My Story of how this Practice came to be

The word accompaniment traces back to the French accompagnement, which evolved from accompagner, meaning "to go with" or “to accompany.” Its Latin root “companio” combines “com” (together) with “panis” (bread), originally referring to sharing bread with another—a metaphor for companionship. In Spanish, my mother tongue, the word is acompañamiento.

Here I want to give space and freedom to the brushstrokes of what I am expressing here. This is my embodied knowledge, resulting from fifteen years of experience committed to my personal healing journey, my professional work in the mental health field and my ongoing involvement in grass roots community arts projects & social justice organizing.

First, I want to tell you the story of the acompañante and then I will focus in articulating how I came to define the foundation of my work in what I call Embodying Coherence and its Acompañamiento. And then you will see how it differs from the relationship and support offered by professional accredited therapy.

II.Acompañante

In 2008 I worked in Bolivia through an International development Internship. My work was to attend and document how women's solidarity groups in remote rural communities were slowly working their ways out of poverty through social support networks and micro-loans. This experience was essential in my development, I documented what well organized indigenous women could accomplish despite the poverty and systemic racism they lived in.

I decided right then that I was going to pursuit a life supporting the most oppressed communities, figuring out a way to support social justice organizing towards critical mass for generating systems change. Looking back, I was young and very naive at the time, but this experience pushed me forward to work in Vancouver BC in the social service front-lines supporting the Homeless.

From 2009-2019 I worked side by side with individuals struggling primarily with complex trauma, social isolation, poverty and mental health deterioration among many other challenges.

For those 10 years, the primary focus of my work was to provide company, to be an acompañante, through their journeys... and while walking side by side with them to identify small opportunities and interests to connect them with meaningful resources and services to them. I provided accompaniment to people in detention centres, first housing projects, treatment centres, schools, back alleys, community gardens, phone booths, shelters, healing lodges, psychiatric wards, mountain hiking, NA & AA meetings, friendship centres, drug shacks, basketball courts, police cars, community kitchens, bus rides, library computers, supervised child-parent visitations, memorials, nature camping retreats, abortion clinics, Tim Hortons, welfare offices, empty buildings, case conferences, colleges, emergency rooms, canoe trips, tent cities, city parks, music rooms, train tracks, funerals, trials, cheap restaurants, probation offices, ice-cream shops, cancer units, swimming pools, safe houses, community BBQs, protests, recreation centres, over-crowded homes and counseling rooms... among many other places... and most often we traveled in between these places together, transitioning together from place carrying an intention and a goal with a story.

Looking back... my work really was to be present, supportive and loving. During those 10 plus years I worked primarily with two communities doing very similar iterations of the same accompaniment foundation, working through 8 different organizations and being involved in over 20 different programs and projects.

I owe the value of my work to the people that welcomed me to accompany them during that time. They were my greatest teachers through my healing journey.

III. Embodying Coherence

After 15 years in the field I realized that despite supporting people struggling with complex trauma, social isolation, poverty and mental health deterioration... it seemed that as a sector we were not getting anywhere. Homelessness, addiction and mental health deterioration continues increasing in alarming proportions and it is a crisis in Canada and many other countries.

Furthermore, the COVID19 pandemic brought to the surface a mental health phenomenon where we all had to resource significantly into our capacity to stay calm and somehow regulate through the social isolation, the misinformation and the hysteria. The impact was unprecedented... burnout, fear, anxiety, uncertainty, social isolation, we all experienced it.

At the end of 2022, after years of committed work to the mental health front-lines through multiple approaches, I was now dancing with compassion fatigue, anxiety, and at the edge of burnout. I stepped out of Social Services and started more intentionally this quest for a deeper purpose in my life, looking for a way to contribute everything I had learned throughout my career and my personal healing journey. I had to slow down, ground, and reconsider how to step into a more coherent way to work better equipped and more resourced in relationship to our collective wellness and the mental health challenges we were encountering in our communities in response to the world today. Since then, I have been inquiring into a more coherent and embodied approach to do this work. And to do so I had to refocus all of my attention into my healing journey.

It is worth noting that I had started my commitment to my healing journey a decade prior in 2012 when, at age 27, I experienced a very frightening panic attack. After that event, I attended my first 10 day Vipassana mediation retreat, and I was able to see what I needed to do to live a more joyful life where my body and my nervous system could be in a healthier and more coherent flow with the work I was doing and the wounding I was carrying. So, every year I committed to a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat. Furthermore, I also committed to a weekly moving meditation practice, I was going to yoga classes as often as I could, and I was swimming, running and going to the sauna almost daily. In addition to my physical practices, I was seeing a therapist regularly, and was taking ongoing workshops on personal, professional and spiritual growth (see my CV for more detailed information).

