I don’t know… I kinda like it in here…

Last week, I talked a bit about Orig­i­nal Face. Get­ting to this place means cut­ting through the ties that bind us, and part of that involves tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for the ropes, the knots, and the pride we have in being so tied-up.

Have a look at last week’s article—and the draw­ing. Notice the bot­tom third.

We’ll return to the “Sea of Chi” in a future arti­cle, but for now, here are some things to be found in there:

• sym­bolic imag­in­ings and sto­ries
• skill set passions
• repressed desires
• “out of con­trol” emotions
• cues for bal­anc­ing merid­i­ans, energy, chi, yin/yang

All of this, and more, has been locked away.

This mate­r­ial has been called Shadow Mate­r­ial (by Jung, among oth­ers) for its ethereal-ness. It’s in there, but not in an obvi­ous way. It mate­ri­al­izes in repeated pat­terns of “fail­ure,” aches and pains in the body, in dreams, in “coin­ci­dences.” It’s hard to see, until we choose to look.

The Cul­tural /Societal Lens, imposed upon us for the “good of the tribe,” is not to blame for this sea of repressed mate­r­ial. No, the process of learn­ing the rules is essen­tial for our social­iza­tion. What is miss­ing from our upbring­ing is a sys­tem­atic “way in”—a way to explore this almost invis­i­ble material.

This is what we’ll be considering

Explor­ing our blocked mate­r­ial is not sup­posed to be a bat­tle. Here’s what “fix­ing it” might look like:

For the first 16 years, and espe­cially in child­hood, we social­ize our chil­dren, help them to under­stand how to be mem­bers of soci­ety. Then we help them to re-explore the shadow mate­r­ial as adults. I see this hap­pen­ing at around age 16 or so.

Need­less to say, this hap­pens almost never.

Not to say this is a one shot deal

I was work­ing with a new client today, who did a quite ele­gant bit of body­work. At the door, we were unpack­ing a bit, and she said, “I’ve been peel­ing away lay­ers of this for decades—now I’m ready to deal with the core issues.”

It’s like what hap­pens as we cut into an onion. Our work is a peel­ing away. We sim­ply find more of our­selves, the same thing, but deeper. It’s us, all the way down.

I’m not stuck, I just don’t want to look

Wil­helm Reich was the father of body­work. He came up with the idea of “char­ac­ter armour” (frozen thoughts and behav­iour) — he saw this as the log­i­cal result of the “Cul­tural Lens” process. In other words, as we are moved through the Lens, we cre­ate armour­ing at mul­ti­ple lev­els, to “put down”, repress. what our tribes tell us is “bad / wrong.”

Cat­e­gories

Phys­i­cal — char­ac­ter armour actu­ally refers to the realm of action—body armour refers to the phys­i­cal realm. In short, we learn to tighten mus­cles in order to “hold in” emo­tions and expres­sions of self that “made mommy and daddy uneasy.” The “feel­ing” of a phys­i­cal block­age is any­where from tight­ness to rigid­ity to inflexibility.

Men­tal — men­tal armour­ing is the result of the Lens. We are told what to believe, and how to judge dual­ity — right / wrong, good / bad, etc. We buy into this stuff because every­one around us is buy­ing into some­thing sim­i­lar. And, we’re manip­u­lated into this sys­tem by the reac­tions of our par­ents. Our belief sys­tem seems to be flex­i­ble, until some­one either asks us to shift, or we form a relationship.

Spir­i­tual — I’m not express­ing a belief in exter­nal deities, but rather am point­ing to the core Self that res­onates to the free flow of chi. Mostly, this vis­ceral expe­ri­ence has been watered down to empty rit­ual and for­mula. The armour­ing is a refo­cussing of atten­tion away from the ener­getic feel of ecstasy, to the process of repeat­ing words and actions.

No way I’m going there–I might actu­ally enjoy it…

Sex­ual — char­ac­ter armour plays a big role here. The armour can be felt dur­ing body­work, as rigid­ity and inflex­i­bil­ity in the lower belly, butt, and root chakra. Body parts are stuck—frozen in place. There is also a judge­ment—sex­ual feel­ing is declared to be “spe­cial,” pri­vate, inap­pro­pri­ate. In body­work, I often see this shut­ting down, as energy starts to move.

