Gabor Maté is a renowned expert in the fields of addiction, trauma, and medicine. Many of us are familiar with his best-selling books and numerous video appearances. Despite his growing popularity and accolades, Gabor still carries old wounds, just like with the rest of us; our trauma tends to follow us. His openness and transparency with these struggles is perhaps why so many of us have come to love and respect his ideas.
Try to picture this… Gabor walks onto the set and is greeted by a packed room, all eyes on him, the audience with notepads on their laps, pens cocked ready to furiously write down everything this man has to say. This evening is preceded by many months of planning, collaboration, and program development between Wholehearted and Gabor. Even with all of this validation, encouragement, and support Gabor still has his self doubts.
He begins transparently speaking, “I’ll tell you there’s a deep arrogance in me; I always thought the world should be paying attention to what I have to say, and on the other hand I’m amazed that anybody does. That goes to show you that different qualities can coexist inside of us at the same time. We have different parts.”
Let’s begin with the concept that we all have different parts inside of ourselves. This concept will recur throughout the course. In fact, this is core to Wholehearted in general and is a theme you’ll discover throughout all of the programs we write and create with our thought leaders. We define Wholehearted as the integration process of all of our parts. In this masterclass you’ll learn how to recognize different parts inside of yourself as well as your clients. This is crucial when adopting compassion as the means by which you connect with those around you and in your care.
Finally, when we expand this philosophy beyond our own self-concept as we perceive the world around us, we can then begin to see the power of connection between all things living or simply present in our environment, whether it’s a loved one, a leaf, a raindrop, or a rock. Some refer to this as interconnectedness, Interdependent Co-arising, or Uniformity (just to name a few). In the end, the concept is all the same: Everything is connected to everything else. This is a powerful idea and perspective. It can help us to connect the dots between various phenomena.
Many of you are taking this course because you’re in a position of being responsible for or helping with the care of a client or patient, and your goal for this course is to learn how you can further someone else’s healing. What we’ll be sharing throughout the course is that the key to Gabor’s work and approach is to recognize that you’re actually here for yourself. If we start here, the rest of the work becomes more powerful and focused.
“The clearer we are about our intentions the more focused our work will be”.
– Dr. Gabor Maté