Hi there,

I wasn’t going to write a per­sonal note, but as I was shut­ting down my com­puter Sun­day night, I saw some news. If you’ve been read­ing the blog for a while, you might remem­ber a post and video regard­ing the Kitch­ener Blues Fes­ti­val, back in August. The best act in the show was Jeff Healey.

Sadly, he died of can­cer today, at age 41. The music world is less­ened and there is silence and still­ness that marks his pass­ing. Rest in peace.

A New Series—On Cling­ing

The remain­ing arti­cles in this series:

7– trau­mas
8– habits
9– emo­tions
10– ide­olo­gies

On Being Headless

OSHO –“Be Headless.”

Fritz Perls –“Go out of your mind, and come to your senses.”

Well, this body cen­tered arti­cle is good timing.

Some years ago, I gained a client, referred to me by a friend he met at The Haven. I won’t go into a long descrip­tion of our work together, but we do Breath and Body­work, as well as counselling.

He’s a good stu­dent, and has since gone back to school to learn Social Work, and (and I think this is great!) next year he’ll be in Debashis Dutta’s pro­gramme. Those of you that are long time read­ers will remem­ber Debashis, by the way, from the arti­cles he used to write for Into the Cen­tre.

My client hurt his back at work a few years ago, and that has really led to an amaz­ing trans­for­ma­tion. He has never taken pain meds, but rather does Iyen­gar Yoga, med­i­tates, and has worked with Qi Gong, Native Spir­i­tu­al­ity, and had acupunc­ture. In other words, he’s the “poster boy” for the “hands on, self-responsible” approach we attempt to teach. He has come a far piece, and I’m proud of him.

Men­tal Cling­ing = Phys­i­cal Symp­toms and Pain

Most peo­ple either resist (by cling­ing… our topic these days—they cling to their belief that they should be able to keep their old ways of being and also make great strides) or avoid.

The avoid­ance is subtle.

It’s usu­ally done through time manip­u­la­tion. As in,

• “I don’t have time to med­i­tate (or breathe)”
• “I need to go slow and see if things sort them­selves out by themselves.”
• “I just got into this new, chargy rela­tion­ship, and mirac­u­lously, all of my past dif­fi­cul­ties have van­ished on their own.”
• “I’m not done being angry at my abuser yet, so I’m just going to hold on to this crap a decade longer.”
• “I want to do this, but time, or money, or work, or my part­ner, or my par­ents or my kids come first, and I’ll get around to it (me!) some day.”

As resis­tance pro­gresses, ill­nesses emerge.

“Wad­daya mean I know what my body wants???”

This is a nor­mal pro­gres­sion. Our bod­ies are finely tuned instru­ments, and give us ample warn­ings. A twinge here, an ache there, a pulled mus­cle, and diges­tive pain, bowel issues, con­tin­ual colds or sinus con­di­tions. All are warn­ings from our bod­ies. Most are ignored or med­icated enough to drop below notice.

A client once reminded me that she had been abused by a rel­a­tive when she was a kid. She was then around 30. Her body was a mess, and her rela­tion­ships were dicey. I sug­gested that per­haps it was time to for­give the relative—

by which I actu­ally mean, let go of car­ry­ing the bur­den of the anger and the dis­ap­point­ment, and the energy of the past—and also per­haps some guilt being car­ried. For­give­ness is an inside job of let­ting go of cling­ing to the “abuse story.”

She was hav­ing none of this, and basi­cally stopped talk­ing, and instead moved to Body­work. At one point I was dig­ging in and she was grit­ting her teeth and refus­ing to let go of her pain.

Finally, she mut­tered, “Noth­ing good can come of this.”

I eased up and sur­ren­dered to her burn­ing desire to cling to her abuse as her only self-definition of who she is. She wins. And loses.

Some­times, our men­tal con­struc­tions become our prisons.

