From mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca 8 Apr 1995 13:32:00 GMT
From: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca ()
Newsgroups: alt.backrubs
Subject: Embracing the Beast
Date: 8 Apr 1995 13:32:00 GMT
Message-ID: <3m638g$dcc@news.sas.ab.ca>

EMBRACING THE BEAST
by Matthew van der Giessen

PART I/I
LEARNING TO VALUE BODY EXPERIENCE
"Nothing influences our conduct less than do intellectual ideas"
Modern Man in Search of a Soul, pg.42
-Carl Jung

	Not long ago, my attention was caught by an article written by
Rabbi Akiva Mann.  It addressed the problems that a modern Jew faces
trying to keep the vitality o f that ancient religion alive in our present
day society.  The article interested me because Rabbi Mann was writing
about an issue of spiritual observance using a body perspective, and in
doing so was creating an example that I feel clearly il lustrates the
problem of relationship between body and mind. 
	According to Rabbi Mann, the ways of our largely Christian and
secular society h ave so insinuated themselves into Judaism that they have
subverted the very ways of praying that distinguish the Jewish form of
worship.  Even the physical motion s of Jewish prayer have given way to
Christian forms. 
	"Were I to say to you right now, 'Let us pray'," writes Rabbi Mann,
"our immedia te response would be to bow our heads in Protestant fashion. 
Not one of you woul d adjust his hat, feel for the prayer sash, reach out
for the little laver at the synagogue entrance to wash his hands, and get
ready to assume the proper Jewish prayer stance.  Our minds may be Jewish
but our bodies are Protestant." 
	What Rabbi Mann describes here is something that we have come to
call body langu age; non-verbal and largely unconscious communication
through movement and postur e.  The study of body language has found that
it is not uncommon for our bodies t o be saying one thing when our minds
are conscious of another.  In fact , with ju st a little observance we can
look around us and see people whose bodies are fidg eting while their
owners seem calmly engaged in quiet conversation;  people who ac t as if
they are quite comfortable with each other except that their bodies are t
urned away as if protecting themselves; or in the example that Rabbi Mann
brings to us, heads that feel definitely Jewish while the body shows that
it has come to accept a religious view that is uncomfortably Christian. 
In each case, there wo uld seem to be a separation between the experience
of mind and that of the body.  The mind is saying one thing, and the body
another. 
	As Carl Jung and other students of human behaviour have realized,
a conflict in expression between mind and body inevitably points to
conflicting messages coming from within our own being.  Although this
split is something that we all experie nce, at a deeper level it can
produce a profound fissure that runs into the depth s of the human psyche. 
Explorers of the body/mind relationship such as psycholog ist Alexander
Lowen have also found that identifying the existence of a separatio n
between our experience of mind and body plays a critical role in the
recognitio n and treatment of schizophrenia.  In this 'split', as Lowen
describes it, our se nse of identity becomes divided, with each part
drifting further and further away from the other.  Our sense of internal
wholeness fades with the diminishing cont act and we are left feeling out
of touch with a part of ourselves. 
	  In this culture, in this time, we all live so much of our lives in
our heads, and are so terribly ignorant of life as it is experienced in
the body;  the non-ve rbal, or body enactment of our lives.  Yet in every
thing we do, our bodies act a s mirrors, living mirrors of our lives.  The
shape of the body and its motion are the living, created form of human
expression.  Through the gestures that accompa ny talking, in the postures
and movements that make dance and theatre come alive, and in the body
language that tells so much about our natures to those about us, we
continually read the commonly understood but seldom acknowledged
expression of our inner lives, that is the body. 
	But the body not only expresses the image of who we are as human
beings.  More w onderfully, through the body, we feel our experience as
human beings.  For it is not until we are moved by the expressive form of
the body that its value and mean ing truly come to life. 
	So it is through both the imaginal expressiveness of its form and
the emotive de pths of its content, that the body brings the richness of
life to us.  And just a s it is for the Jew who tries to keep traditional
spiritual practise in our moder n society, the body not only is an
accurate portrayal of our deepest, and often u nconscious relationships
with life (and one that may be very different from our c onscious views),
it also fixes that information at a very physical level, feeding that
inner self perception back to us, and so strongly that we cannot truly
have said to have changed our responses to life relationships until we can
see that t here is a change in their expression at a body level as well. 
	Obviously, there is much value in being in touch with body
information, and yet learning to understand the language of the body is
not all that easy.  In fact, I have found just talking about body
experience to be a most difficult task.  If a nything meaningful is going
to be said, we want not to talk just to the head, but to the body as well. 
	Finding the right language when speaking to the body is important. 
It seems to be a language that does not have a lot in common with
conscious, rational thought .  "...the language of the body is
proprioceptive and not conceptual or logical.. .", says Rabbi Mann.  "It
is a language not for the reason but for the imaginatio n; and it is not
for our imagination as it becomes translated into thought, but f or our
imagination as it becomes translated into muscular responses." 
	Because of the body's capacity to both express itself and to be
understood throu gh image, I will use imagery; and so that the images will
not speak only to reaso n, I will hope to invoke the feeling content of
imagery as mediums through which to bring the living experience of the
body to you.  To this end, we will explore our relationship with the body
through the metaphorical world of fairy tales.  Th rough their stories we
will bring the human experience of the body to life; exper iences that can
be imagined, and felt. 

