If you want to comment on this post, you can do so on my x-post on substack.

This post is intended to be a rough sketch, a snapshot, and a series of trailheads to much bigger ideas.

Attunement

I like the word attunement. I’ve been thinking about attunement for a while now. Even before I started school. And now that I’m in school and doing clinical training it’s even more relevant. What does being well-attuned look like? In conversations. In relating to another person. It’s something like: noticing what’s going on with the other person, what’s going on within yourself, and what’s going on in the moment that’s being generated by the two of you. It’s first being aware of, and then feeling, the texture of what’s present.

In the context of therapy, it’s the same idea but more targeted:

• What is the client feeling?
• What are they saying (and what are they not saying)?
• Are they in their head, are they in their body?
• How is their nervous system? Are they under-aroused and out of it? Are they hyper-aroused?
• Are they emotionally connected to what they’re sharing, or is there a mismatch? E.g. talking about a difficult topic but their affect is flat
• What am I feeling, in response to what the client is sharing?¹

Everyone has some innate level of attunement to others. And also I think this is a skill that can be cultivated.

Here are some folks who appear to have high levels of attunement, who have described some developmental stages that they’ve been through.² In video game terms, I liken these to character builds or skill trees you can go down.

Example end game attunement builds

Dr. K’s “head-focused” / “understanding” / “contemplative” build, for understanding the self:

1. Start at: a lack of awareness
2. Pay attention to your subjective experience
3. Notice your thoughts and emotions
4. Introspect on where these come from³
5. ?? - something like: become aware of the ego – “oh I was stuck in this loop that was all constructed by my mind”
6. Deepening understanding → which leads to more and more dissolving of the ego, the “I”
7. Acceptance, just being, etc.

Joe Hudson’s “heart-centered” / “love” build, for relating to your (negative) emotions:

1. Start at: a lack of awareness of what we’re feeling – e.g. “I’M NOT ANGRY, YOU’RE ANGRY”
2. Pay attention to what you’re feeling
3. Try (futilely) to control/manage your emotions – “Being angry is not OK”
4. Learn to accept the emotions, and not be controlled by them – “Anger comes up sometimes, and that’s OK”
5. Inquire about the emotions – “What is the anger trying to tell me?”
6. Welcome the negative emotions; get excited about what they have to teach us⁴
7. Self-love, acceptance, just being, etc.

Just seeing these paths outlined has been incredibly helpful for me. It’s felt like being introduced to an entire new dimension of how to think and feel, that is both helpful and plausible and helpful. Like in Flatland when they learn about the 3rd dimension.

Also, so far I’m finding training in psychodynamic psychotherapy to be a nice hybrid head/heart build. More on this below.

Chakras

Disclaimer: I know very little about this so take everything here with a grain of salt. Most of what I know is from relatively casual youtube lectures (Dr. K) + asking Claude 4.5.

Very, very broadly: chakras describe various metaphysical energy centers in the body. Energy flows through these centers, and each chakra has a different role and function.

You might be able to guess what the role/function of some of the chakras are, e.g. head (or third eye, Ajna), heart (Anahata), and gut (Manipura).

My understanding is that this system and this knowledge come from patterns observed across reports of individuals doing intensive introspection, across thousands of years. Whether you think this is true and valid or not is up to you.

But what really interests me about this system is that it comes with instructions on how to develop these channels further. Because that’s what I want to do. And from what I’ve encountered so far in the West, there’s very little specific instruction on how to level up your attunement. But this system of chakras seems to have pretty detailed suggestions on specific practices and what those practices are intending to accomplish.

It’s like they have a gym for attunement.

Some third eye chakra exercises that sound compelling:

• Pay attention to your intuition, what feels right to you, before you make a decision
• Practice expanded awareness
• Trataka - fixed point gazing, or breathing while maintaining awareness at the third eye

Some heart chakras exercises that sound compelling:

• Hridayakasha dharana - relaxed concentration at the center of the chest
• Maitri or metta or loving-kindness meditation

Now I have no idea if these actually work, or how well these work. But the brochure so to speak is compelling – the descriptions of the chakras seem plausible, so maybe these exercises work too. We’ll see!

If this interests you too, I recommend doing some cursory exploration with Claude to start. That’s where I got a lot of this from.