Unholding – Cultivating Effortless Being

This month marks the completion of the college aspect of my HND in Person-Centred Counselling.

Whilst the course deepened my understanding of counselling theory and therapeutic relationship, I hadn't anticipated how much the process revealed in me personally.

As the course unfolded, deeper layers of myself gradually became more visible. Some felt open and ready to be met. Others seemed to tighten and protect more subtly. I began noticing forms of holding that were not always obvious from the outside: emotional bracing, internal efforting, trying to stay calm, trying to get things right, trying to hold everything together.

Not dramatic tensions. Quiet ones.

At the same time, I continued teaching and practising Qigong and meditation.

What surprised me further was how these practices also began to change.

The teachings my master passed to me remained the same strong foundation I have stood on for many years. Yet something in the way I experienced those teachings softened and deepened. The arts began revealing themselves through what I now call the Layers of Self.

Practices I had taught for years, such as entering a Qigong State of Mind, standing in Wuji, Lifting the Sky, or simply resting in stillness, began showing me not only flow and relaxation, but also the subtle ways we hold ourselves against experience.

I also found myself reflecting on some of the methods I trained in during HypnoCBT, particularly the work of Edmund Jacobson, who pioneered early approaches to releasing held tension through awareness and refinement of muscular holding.

What interested me most was not simply relaxation techniques themselves, but the deeper principle underneath them: that many people live with layers of unnecessary holding they are barely aware of.

Not only in the body, but in identity, emotion, thought, behaviour, and relationship.

The more I explored this personally and professionally, the more connections I began seeing between:

• Person-Centred counselling
• Qigong
• meditation
• nervous system regulation
• Zero Balancing
• awareness practices
• the Layers of Self
• and the subtle difference between forcing change and allowing unnecessary holding to soften naturally

This has gradually become the foundation for a new 8-week exploration called:

Unholding – Cultivating Effortless Being

This is not a course about fixing yourself.

It is not about trying to become endlessly calm, spiritual, positive, or detached from life.

It is an exploration into how we hold tension physically, emotionally, mentally, energetically, and relationally - and what may happen when we begin meeting those holding patterns with greater awareness rather than force.

Throughout the course we will explore:

• movement and stillness
• breath and awareness
• subtle holding patterns
• nervous system regulation
• Qigong and meditation
• relational and emotional holding
• the Layers of Self
• and the difference between “letting go” and what I have recently begun calling “unholding”

Because sometimes “letting go” sounds like another thing we should already be able to do.

Unholding begins more gently.

It begins by noticing what is being held.

Perhaps effortless being is not something we achieve.

Perhaps it is what remains when unnecessary holding softens.