My 10 Week Journey - The Presence Process

Andrew Lee • July 23, 2022

My Deep Dive Into Presence and the Clarity It Brought

-10 MINUTE READ-

Have you heard of The Presence Process?

If not, read on... This is a very powerful healing journey. One of the most powerful I have ever delved into.

The Presence Process is a 10-week self-improvement journey, self-facilitated and guided by the book of the same name written by Michael Brown. It requires, among other things, complete sobriety plus doing breathwork everyday.

You might be skeptical already... How do you expect anyone to commit to such a deep long process simply by reading a book?

Brown founded The Presence Process and originally held retreats, the typical setting for such a practice. He became saddened seeing graduates from his early retreats start holding retreats of their own and making lots of money off it. He wanted to make it more accessible for people who had less time and money, who couldn't experience this powerful journey in a retreat setting. Thus, he decided to write the book.

The book is written in a thoroughly clever way such that, if you have a strong enough motivation to improve yourself, once you start reading you will be convinced to start the 10-week journey. And the journey does deliver results, and from there spreads by word of mouth.

I was introduced to The Presence Process in the course of my training to become a Breathwave facilitator. Breathwave is a modality of breathwork founded by Robin Clements. Completing The Process is a requirement for becoming a facilitator.

Essentials of The Presence Process

The Presence Process consists of four activities: complete sobriety - no alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, psychedelics or other mind-altering substances; breathwork everyday - 15 minutes in the morning, 15 in the evening; conscious responses at any given present moment; and weekly readings.

The first week's conscious response was "This Moment Matters." So my typical day started with a 15 minute breathwork session almost as soon as I woke up. Then throughout my day filled with work, other tasks and typical distractions, whenever I came back to the present, I thought to myself, "This Moment Matters." I would occasionally read some of, and eventually complete, Week One's designated readings. I would conclude the day with a 15 minute breathwork session.

The next week, Week Two's conscious response was "I Recognize My Reflections and Projections," and there were new readings. And so on and so forth. Every week's readings continually built upon and eventually rounded out my knowledge and application of The Process.

Doesn't seem as bad as it first sounds, right?

The central theme of The Process is to activate presence with the breath (creating healing).

It is embarrassingly simple. Almost all spiritual practices centre around presence and breathing. Brown simply provides a structure and practice accessible to laymen for activating more presence over a sustained 10-week period that creates enough transformation and ingrains new habits that will have lasting benefits after the journey is over.

Activating the breath creates present moment awareness. Through present moment awareness we slowly and surely pierce our conscious physical and mental processes and access our deeper subconscious emotional processes. With enough awareness of our subconscious emotional processes we can uncover and deprogram deeply rooted patterns of thought and behavior connected to our childhood experiences.

To Heal or Not to Heal?

Interestingly, Brown avoids using the word 'healing' explaining that he doesn't want to create the idea that we are inherently flawed and need fixing, nor does he want to create expectations around diving into the practices of The Process, which could ultimately get in the way.

This is why I put the parentheses '()' around creating healing. Without this, the quote still stands on its own: to activate presence with the breath.

By now, most of us intuitively understand the power of presence. Brown emphasizes this further by taking away any expectation around healing or improving yourself. By simply being present, you will manifest your reality, and everything you need will come to you. Whether your present experience is positive or negative doesn't matter, it's what you need to experience. If it's negative, this means you ultimately need to be with it in order to learn from it and overcome it. And that's where the healing happens.

My 10-Week Deep Dive

Doing breathwork everyday in the morning and evening was by far the most difficult part of the 10-week journey. Thankfully my schedule wasn't overly busy. Also thanks to having taken two Breathwave retreats this year, and sandwiching my second within the 10-week duration, my breath was already in higher activation. Still... it's a big commitment both in time and energy.

I got off to a slow start, but found my groove in Week 3, really feeling my breath activated. However, by Week 6, it felt less activated and remained this way the rest of the journey. Within this larger wave were smaller waves. The biggest lesson I learned is that the activation of my breath depended on how my day went. If something bad happened to me or I had a negative interaction, my breath would be less activated.

Overall, I feel happy with my commitment and results. By the end of most breathwork sessions I was able to activate subtle body sensations, which anchored me in the present and in my body. I missed less than 10 sessions total for various reasons, which I think isn't bad.

