The Odoki Method has six stages - people engage at the stage that most suits them. Each builds on the prior, providing building blocks that move towards an ever deeper experience of wellbeing. Some will want to complete all stages, others might work with just one and gain sufficient benefit for their own needs.
1. Regulation
When we perceive a threat, a special part of our brain is triggered - the sympathetic nervous system. This redirects energy and resources from our brain to our limbs - we don’t need to think when faced with a lion/tiger/etc - we need to run. Yet, modern threats don’t function the same - they don’t walk away like a lion or tiger might, and we can find ourselves staying in the sympathetic nervous system longer than we might want. Fight/flight responses, panic attacks, PTSD, trauma, and more.
The good news is that most of the threats we perceive around us in the modern world are perceived through our predictive processing brain. And with the Odoki Method (and other systems too), we can begin to train our brain to have alternative responses to these threats.
2. Attention
In this stage, we learn to have experience. It is so common to feel something, then be lost in a chain of thoughts about it. Here, we learn just to have experience, whether physical, emotional, or mental. We just experience it, without pursuing any thoughts about it. We can do that later. For now, we just experience it.
This seemingly simple practice alone can be of significant impact on people. We can realise that we don’t need to pursue every thought. We don’t need to completely believe every thought in our head. We can choose to simply stay with experience.
This can lead to a quieter mind. It can also help with struggle sleeping.
3. Attitude
Once we have some ability to stay with what is happening in experience, we turn to exploring their attitude to that experience. Scientifically, we’re referring to meta-cognition. Or more particularly, meta-cognitive feeling. That is, how do we feel about the things we sense?
Our experience of life is much more conditioned by our feelings about the things around us than by the things themselves. This has a curious implication: it is much easier to adjust our attitude to something than it often is to adjust the ‘something’ itself. This can be demonstrated with some simple (but often surprising) imagination exercises.
By paying attention to our attitude to experience, we can learn that it is possible to be kinder. This, again can defuse life situations for us. Situations where we felt the need to react (e.g. with anxiety), perhaps we can begin to react in a more measured way. Life becomes a little quieter.
4: Identity
So far, we’ve been learning some basics about how the brain works. In terms of Predictive Processing, we’ve been learning how to look at experience and trigger small prediction error events that bring about meaningful change in our lives.
However, the brain’s predictive system is hierarchical. We make some predictions on the basis of others. If we go looking for some of the deeper predictions, and trigger a prediction error event here, we can witness a more significant change in our experience of life. The rest of the Method, from this point on, is exploring these deeper predictions.
In this stage, we explore our sense of identity, our sense of “me”.
5: Reactivity
Once stage 4 is complete, exploring reactivity becomes available. We can begin to explore the mechanisms of reactivity, and find it can bring about a significant quietening - where reactivity gives up for good. No more anxiety, anger, frustration. Life becomes much simpler after this.
6: Completion
This final stage encapsulates a number of subtle inquiries, including space/time and further levels of identity. When completed, this stage commonly leaves the client with a deep sense of ‘knowing’ that can be invaluable throughout life.