The g.r.a.c.e. sequence

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For those of you who like background and details, this section gives you a run-through in a little more depth about where this comes from, how it works, and why you might want to try it once if not daily.  You can jump to the simple version here if you’d like to just jump in.

A bit about me and how this got started:  As you may have read already in the About Section, I’m an integrative clinical psychologist who’s worked with clients in private practice for about 15 years and other settings well longer.  My focus has always been one that mixes neurological and psychological theory with what ancient wisdom traditions know about the body, breath, and spirit.  Combining perspectives, even radically different ones, has been an M.O. for a long time:  In college, I double-majored in college Psychology and Religious Studies; I have a doctorate in Clinical Psychology but am also certified as a Practitioner of Medical Qigong; I’ve practiced Taoist traditions like Tai Chi for 20 years, practiced Transcendental Meditation for 30, and so on.  I see us as complicated and layered, and I study as many of those layers as I can because they inform each other so beautifully.  This philosophy is nothing I need others to adopt, but it does seem to be an inherent part of how I think about what it is to be alive.  So when I work with clients, these many influences come together in unusual ways that I believe help our work go better and faster than it might otherwise.  

Nearly 15 years ago when a client announced he had to move, he asked, rather imploringly, if I would create something of a “to-go box” for the unusual work we did so that he might continue to work on himself.  Honestly, I laughed.  But he wasn’t kidding.  So I shared the only thing that came after meditation, and to my surprise more than his, it really helped.  He wrote me for years from the midwest with thanks and stories of how he’d used it successfully to work with things alone that many therapists would be nervous to tackle.

I practiced it myself and taught it to some individuals for some time afterward, but always with the assumption that it ran a distant second to what I could offer in person.  After all, it's really simple and self-directed, to boot.  But that notion changed in 2014 when a longtime client who had dutifully worked in every way I suggested — experiential work, EMDR, group therapy, couples therapy, a Brain State series, and more — was finally able to clear a trauma that had not budged (despite all our other progress) in four years.  It had taken less than two weeks.  And this certainly got my attention!

NAMES, names, names.  For years, this quiet little practice went unnamed.  Actually, it was named all sorts of things by the folks who encountered it, from “Dodge’s Three Breath Technique” to “That Joining Thing.”  “Pocket Dodge” was a nickname started by one of my hilarious clients, named so because it captures so much of how we worked together in a nutshell.  What’s emerged since has been the name The G.R.A.C.E. Sequence, an acronym named for its component parts.  It’s been taught under that moniker at the One River Wisdom School, the Nashville Psychotherapy Institute, St. Augustine’s Cathedral, for the Adult Chair podcast, in ongoing seminars, and elsewhere.  I am consistently surprised by the level of interest and impact, even in large groups.  

As I’ll describe briefly below, there’s real theory that’s developed around that name.  The acronym describes a sequence of areas to attend to that inform not only this breath practice but also a way to work as a healer or therapist or a broader approach to most anything.  I’ll tell you about that larger use at some point.

The GRACE Sequence is an acronym for Gather, Reach (to touch), Allow, Connect, and Elevate palms with Eye-movement.  The letters spell out how one can direct his or her attention (or someone else’s) to join with rather than try to “fix” or defeat their internal experience.  From there, the actions we take to change our outer experience — our circumstances — tend to be far wiser and more effective.

Why joining our experience so important?  Here’s my take, in one paragraph:  Our suffering lies not in our experience but in our resistance to it:  It’s in our holding our breath that our bodies most hurt emotionally; it’s in our judging and fighting our feelings that they grow; it’s in making those feelings into ‘problems' that we create terrifying stories about our surroundings; and it’s in behavioral avoidance of those feelings and stories, not the feelings themselves, that we tend to make messes of our lives.  In effect, We either have our feelings or they have us, as one great mentor used to put it.  So finding a manageable way to have those feelings — to stay in our bodies rather than act out our suffering — can both deepen and soothe what’s happening inside at the same time. This allows us to transform both the feeling and the one who is having it.

Fine, BUT WHAT IS IT?  To Gather, Reach, Allow, Connect, and Elevate palms with Eye Movement, we’re essentially doing this:  

  • gathering up awareness of our thoughts and feelings as they are in this moment;

  • physically touching to acknowledge how they reside in the body;

  • simply allowing ourselves to have that experience for at least a full breath;

  • inviting our own personal sense of universal, sacred, or divine consciousness to be with us; and

  • giving that experience back to the sacred while moving our eyes back and forth between our palms.

Here’s part of why I had underestimated the value of this process, even after seeing it work.  These elements might all be thought of as “off-the-shelf parts”.  There’s nothing new here, really, nor anything complicated, though it can take a little practice (especially to assist another).  And if you were to trace any of them back a little ways, you’d find none of these elements were original in those forms either.  But the collection of them in this structure is quite unusual, and the benefits in my experience are just remarkable.

Attached just below you’ll find a one-page summary that names the steps when split into their five elements.  Please feel free to download this and use it as a guide for this work.  (Please also know that as simple as it is, it represents the work of much of my career, I’d ask you to use it and share it but not to plagiarize it.  Thank you.)