Note:1.No copying for use in making a financial profit
         2.All copies must include full body of text including author credit
            and these notes.

--
Matthew Van Der Giessen              email: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca

From mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca 9 Apr 1995 14:49:50 GMT
From: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca ()
Newsgroups: alt.backrubs
Subject: Re: Embracing the Beast
Date: 9 Apr 1995 14:49:50 GMT
Message-ID: <3m8s6e$k14@news.sas.ab.ca>

EMBRACING THE BEAST
by Matthew van der Giessen

PART I/2

	Why should a gap arise in the relationship between body and mind? 
In searching for the answer to that question, let us start with a story,
the tale of the Frog Prince.  The 'Tale of the Frog Prince' begins by
telling us that there was once a princess who had a golden ball.  One day,
while she was playing with it, the bal l bounced across the lawn, and down
the well. Horrified the princess ran to the w ell and peered down into its
dark depths, but with growing despair, for it was cl ear that she had no
hope of getting the ball back herself.  But as it is the luck of such
things in the world of fairy tale, there was a frog who lived in the wel
l, and the frog could talk.  He would get the ball back for her, he said,
but at a price.  If he was to give her back the ball, she had to allow him
to return wit h her to the castle, so that he may sit at her table, drink
from her cup, and sle ep by her side.
	Well!  She never takes him seriously.  Nevertheless she makes the
bargain.  But as soon as she gets the ball back, still dripping from its
fall into the waters b elow, she turns her back on him and hurries back to
the castle, alone.  He is lef t, hopping slowly behind, calling out to her
to remember their agreement.  She th inks that she will never see him
again. 
	Students of myth and legend know the wonderful way in which the
story can parall el real life experience, often at a surprisingly deep
level.  The story of the fr og and the princess has strong parallels to
the relationship that we often have w ith our own bodies.  Like the
princess, we too continually make bargains with our bodies to get what we
want from them, never thinking that we have to keep our si de of the
bargain.  Too often, once our bodies have performed to the level they w
ere expected to; whether that is shedding fat for the summer's beach, or
lessenin g pain levels after an injury, we forget, and like the princess,
put our awarenes s of the body aside for the moment.  But if we have
forgotten, the body is faithf ul and never forgets.  Slumbering, it only
awaits the right moment to be awakened again. 
	If expectations of the body are seldom heard and often ignored,
from our mind's perspective what is expected from the body/mind
relationship is easily understood .  Commonly, we ask for no more than
that the body should function well for us, l ook better than we could
possibly hope for, and not bother us too much.  Unfortun ately, our bodies
seldom live up to this short list of expectations, and at times they
positively assail us with their imperfections.  In fact, in spite of our
wi sh for positive messages from the body, often the only time we get
strong signals from our body is when something is not right. 
	What this all adds up to is that for each of us, the relationship
between body a nd mind could usually be much better.  It is not surprising
that our relationship with our bodies should be fraught with tension.  It
is one in which we usually h ave a low background noise of tensions, or
aches; it is a body that could ambush us at any moment with a torn
ligament, disease, and inevitable death.  It often r equires attention
when we don't have the time, and it can seldom keep up with the daily pace
that our minds would like to set for it.  It would seem that it is ou r
minds, and seldom our bodies that set the level of expectation in our
lives, an d yet like the frog, as we shall see, the body's needs are
seldom far from us. 
	As much as we would like our bodies not to bother us too much, at
the same time we do depend on them for sensory awareness.  In fact, our
ability to sense throug h body awareness is a survival skill at the most
basic level.  Through what we fe el in our bodies we know if we are too
close to a fire, if we have cut ourselves, whether a pain is
heartburn...or heart attack.  Our bodies give us a way of moni toring our
physical world, and a guide that tells us how to most correctly respon d
to it.
	But our bodies tell us more.  Our bodies also tell us about the
quality of our w orld experience, and of its effect on us at a much more
