Inner Journey 1 is the Center’s Foundational Workshop.

During this workshop, we identify the deep-seated self-defeating imprints or core beliefs that shape our perceptions and emotional experiences of reality. Attached to these imprints are core emotional addictions to security, power-control, sensation, and struggle. These emotional addictions both trigger and are fueled by self-defeating imprints, creating an emotional/behavioral loop in the nervous system that keeps us in reactive states.

In this workshop, we learn to identify these loops, to integrate and release their energy through the practiced attention to the emotions traveling through our body, and the intentional application of breathing techniques. Our guided process leads us through self-reflective work and writing, practices in heart-centered breathing exercises applied to distressing emotions, as well as creative and contemplative practices that re-imagine old stagnant stories of distress into new thriving stories. Each component builds on the other to guide us through layers of emotional work that uncovers self-defeating imprints and transforms the core emotional addictions developed around old wounds.

The educational component aligns with the latest findings in neuroscience, neuro-cardiology, interpersonal neurobiology and trauma research. Recent neuroscience breakthroughs are helping us understand how the imprints of our life experiences, encoded in our memory pathways, structure our perceptions of the world and our place in it. These experiences shape and are reshaped by our biology, creating emotional/behavioral loops in the nervous system that can, if hurtful and wounding, keep us stuck in compulsively repeating self-defeating behaviors against our best intentions. But they can also be reshaped by our intentional attunement to our body/emotion patterns, thus changing neural pathways and future experiences.

“From an interpersonal neurobiology perspective, attention is the ‘scalpel’ that helps remold neural pathways: attention is to a clinician or teacher what a scalpel is to a surgeon” (Siegel, D., 2012, p.32). Moreover, latest research in neuro-cardiology, and in particular the research conducted a the HeartMath Institute in Boulder, Colorado, is revealing how the heart, beyond a muscle pumping blood, has its own brain, influenced by emotional information and patterns that in turn affect and shape cognition (Childre, D., Martin, H., Rozman, D., McCraty, R., 2016). The latest research on trauma (Levine, P. 2010; Van der Kolk, B., 2015) has shifted perspective from analysis and talk therapy, and onto the role of the body in keeping or releasing traumatic memories. Moreover, the work of Thomas Hübl on ancestral and collective trauma also informs the Center’s work and interest in exploring cross-generationally and ancestrally transmitted trauma, as well the role of collective trauma in perpetuating individual trauma (Hubl, T. 2023).

The experience of a traumatic event, an event that is too overwhelming for the nervous system at the time of its occurrence, and our protective reactions to it (through survival behaviors of either fight, flight, freeze and fix) trap us into emotional/behavioral loops and patterns that keep us repeating the survival behaviors even when they are no longer warranted.

Beyond scientific findings, the work we do at the Center and during the Inner Journey workshop directs our attention to the Spiritual dimension of human experience, to purpose and meaning and the embrace of a lived connection with the Divine. Our spiritual approach is informed by the lives of mystics such as Thomas Keating (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Keating), David Steindl Rast (https://grateful.org/brother-david/), Thomas Hübl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_H%C3%BCbl)a, and by the loving teachings embedded in religions across the world that foreground a loving heart as the gateway to a fulfilling life.

Attendance and Fees

The workshop is usually held over a 3-day period, Wednesday through Friday. A half day on Saturday is included should issues have come up that need more attention. Clients have the choice to attend the workshop in-person, or online, via zoom.

We begin at 10:00 am Austin Central time, and end at 3:00pm (4:00pm the latest). All clients are assigned practices between sessions. These practices are an essential part of the workshop and help the facilitator understand how to adjust practices to best serve the client. One half hour is reserved for lunch, and clients and facilitator take breaks as needs present, whether in person or online.

The fee is $3,300.00. A non-refundable deposit of $300.00 is required, the remaining fee of $3000.00 is due two weeks prior to the workshop. Scholarships and payment plans may apply. Contact Caroline at caroline@cfhmc.com for information about possible scholarships and payment plans.

Cancellation policy for sessions paid in full: When clients pay in full for a workshop and then cancel their session less than two weeks in advance, they will be reimbursed for 50% of the cost (serious medical reasons are an exception). It is the responsibility of clients if they do not show up on the first day of the workshop, to let us know whether they want to stay on the roster for future workshops or want to be reimbursed. Clients can postpone their fully paid sessions to up to 6 months from the date of registration, after which they will no longer be reimbursed.