My clients (and any of you, too!) have free reign to con­tact me with issues, ques­tions and comments.

A client of mine e-mailed a story of an inter­ac­tion. She and her part­ner had a con­ver­sa­tion (sort of) about the state of the rela­tion­ship. What became clear was that they were com­ing at the rela­tion­ship from two dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. She also men­tioned some pain in her collar-bone area, and I remem­bered that she had been quite sore at her upper back at her last Body­work session.

I wrote back, and half way through, real­ized that what I was writ­ing would be ben­e­fi­cial as a BLOG arti­cle on Body­work and rela­tion­ships. What fol­lows is my take on the issue my client raised, with notes.

I replied with two things:
1) some stuff on body­work, and
2) some stuff on relationships.

The chakras are energy cen­tres, and each is con­cerned with an aspect of phys­i­cal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual devel­op­ment. In a sense, they tell us the story of our lives, and pro­vide the energy for trans­for­ma­tive being. What fol­lows is a metaphor that demon­strates the path to full and vibrant living.

There are at least two “diaphragms” or “gates between” in the body. The first is between the solar plexus and the heart, and the sec­ond is at the shoul­der region. Let’s talk chakras, but these zones also exist in Chi­nese med­i­cine.

Here’s the pat­tern in sim­pli­fied form.
The | mark rep­re­sents the gates.
It’s 123|4|567

123 are phys­i­cal chakras, and sadly, most peo­ple stay stuck in these 3.

1. Root – secu­rity, sta­bil­ity, exis­tence
2. Belly — rela­tion­ships, to every­thing and everyone.
3. Solar Plexus – self-esteem

There is a “zone” made up of chakras 1, 2, and 3 – this is the zone of sta­bil­ity, rela­tion­ships, and self-esteem.

My client dis­cov­ered that her partner’s self-esteem is con­nected to job, money, “clean­li­ness,” tidi­ness, order, con­trol, etc. For him, any form of “clut­ter” becomes a self-esteem issue. In other words, he thinks: “If I see a mess, I feel bad about myself, and assume it is either an insult (I blame oth­ers for my messes) or I blame myself for not try­ing hard enough.”

With effort you can move past zone 123

Phys­i­cal is joined with heartfulness

How­ever, because of the first diaphragm or gate, (which requires per­sis­tence to pen­e­trate,) most peo­ple do not move out of this very phys­i­cal realm. They have a vague sense of “some­thing more,” but no clue how to get there, so they keep mess­ing around in famil­iar waters. They change jobs, part­ners, obsess, clean, move their piles from one place to another, try to be happy by mak­ing more money etc, and this ten­sion and drive to shift piles seems normal–as in, “What I’m stuck with.”

You get your­self unstuck by iden­ti­fy­ing the 123 zone, own­ing it, and then com­ing to a new under­stand­ing, which might be thought of as the “spir­i­tual” or voca­tional aspect of liv­ing. This begins at the heart.

4– The heart chakra is the inter­me­di­ary between phys­i­cal (123) and the spir­i­tual (567)

Open­heart­ed­ness is the first step on a long walk into voca­tional, present, “in the moment” liv­ing. This requires sim­ple accep­tance — of oth­ers, of self, of the Taoist prin­ci­ple. “The way it is, is the way it is.”

The Heart Chakra is the locale of “being,” (as opposed to “doing,” which is the realm of Zone 123) and is sensed as “empti­ness” (as in, “empty of meaning”)

This is not nihilism, but rather sym­bol­ized by the empti­ness that comes in between thoughts when med­i­tat­ing, for example.

The next diaphragm, at the shoul­ders, is interesting.

Phys­i­cal, heart­ful liv­ing, joined with the transpersonal

You could, I sup­pose, “live” at the heart level, and sim­ply be a sort of pas­sive accep­tor of “what­ever.” This, to me, seem disin­gen­u­ous, and some­what self absorbed.

The tran­si­tion, the process of mov­ing through the upper gate or diaphragm, leads to the actual expres­sion of (the actual liv­ing of) an ego­less spir­i­tual life. This tran­si­tion requires the use of

567

5. The throat — which it the medium for the release of true self into the world, metaphorized by speech, but actu­ally about expres­sion of the total­ity of being.

6. The Third Eye — Insight — trust­ing intu­ition, and the abil­ity to see what’s really going on.

7. Tran­scen­dence — satori, enlight­en­ment, etc.

If there is a block at the shoul­der diaphragm, get­ting past it requires actu­al­iz­ing the first 4. In other words, the work is to assim­i­late the 123, phys­i­cal zone, with the heart, so that all phys­i­cal being and act­ing is done out of com­pas­sion. As Lama Marut put it:

“Com­pas­sion for oth­ers is impos­si­ble until you care enough for your­self to really want to stop your own suffering.”

My client wrote a list of her pri­or­i­ties for life:

Her list was, in the order she chose: love (chakra 4), tak­ing care of self (chakra 3), tak­ing care of oth­ers ( chakra 2)

Foot­note: our real work is self work, so there­fore the lan­guage of the last pri­or­ity is not cor­rect. We can care about oth­ers, but can never take care of oth­ers. That is their job. (Infants and chil­dren are the exception!)

Notice the direc­tion of my client’s list — hint — it’s down­ward, toward the root chakra, which means it’s focused on sta­bil­ity and secu­rity, as opposed to mov­ing past what­ever issue arises by tran­scend­ing it.

My list might be: being lov­ing (an action), being direct and clear, being my-self, and deep­en­ing my con­nec­tion to that which is. Notice that there is only “me” in this — yet if I do “me” well, those around me ben­e­fit. The direc­tion is upward and inclusive.

Back to my client’s part­ner. To use Scott Peck’s Four Stages, he’s fight­ing off Chaos through “Fun­da­men­tal­ism” — rules and structures.

My client is at the begin­ning of the next stage, “Doubt”—she is ques­tion­ing her “old, stuck ways.” Peck’s 4^th stage is Mys­ti­cism, (what I call zone 2—consisting of 567,) where all of the rules and struc­ture fall away, and one just “is.”

• My client’s part­ner cleans when he comes home, not to pun­ish my client or to ignore her, but to try to keep his col­laps­ing, chaotic world together. If the house was spot­less, he would cre­ate another issue to obsess about.
• My client’s part­ner is stuck try­ing to make his lit­tle feet­sies run fast enough to keep all the balls in the air. I sus­pect, like most, he’ll have to crash and burn before he real­izes the futil­ity of this path.

My client’s job is to keep him talk­ing, while ask­ing, repeat­edly, “How’s that work­ing for you?” Until he sees the impos­si­bil­ity of struc­tur­ing him­self into hap­pi­ness, he’s going to be stuck.

The rules of the Doubt stage:

Ques­tion every­thing, and get rid of what does not work. This is the stage my client is at, and is expressed through pain at the upper or sec­ond diaphragm or gate–at her shoul­der blades, upper shoul­der mus­cles, and her collar-bone.

My client has rules about who she is and how she is, and she gets stuck defend­ing them, intel­lec­tu­ally and phys­i­cally. She would be bet­ter off laugh­ing at her rules, rather than fid­dling with them — in other words, hav­ing her experience(s) as opposed to try­ing to force them to fit her no longer use­ful rules.

We’ll look more at how you can tran­si­tion from one zone to another in future arti­cles. In the mean time, drop us a line!