subtle level than our min ds alone would ever be aware of.  When we touch
another, it is through our bodies that we can tell if this is the touch
that thrills, or one that leaves us cold. 
 And it is through touch that we know ourselves, that we feel our very
existence by the sensations our bodies bring to our awareness.  Through
the body we feel th e pathos of life; not just the pain, but perhaps also
of some time when we lay on a beach, or on a windswept hill top, and felt
at peace with our body, and oursel ves.  We are moved by the touch of the
world.  And it is through touch, experienc ed in the body, that we are
finally truly touched by life itself. 
	In all these ways, the body brings us information that is vital to
us, and that speaks deeply of what it is to be human.  But too often,
because of the nature of the information they give us, the responses of
the body are exactly what we don' t want to feel.  They reveal us, and
tell us and others things about ourselves th at we would rather not feel,
or like the princess when she must explain to her fa ther the frog's
arrival at the castle gate, something that we might not want know n.  A
blush at the wrong time, a racing pulse and dilated pupils, even the
flicke r of an eye - we all are to some degree adept at reading the body
language of tho se about us, despite the best attempts of the bearer of
these tell-tale signs to repress their expression. 
	While hiding body expression from the discerning eye of others can
be difficult, we are all potential masters at denying ourselves full
recognition of their real ity.  And for good reason.  There is a common
theme that winds its way through ou r experience of body information that
often we would prefer not to feel, and hear , and that is the experience
of pain.
	The attempt to control discomfort and pain is a major factor in
why we relate to information from the body in the way we do.  Whether its
source is embarrassment or bruise, we invest a tremendous amount of energy
in controlling the pain of li fe's wounds.  The instant discomfort is
felt, we activate a whole array of defens e mechanisms whose job is to
control the influx of pain signals and armour the pl ace where the injury
has made us feel vulnerable. 
	Many of the ways in which we try to control the full brunt of pain
are easily re cognizable.  If you fall and hurt yourself, you brace,
wince, and tighten up - f ace, body and all.  Control over breath and body
movement by bracing is amazingly successful at controlling the intensity
of pain.  This can be seen in bodywork w hen often a client will stop
breathing the moment they feel discomfort.  From ear ly in life, the
lesson we learn is that the more we stop body movement, the bette r chance
we have of diminishing the pain of injury. 
	Physical injury is body pain that we all know too well.  It is
pain like this th at we pay the most attention to because this is the pain
that calls out most for our attention.  But there is also pain, like the
pain of embarrassment, that is m ore subtle.  The source of injury is not
as easily seen; its wound cannot be as e asily discovered.  And if this
kind of injury is so subtle that it has only sligh t impact on our
consciousness, or if we have learned too well how to dull our awa reness
of it, how can we be sure of what effects these injuries, and our response
s to them will have had on our bodies.  How will we know what is happening
in the experience of the body if we are so busy denying the messages that
it sends us. 
 Yet whether we acknowledge them or not, like the spider that spins its
web stran d by strand, the effects of defensive control still quietly move
into our lives, and will inevitably have their influence over us.
	Even when we successfully subdue awareness of our body responses,
the impact of that experience on our lives is no small matter.  In fact,
our very attempts to c ontrol the discomfort of injury increase the long
range effects of body trauma an d the stress it puts on our systems.  The
result is a mental stopping of body pro cesses, so that defensive bracing
becomes lodged in the body, affecting metabolis m, movement and posture,
becoming the physical reason for the growing implication of stress in
diseases of both body and mind.
	   	Our talent for silencing body signals makes unravelling the
language of the body no easy task.  Even when we decide that we want to
understand its language, we are still so entangled in the very ways we
originally masked sensory informati on that it becomes difficult to
understand what we are hearing.  Bound up in a tr ap of our own making,
like a spider caught in its own strands, it is truly a tang led web that
we weave. 