Reich was the first to notice that putting pres­sure on blocked parts of the body helped peo­ple to release, or let go of, the body armour, and what resulted was the release of the char­ac­ter armour and the full expres­sion of the under­ly­ing, blocked “what­ever.” Might be an emo­tion, might be stuck think­ing, might be free­dom to be whole, might be the free flow of energy, charge, pas­sion and sexuality.

In fact, Reich named this energy Orgone energy, and declared that hav­ing full-body orgasms would mean you’d never need therapy!

Peel­ing away starts with acknowledgment

Funny how pow­er­ful the con­di­tion­ing is. Most peo­ple come to ther­apy unaware of its depth or breadth. In gen­eral, the chief Lens rule is, “Look Out­side.” This plays out in 2 ways:

1) oth­ers are to blame for our expe­ri­ence, and

2) I should look to oth­ers to deter­mine what to do.

If you think about kids, this is pre­cisely how they learn. Their lit­tle heads are con­stantly swing­ing about, mon­i­tor­ing the reac­tions of “par­ents” to their behav­iour. If the “par­ent” reacts “neg­a­tively,” you see mus­cles tighten, and jaws clamp shut. Or you see an explo­sion of emo­tion, fol­lowed by a larger, more repres­sive adult reac­tion. One way or another, the child’s “neg­a­tive” behav­iour is extinguished.

Of course, the energy went inter­nal. It got stuffed down, under the tight­ness of the child’s devel­op­ing body and char­ac­ter armour.

Our work with clients, and on this blog, is all about help­ing clients (and read­ers) to begin to peel away the lay­ers of armour­ing. Down to the grow­ing edge. And then to dig deeper, and deeper, to unearth more and more of the blocked and sup­pressed mate­r­ial, to explore the energy of the blocked mate­r­ial, to dig and dig, and to find the cen­tre, where all the drama and bull­shit sim­ply dis­ap­pears. Like peel­ing an onion.

Most peo­ple resist going that far

I see a lot of peo­ple, and most want to main­tain their belief sys­tem, keep up their walls, and mag­i­cally be free of their pains and block­ages. Exam­ples abound. It goes like this:

• “Peo­ple are crit­i­cal of me, and hold me back. Oth­ers try to make me do things their way. I have no free­dom of action, and besides, if I take a risk, I may fail, and then they’d be proven right.”
• “Bad things hap­pened to me when I was grow­ing up, and they will define me until I die. it’s all their fault that I am stuck!”
• “I know there is a princess out there, wait­ing for me. I keep find­ing her, and then, after 6 months, there are prob­lems. I won­der why I can’t find my princess.”
• “I want to com­mu­ni­cate and have a great rela­tion­ship, but my part­ner won’t go along, and besides, I have to pro­tect the chil­dren from see­ing what’s hap­pen­ing.”
• “My part­ner should do all of the stuff I don’t want to do, for me. It’s “his” job to make me happy and to keep the boogey­man away.”
• “My body is tight because I can’t let down my guard. I want to be flex­i­ble and pas­sion­ate and sen­sual, but only if I can do it slowly and with­out any­one see­ing me. And I don’t want to enjoy myself too much, because, what will peo­ple think?”

And on… and on…

A ther­a­pist friend of mine is off doing a 3 month body­work train­ing. Here’s quote from her blog:

The psy­chother­a­pist in me sees that the ways I move in the world were adap­tive some­where along the line.

Lock­ing my pelvis and freez­ing my hips have served to pro­tect me from con­nect­ing to my sex­u­al­ity (a poten­tially dan­ger­ous place to hang out). Tens­ing my shoul­ders and rolling them for­ward around my heart has shielded me from pain and hurt. Clamp­ing together my teeth and tight­en­ing my jaw has stopped me from say­ing some­thing that might offend some­one I care about and cause them to move away, might pre­vent another’s anger and vio­lence. Lim­it­ing my breath has allowed me to avoid feel­ing and express­ing emo­tions that might oth­er­wise upset my home­osta­sis. Main­tain­ing a low-grade armour­ing has ensured that the ani­mal of my body would not spon­ta­neously do some­thing that would make me strange, a tar­get for another’s ridicule. Using my shoul­ders, arms, and hands to move through the world has cul­ti­vated a false sense of being in control.