Despite all my robust efforts, I still struggled to self-regulate. Years later, even though I had done significant trauma recovery work, seen over 10 therapists, and had gone into significant therapeutic deep dives, spiritual journeys and wellness retreats, I was still having difficulties improving the quality of my sleep, plus many other psychosomatic complications. I was very often quite awkward and anxious, I felt like I could not belong anywhere, I was incredibly self-conscious, compulsively active and often very agitated for no apparent reason. In theory, I knew it was all in my head and that it was psychosomatic, but I could not break through despite the numerous somatic practices I had incorporated into my life.

Although I was able to co-regulate effectively with close friends, I could not bring myself to ease on my own. Despite being told I was living a life of service equivalent to the life of a committed saint, i.e. helping the homeless full-time for over a decade... I still could not quite figure out what I was needing to be more at peace within myself. And even immersive mediation, although they were life saving 10 days of refuge at the retreat centres every year, outside of the retreat centre, the daily meditation was often a tricky build-up of more mental and existential anxiety.

My nervous system remained sensitized (overly reactive) through all those years until recently. Luckily I had all along the company of beautiful supports and solid mentors that held space integrally for me to be able to break through. This is where the idea for the accompaniment of embodying coherence started.

IV. Breakthrough

Today, I am on a wave of inward expansion, cultivating a subtler embodiment practice, leaning into a more loving relationship with my nervous system. Still, this is a very long journey, and I am sure there will be plenty more roadblocks on the road. However, I am deeply thankful for this subtler dance nudging me forward, this growing inwardly with more ease, this calmer and more loving nervous system.

The complex developmental trauma stored in my system, mixed with the ongoing secondary and vicarious trauma I was exposed to during my work in front-line mental health services, made this journey very confusing and just arduous. I was being kind to my nervous system from a cerebral place; I exercised, ate healthily, tried to sleep, stayed away from drama... but I did not know how to embody this kindness to myself.

Thanks to extensive, committed and intentional work, the company of loving friends, and some divine luck, I am here, feeling that I have now beautiful, meaningful offer to share. It is hard to explain what happens when one breaks through because no words can really describe what the body, our nervous system or our experience really feels like. All I can say for now is that I feel significantly more beautifully connected to myself, the world, and life.

V. Accompanying the process of Embodying Coherence

No one should go through so much nervous system dys-regulation and confusion on their own. It is often a lonely road for those of us who carry complex trauma. This is why I am choosing to step into this work, to write this call-out, to take a risk to provide for myself in more alignment with what moves me in our collective journey, offering to accompany others through what I once consider almost impossible to overcome... But it is possible. It requires committed intentional work; it may take time (it took me 13 years and the work still continues) but the journey is not so hard when we have proper, skilled, loving accompaniment.

Offering this work supports my gratitude for what has been given to me by all the teachers, friends and supports that have accompanied me in this journey. I had to reconcile that the offering of this practice and this work are essential for me to continue growing. So there it is, this is different to therapy in the sense that, whether or not we work together one time or many times, we will remain connected as we will need each other to continue growing collectively. There is reciprocity in accompaniment. In this process together, I learn from you how to better integrate our mutual company into this body of work, so I can to continue inspiring the journey ahead. In return, you learn from a 15 year catalogue of knowledge, skills, practices and experiences all integrated into my work, thanks to all those whom I accompanied in the mental health field plus all those who provided me with loving company through the journey. We are together here with all those whose company we have cherished.

To end, I want to express that I am in total admiration of the people in my life who can regulate innately and naturally having access to well toned ventral-vagal parasympathetic equipment. I rejoice with gratitude when I meet healthy parents nurturing healthy nervous systems in their children. This world needs more healthy well regulated nervous systems with us, within us, so we can find a gentler, slower and more peaceful flow collectively through the dance of life.

May we continue being inspired by each other, every step of the way.

Well, I have written enough about me. I have openly shared with you my story and why I am doing this work. So...

What is your story?

What or who brought you here and why?

Regardless of whether or not you this offering resonates with you,

Thank you for being here,

for being alive

for reading my story.

Sincerely & with Love,

R. Alejandro C. Zuluaga