(to be continued)

Note:1.No copying for use in making a financial profit
         2.All copies must include full body of text including author credit
            and these notes

--
Matthew Van Der Giessen              email: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
6304 109A Street                     phone: (403) 438-3757
Edmonton, AB, T6H 3C7

From mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca 10 Apr 1995 14:04:44 GMT
From: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca ()
Newsgroups: alt.backrubs
Subject: Re: Embracing the Beast
Date: 10 Apr 1995 14:04:44 GMT
Message-ID: <3mbdts$rl4@news.sas.ab.ca>

...

Embracing the Beast
by Matthew van der Giessen
PART II/1
The Two Worlds

"Let me go", cried Brer Rabbit, 
"or I will punch you again" 

	Untangling the web of control over body responses is no easy task. 
Anyone who t ries, quickly learns some sympathy for Brer Rabbit as he
struggles to disengage h imself from the tar baby.  A large part of the
problem is that we have hamstrung a fundamental sensory ally, the human
body.  And this is not a problem we are goi ng to solve out of our heads. 
	An example of how hard it becomes to understand body information
when we have lo st contact with the immediacy of its expression can be
shown in the experience of one of my clients.  She had come to see me
because she was suffering from tensio n and badly wanted some relief from
the pain in her shoulders.  I began to work w ith the muscle tension, and
as I did, she started to talk about the events of her day.  She had been
through a horrible time, involved in an ongoing fight with a co-worker. 
	Now, 'talking out' the tension is not an uncommon occurrence when
working with t he body.  Bodywork brings a greater awareness of the body. 
As the tight muscles get worked with, we feel them more, and associations
are made with the experience s we had when we first tightened them; a kind
of place memory, in the same way th at the smell of baking bread might
bring back a flood of memories of visiting Gra ndma's house when you were
very young.  As feeling and body are associated with a gain, the control
that we had over the feeling becomes softened, and freed from t hat
control, the body is able to respond with more immediacy to what is being
fel t. 
	For my client, as she talked, the feelings surrounding her
experience of the day became more consciously recognized, and the muscles
involved in controlling the experience, in this case in her shoulders,
started to loosen their hold.  What w as held in limbo at a physical level
could now be experienced again at an inner l evel, and the body is freed
to a greater degree of expressiveness. 
	But then as her body began to respond and have more freedom of
movement, and my client started to feel more, what she became aware of was
the very anger that she had had that afternoon.  She was horrified.  "Now
I'm getting upset again", she cried in dismay.  "I'll lose all the
relaxation you've worked so hard for."  And of course, at the moment she
said those words, her back indeed tightened again. 
 Feeling was again controlled, body expression was stopped, and the
muscles of th e shoulder were tight. 
	From blush to gesture, the body is moved to express what we feel. 
Like the move ment of Aurora Borealis across a night sky, every flicker of
feeling excites and moves the tissues of the body in the places where we
feel the experience.  Contro l of that expression shows itself as control
over body movement.  A tight jaw, co ntrolled breath - in fact any tension
in the body can be seen, like the tight sho ulders of my client, to have
been control on the expression of what is felt. 
	 When we try to control the onset of pain we hold it, suspended, as
an oyster ho lds the irritation of a grain of sand, still there, but
separated, and held away from our immediate awareness.  But by distancing
ourselves from the pain, and dul ling the immediacy of its experience, we
only manage to seat pain deeper into th e body.  In the same way that the
princess dealt with the frog, we attempt to dea l with the problems
