3 Months Down the Road with ILP: Group Practices

After more than a year of ITP (Integral Transformative Practice), the SeattleIntegral ITP group has been alternating between Murphy and Leonard's ITP and Integral Institute's Integral Life Practice (ILP) 3-Body Workout.

Perhaps not exactly what has been described by Wilber as "transcend and include,", where earlier developmental levels have been differentiated from, transcended, and included in our repertoire of practices, but pretty damn close!

We've loved the ITP we've been doing, and a couple of members still prefer it, but everyone in the group pretty much agrees, there's a deeper spiritual presence in the ILP 3-Body Workout than in ITP. It's certainly not that spirit is lacking, or not present (spirit is ever-present), in the ITP, but with the gross, subtle, and causal body movements, and awareness created by the moderators and theme on the ILP DVD, spirit is right up there in your face. I like that my awareness of spirit is brought to full presence in the ILP DVD. It reminds me to be more present when switching off to ITP on alternating meetings.

Let me also say that ILP owes it's very existence to ITP, and we should never lose sight of that.

One small critique of the 3-Body Workout DVD with an eye to the future: the Home Study Kit is just that - a home study kit. There is no group practice as such. Oh, a group can do the Kata (form), but that would only involve the lower right quadrant. The 3-Body Workout is hyper-agentic, or masculine in its approach, and most of us guys would be probably go right along with that, no problem. But for women, or men who recognize the importance of balancing the masculine and feminine, it's just not there. The group process must pay attention to all four quadrants.

And while I-I is working on creating a group process, SeattleIntegral is already doing it. We are developing the community aspects of the 3-Body Workout, and the first element is community dialogical processes that open up our hearts, communication, and a sense of intimacy for our members.

High on my list to bring to the group is Insight Dialogue, co-created by Terri O'Fallon, one of SI's beloved teachers, and member of I-I's Integral Education Committee. I'll write more about Insight Dialogue and how it brings the feminine to ILP in a future blog.