New horizons in healing | A map of the space

My map of the healing space, and where I'm excited for more work to happen.

We are in the most incredible wave of culture shift around our psychological state. Wisdom that has existed for thousands of years is meeting our newfound technological capacity, and our many hundreds of years of disembodied cognition is easing into an understanding that the body exists.

These swirling eddies of change are creating places that are bubbling over, ready for organizations and movements to emerge.

As I have sailed through the waves, I’ve noticed a few such bubbling places. I want to share my excitement for increasing accessibility, discoverability, and acceptance of healing practices and wisdom that can shift our experience of being alive.

Laying the groundwork

First, I want to start by laying out a few beliefs that are a foundation for my view of the landscape.

There are four depths of experience, and the deeper we go the more potent it can be

There are many frameworks for human experience, all of which are wrong. I’ve found it helpful to think about four depths of experience: Thought, Emotion, Energy, and Awareness.

In either a beautiful stroke of synchronicity, or a testament to my ability to squish reality into lines that feel serendipitous, these depths align roughly with movements in healing: Cognitive (thought), Somatic (emotion), Energetic (energy), and Meditation / Non-dualism (awareness).

Since the inception of behaviorism in the 1920s, we have been on a collective cognitive streak. Emotions are unreliable and untrustworthy, and only the mind can be trusted. Healing consists of finding thoughts at the ‘root’ of behaviors and remapping them effortfully. We find this rearing its head in the accepted truth of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as the most scientifically backed, legible, trusted therapy, the prevalence of talk therapy, and the beliefs of the previous generation (my parents still purse their lips and flutter up into their thinking mind any time an uncomfortable emotion threatens to break through). This is not to say that other philosophies didn’t exist (Wilhelm Reich was doing developmental character work in the 1930s that was the foundation for powerful somatic therapies, and shamanism and eastern philosophies have continued throughout thousands of years), just that the mainstream consensus was cognitive.

In the last decade or so, the knowledge that we have a body has begun to seep through. Modalities like Internal Family Systems, Somatic Experiencing, Core Energetics, and Ideal Parent Figure are becoming increasingly mainstream. The PESI page, and many therapy conferences, boast courses and speakers in IFS, EMDR, and Polyvagal Theory. More and more, people are talking about how healing means feeling your emotions and being with your moment-to-moment experience. Somatic therapy is all the rage. Our understanding of the way that early attachment relationships contribute to suffering has progressed, along with modalities that target early emotional wounding stored in our bodies. It’s all very exciting, like being on the frontier of a wave as it swells. Check out the increase in searches worldwide for Somatic Therapy over the last 10 years.

Somatic therapy Google trends

Meditation has existed as a source of wisdom for thousands of years. More and more organizations are bringing Eastern meditation practices into the Western mindset – apps like Headspace, Calm, and Insight Timer have made mindfulness meditation mainstream. Mindfulness meditation has become so well-known that many people view having a meditation practice in a similar way to having a regular fitness practice. The next step is to tackle the frontier of non-dual meditation, which is distinct from mindfulness. Michael Taft draws this distinction nicely here:

In the context of American spiritual practice nondual traditions and mindfulness traditions appear to be in sharp contrast. Nonduality is often associated with the “doing nothing” schools of meditation, and mindfulness meditation is often very effortful. Mindfulness meditation masters in the States commonly refuse to even discuss enlightenment, whereas nondual teachers never stop talking about how we’re already enlightened.

Startups like Jhourney are getting closer to this, but there’s still a lot of space for more (for example, creating fully personalized meditations and meditative state neurofeedback).

You may have noticed that I skipped over energy. I find this absolutely fascinating. There are many books on the understanding of the subtle energy body, papers written on qi, and modalities that leverage our energy body (like reiki, qigong, core energetics, etc). In my personal experience, energy work has been incredibly enjoyable and wildly effective. Discovering that I have an energy body was like coming home – people tuning into my energy and matching it felt like being hugged for the first time. Healers meeting my energetic state has allowed me to digest so much trapped emotion and energy in a way that has very few words I can use to describe it. And yet, as far as I can tell, energy hasn’t had its moment in the same way somatic therapy and meditation have. Watch this space.

I wrote earlier that the deeper you go, the more potent. My experience has been that one glimpse of awake awareness can re-orchestrate our nervous systems in a way that unfolds for a long time afterwards. We can spend years rewiring beliefs at the cognitive level, or one session working with someone on our underlying attachment needs with energetic attunement, and the result is the same. The more we bring somatic, energetic, and non-dual modalities into the mainstream, the more we can shift the collective state of people’s well-being.

