My journey to become a Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) Organizer began at an assistant’s meeting. Our dear faculty member, Linda Stelte, offered the idea as a possibility: “You could organize the training in your country.”
I thought: “…but I am a doctor… not an organizer… I don’t know anything about organizing, creating a business plan, making economic decisions, accounting, marketing… I have never used social media, and social relationships and diplomacy are not really part of my skill toolkit…” To put myself into a situation where I would need to make hundreds of decisions and respond to thousands of messages seemed like climbing the Himalayas, not impossible, yet who would bother? And why?
Not being attracted to the extremely lonely, cold, harsh, and windy environment at the top of the high mountains, I dodged the proposition with a gentle smile and responded: “I could.” A few days later, while taking a walk with my dog Taiki, I realized that if “given the right conditions the renegotiation of trauma is possible” (one of the core concepts of the SE™ theory), then becoming an SE™ Organizer would be a perfect opportunity to create the “right conditions” in a group setting to help facilitate the renegotiation of trauma for 70 people at once. It would also help facilitate the learning of the SE™ technique, enabling them to multiply and spread the possibility of trauma renegotiation throughout our country for past, present, and future generations. Having regarded community healing as the highest healing art, and having tirelessly traveled the world in search of medicines that could soothe wounds caused by war and violence, I started getting enthusiastic about the idea.
Quickly, the “I could” turned into: “I could!” I could learn the organizer’s skills with time. I could ask for help and support from others with better organizing skills than I. I could pair up with Colombia’s astonishing natural resources to support me and all the people involved in the training. I could keep being a doctor from a different perspective, a perspective that made the cells in my body dance with excitement and hope as I remembered the XI verse of Lao Tzu’s Dao De Jing:
“We join thirty spokes
to the hub of a wheel,
yet it’s the center hole
that drives the chariot.
We shape clay
to birth a vessel,
yet it’s the hollow within
that makes it useful.
We chisel doors and windows
to construct a room,
yet it’s the inner space
that makes it livable.
Thus do we
create what is
to use what is not.”
About six months after the exchange with Linda, I became an SE™ Organizer alongside my dearest sister, Maria Francisca, who accepted to co-organize. Shortly after, we launched Colombia’s first generation of SE™ students. We now have two generations studying. Support has shown up in all sorts of shapes: dear and known people, complete strangers, staff, assistants, faculty, students, friends, organizers, peers, elders, youngsters. As I focused my energy on tending to the Colombian SE™ community’s seed so it would sprout and start growing, I felt the larger SE™ international community embracing and supporting us. Humans from about fifteen different nationalities have offered their help; we could name at least thirty co-parents of this project.
For forty-two years, I thought I knew the meaning of community. It was actually only a thought and a meaning; I had no idea in my body how community felt. Today, I can access through my body the somatic experience of community.
The experience as an SE™ Organizer has taught me, and keeps teaching me, how much I need to keep learning to become an integral human being and how much that endeavor is worth. The challenges have not been few and have not been light. The learning has been immeasurable. Reading the hopes, dreams, and beliefs that the students share in their letters of intention when they apply for the program; looking into their eyes as they sit in silence in the classroom; witnessing how their lives change month by month, year by year—how they empower themselves as new sparkles of hope light up their bodies; hearing their stories of success with their own communities, their struggles, and growing edges, I can’t imagine anything more magical and more inspiring.
The amount of war and violence that my generation in Colombia has been exposed to feels like a bottomless abyss. It is simply too much, too fast, too soon. For decades, I have held the deep doubt of whether I could contribute to the healing of my country without getting killed. Since I wasn’t sure about the answer, I left for other countries and kept changing careers and jobs.
When the first SE™ module in Colombia finished, I was the last one to leave the classroom. I walked to my car and had an impulse to look back one more time. I did. A small rainbow shone against the mountain behind the classroom. That day, I felt in my body that there is nothing else I would rather be doing than what I am doing at this moment. The bottomless abyss in my heart now has a counterpart of endless gratitude.
Written by:
Dr. Laura Botero
SEI Organizer, Colombia