Why Chi for Two® Now?

More and more people struggle with anxious feelings and difficulty focusing.

New nervous system science helps us better understand and manage our nerves.

Solutions for nervous system dysfunction exist within the energetic dance of relationship, offering hope for social healing.

Black Lives Matter, exploration of LGBTQ rights, and #MeToo are encouraging movement toward social justice.

Technology and current economic systems are pushing all of us into trauma response.

Romance! …and Relational Dysfunction

Post-puberty, our romantic interactions will trigger the dysfunctional aspects of our infant/caregiver dances. Thankfully, the dysfunctional aspects of our romantic dances can point us toward the moves that re-pattern our nervous system functioning. When we interact with a lover, very intense feelings can pop up and we might say things like, “You're making me so mad” or “You always hurt my feelings” or “You drive me crazy!”

When we better understand the infant/caregiver interactions, we are more able to see our romantic partners as the people we were attracted to before the old dysfunctional relationship patterns got triggered. We can start to take responsibility for our own emotions.

Alternating Rhythms

It helps to know that the rhythms of infant/caregiver dances alternate in quality. Half of the rhythms are called indulging and half are called fighting. The fighting rhythms are part of dances where the child is developing a sense of self within relationships, particularly the relationship with the primary caregiver.

Other theorists who have studied attachment issues—Ainsworth, Tronick, Kaplan—have addressed bonding with the primary caregiver and speak to the need for matching rhythms that create a sense of belonging as well as mismatching rhythms that help us individuate. These neonatal and early infant interactions train nervous system patterning, but culture has set the stage upon which these dances are performed. Cultural influence on each two-person dance—pas de deux—creates multi-generational relationship patterns.

Culture and Family Patterns

In 1990, American poet Robert Bly published a book called Iron John: A Book about Men. Bly along with psychologist James Hillman, mythologist Michael Meade and others created a men’s movement that supported the women’s movement of the 70’s. The men’s movement joined the women’s movement in pointing out the flaws of patriarchal government—pointing out that patriarchal government harms men as well as women.

Today, many scientists and social activists from many cultures are sounding alarms about the multi-generational patterns that speak to the trauma caused by social systems that allow some people to dominate and marginalize others. As we better understand these patterns, those who offer all sorts of social services can better help us shift how we live in our bodies, so we can find more play within the energetic dance of relationship.

The Nerve of It!

Scientist Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory helps us see that we have separate nervous system patterning that occurs when we sense life-threatening danger versus when we feel safe. When we sense life-threatening danger, we fly into Fight/Flight. When we’re trapped, we go into Shut-down.

The biology that exists for life-threatening danger is not designed for critical thinking. We do not want to stop and think, "I wonder if I can lift this car off this person." We want to shoot off the unique chemical cocktail that creates action without thought, which is the state called Fight/Flight. If we are trapped, we freeze and ideally disembody, dissociate—play possum—as a way to calm panic. Shut-down shallows our breath and therefore makes critical thinking impossible.

The Chi for Two “Map” of nervous system functioning helps us picture the path between Shut-down up through the burst of Fight/Flight that wakes us up from Shut-down.

The “Map” along with the Circles of Support drawing helps us picture how we can resolve Fight/Flight response and move back over into Social Engagement system functioning, which allows the return of critical thinking ability.  This is the path of trauma healing. Returning to Social Engagement system functioning involves a mind-expanding nervous system process that flushes out stored Fight/Flight chemistry.

We understand this trauma response patterning from the work of trauma expert Peter Levine. Trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk speaks to the value of both Levine’s work and Porges’ theory. 

Safety

 It is useful to understand conceptually the existence of unique nervous system functioning that exists for times when we sense safety, but historically actual safety was a luxury of the dominant culture. That luxury is disappearing in our modern world as technology and current economic systems push all of us into trauma response. 

Individuals who have experienced unspeakable abuse from which they were unable to flee or fight, survive in Shut-down. Having been trapped, they shot into Fight/Flight and immediately went into Shut-down. Shut-down provided a way to function but their bodies became wired to react to anything that feels similar to the danger of the past and to desperately search for the path to future safety that will make discharge possible.

People on the sensitivity spectrum feel potential for life-threatening danger in mundane activities, which less-sensitive people may not feel. Highly sensitive people may feel the brewing of a storm that could spawn tornadoes or the building of social tension that might threaten people’s need to belong. Herd animals rely on each other to cue danger. When danger exists, and individuals ignore the danger through various methods of Shut-down, highly sensitive people feel an anxious need to warn the pack. It is crazy-making to tell a sensitive person, “You’re just too sensitive.”  

Chi for Two helps sensitive people sort out what is possible to be done about life-threatening situations from moment to moment. For instance, we drive 70 miles an hour on expressways. We are putting ourselves in life-threatening danger. Naturally our bodies want to go into Fight/Flight—road rage—or Shut-down—distracted driving. What can we do about it? Wear seat-belts. Stay off our phones.

As our current economic system strives for constant financial growth, business leaders explore management styles that push people into Flight/Flight for the quick gain that Fight/Flight produces. Managers have also discovered that Shut-down creates a kind of robotic functioning that seems useful as technology makes it possible to work 24-hour days. However, neither Fight/Flight nor Shut-down are sustainable business strategies. Those who sense the lack of sustainable business practices have explored offering yoga at lunch and drumming in sales team meetings, but those efforts have not proven sufficient. 