We already have a lot of wisdom

Perhaps as a symptom of having lived in San Francisco for too long, my belief a few years ago was that more ‘discovery’ needed to take place. How do we understand so little about the human experience? I asked myself in outrage. How do we have such detailed visions of the technological future, and such sparse visions of our psychological future? It turns out that I just hadn’t discovered all the wisdom we do have yet. Our understanding of reality and the true nature of our consciousness is incredibly advanced. The more I’ve journeyed along this pathways, the more I have experienced and come to deeply believe that a lot of the pointers I dismissed automatically are, in fact, true: our true nature is infinite, boundless consciousness; we can access experiences across time and space; our souls are real and we can connect with others’ souls; we have a soul purpose that is here to manifest; basically, magic is real. All of this wisdom is out in the world, often tucked away into little self-contained pockets. Have you heard of the Purpose Guides Institute, created to guide people to connect with their soul purpose? Or Barbara Ann Brennan’s school for energy healing? Or Shamanic Dearmoring, a healing process using shamanic techniques? These places aren’t just existing in their little bubble of delusion, they are doing incredibly potent work on the fringes of society.

The vision of many of these organizations is stunning: A collective waking up, à la Integral theory. A society of enlightened beings. Everyone awake to their soul purpose, connected to the infinite consciousness. I want to live in that world.

It is not a case of discovering more wisdom about our human experience, but of translating: bringing the wisdom that we have developed over thousands of years of human experience into the consciousness of right now, framing it in a way that modern society will accept.

The most potent work is still not easily accessible

There are many components of accessibility – financial, time availability, discoverability, and cultural norms.

I have a handful of healers on my list of people to go to when I need deep transformation. They each cost upwards of $300 per hour. I need to book them in advance – I feel an emotion in the moment, and hold it in my body for a week or two until I can see one of these healers. What they’re doing is non-legible and hard to describe to the people in my life: ‘sort of like attachment energy work, and I guess they’ve just sorted through enough of their stuff and meditated enough that just being on the phone with them makes me want to cry’, I offer haphazardly to people.

E. Richard Sorenson’s essay on Pre-Conquest Consciousness is a delicious read. Through anthropological study of tribes in New Guinea untouched by modern society, he paints a story of how human society used to be. He describes societies of deeply attuned people:

In the isolated hamlets in the southern forests, infants were kept in continuous bodily contact with mothers or the mothers' friends--on laps when they were seated, on hips, under arms, against backs, or on shoulders when they were standing. Even during intensive food preparation, or when heavy loads were being moved, babies were not put down. They had priority.
…
Babies responded to this blanket of ever-ready empathetic tactile stimulation by tactile responses of their own. Very quickly they began assembling a sophisticated tactile-speech to transmit desires, needs, and states of mind. They didn't whine or cry to get attention; they touched.
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With nourishment, comfort, and stimulation constantly on hand, infants did not have to wait helplessly to have their needs met. They had no emotional need to anchor their libidos to abstract concepts of time, place, or kinship; and abstract foundations of awareness such as these were not imprinted on their nascent consciousness.

Human beings were meant to receive constant attunement growing up. We were meant to be so deeply in contact with our caregivers that every need would be felt, every emotion would be mirrored back, and our experience would be met and responded to. Very few people today received this experience, and a large portion of people received such inadequate attunement that they developed insecure attachment to their caregivers (something which follows children throughout their lives).

In one healing program I am part of, they frequently tell us that what they’re doing is giving us doses of relearning that our needs can be met – that when we feel distressed and need presence and attunement, we can get it. I ask someone for 10 minutes of support at least 3 times a week, and every time, I receive it. My body is relearning that I can be attuned to, that however intense the emotion that is coming up in me is, someone is there to digest it with me. This is the kind of accessibility I am talking about.

The first step is for people to have access to a therapist or healer at all. But beyond that, the kind of accessibility that deeply heals is in-the-moment presence – receiving support when you need it.

Then, there’s the basic fact that the most potent healing modalities are still fringe. Finding a healer in parts work or energy work is still a process of asking someone who knows someone who knows someone. I am constantly in awe at how haphazard and disorganized it is. There is huge opportunity to coalesce the space and make finding a practitioner who resonates with you much easier.

