bodies, we connect to a deeper sense of safety. We are fully integrated in our power, in our voice, in our sexuality, in our intelligence, and in our love. We become unflappable beings that with great resiliency can face the suffering of the world. We will engage in a Tantric/Vajrayana Somatic Meditation Practice that keeps us stable amidst the difficulties and uncertainties of life. We will close in SILT Practice.
Transmission Twelve
Heal to Wholeness. Learning to relax is a skillset these days, as it has been covered up in deep layers of perfectionism, anxiety, fear, trauma and uncertainty. In this lab we will excavate our natural ability to heal ourselves, as we already have everything within us that we need. We will use the stable and pervasive ground of Love as our guide so we can release any remaining worry, fear, doubt, self-hate, tension and constriction from our body-mind-spirit. When we know, and experience the ground of love within us, compassion becomes easy and natural. We will Sit In Love Together, SILT Practice, to close.
Bonuses Listed Here
On occassion SILT Training will host experts in the field to come and speak to our community. These guest appearances might be planned, and they might be a surprise, so you will simply have to show up.
SILT Training will not be engaging in the everyday practices we may already know from mainstream meditation and mindfulness. We will be moving way beyond the known practices of metta, compassion, tonglen, loving-kindness, equanimity, joy, forgiveness and gratitude. Most of SILT practices will be new to you.
This masterclass training is a compelling hands-on course in the principles and skills of interactive and practical meditation and attunement exercises. The overall aim of the course material is to keep repeating it until mastery of the skills and lessons have become embodied. Although the lesson pedagogy will remain constant in theme, the meditations and practices will be geared toward what the current community needs. So if we can go deeper, we will. We will sample some of the deepest and most effective tools I’ve learned in my decades as a teacher and psycho-therapist. Extraordinary openings can happen in a single session with these special healing practices.
Are You Ready To Begin?
Meet the Teacher
Hello and Welcome!
My name is Jennifer Finch. You can call me Jen. Many of you know me through my years of work in private practice psychotherapy, my teacher trainings, workshops, public speaking, publications, and/or through my founding company, Be Here Now Mindfulness, LLC.
After many years of teaching and researching compassion I came to the conclusion that it was hard to teach. Why? Because it is really hard to extend ourselves outward to others when we don’t have such a good hold on our own selves first. This led me to the current practices of self-compassion, which I found to be nice, but they weren’t really satisfying my quest to feel something extraordinary in my body. I didn’t find it compelling to just have nice thoughts in my brain…for a fleeting moment, that I should be kinder to myself and speak to myself as if I was my own friend. 🤪
I went on a long, winding journey in search of better ways to connect my clients and the people in my personal life, including myself, to compassion.
Compassion, love, and self-love are needed in this world and I wan’t going to give up, so I dug deeper. I wanted to feel something bigger than me, I wanted to connect to something that would be radically different and move me to change. I wanted to feel good about this world and the people in it, but all I kept feeling was let-down.
I longed to feel “much more muchier” as the Cheshire Cat says to Alice. Like a wild child running endlessly in a meadow. When I have felt I am my truest, most authentic self, connected to my core, is interestingly when I have been the most compassionate. I am able to give more, get out into the world more, help more, because I AM more. And in this magical zone of pure embodiment and groundedness; burnout, overwhelm and exhaustion don’t exist. Was I looking for a unicorn?
With my background in Somatic Experiencing™ trauma therapy, and extensive knowledge of polyvagal theory and nervous system regulation, and my two+ decades of meditation practice, I eventually and finally, came across the work of Dr. Judith Blackstone. Her carefully crafted embodiment practices within the large canon of her lifetime work called Realization Process, I knew I had landed and had found exactly what I was looking for. The missing key was rediscovering my core Self and the secret ingredient was the Healing Ground of Love.
The Realization Process (RP) method showed me how to find space within myself, to open beyond my emotional, physical, and traumatic holding patterns, and I was taught to release my constrictions and hindrances back into the space itself. RP can hold it all, willingly. Slowly, I began to excavate my true Self and trust being in my whole body. These simple and effective practices can be experienced by anyone regardless of their experience or starting point in life, and bonus!, they are relatively easy to teach. In SILT Training I aim to integrate and incorporate my wide experiences of:
trauma comprehension
clinical experience
compassion knowledge
somatic expertise
and, long history as a practitioner of body based Tantric/Vajrayana Buddhism
with Realization Process techniques. The end goal is to become a whole individual, integrated, confident, resilient, and capable of weathering any storm. Imagine how the world would look if w all showed up with this kind of fierce compassion?
What I have discovered through all of this seeking, is it undoubtedly all begins with LOVE!
What Past Students Have to Say
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Be in Touch with Your Questions
Absolutely Complementary:
While you think about it, and get your calendar out to see what SILT Training dates you are committing to, enjoy this meditative video of Ocean Waves and Seascape at Portland Head Lighthouse at Sunset.
Relaxation is on the house:)