I see now that to main­tain these once-adaptive body dynam­ics requires an inor­di­nate amount of energy; energy is com­ing up so that I can run a hill or feel into someone’s quadri­ceps and energy is simul­ta­ne­ously hold­ing down and restrict­ing any impulses and move­ments that threaten to ambush the sta­tus quo of my body’s safety, secu­rity, and sta­bil­ity in the world. The result is effort­ing, endur­ing, and even­tual exhaus­tion. Even­tu­ally, the con­se­quence is also a tweak in my lower back or a locked jaw, aching in my hands and fin­gers; mus­cles which might be sup­ple and flex­i­ble are instead hard and unre­cep­tive. More dis­con­nec­tion from my ani­mal body is needed to man­age the dis­com­fort. Numb­ing takes over.

Blog link

Over the next while, I’ll write about let­ting go, peel­ing down, and why it’s the work of a lifetime.

QiGong Secrets — Week 2

I am con­tin­u­ing to enjoy the QiGong Home Secrets course that I described in last week’s blog. This online, twenty-two week course is a sim­ple intro­duc­tion to QiGong. The sim­ple QiGong move­ment, But­ter­fly Danc­ing in Front of Flow­ers, demon­strated in week one, and taught in more detail in week two, is alone worth the cost of the $5 two-week trial.

But­ter­fly Danc­ing in Front of Flow­ers is a very sim­ple move­ment that opens the heart merid­ian. In Tra­di­tional Chi­nese Med­i­cine, the heart merid­ian is called the Emperor. When it is open, it ben­e­fits all the emo­tions. Ben­e­fits for this move­ment include over­com­ing depres­sion and sad­ness, and deep­en­ing cre­ativ­ity, joy, and clarity. 

I have been prac­tis­ing twice a day for about 10 min­utes each time. I prac­tise in the morn­ing and when I get home from school. One day I came home from school with a pile of mark­ing, won­der­ing how I would have the energy even to accom­plish a frac­tion of what I wanted to get done. After 10 min­utes of But­ter­fly Danc­ing in Front of Flow­ers, I felt refreshed and actu­ally accom­plished some mark­ing rather than my usual pat­tern of car­ry­ing home bags of mark­ing and car­ry­ing them back the next day untouched.

It is my hope, in retire­ment, to spend some time teach­ing QiGong.  But­ter­fly Danc­ing in Front of Flow­ers will be the first move­ment I teach. It is so sim­ple to learn, can be done by any­one regard­less of coör­di­na­tion or ath­letic abil­ity, is easy to remem­ber, and demon­strates quickly the pos­i­tive effects of QiGong.

In Tra­di­tional Chi­nese Med­i­cine the­ory, our body has 12 pri­mary and 8 sec­ondary merid­i­ans, or energy path­ways. When “chi,” or energy, flows har­mo­niously through the merid­i­ans, we expe­ri­ence good health. When we expe­ri­ence lack of energy or ill­ness, it is the result of block­ages in the energy flow in our merid­i­ans. These block­ages can be from a phys­i­cal cause due to an injury, an emo­tional cause due to the stresses in our life, a men­tal cause due to think­ing too much, or a spir­i­tual cause due to depres­sion. The sim­ple move­ments of QiGong remove block­ages and increase the flow of energy. With a smooth energy flow, we can expe­ri­ence good health. With a vig­or­ous energy flow, we expe­ri­ence vital­ity, and with an abun­dant energy flow, we expe­ri­ence longevity. Health, vital­ity and longevity are three of the aims of QiGong.

I truly believe that QiGong is sim­ple to learn but that does not mean it is easy. It is not a mir­a­cle cure. It takes a lot of work. Block­ages that have occurred after years of bad habits will not be cured after a few sim­ple moves. QiGong requires 15 to 20 min­utes a day of prac­tice. That means every day. QiGong is sim­ple repet­i­tive move­ments com­pleted in a med­i­ta­tive state. You can’t be plan­ning out your day or prepar­ing the sup­per menu while prac­tis­ing QiGong. 

If you have not already taken a look at this course, I encour­age you to do so. You will get value for the cost of the two-week trial, learn­ing the first move­ment and the cost can be fully refunded if you decide not to con­tinue with the course. 

I’d love to hear about your expe­ri­ences. Drop me a line in the com­ments sec­tion of the blog!