presented to us by the body by putting them at arms length, n ot seeing
that through this very distancing, we become locked into a negative rel
ationship with the body, dependent on maintaining our control over the
disturbing demands of feeling.  In our effort to push away the unpleasant
experiences of th e body we succeed, but at the price of binding ourselves
to these experiences in a grip that, like the body tension associated with
it, just won't let go.
	Although it may seem to have some negative side effects, denial of
pain is still something that we can all empathize with.  After all, pain
is not a popular word or experience in this world of ours.  If we do
relate to it, it is usually in te rms of learning to eradicate it from our
lives.  We quiet the pain of the body wi th pills, with subliminal tapes,
with surgery.  When it comes to the body, our cu lture is on a fervent
search for the perfect and painless body.  And yet, as we s hall see, in
bodywork, transformative change happens at the very places where pai n is
greatest.  It is the very experiences that we would most like to avoid
that have the greatest need and offer the greatest possibility of healing. 
It seems a s if because we seldom pay attention to our bodies when all is
going well, the po ssibility for change needs to start at the place of
discomfort, at the point wher e the body calls us most strongly to come to
terms with it.
	Body discomfort is a voice that calls to be responded to.  It is
the voice of th e child, tugging at our apron strings, crying for our
attention.  Much of the rea son for the continuation of bodily discomfort
can be found in the decision of the frog's princess.  She has little time
for the frog.  His only value to her is th at he is able to move freely in
the dark, moist world of the well, a world that s he has little ability or
inclination to explore.  So too often with ourselves.  W e give a minimal
amount of attention to the murky world of bodily needs and dista nce
ourselves from exploring any deeper relationship with its sensory depths. 
A nd yet the exploration of that relationship is precisely the road to
healing. 
	The difficulty in finding that road is that we are so completely
caught up in th e way of doing things that initiated the problem.  Even
when we try to deal with problems of the body, we continue to create
solutions that are nothing more than a rehashing of the same way of
dealing with the same old problems.  Like Brer Rab bit embracing the Tar
Baby, everything that we do seems to only pull us deeper in to the
experience. 
	A newspaper article I saw recently is a good illustration of this. 
Apparently, growing awareness of the influence of stress on heart attack
has caused stress-la den office workers to take up sports such as running. 
The idea, as you might ass ume, is to to get their bodies in shape, and
their tension levels lower. 
	The problem is that these fledgling athletes also incur a high
number of body st ress injuries such as shin splints, and sometimes heart
attack.  Now why should t his happen?  Apparently, exercise is being
approached with the same attitude that created success, and too much
stress in the work-place.  Minds that were alread y well trained to drive
bodies to long hours and high levels of anxiety were quic kly applied to
driving the body into 'success oriented' exercise routines that we re far
beyond the body's capacities. 
	Once again, success was being striven for, but again at a cost. 
Without a chang e in attitude, exercise only replaced ulcers with painful
joints and didn't lower the stress to the heart.  The mind continues to
reign as the only valued source of information with which to approach
life, a view that leaves the perspective a nd needs of the body still
crying out from far behind us. 
	In this relationship, the princess is the conscious mind.  It is
that part of us that wants to take the good out of life experience without
any investment of our princess world into hearing the voice of the
frog-world: the dark, moist and oft en treacherously swampy world of the
body. 

