YEAR OF INQUIRY | MONTH 3 THE MONTH OF Θαῦμα

What happens before we know?

As I continue my Year of Inquiry into Healing, I arrive at September, my third month, with the Greek word θαῦμα, thauma (pronounced thavma)

θαῦμα carries a sense of wonder, marvel and astonishment. For me it is that moment when something interrupts the way I have been seeing or sensing and it catches me out. I don't quite know what it is yet, but something in me wants to move a little closer.

The Greeks have been thinking about this for a very long time. Aristotle wrote of thauma as the beginning of philosophy. We meet something we don't understand and it draws us toward inquiry. 

And of course I find myself bringing this into the therapy room.

Over the years we learn so much. Theories, frameworks, nervous system maps, attachment, trauma responses, diagnosis, different therapeutic approaches. With experience we begin to recognise things more quickly. We hear something, notice a movement in the body or a change in the eyes, and our knowledge comes forward. Of course it does. We need what we know.

But I keep coming back to the pause between recognising something and deciding that I think I know what it is.

Because the person sitting in front of me has never existed before. This person. This body. This history. This culture. These relationships. These particular ways of surviving, loving, protecting and becoming. There has never been another one of them.

When I really let that pause in, it changes something for me.

Even with a client I may have been sitting with for months or years, something new arrives each time. A silence is different. A movement comes. Something is remembered. Something has shifted since we last met. Sometimes neither of us knows what it is yet.

And this is the place I am interested in. What happens in me as the therapist when I pause not only at time of not knowing but even at times of when I think I do know. 

To stay a little longer in that pause, with the unfolding human being in front of me, and allow the uncertainty to be here too.

Can I do that all the time? No. I try. And I alo notice what happens in me when I can't.

And when I have thoughts that come. Am I doing enough? Am I being enough? What should I be doing here? I know those thoughts too. Rather than pushing them away, I can notice them and let them become part of what is here.

And somewhere in this place of the weird and wonderful pause, something begins that I could not have planned. Something shifts or emerges and I find myself witnessing an unfolding I have not seen before.

Perhaps this is part of what keeps drawing me back to expressive arts and brainbody based therapies. There is room for something to happen that neither person planned. A hand begins to move across a page. A colour appears. The eyes find a particular place in the visual field and something in the body shifts. An image comes. A sensation becomes movement. A mark that seemed accidental becomes the thing that holds our attention.

And we stay with it. What is this?

Sometimes there are no words yet. There is simply an experience unfolding and our willingness to stay close enough to notice it. Maybe thauma lives somewhere around here, in the pause while something is still becoming, before we have made it into something we can know.

The more I sit with Θαῦμα, the more I notice this outside the therapy room too. How easily the familiar disappears from our seeing. The tree I pass every morning. The face of someone I have loved for years. My own hands. The sound of rain. The way the afternoon light enters a room. Even myself.

My first month of this inquiry began with Τὸ Ὄν, Being, and then came Παρόν, Presence. Now I arrive at Θαῦμα. I didn't plan for these words to speak to one another in this way, but they seem to be doing that.

Being  - invited me to encounter what is here. Presence  - invited me to stay with it. And now Θαῦμα seems to be asking me to remain open to what I have not yet seen.

So this is the question I want to carry with me through September, into my work, my relationships, my art and my own unfolding:

Can I make more space for the pause before I know?

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ABOUT A YEAR OF INQUIRY

Over the coming year, I will be spending time with twelve Greek inspired inquiries and the questions they invite. Some of these words are ancient. Others have travelled through philosophy, poetry, mythology, and everyday life. Each carries a way of seeing, a way of relating, and a way of accompanying us in our exploration of what it means to be human.

Rather than moving quickly from one idea to the next, I will be living with one inquiry each month. Listening to it. Exploring its history. And following the questions it awakens. What is this Inquiry About? What is Healing?

The inquiry will follow me in my work, my relationships, my conversations, and my own unfolding. Follow me (here and on Instagram) through this year long journey and be part of the Inquiry too @nouladiamantopoulos.