The Viewing Session

As was stated in JOM Article 1 "A Safe Space", in order to be successful, viewing requires a proper environment. Therefore, before starting a session, the facilitator ensures that all the requisites for a session are present. He ensures that the space is safe, private, quiet, a comfortable temperature, and comfortably lighted. The space need not be exquisite or magnificent, but it should be pleasant -- not messy or smelly, nor overly distracting. The viewer should have a comfortable chair (so should the facilitator). The door should, of course, be closed, preferably with a very noticeable sign on it stating that a session is in progress and no one is to disturb it. Any distracting external noise must be dealt with before starting the session.

The facilitator also ensures that the time is safe. He makes sure that the viewer is not pressed for time, that suitable precautions have been taken against any need to interrupt the session for any reason. For instance, the facilitator ensures that he has all necessary materials (paper, pens, dictionaries, etc.) ready to hand, so he won't have to interrupt the session to get anything. He also goes into the session with a written agenda for that session so that he does not lose track in the session of what he intended to do with the viewer and start trying various procedures more or less at random. He also makes sure the viewer doesn't have anything he absolutely must do instead of having a session. For instance, if the viewer actually should be picking up his wife at the train station in half an hour, then the session shouldn't be started, unless the facilitator is certain that it will be so short as to not pose a time problem. An elementary precaution is to make sure the viewer isn't going to have to use the toilet before the session has progressed very far.

Before the session, the facilitator otherwise ensures that the viewer is in proper physical shape for the session: that he is not hungry or tired or under the influence of mind-affecting drugs (including aspirin and alcohol). Drugs, tiredness, and hunger tend to lower a person's awareness, and a lowered awareness is counter-productive in a viewing session. Sometimes a person must delay viewing for periods from a day to two or three weeks, until the effects of drugs or medication have fully worn off. The precise amount of time one must wait is a matter of judgment, but in any case would probably be around 24 hours for alcohol or aspirin and longer for drugs with longer-lasting or more potent effects. It may be necessary to make some kind of arbitrary policy about the wait required for different kinds of drugs. To make sure the viewer isn't tired or hungry, the facilitator may have to get him to take a nap if he is tired or eat something, if he is hungry, before starting a session.

Finally, the facilitator ensures that the viewer is really willing to do viewing at this time, in this space, and with him. Any reluctance on the part of the viewer is an indication that the session shouldn't be started until it has been fully communicated about and handled. Some viewers don't get along with some facilitators, and it is better to know about a mismatch early on, before addressing sensitive material with someone whom the viewer does not find congenial.

When all the above requisites to a session are present, the facilitator actually starts the session by giving a definite and precise statement, such as, "Start of Session," or "We are starting now," or something of the sort. This is rather like the phrase "Play ball!" in a baseball game. From the time those words are uttered, all parties understand that the normal rules of social communication and interaction are suspended for the duration of the session, and nothing will be said or done by the facilitator that is not directly relevant to facilitating the process of viewing. By having a definite start of session (SOS), the facilitator also implicitly agrees that anything the viewer says thereafter will be held in strictest confidence and not commented on, evaluated, or invalidated by the facilitator, during the session or ever. As far as the facilitator is concerned, things said in a formal session were never said and will never be used for any purpose except to facilitate the viewing process, in this session or in a future session.

After giving the SOS, before the facilitator launches into his program for the session, he checks to see if the viewer has his attention on anything in particular that, if not addressed, will inhibit the viewer's ability to concentrate on the material to be addressed in the agenda. We call such blocks to attention "disturbances":

Cumbrances are areas on which the viewer has his attention relatively fixed that are not the major issues to be addressed in the session but that need to be handled sufficiently to get the viewer's attention off of them so that his attention can be placed on the session agenda.

If the facilitator simply overrides such disturbances, then the viewer is likely to become upset, either immediately or within a few minutes, because of the unhandled charge contained in these disturbances. Normally, in a session, the viewer selectively addresses certain charged materials, but he has enough awareness to be fully aware of them and thus to complete receptive processes. In other words, he handles the charge in the restimulated material, instead of restimulating it. When, because he has his attention fixed on something else, he doesn't have enough free awareness to confront and handle the charge, the viewer will simply become overwhelmed, and so will either dramatize by acting upset or feel uncomfortable emotions or sensations or both, while the session itself becomes another traumatic incident that will have to be handled later. So the disturbances must be checked for and handled first.

The most common forms of disturbances found at the start of a session are those:

Upsets
Problems
Misdeeds and
Secrets

on which the viewer presently has his attention fixed to such a degree that it is difficult or impossible for him to concentrate on something else, particularly a charged topic. Obviously, any one of the above disturbances can be quite distracting. If the viewer's Significant Other has just told him he is a louse, it is hard to get much done on an agenda designed to handle problems with his boss or childhood traumas. If the viewer is preoccupied with worries about a recent exam he has taken, if he has just done something he feels very guilty about, or if he is beginning to suspect that his wife knows about an affair he is having, that will also make it impossible for him to address any other subject, until the disturbance has been addressed sufficiently to release the viewer's attention from it.

So the first step of any session is to check for disturbances and to handle any that are found. The idea is not necessarily to resolve these disturbances for all time -- they may be quite deep rooted. The idea is simply to reduce the amount of emotional charge on these disturbances enough to allow the viewer to concentrate on the main topic at hand. Usually the action of handling disturbances is quite brief. When all disturbances are handled, the viewer is there, in the session, without distractions, and is ready to begin the agenda of the session. When all agenda items are completed or when a suitable stopping point has been reached (generally between major actions), the facilitator asks the viewer whether there is anything he wants to ask or say before formally ending the session. This question gives the viewer a chance to comment on the session or, if anything is left incomplete, for the viewer to point out that it is incomplete so that he can complete it before ending the session or so that it can be added to the agenda for the next session.

The facilitator then ends the session with a definite, precise statement, such as "End of session," or "That's all for this session." The practice of having a definite, formal end of session (EOS), like the practice of having a definite and formal SOS, has a real and significant purpose: it helps keep the viewer from continuing to mull over the material of the session. When a person has completed something, it is better for him to turn his attention to something else instead of keeping his attention fixed on what he has just completed. After a session, it is better for a viewer to do something else, rather than to continue to attend to the material covered in the session. It is possible, otherwise, for him to restimulate related material that has not been handled in the session and thus to remain stuck in a restimulated state until his next session. A precise ending also serves to reinforce the idea that a viewing session is an island of calm and safety in an ocean of busy life.

Frank A Gerbode, M.D.
Director, IRM

Entire page contents copyright (c)2005 AMI/TIRA, a non-profit 501(c)3 corporation.
To contact us write to info@tir.org for fastest response.
Phone: +1 800 499 2751 (Toll-free USA/Canada) or +1 734 761 6268 (elsewhere)