What do you notice that you don't notice?

I have spent the past few days with Dave Dobson going back in time to Friday Harbor, May 1988. I'm sitting with John Morgan, Jerry Stocking, Doug O'Brien and others listening to Dave's Funshop Experience. I started off just jotting down notes but soon turned to my computer and have been transcribing. I'm on Tape # 6 out of 20.

If you ask me WHY I feel compelled to do this, I couldn't tell you. Just as I could give no clear reason WHY I attended Dave's Funshop the week after I'd finished massage school. Dave has had-- and continues to have, a profound impact on me. And for that, I am grateful. There's much more I could say, but I'm going to refer you to John's blog, because he wrote the post that I don't have time for, that elegantly describes what these past few days have been like.

And now, for all you Dobsonians out there:

I'm off to go play with the lab animals. cyasoon

Pattern Interrupts

Dave Dobson used to say that everything is patterns. We have productive ones & less-than-productive ones. Useful & non-useful. Bruce Lipton says that for the first 2 years of life, our brain waves are predominantly delta waves--that v. deep, unconscious state. It's a time when we soak up learning--and patterns, at a rapid rate. Eric Jensen says in Brain-based Learning that the brain needs to feel safe before it can really learn. Credit that to the only part of our brain that is fully formed at birth: the amygdala [uh-MIG-duh-la] It records everything.

Which brings us back to Dave: the primary concern of the unconscious mind (Other-Than-Conscious, as he called it) is to keep us safe. Patterns develop as a safety mechanism. And then we run them like a computer runs a program. OR:

They run us.

What do you do when you become aware of a pattern that you find less than elegant? Dave said there are no good or bad patterns. They all had a purpose at one point in time. All you need to do is to update the pattern. John Morgan says that awareness is the first step in creating a wedge between stimulus & response (pattern). And then you do something to interrupt the pattern. When I was training with Doug O'Brien in Ericksonian hypnosis, he used a v. simple pattern interrupt. He would say, Do you golf?

I have been looking at the pattern of how I make decisions. Or, to be more accurate, how I don't make decisions. I have created a sense of urgency where there needn't be one. It's something that I'm becoming aware of. It's something I need to update.

Perhaps I should take up golf.

Dave Dobson

Dave Dobson, Funshop 2006

I used to send him blonde jokes. Dave's Joketree is the BEST for funnies and punnies.

I fell asleep to his Beach tape for almost 20 years before I ever studied with him in person. I had just finished massage school and there was no logical good reason for me to go spend the very next week on an island in his Funshop—except that I’d always wanted to and it was his last one because he really was retiring this time. Again.

There was so much that I learned from him that I didn’t know I learned until much later. That’s the way it was with Dave. He is the gift that keeps giving. I ran into some old Tony Robbins friends from my firewalking days and told them I’d gone to Dave’s Funshop. Kay smiled and said, “How much of it do you remember?” That’s the big joke, because I didn’t.

It was after working with him that I finally finished my Healing Labyrinth Path script. I started it with All right, let's get comfortable . . . just like he does on his beach trip. I put a lot of things in there for Dave, and anyone who knows Dave would be able to guess what they were. My favourite inside-just-for-Dave was You might make a funny face if you ate a dandelion. The story goes that when he was a baby he ate a dandelion. Once. I sent him the CD and asked for his feedback. He said he kept falling asleep. :-) Really? THANKS, Dave! My friend Robbie said when she saw our picture, “He looks like a teddy bear.” I said, “Oh, he’s a bear, all right! But underneath that, he really is a teddy bear.” I told Dave that and he looked confused and said, “I don’t know how to take that.” I said, “It means I really do like you.” Not that Dave cared or needed anyone to like him. But I did.

The first day he told me to hang up my beliefs on the coat rack for the week. “I don’t want them and they get in the way of your learning,” he said. Or something like that. Really, did I mention I don’t remember? He taught me how to say hello Other-Than-Consciously; the rest of your communication beyond words. One of the first things I did when I created my blog was to post some things for him. He wrote back and said, "Bye the bye, since you used the term "other than conscious communication"on your blogger page, you have my permission to use the term "Dobsonian hypnosis" when referring to some of your training experiences."

English Camp

One of my favourite Funshop experiences was English Camp. Ah, English Camp. Fond memories. Dave sent us off to play at English camp after a Tuxedo trance (formal, close-your-eyes) where we were regressed to the age of 3. It’s amazing how much you miss as an adult. We climbed trees and ran through the woods and played on the floating dock. Dave said that one year one of the participants sat in the water on the shore in his business suit and splashed around “as happy as a clam.” He also suggested that we would find a treasure there. And do you know what I found? I found a piece of pottery with a tiny child’s fingerprint embedded in it. I later was in a museum there and saw other pottery pieces—200 years old that matched the one I had. WOW. Plus I found TONS of rocks. I was wearing cargo pants and every pocket was filled—more so than a usual rock gathering trip.

I can see Dave in Heaven now. After greeting "Our Designer" (he didn't say God) OTCly, he might run into Milton Erickson. They were contemporaries and developed similar techniques independently of each other. I was joking with John that Erickson would say, “Seeing you reminds me of a story….” And Dave would say, “No! Seeing YOU reminds ME of a story!”

To see more stories about Dave, his life partner Barb has created a space for people to leave comments. He used to sign his emails to me, cyasometime. cyasometime, Dave. B.G.P.