(To be Continued)

Note:1.No copying for use in making a financial profit
         2.All copies must include full body of text including author credit
            and these notes

--
Matthew Van Der Giessen              email: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
6304 109A Street                     phone: (403) 438-3757
Edmonton, AB, T6H 3C7

From mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca 12 Apr 1995 04:21:37 GMT
From: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca ()
Newsgroups: alt.backrubs
Subject: Re: Embracing the Beast
Date: 12 Apr 1995 04:21:37 GMT
Message-ID: <3mfkgh$62l@news.sas.ab.ca>

Embracing the Beast
by Matthew van der Giessen
PART II/2
The Two Worlds

	Let us take a minute to look closer at the world of the mind. 
Perhaps in doing this we can gain more of an understanding of what is
needed to heal the rift that can arise between them.  In the body-mind
relationship the world of the mind is the world of image.  It is a world
that perceives, imagines and uses its imaginal abilities to organize
information.  Images allow the mind to take the rich array of information
it receives, and 'get the picture'.  But the imaginal capacity of the mind
is not just a receptive one.  Images have been called the "bridge betwe en
conscious processing of information and physiological change"  spreading
their influence through both the voluntary and involuntary nervous
systems.
	A large part of the the 'picture' that the mind receives is made
up of sensory i nformation impressed on the brain at an area of the
cerebral cortex called the ho munculus.  The homunculus is a cross section
of the brain with one half devoted t o receiving sensory information and
the other for sending motor, or movement sign als to the body. 
	The sensory half of the homunculus has larger areas for the parts
of the body th at have a higher concentration of nerve endings, such as
the palm of the hand, an d smaller areas for parts of the body we need
less information from, such as the back.  A picture of the body created on
the basis of the proportion of homunculus used for sensing that area would
have a huge face, with enormous lips and mouth, a huge hand with an
enlarged index finger, a very small trunk and limbs with hug e feet.  The
motor side of the homunculus has a similar look with only slight cha nges;
a larger thumb and smaller index finger for example. 
	The amount of information received by the sensory side of the
homunculus is fed to the motor side, and is decisive in the amount of
control that the motor homunc ulus has on the body.  The more information
the sensory side receives, the better able is the motor side to guide the
body in the demands of body movement. 
	This ability to specifically affect the body has been found by
researchers to sh ow response not just at a muscular level but to effect
tissues and organs, even c ells.  Recent research has indicated that human
imagination may even have a stron g effect on the workings of the immune
system, influencing states of sickness and health.  The effect of the
imagination on the body can be so immediate that it h as been called
preverbal.
	Our ability to learn and refine body movement is also affected
here.  It is actu ally possible to stimulate the sensory homunculus with
an increased level of inpu t by working that area of the body more.  The
result of this increased sensory in formation is that the motor homunculus
is able to create more defined motor signa ls to that part of the body and
a higher degree of movement control.  This is the function used by the
yogi who learns to control the movement of each joint of a hand. 
Continued practice of the movement brings increased sensory awareness, whi
ch in turn allows greater control over movement. 
	The ability of the mind to imagine is at the root of our
consciousness of life.  It allows us to form sensory impressions into
pictures of existence, and use tho se images to direct our bodies to
movement.  The mind's ability to work with imag es allows it to seemingly
have no bounds.  In an instant, our minds can be in Mos cow, or will have
created a world never experienced before. 
