Walking the Path of Healing Discipline – Part 2

Here is the second part of a discussion about Healing Discipline, published by the Windhorse Legacy Project. This new book is an edited collection of three seminars given by Dr. Ed Podvoll in the mid-eighties.

My connection to this book is as the managing editor for the Windhorse Legacy Project. Jeff Fortuna and I have spent the last year transforming Ed’s raw lectures into a readable—hopefully relevant—book, with notes and introductions.

For me, this has been an interesting lesson in translation. Many of the teachings Ed shares on Buddhism and psychology were taught to him. He then applied them in his own way, transforming them through his own experience. With the original transcripts in hand, Jeff and I had to decide what to keep, cut, and clarify in our own way in order that the teachings felt current and applicable to us. The intent was to translate the essence of the material for a modern audience, not robotically preserve the literal past. I hope you feel invited to do the same sorting and applying; what here feels relevant to your personal and clinical life? In this episode, you can hear the group doing this for themselves.

The gem that always shines out to me in the section on counter-transference, which the group discusses first, is Ed’s warning about the urge toward rescue, cure, and professionalism—poisons to the therapeutic relationship. The group also discusses the somewhat esoteric concept of bardo but are quick to point out—as Ed does—all the ways this somewhat science-fictiony concept (to quote Blake Baily) is happening all the time. We are always in-between something, waiting … for a pandemic to end, for better health, for someone else to change. The group discusses how these in-betweens are cyclical opportunities to let go, dig in, wake up.