My mom con­sid­ered her­self the sick­est lit­tle old lady on the planet. If you had a cold, she’d trump you with the flu. If you had the flu, she was get­ting pneu­mo­nia. She knew no doc­tor would lis­ten to her, and no surgery would be suc­cess­ful. And so, that was her expe­ri­ence. She got great sat­is­fac­tion in being right about being who she saw her­self to be.

These pat­terns of see­ing and being are taught to us, and because we usu­ally are immersed in them at a young age, they take great effort to root out. And given this week’s topic, the root­ing it two-fold.

• I have to iden­tify my sto­ries, my men­tal pic­tures, of what I am cling­ing to.
• I have to iden­tify what my body is telling me, and lis­ten, shift, and do things differently.

Many religions/wisdom tra­di­tions have indi­cated that there is but one path to free­dom, and it is achieved through cen­ter­ing. Now, this cen­ter­ing might be described as pray­ing, med­i­tat­ing, direct­ing our energy, danc­ing (think­ing of Sufis here) or chant­ing. It might be reached through mas­sage, manip­u­la­tion of the chakras, through Qi Gong, yoga, Kun­dalini work, but the goal is the same.

Being cen­tered is liv­ing at your core, in balance.

The core is cen­tered at the belly but­ton. Energy is made at the lower dan tian, 2 inches below the navel, and then stored through­out the belly. Liv­ing from the core means con­tin­u­ally return­ing to “source,” through breath and attention.

There are, as I just said, tons of ways (spe­cific tech­niques / tech­nolo­gies) to get to cen­tre. We describe our favourites here.

Pic­ture an hour­glass. The var­i­ous tech­niques are in the big top part, and ‘pour through’ the action of being cen­tered. The energy emp­ties into a mil­lion dif­fer­ent experiences—enlightenment, bliss, nir­vana, heaven-on-earth, union with god, what­ever. There are so many descrip­tions of the expe­ri­ence because what hap­pens to you will be personal.

Cod­i­fied, it’s:
Many paths (tech­niques) lead­ing to
one action (cen­ter­ing), lead­ing to
many (phys­i­cal, men­tal, spir­i­tual) experiences.

When peo­ple ask: “But what will I be like, and what will I expe­ri­ence if I med­i­tate (or what­ever)?” I say, “Bests me. Do it for a while (say, for the rest of your life, one moment at a time) and you’ll see.

It’s all about our games

We really don’t want to believe that ill­ness, pains, dis­ease are all the result of the games we are play­ing with our­selves. In the West, we’ve been taught not to trust our bod­ies, and to live in our heads—up there, where the voices ram­ble on, and the images, judg­ments, and plot­ting seems to go on 24/7. To say that exit­ing the head, and liv­ing from the heart and belly, seems absurd.

So, ask your­self, “How’s your life going?

You con­tent? In a great rela­tion­ship? Liv­ing guilt, pain, and judg­ment FREE?” If not, maybe it’s time to do some­thing about it, and that doing will entail behav­ing differently.

Our upcom­ing DVD will have a few prac­ti­cal suggestions.

In the mean time, here are 5 suggestions.

Haven Breath­work Posture

Zen Body­work

“Let the block in!”

Photo by Harpers­biz­zare

Lastly, remem­ber that any form of cling­ing gets you nowhere

Cling­ing leads to men­tal and phys­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties. For instance, learn­ing to let go of an abuse story does not excuse either the abuse or the abuser, but does let the abused per­son move on.

Oth­er­wise, the per­son is never any­thing more than the poor vic­tim of some­thing that hap­pened ‘way back when.’ I want my clients to be free of cling­ing to dys­func­tional sto­ries and beliefs, and ‘being a vic­tim of…’ is a big­gie in our culture.

The way out is through elim­i­nat­ing the seduc­tive power of cling­ing to the vic­tim role, and one of the best ways to do this is through phys­i­cal means.

Open your­self to your body, to being touched, to releas­ing all that pent up energy.

You’ll be glad you did.