	The body, on the other hand, lives in a slower, more prosaic
world.  The body ha s its strength in feeling.  Just as imagery is the
mind's way of 'getting the pic ture', of taking its information and
creating wholisms or realizations, feelings take the sensations of the
body and create a wholism of sensory experience.  Feel ings allow us to
'get a feel' for situations. They allow us to respond to body se nsations
in a conscious and intelligible way.  They give content to images, engen
dering movement and form that has meaning and purpose. 
	The mind may bring us the structure of the world, but the body
gives us its cont ent.  An assessment of body sensations can tell us
whether we feel happy or sad, they can keep us in touch with important
subtleties of life, such as whether we a re too close to the car ahead, or
whether there is something that 'just doesn't f eel right' about someone
we have met.  And like the dancer who is moved in the cr eation of a
dance, images give form to what is felt.  But every good actor and da ncer
also has to "feel" the part before they can bring life to the image they
are creating for the role.  Our ability to read body sensation through
feelings tell s us vital information about the inside story of life.  Even
more so for the body worker for whom it is vital to have an enhanced
ability to feel his way through t he subtleties of the work.  Our bodies
become essential eyes on our inner world. 
 It is true that the eye can be deceived, but the heart, when listened to
with a discerning ear, can tell us much more about our world than the mind
will ever not ice. 
  	Working together, the body feeds the mind sensory information about
life exper ience, telling us what is felt about them.  Images, in turn,
have a powerful effe ct on the body, bringing the many individual muscles
of the body together to be u sed in concerted action.  Input of sensation
from the body allows the mind to for m images that are as concise and
immediate as the needs of body movement in that moment.  This interplay
between the sensory and imaginal strengths of body and mi nd has been used
to good effect by athletes when they want to train the body to r espond to
the finest degree in competition.  Between them, the body and mind brin g
a richness to human experience that can be especially felt when there is a
lack of information from either sphere.  Sensory deprivation has been
shown to reduce the imagination to fantasy while those who have little
sensory contact with thei r body (such as the sexually abused) have also
been found to have a reduced abili ty to form clear images around the
body.  As we shall see, a lack of clear images about the body has a deep
effect of our ability to move and respond through the body. 
	Like the athlete in training, we can use images consciously, but
more often body images become unconscious and insinuate themselves, for
better or worse, into ou r body image and its expressive language becoming
for example the slumping postur e of one who we say "doesn't have a good
self image"  But in whatever form they s erve us, images and feelings
bridge the gap between mind and body, and organize t he individual muscles
of the body, so that inevitably the body becomes 'created i n our own
image'.
	This difference in perspective between the mind and the body is
important to our understanding of the source of conflict that can arise
between them.  While the mind is quick, it is slow to appreciate the
seemingly plodding motion of a body t hat absorbs and digests life through
feeling.  If our minds can be in Moscow this moment, it will take a lot
longer for the body to get there.  And if the body is hurt, the mind, not
wanting to experience the wounds of bodily life is wont, lik e the
princess, to desert the body, forsaking it because of the trials that the
b ody brings us. 
	As in any relationship where there is no relating, tensions
inevitably grow.  Stifling expression, disregarding another's needs,
unresponsiveness to changing conditions; like a microcosm of everyday life
these same issues are all to be found at play when there is a breakdown in
the relationship between mind and body. 