Being sober was overall not that difficult for me, as throughout a typical day I don't intoxicate myself much, not even with coffee. However, it was difficult at times to know that an intoxicant was never available, not even the smallest amount, to take a little edge off. If my mood was off or something was bothering me, I had to sit with it and be present with it.

This is precisely why sobriety and breathwork are so important, so we don't dissociate and run away from difficult emotions. Instead we face these emotions with our unconditional attention. I've done lots of healing work in my life and am in a pretty good place. I can imagine anyone carrying lots of trauma to struggle through this process knowing intoxicants were unavailable.

My ability to make conscious responses started off great, but over the last half of the journey I recalled them less and less, a result of waning commitment over such a long duration. But at least they never stopped.

Finally, the readings were fairly minimal and easy to keep up with. I resonated strongly with The Process and its theories as they aligned with my own cosmology, so I enjoyed reading and integrating his theories. For example, one central value Brown and I both share is integration. I believe this is the most underrated and important aspect of our moment-to-moment experience, and is key to overcoming uncomfortable emotions.

The philosophy of The Process reinforced and added to other philosophies I have dived into such as vipassana, Stan Grof's LSD Psychotherapy, Breathwave, and Internal Family Systems. These emphasize and activate the innate healing power within the Self, and that our present moment experience is shaped by unconscious material from the past, mostly traumas from childhood, that can be accessed in order to be overcome.

Essential Theories of The Presence Process

Here is some more theory to expand on the simplified explanation I gave earlier consisting of mostly quotes from the book itself. I copied and pasted notes while reading from an e-book to create a Coles Notes version of The Presence Process book which is available in this Dropbox link.

Physical, Mental, Emotional

Our present moment experience consists of physical and mental perceptions. These perceptions are based on emotional charges, which were imprinted on us from childhood experiences.

Reflections & Projections

Whenever anything happens that upsets us emotionally, whether it appears as an event or as another person’s behavior, we are experiencing a reflection of our past. Whenever we react physically, mentally, and emotionally to such an experience, we are projecting as a consequence of this reflection.

The core emotional experiences of the past that have an impact on our current experience are by their nature uncomfortable. The first consequence of charged emotion is drama. Drama is reactive projection – whether physical, mental, or emotional – which we use to gain the attention from others.

Sedation & Control

The second consequence of charged emotion is a behavior called “self-medication.” It manifests as sedation and control. Quitting self-medicating behaviors without integrating the associated emotional charge is ineffectual and accomplishes nothing.

Reaction vs. Response

A reaction is unconscious behavior as a result of physical, mental and emotional reflections & projections from our unintegrated emotional past. A response is a conscious choice to distance ourselves from engaging with the “messengers” and instead redirect our focus toward accessing “the messages” they bring.

The Presence Process invites us to respond to our experiences of pain and discomfort by listening to them instead of running from or attacking them. Our choice to respond instead of react gradually neutralizes our unconscious automatic impulse to react.

Cause and Effect

We realize that our unintegrated childhood emotions are the cause we normally can’t perceive of the physical and mental circumstances unfolding as the quality of our adult experience. We don’t impact causality by fiddling with effects.

Present Moment Awareness

Our breath is both an efficient and readily accessible tool for anchoring our attention in the present. In present moment awareness, there are no good or bad emotions. Any discomfort experienced from consciously connected breathing is the consequence of unintegrated past trauma surfacing into our awareness for integration.

The Messenger

Throughout The Presence Process, we call the triggering event that upsets us “the messenger.” We respond instead of reacting to the message by taking our attention off the messenger (the physical event or person’s behavior that is triggering us), stepping away from the story that urges us into reaction (in other words, detaching from the mental event), and placing our attention on how we are feeling as a consequence of the triggered upset (the emotional event).

Integration

The use of reflections (messengers) is the only way to “see” our deeply suppressed past in a way that empowers us to integrate it:

DISMISS THE MESSENGER. The first step is to acknowledge that the person or event setting us up has nothing to do with what’s happening. They are “the messenger"
GET THE MESSAGE. Through wielding felt-perception, encounter the underlying energetic resonance of the emotional reaction
FEEL UNCONDITIONALLY. Instead of externalizing our discomfort by resorting to blame, we trade projection for integration, which we accomplish through unconditional containment

One of the biggest insights we may receive at this point is that it isn’t our adult experience that requires integration, but the unintegrated aspects of our childhood.