Looking to Ancient Cultures for Help

Oppressed cultures live in life-threatening danger. Some have found pockets of safety where dances that shake out stored Fight/Flight can happen. Channeling stored Fight/Flight into artistic expression is often part of community gathering and spiritual ritual. Some cultures have found meditation practices that make aspects of Shut-down transcendent. 

Chi for Two coaches tip our hats to the ways people from various cultures have found to invite a sense of safety or calm when actual safety is not possible. Some Chi for Two moves look like practices from other cultures—particularly yoga and tai chi—but the Chi for Two moves and philosophy truly originate in the relational dances of infancy that wire nervous system functioning. 

We can see hints of appreciation for the early infant dances in ancient writings. The Tao Te Ching—a discussion of the Tao: translated as the path or the flow—describes energetic flow as having no name. If given a name, it is the Mother of all things. These words speak to the power of the developmental rhythms and the responses to those rhythms by all who play The Mother in a child’s life. 

When caregivers approach the shifts between indulging and fighting rhythms as a dance, the child’s journey of individuation is not frightening. This is equally as relevant for the redo of these dances between clients and Chi for Two coaches.   

Chi for Two moves invite exploration of the relationship between individual and other because relational dances shape our being. In the Tao Te Ching it is written that our dance with the Mother of all things leads to the naming of things and thus the structuring of the energy or flow.

We choose to use the Chinese word chi as the name for energy in Chi for Two because it rhymes with the word tea. The name Chi for Two mimics the name of an old American song Tea for Two. In the lyrics of the song we hear, “Can’t you see how happy we will be?” Chi for Two blends old and new—so old that it predates any patriarchal or matriarchal society and so new that Chi for Two® coaches teach polyvagal theory to increase appreciation of human animal biology. 

When we look to our animal biology, we can appreciate the wild mother’s training of her young through nuanced ways to growl and bite as part of becoming functional adult animals. There are playful ways to growl and snap. When we appreciate the role of the fighting rhythms in our learning to be functional separate selves within communities, we invite the possibility named in those words of the song Tea for Two—Can’t you see how happy we will be.

Oxytocin—the Social Neuropeptide

Our animal bodies are biologically programmed to connect with the body we come out of. If a baby has a breast pad smelling of breast milk from the biological mother on one side of the baby’s head and milk from another mother on a pad on the other side, it will turn its head toward the breast pad that smells like mom.

Because we are biologically programmed to connect with the body we come out of, we are programmed to do developmental dances with bodies that have higher levels of the neuropeptide oxytocin. Until recently, oxytocin was only associated with birthing and nursing but the work of scientist Sue Carter helps us appreciate the fact that we all have oxytocin in our bodies. 

Oxytocin helps caregivers stay in their Social Engagement system functioning as children differentiate using the rhythms Kestenberg and colleagues identified as the fighting rhythms. When we as infants can embody the fighting rhythms within a caregiver interaction that welcomes these rhythms, we learn to release and re-engage the ventral branch of the vagus nerve without going into Fight/Flight. 

When the fighting dances are met with appreciation by whoever is in The Mother role, we feel more and more self-sufficient. We learn to connect without merging our sense of self during matching dances. We learn to tolerate and even enjoy mismatching dances because they are less likely to stir abandonment terror. 

The fighting rhythms train our bodies such that we can have highly active dances—passionate dances—in a state that is not fueled by Fight/Flight. Sexuality becomes more sensuous and less focused on orgasm. Rather than agreeing to disagree, we can wrestle through to win/win solutions. Agreements become more possible because disagreements become more manageable. 

When we push into what is not us, we find us.

When we push our hands into the earth or into the hands of our Chi for Two® coach, we begin to develop a sense of our core. We begin to connect with our belly-brain—the mesh-like nervous system network in the gut. Scientists are doing a lot of research on belly-brain/head-brain connection, which happens through Social Engagement system functioning and healthy digestive flora.

With Chi for Two practices, it becomes possible to increase communication from belly-brain to head-brain—critical thinking. When we use Chi for Two moves to embody, we own our energy sphere. We have the responsibility—the ability to respond—to self-regulate within our relationships. That makes all our relational dances more fun.

Why Chi for Two® now? 

Chi for Two helps each person own their own actions. When we can handle our energy—self-regulate—we are able to be curious about others. Mindful relational dances help us stay in our Social Engagement system functioning even if others have flown into Fight/Flight.

Understanding the patterning of trauma response helps us expect the rush of Fight/Flight responses as part of waking up from Zombie-like Shut-down states. When this happens within us, the Chi for Two moves help us work that chemistry through and out of the body. When others “lose it,” we can use our Chi for Two moves to help ourselves stay in our Social Engagement system and remain functional.

Why Chi for Two now? It makes us functional within the nuanced energetic dance of relationship! It gives helping professionals a conscious understanding of the therapeutic dance (see Certified Coach Training). Let's push into each other and develop our Social Engagement systems!

©2019 Dee Wagner and Stephen Kirk Wagner chifortwo.com             

Photos ©2020 bobmahoney.com

Illustrations by John Cargile