SALT. The impression of a novice.

[Maria Dupina]

I have never worked with communities and never heard the word SALT before. So what I saw being occasionally involved in learning SALT-approach (as an interpreter) confused me. In order to come to comprehension I've decided to describe the SALT-process.

The work in group confirms the idea that people are the same even being absolutely different. I was really amazed when I heard my story  word for word from another person. The stories of others correspond to your life and reflect your problems. This similarity makes an enormous impression and enables us to be in tune with each other. We were acting as a harmonious system. Trying to describe the phenomenon, I would even say that it seemed as we had "a common fund" of energy and positive. Maybe talking to only one person there's an opportunity not to achieve mutual result. The energy given by one can be negative or useless for another, so it won't be taken. But the person with positive energy may feel exhausted. This is rather a work that psychologists do.

As for me, emotional part of this kind of work was the most useful as it appeals  to subconsciousness and enables us to use hidden resources. You feel as if you were hypnotized. However, coming back to consciousness you realize, that the recipe of solving your problem wasn't found, but with emotions help not to take them seriously, or to accept them and find out the decision.

Summing up this is a very strong approach to improving yourself.

But I kept in mind that we had to take certain activities as a result, which can lead us to local solutions. In order to find them out it is necessary to evaluate the situation obviously, without emotional attitude. In this context the previous work seems useless. Only analyzing  the whole process, I found out the main principle: start in a small way. It means: "Start from yourself, as if you've managed to change yourself, there's an opportunity, that you will be able to motivate the community and even the society for changes.

The most obscure part of the SALT-approach was the framework. People can obviously see where they are, where they want to be and what measures they have to take to improve the situation, but they can't work out a dimensional range. So here we have difficulties and misunderstanding, although we all know SALT-principles and use them. Being concentrated in one of ten practices allows us to work more purposeful and more effective. But for the first time it is more difficult to deal with one or two practices in details than to notice separate drawbacks in all practices.

There are a lot of bright examples of applying SALT-approach in practice, but its theoretical background can be unclear. The only advice I can give for those who want to be aware of SALT is just to write about their impressions. You will realize, that SALT is just a systematization of a human approach to life.

[MariJo]

Dear Masha,

I totally agree with you in that SALT can help us to stay in tune with each other when we truly understand that we are equal and different, that we share common concerns and joys in life. And when we fully realize this fact, then we can relate to others with an open heart, accepting what makes us equal and also what makes us different.

Thank you very much for sharing your first encounter with SALT and the impressions you got from it.

Love