Healing

When charged emotion is sufficiently integrated, there’s no longer a foundation for addiction and affliction.

Only when we discover how to nurture ourselves with our own unconditional attention do we develop the capacity for attending to others unconditionally in an authentic way. Only when we are able to be this way with the felt-aspect of our experience are we able to be this way with others and the experiences they are required to go through.

Get Started!

All of the spiritual practices and modern gurus preach presence as the key to improving your life, and ultimately achieving sustained happiness. The Presence Process is probably the deepest dive into activating presence, without having to go to a short retreat. I wholeheartedly advocate for you to try it out. I also completed it together with two colleagues from my Breathwave retreats, checking in with each other every few weeks. I highly recommend finding someone else to do it with, as it increases engagement and accountability.

If not, I highly encourage you to receive breathwork. This is in my opinion the most powerful facilitated therapy available, because it activates our inner healer using our most primal and innate tool - our breath. I wrote several blogs about my Breathwave experience, starting here.

I am extremely thankful to have completed The Presence Process. Forcing myself to be present for so long was a challenge, but one that will have long-term benefits, whether you want to call it healing or not. I feel more in my body, able to sit with my discomfort so that I don't bottle it up, and eventually project it onto other people.

I'm sure more benefits will reveal themselves over time - I'm still integrating my experience.

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The Psychology of Polarization