Improving accessibility, discoverability, and acceptance

This brings me to some of the areas that I’m most excited about: improving our ability to access potent healing, increasing discoverability of practitioners, and doing the translational work to bring the depth of wisdom that we have into the mainstream. For all of these, I’m focusing on somatic, energetic, and non-dual modalities (not talk therapy and cognitive-based therapies). Perhaps it is my anarchic streak, but there are a lot of companies creating directories, matching services, training, etc for traditional therapy that I haven’t included (check out a WIP map here if you’re interested in the more traditional mental health side). I should also caveat that this is very much influenced by my experience. There’s whole swathes of healing (like breathwork and bodywork) that I have had less experience with. I’ve tried my best to include all the things that I know of in my field of view, but the space is quite vast.

Improving our ability to access potent healing

Automating healing

Automating healing practices with artificial intelligence is one incredible way to reduce the financial cost and make healing more available in a just-in-time way. The downside is that, as far as I can tell, AI doesn’t have energy – mostly, these AI tools are facilitating attunement to yourself, or offering an echo of external attunement. But it’s a good start. Testimonials for apps like Rosebud and Refract are amazing.

There’s a wave of AI apps that support cognitive / conversational therapy, but I’m most excited about the ones that are focused on somatic modalities and meditation / awareness. As far as I can tell, there are no tools automating energetic modalities (yet!).

(NB: The areas in purple are the ones I’m most excited about!)

Increasing the amount of trained practitioners

There’s something like 20 ideal parent figure practitioners that I can find, which is absurd for a modality that can reduce the symptoms of cPTSD patients in 4 sessions. Many organizations are working on the supply problem by training more practitioners in various modalities.

One area that I’m excited about and haven’t seen much work in is in peer support networks with embodied modalities. With somatic, energy, and non-dual work, I notice that very little context is needed – you can learn so much about someone’s history and core wounds from just attuning to someone’s system and noticing what they’re feeling. 10 minute sessions where you attune to someone and offer presence to them can be more healing than hours’ worth of talking. Peer support networks are also less costly than trained practitioners – I’m excited for someone to tackle this.

Increasing discoverability of practitioners

Finding a practitioner is a haphazard game of telephone. Many practitioners exist ephemerally through websites you’ll only ever discover in clandestine gatherings. There’s also very little in the way of matching people to somatic / energetic / non-dual practitioners. You have to just ‘date’ practitioners until you find one that resonates. I’m excited for projects that systematize the space and help make finding effective practitioners that resonate with you very easy.

Translational work to bring wisdom into the mainstream

Collective sense-making

We’re in a phase of digesting all the disparate ideas in healing that are emerging and turning them into coherent frameworks and philosophies. We’re seeing this in blog posts people are writing and frameworks that are emerging (e.g. Taashin’s bio-emotive framework post, Sasha Chapin’s Deep Okayness, Jeff Lieberman’s A New Map of Human Experience). This collective sense-making is bringing wisdom that we’ve had for thousands of years into our existing western philosophies, and there is room for so much more of this.

Shifting norms

Many of the training programs are actively engaged in norm shifting, working with people who come from more traditional backgrounds and offering them a pathway towards more ancient wisdom. The Art of Accomplishment is doing an incredible job of this, bringing in high-performing people and giving them a sort of Trojan horse of emotional education. Sleepawake is creating a community of people with new and nourishing relational norms, and Luminous Awareness is shifting norms towards energy work and awareness. The key to successful norm shifting is to work with people who are career and cultural leaders, and we’re seeing this trickling through.

Creating standards to legitimize fringe healing work

This is a huge area of opportunity. It’s the wild west out there in the healing world at the moment. As fringe modalities appear without having gone through the pipeline of the traditional psychology system, it creates a soup of healers with varied and eclectic qualifications. As a result, there are many incredibly effective healers out there mixed in with people who haven’t done their shadow work mixed in with people who don’t really know much. Gauging the difference is a difficult task. I’ve had multiple friends get hurt by trusting healers that exist outside of a system. Projects to systematize, create legitimacy, and allow for social proofing systems would be impactful.

Surfing the wave

The sails are set, the water is bubbling, and the wave is continuing to swell. Technically, in every moment we are part of the next evolution of humanity, but it feels especially poignant now. I feel honored and excited every day to be part of the healing collective that is emerging, and I’m excited for so much more to arise.

If this sketch of a map resonates with you, I would love to hear about it. If I missed something, or if you’re working on projects in any of these areas, reach out and let me know!