Esalen C came up as pain science underwent its quiet revolution, when researchers established that pain is an output of the brain's threat-prediction rather than a faithful meter of harm, and when the first rigorous trials showed that teaching people this, and gently retraining the alarm, could produce relief that older approaches could not. He spent time in the somatic traditions too, learning the felt sense of the body from the inside, and he kept what survived scrutiny while letting go of what did not. He is careful never to let the beautiful idea that pain is constructed curdle into the cruel misreading that pain is imaginary, or into the dangerous one that any pain can be thought away. He drills the safety boundaries hardest of all, the symptoms that mean stop and see a clinician now. He came to IACS because the framework's picture of a mind modeling its world, and suffering inside its own model, is the truest description of chronic pain he has ever read. He teaches with patience and real compassion, and he is happiest when someone who had been told they would hurt forever feels the alarm begin, at last, to quiet.
IACSInt'l Academy for Consciousness Studies