By Andrew Lee • December 1, 2021

"People shouldn't be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." This phrase from my favourite movie alludes to the fact that the people should be the prevailing force that keeps their government in check. At some point a government becomes too big and starts looking after its own interests, no longer serving the needs of the people it was created for. Governments have long been the dominant organizations of the 20th century. In the 21st century technology corporations are eclipsing governments. Rapidly advancing technology has increased not only the influence of these national and multinational organizations, but their ability to monopolize even more power. When organizations reach a certain size, just like governments, they no longer act to serve the people, but their own interests. T here are plenty of examples of this throughout history. Facebook was recently exposed, when a former employee and whistleblower testified to the US Senate that the company repeatedly faced conflict of interests over profits versus reducing division, and always put profit first. Polarization for Profit How was FB able to do this? Typically if a company was exposed for not serving its customers' best interests, customers would take their business elsewhere. But with social media, there is almost nowhere else to go. FB has cornered the market, and intentionally bought or squashed competitors to cement its dominance in the space. Undermining free market principles has allowed FB to serve its own interests over the interests of its customers. They are maximizing their profit by allowing dishonest science to go viral, and allowing divide and conquer to occur. Facebook isn't the only big tech company guilty of this activity. Google, Microsoft and Apple have been sued for antitrust actions . And big tech isn't the only corporate sector valuing profit over people. Nearly all the largest corporations are guilty of some sort of fraudulent behavior, whether it's big oil, big pharma, big agriculture or big food. Governments are not only complicit in allowing corporate abuse to occur, they are often hand-in-hand with corporations and mainstream media. I've seen this first-hand with my experience at the Fairy Creek Blockade , the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, preventing old growth logging on Vancouver Island. On the ground at Fairy Creek I've witnessed a coming together of some of the most beautiful and inspiring humans, passionately protecting the environment against corrupt political leader Premier Horgan, who went back on his word to stop old growth logging. In the news, however, there's little to no coverage of the events, and what coverage there is, is highly skewed against the protesters. It was here where my direct experience caused me to lose faith in mainstream media, and to see how they are under the sway of existing power structures. To see how they would take certain photos or video snippets and portray them in a different light, to make protesters appear irresponsible or incompetent. Or to portray the Premier's words and actions as if he was resolving the issue, when in reality he was deceiving the public. The Psychology of Polarization So why, on a psychological level, is polarization catalyzed by social media? It's quite simple really. Technology has eroded the quality of communication between people. There is a richness to face-to-face communication that cannot be conveyed. Studies have shown that 90% of communication is nonverbal (body language and voice tone), meaning only 10% of communication is through words alone. Words alone are such a poor quality of communication that they do not properly express the author's full meaning, and are too easily misinterpreted by the reader due to their own biases. This is especially true with words on a screen, transmitted through instant messages or social media posts. And yet it has become the most dominant form of communication due to its convenience. How many times did you misinterpret a text or a social media post, and respond with a critical comment? How often did this needlessly escalate into a full blown conflict? It happened quite a bit in the past with me, and I eventually learned to resolve disagreements with a phone call or meeting face-to-face. Unfortunately, too many people rely on texting because they have gotten too used to it and have lost their ability and initiative to resolve conflicts in person. Humans are still wired for face-to-face communication, and this is particularly necessary when resolving conflicts. Today, we are creating conflicts through texting and comments on social media posts. This is a recipe for disaster, a vicious cycle of misinterpretation where one comment blows up into massive conflicts. And, as mentioned in the previous section, Facebook is aware that this is happening on their platform, and instead of working to resolve it, they are exacerbating the problem. But the sole goal, the very existence of a corporation, is profit. Any non-financial consequence is a mere externality. Bridging the Communication Gap Seeing the bigger picture isn't easy. It takes a trauma-informed understanding of how the world got this way, in order to move forward with nonviolent solutions that bring people together, not further apart. The majority of people are living in fear. Their nervous systems are constantly in hypervigilance, meaning they are on edge, ready to engage in fight or flight. Showing them disagreeable information will only trigger their fight or flight, and potentially start a vicious cycle of arguing. People living in this way carry a narrowed perspective, focusing only on survival, and are thus unable to see the bigger picture. In order to engage with people on the other side of the coin, social media is not the answer because its low quality medium of communication creates further division. What's needed is the exact opposite . The one antidote in a time of such extreme polarization and division is face-to-face conversations with those we disagree with. This is also exactly what is being discouraged by the pandemic. Mask mandates have undermined our ability to see and read facial gestures. Closures of small businesses and gathering places have prevented the opportunities for holding the gatherings and face-to-face conversations needed to bridge this gap. It is critical to be able to spend time with people we don't know in order to break down each other's walls, and eventually feel safe sharing information without feeling antagonized. The Way Forward More and more people out there are realizing deep down that not all is as it seems. If I have a plea to you, it is, against all odds, to take the courageous step to gather with people and have face-to-face conversations again. If you can do this with people you already feel safe with and who share your views, then do this with people who you don't agree with. Start by smiling at strangers outdoors. Engage in friendly conversation. Unmasked people have been framed as antagonists. If you are brave enough to go into indoor businesses without masks, smiling at people completely disarms their hypervigilance. This is exactly what I have been doing, and the vast majority of my interactions have been positive or innocuous. I've had people smile back at me and acknowledge my bravery, and others follow my lead and take off their mask. Unmasked and smiling, you are a shining light, a warrior. You are an inspiration to others who sense something is wrong but are too afraid to act out against the narrative. Even if you have confrontations, smiling and holding your head high, proves to the confronters that you are a compassionate individual. Not only are you disarming the narrative, but you are disarming nervous systems. I certainly have had a few business owners ask me to put on a mask or leave, and obliged their concerns with a smile. If conflicts occur through your social media platforms, engage directly with others through phone calls or voice messages. This has been my most effective tool for deescalating conflicts. However, I choose phone calls and voice messages over texting more and more often these days in general, because my friends and I value the richness of expressing in voice and hearing each other's voices. Polarization is one of the greatest invisible threats to society, preventing people from uniting in action against tangible and urgent threats. It is up to all of us individually to overcome these barriers, through gathering and having face-to-face conversations again, with those we do and do not share views with.

