Organic Intelligence®
Follow your nervous system’s natural movement toward wholeness and integration.
Organic Intelligence® is a process of gently following your system's naturally arising resources—thoughts, images, sensations, feelings, and unconscious movements—inside a free-association conversation. The role of the practitioner is to highlight your organic, self-organizing impulses while supporting an orientation to the present moment. Developed by Steve Hoskinson, a clinical psychologist and Somatic Experiencing trainer for over 20 years, OI sees life's challenges and gifts within a complex systems framework. Being well oriented in the here and now supports us to be well oriented on our life path—moving and being moved in meaningful and enlivening directions.
More about an OI session
In an OI session—which can happen in person or online—we move away from a focus on “what’s wrong.” Away from working “with” trauma, “with” anxiety, “with” chronic fatigue or IBS or overwhelm. Instead, we focus on specifically reinforcing the biology’s super-subtle (at first) signals of healing and growth. Because this is how our biology works.
Origins of OI
Organic Intelligence was developed by Steve Hoskinson which integrates the best of complexity science, systems theory, biopsychology, positive psychology, somatics, mindfulness, the work of Milton Erickson, Carl Jung, polyvagal theory, aikido, deep ecology, play, and the fractal nature of body & mind.
Organic Intelligence approaches trauma as “unintegrated resource”.
In Steve’s podcast, The End of Trauma, he lays out that our problem is our focus on the problem, and our addiction to the “What’s Wrong Attention”.
"Attention tends to potentiate the process it goes toward.” -Steve Hoskinson
Shifting our attention to the present moment, mapping our environment with our senses, re-orients us in our lives. This is the opposite of disorientation.
And not only do we become re-oriented in this particular moment and phase in our lives, but we get to the heart of why we are here and receive support for forward movement on our life path.
When the underlying biology and internal rhythms become more harmonious and find their organic occillation (expansion/ contraction, exceleration/ deceleration, activation/ deactivation…), a natural expansion of capacity occurs.
“OI practitioners learn to see the ‘organic intensity thresholds’ which the nervous system is attempting to reach — not too much, not too little is the key! It’s a biological intention to reach those thresholds, similar to a thermostat — reach exactly that threshold, and the system learns how to process a new level of intensity….the system learns how to learn to reach future and greater thresholds more automatically. In this way we actually catalyze a self-organizational impulse which drives our biology — and this creates natural resilience.”
-Steve Hoskinson, OI Tenant #3, What is Resilience?
In addition to integrating Organic Intelligence in to my private practice and work with groups, I am a mentor for OI Trauma Safe™ programs.
Some client experiences:
“Organic Intelligence is powerful yet gentle, refined yet simple... I feel blessed to have stumbled upon it, as it's been a missing link within my own healing process and the work I do. Recently, I have really needed the support of OI sessions, and reached out to Tiffany for this. This work requires such attuned attention, and Tiffany is able to facilitate the process skillfully. She holds a very kind and non-judgmental attention throughout the process. I have appreciated how she artistically can guide and weave certain threads that unfold in the session. I highly recommend both the work of OI and Tiffany as a practitioner”- Teja
“Such a pleasure. So lovely how it all seemed like so little to do, but then afterwards a feeling that so much had happened, that is still rippling around.” - Meghan Reedy, Program Coordinator at the Maine Humanities Council
“Organic Intelligence Sessions with Tiffany have been a very fascinating process filled with experiences of joy and curiosity. Tiffany has this incredible ability to create a safe and warm atmosphere that opens up space to share anything. By exploring compassionately, witnessing and mirroring back what is present in the moment Tiffany has lead me to a greater sense of wholeness and acceptance by weaving in and differentiating much more layers of sensing, imaging, meaning and feeling into my felt experience.
It’s like no state no emotion has just one solid quality and by exploring all it`s different nuances it breaks apart and opens up to moving into something new.
Working with Tiffany feels like a huge gift and has touched and enriched many areas of my being.
The most profound shift that I can put into words is this newly discovered intelligence of my own system, the rhythmic nature of it’s life and with this embodied knowledge came a sense of ease, trust and purpose that I could not be more grateful for.
These are two quotes I stumbled across and thought of our Sessions:
If we surrendered
to earth`s intelligence
we could rise up rooted,
like trees. -Rainer Maria Rilke
“Of what is the body made? It is made of emptiness and rhythm. At the heart of the world there is no solidity, there is only dance...” - George Leonard
-Katharina Jänicke, Germany”
All the images on this page are with quotes from Steve Hoskinson. Learn more at www.getoi.org