Jennifer Nagel is the Director of Training Development for the Satir Institute of the Pacific. She has a private practice as a therapist, is a published author and an international trainer (in China, Canada and Kenya. in the Satir Model and Transformational systemic therapy.
We explore the topic of grace and finding grace in moments of chaos and overwhelm. Jennifer provides insights, wisdom and practices to help bring into our lives the energy of grace, gratitude, stillness and peace. Jennifer discusses the importance of ownership of one’s feelings and responses and how empowering and grounding this can be. Jennifer shares her experience of Virginia Satir’s work and how it brings her such joy and vitality. She shares some advice for how to stay connected to Self during difficult times and we arrive at a beautiful idea that we are all pregnant with life and we ought to protect, nurture and live fully that life within us.
1:32 Jennifer leads us in a self-connecting meditation
5:21 Tim reads from Jennifer’s book and Jennifer reflects on the word “Grace”
What is helping me here at this moment right now? Can I notice my breath, the fresh air?
What’s sustaining my life?
9:12 We need chaos in order to experience grace. Jennifer talks about the importance of pausing and being in the present moment to connect to grace.
How does your grace interact with the chaos of life?
Jennifer talks about how grace helps create a sense of peace and presence. She talks about the practice of taking moments of stillness and of gratitude. Putting a hand on her heart and stilling herself.
Notice and appreciate that keeps going on no matter what happens.
12:40 What are the thoughts, attitudes and beliefs that are connected to grace? What are the expressions of wisdom that express grace? Jennifer mentions that we have all the resources for survival and growth. Also, as human beings we do the best we can with what we know how to do.
Jennifer talks about going beneath the surface of behavior and listening with curiosity for the deeper need. The need to be heard and connected
We may have the capacity to love,but the capability occurs through learning and practise over time
Imagining the iceberg is a skill that can be learned. Awareness of one's and another’s feelings, perceptions, expectations and deeper still their yearnings
17:52 How can we connect to our Resources? Asking yourself when do I start to react? What’s happening in my body? Can I pause and take a breath? This allows us to slow down, pause, instead of going into fight or flight or freeze?
Be curious about what is going on inside of you and in others?
20:28 Can I own my experience? Notice what’s happening in my body, feelings, what meaning am I making? Being open to alternative meaning.
Some helpful questions for self-reflection
What else could it mean?
What’s happening in my feelings? What am I needing right now? What need is unmet?
I can only be in charge of my response and what I am doing.
23:30 Beliefs are alive. They are living when they are embodied in action. I own my experience and actions. Owning my experience and then connecting to a deep yearning that can help transform the experience. We can be in touch with peace and start to embody that.
26:00 Tim asks Jennifer to make more concrete the forms of grace and peace as living energies.
Jennifer talks about flow and harmony and how she experiences calmness and stillness with vitality in her body. Feeling grounded on the earth. Experiencing something greater than oneself. “I experience myself as part of a whole. “ she says.
The notion of ownership may be grounding itself.
I own my experience; I own my response.
Anger is an emotion that projects our attention externally and it's easy to lose ourselves in the experience of anger.
Tim shares Virginia’s idea that parents experience having holes in them which they try to fill by bringing children into the world; those children experience/feel that they have holes. Virginia helped people understand that they were already whole, not hole-y. Being whole means that I have all the worthiness and resources within me.
A grounding exercise might be to say:
I own my feelings, thoughts and needs
I own my responses
I can breathe and own the response that comes next..
Connect to your deeper yearnings.
When I connect to my yearning, for example, the peace that becomes a gift to myself and to the other.
30:30 Jennifer when we are in touch with our yearnings we are much more able to be compassionate towards ourselves and others. Connecting to yearnings helps us account for ourselves, others and the larger context.
32:30 Jennifer shares about Virginia’s work on her life, personally and professionally. She had always felt something was missing. Learning about the foundations of Virginia’s work provided a framework that was grounding for her. Whereas other models focused on different aspects of experience, Virginia’s work helped Jennifer look at the full spectrum of experience.
Experiential, transformational, looking at the whole system.
36:00 Jennifer shares her ideas about changing our use of the word tools to vehicles for change. Focusing on the process of change. There is a dynamic fluidity to processes than tools.
39:30 Jennifer shares the 5 essential elements from the Satir Model: Positively directional, the use of Self, Change focused, systemic, experiential. As long as other techniques are congruent with these 5 elements she can incorporate it. She focuses on the relational process and does not see therapy as doing something to people.
41:30: What is self-connection to Jennifer and how she connects to herself. She describes herself as preparing herself to be fully present so she can connect with others. Spending some time alone perhaps in silent meditation to simply be. Jennifer emphasizes the importance of owning one’s experience as separate from other people.
44:40 The belief and knowing that clients have the resources to learn and survive. Jennifer doesn’t burden herself with having to do something but focuses on being something and providing the conditions for the work to occur. She experiences a lot of energy and fun in that work.
47:00 Jennifer encourages Self-connection to pause and to reflect on what we can be grateful for. Finding moments of grace in the face of chaos. “At this moment in time, I can breathe…I am alive…”
In each moment reflecting what you can be grateful for.
48:30 Tim asks how do you encourage grace and gratitude in the face of deep anxiety, depression or anger. Jennifer shares that during her husband's cancer diagnosis and treatment she was pregnant and this pushed her focus on self-care and manage her energy.
Jennifer said she emphasized breathing and being in nature. Being in nature helped her feel grounded.
50:33 In order to get to that place of gratitude, you need to believe that there is something to be grateful for. It’s an act of faith to get there. If I have the belief that there’s always something to be grateful for, then you have something to strive for. You may not be pregnant with a fetus, but you are pregnant with life and potentials in you. We need to protect the life within us and the yearnings that are desiring to come out. What if we protected our core Self to the level we would protect an unborn child?
We are all pregnant with life. We need to protect our life force...
When we do not honour, protect and express our life force..atrophy, destruction and suffering ensues.