Leading the Great (FB) Boycott

By Andrew Lee • November 30, 2021

At the beginning of 2021 I declared that I would get off Facebook by the end of the year, in my blog here . I am now one month away and fully ready to honour my declaration. I am prepared for this eventuality, as I have had practice at being without social media. Throughout the past several years I had many social media detoxes, ranging from one to six months. There were several reasons for them, but they all connect and overlap - to reset myself, wean my addiction, and to learn how to live in the present moment and focus on face-to-face connection. These detoxes have always been very powerful. I feel like I'm stepping out of a haze, able to see more clearly. And stunned how I became so embedded in such a hazy reality, only able to notice once I stepped away from it. When I rediscover such level of presence I wonder to myself whether I could possibly fully wean myself off of social media technology, and maintain this state more fully. I know people that don't own either laptops or cellphones, or both, and they are the most present and pleasant to be around. A Blessing and a Curse Technology really is a tremendous blessing and curse. When you adopt new technologies you, in a way, are signing a deal with the devil. You unlock unbelievable powers of productivity, but become entrapped in a system chronically maladaptive to human health, and a vicious cycle predicated on ever growing demands on said productivity. Perfection and efficiency become mirages perpetually beyond grasp. In recent years more of social media technology's curses than blessings have come to light for me. The first light shed on such curses was through articles about how big tech has gotten too big. All of the major tech companies have been subject to major lawsuits for antitrust activities, unfairly squashing competition and maintaining a stranglehold on market dominance, as elucidated in my blog at the beginning of the year, linked at the top of this blog. This issue is not isolated to tech companies, but is present across all major industrial sectors such as big oil, food, pharma and natural resources, such as logging, which I experienced firsthand at Fairy Creek . The corruption of not only major corporations, but any large organization including governments, is a reflection of humans' inability to handle power over others, which I wrote about in this blog . We cannot run from this realization anymore. Large power structures preside over and dominate almost every aspect of our lives. The first step is to become aware of this. To realize with real eyes. The next step is to take action - to reduce our dependence on these large power structures. Profit Over Peace The further we isolate behind screens and depend on robotic algorithms to determine our social interactions, the more we hunker into our siloes and lose our capacity to communicate face-to-face and resolve conflict with each other, plunging us into loneliness and depression. This ever growing divide and epidemic of mental health is intentionally exacerbated by FB, as recently exposed by a whistleblower . FB incorporates algorithms that enable posts to go viral, which don't exclude posts with extreme hate or intentionally misleading propaganda. In fact, such posts tend to go viral and are catalyzed by these algorithms. This has become apparent during the pandemic, the most divisive time in human history. FB, with its market dominance, can influence the fate of such global issues. So what does it do? It worsens these issues in the name of profit! In a time where division is at an all time high, and our ability to resolve conflict through face-to-face communication has been eroded by social media, exacerbated by big tech, it is time to wean our dependency, walk away from big tech and find alternative community-oriented solutions. It is more important than ever, against mounting odds, to meet face-to-face with people of diverse walks of life, and who hold both shared and conflicting views. Holding physical space for each other is what's needed to overcome our differences. I wrote more deeply about this division by social media in a recent blog . It is time for me to walk the talk, lead by example, and leave FB for good. Follow Your Intuition My intuition is telling me that it is time to leave FB. Intuition is that whisper in your gut, that gut feeling. It gets drowned out by excess stimulation, as well as the voice of the ego, coming from the head. Furthermore, tapping into your intuition requires being in a state of deep presence, achieved through being in unstimulating environments and connecting with nature. When you tap into your intuition, you attract synchronicities, coincidences that are not coincidences. These synchronicities can lead to beautiful connections and abundance you could never have expected or called in through logic and hard work alone. I know because since embracing my intuition, my life has been a series of neverending synchronicities that has brought unprecedented transformation and happiness. I have since realized that there is a disconnect between synchronicities and technology. Technology, particularly social media, takes you out of presence, thereby silencing your intuition. People my age and younger, growing up with videogames and social media, never get a chance to disconnect from technology and discover they have an intuition, let alone can attract synchronicities. This is perhaps the most exciting thing about permanently disconnecting from FB - to take my synchronicities to another level. While FB did connect me with a lot of opportunities, I have faith in my ability to manifest a new reality without it. Besides, intuition and synchronicity have already manifested beautiful community that takes care of me and brings me countless opportunities. Neglecting these powers would be doing a disservice to myself. Take It Or Leave It I leave you with lessons from the beautiful book, Ishmael . Ishmael is an ape who gains the ability to communicate telepathically with humans, and offers an intelligent third party perspective of human history and current day society. He categorizes society into takers , those who colonize other humans and destroy the environment, and leavers , those who leave mainstream society to create a sustainable society of their own. Ishmael espouses how society's power structures depend on its people's dependence on them to maintain their power. Instead of fighting them, he suggests simply leaving society behind. If enough people did this, these power structures would lose the legs they stand on.