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. The feet can always be pointed more, the entry intothe water can always have a little less splash, the tuck of the somersault can always be a littletighter.The diver looks at the scores she has received for a dive, compares these to her ownbody s sense of the dive, consults with the coach outside and the coach inside.and climbs theladder to do it again.Perhaps the diver has been motivated to succeed by a desire for fame and wealth, perhaps byher ego s stubbornness in wanting mastery over a difficult task.It will be hard to sustain thismotivation over many hours and many years of cold waters and dank locker rooms, of frustratingslips and painful failures.The diver s ego will rebel against the discipline required; as long as thedive is something outside of herself to be conquered, it will be a struggle.Her self-consciousnessand her desires will get in the way of a smooth entry into the water.Still every dive, awkward or smooth, describes a complete arc into the deep pool.This is trueeven when the diver is self-conscious or absent-minded.As she practices over and over, the diverwill tend to devote herself more to the diving itself than to what she hopes to get out of it; hergrowing love of diving sustains her more than a desire to see her picture on a box of Wheaties.Each time the diver steps onto the board, she forgets herself a little further as she lets herself gointo the dive more fully.Eventually the diver holds nothing back of herself and, becoming avehicle of the dive, enters into the ease and joy of diving.Zazen and working with clients are like this: great effort and concentration make way for theease and joy of forgetting ourselves in our activity.In psychotherapy, this means meeting anotherhuman being in the fullness of their happiness and suffering.Therapists are often anxious.Feeling compelled to accomplish something while fearing weare not up to the task, self-centered concerns about our performance can get in the way ofmeeting our clients heart to heart.To allay our anxiety, we often try to develop special abilitiesand techniques to help our clients.Learning and practicing technique is useful.But as we cometo know more we stand in danger of becoming attached to our expertise, and risk seeing clientsonly through the particular lens of what we know.Then therapy can begin to seem boring, amechanical exercise which becomes a job, not a journey.In contrast, doing therapy time and again can help us deepen a constant sense of wonder ifwe approach therapy not as a test of our mastery, but as an opportunity to renew our practice ofhelping others.Like the diver who practices again and again but finds each dive is different, eachsession is a fresh opportunity, and we find not only are there numerous clients who simply do not fit into diagnostic or treatment categories: we find every client is unique each session.As webecome more comfortable with not having all the answers, each session evolves into anexploration of how to test the waters with the particular client in front of us.We all have our share of belly flops and of wonderful moments.More than any particularsuccess or failure, though, simply doing the activity over and over -- meeting a client while lettinggo of our expectations and self-centered preoccupations -- allows the process of psychotherapy toslowly teach us to trust it.Session after session we dive into psychotherapy, in search of ourselvesand each other.Each moment of each session is a complete plunge off the board.We makemany mistakes in psychotherapy, but practicing therapy, accepting, learning from, and rejoicingin its imperfections, becomes the therapy itself.Gradually we just do the therapy withoutworrying about it, and find happiness in the practice.In these days of managed care, where each session needs to be justified and rationalized, itmay be hard for us to do psychotherapy without pretending we know what we are doing oradvertising ourselves as accomplishing some goal
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