(To be Continued)

Note:1.No copying for use in making a financial profit
         2.All copies must include full body of text including author credit
            and these notes

--
Matthew Van Der Giessen              email: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
6304 109A Street                     phone: (403) 438-3757
Edmonton, AB, T6H 3C7

From mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca 12 Apr 1995 17:07:00 GMT
From: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca ()
Newsgroups: alt.backrubs
Subject: Re: Embracing the Beast
Date: 12 Apr 1995 17:07:00 GMT
Message-ID: <3mh1bk$95e@news.sas.ab.ca>

EMBRACING THE BEAST
by Matthew van der Giessen
PART III/1
THE WORLD OF SLEEPING BEAUTY

	In the last two chapters we started an exploration of the
relationship between b ody and mind.  First, we used the fairy tale, "The
Frog Prince" to illustrate the problems that arise when denial of messages
from the body causes a disruption in the integrity of body consciousness.
Then, we looked at the worlds of body and m ind, showing what is involved
in their makeup that might contribute to the breakd own in relationship
that we call tension and pain. 
	Now, let us leave the dilemma of the frog body and the princess
mind for the mom ent and take a closer look at the process through which
consciousness of bodily i njury is denied.  Let me give you an example, a
revealing and powerful portrayal of one individual's response to injury
and pain as given by Jeanne Achterberg, in her book, 'Imagery in Healing'.
	"I am reminded", she writes, "of a young man who was working on a
scaffold when a crane swung into it, sending him hurtling down two
stories.  His arm was nearly severed, he broke both of his knees,
sustained multiple fractures, and injured h is back.  There was no logical
reason for him to have survived, except that he's mentally as tough as
nails.  When I asked him how he did it, he said he knew he h ad to keep
his eyes open, because if he became unconscious, he'd never wake up ag
ain.  He remained awake throughout the whole ordeal, watching the blood
and 'whit e stuff' flow out of his arm, acutely aware of the pain, and
never going into sho ck.  He focused on his breathing, holding his breath
as long as he could and then breathing shallowly.  A fellow construction
worker helped save his arm by applyi ng pressure in the right places. 
After hours and hours of careful surgery, it wa s successfully reattached,
and has now become functional.  He still fights genera l anaesthesia and
every other situation where he might lose the self-control that pulled him
through.  He holds his breath, and steels himself for his next life c
risis; but he's alive."
	What Achterberg has described so well here is the 'damage control'
that we all d o whenever faced with injury to our being.  It doesn't even
take conscious focus.  When faced with such a threat we all will
instinctually brace with our breathin g and fight the overwhelming of our
consciousness from body sensation. 
	The blind determination of Achterberg's construction worker shows
the response o f mental control in the face of injury that is an essential
part of our survival mechanism.  Bracing in the face of injury leaves us
steeled against the injury, and keeps us alive.
	So what is the problem with controlling body sensation in the face
of pain?  Not hing, in itself.  The world of the body has a need for
balance.  If we feel overw helmed by body sensation, such as pain, the
mind will try to cut down on the inpu t so that we are left with some
ability to reason, some capacity for self awarene ss and self-control. 
But at a cost.  We also lose some of our ability to feel wh ether each new
experience that follows is a safe one or not.  Like a stray dog th at
growls at a friendly hand, we are left blinded to the possibility of
redemptio n from our pain.  In bodywork, it is the most traumatized client
who will hold th emselves awkwardly above supportive surface of the
massage table, and brace again st the hand of the therapist.  In the same
way that the oyster learns to cope wit h the gradually increasing demands
of the growing pearl by giving up some of its living space, we are left
using more and more of our energy to cope with an unint egrated
experience, still staving off the invasion of injury signals to our body
consciousness. 
	In the Grimm's story of The Sleeping Beauty, we are given a
powerful picture of the cost of control in the face of injury.  In this
case, the object of denial is an evil tempered wise woman, or witch who is
not invited to the feast given in h onor of the king's baby daughter.  She
arrives in any case but in a fury, and jus t before the last good wise
woman is about to give her gift proclaims, "In the fi fteenth year of her
age, the princess shall prick herself on a spindle and fall d own dead". 
The court is filled with horror.  The king, not wanting his daughter to
fall prey to the wicked woman's curse, burns all the spinning wheels in
the ki ngdom.  He hopes that he can remove the danger by banning all
awareness of the in strument of her promised death.  Although he has been
assured by the last wise wo man's prophecy that in the end all will turn
out well, he wants to save them, cas tle and court, from the pain of the
princess's fate, and yet in vain.  Time goes on.  The princess grows up to
be beautiful in a land that does not spin.  Because of her lack of
experience she does not recognize the spinning wheel when she fin ally
comes across one.  Because the king has ordained that it should not be
spoke n of she has not been told of the deadly prediction.  She reaches
out to touch t he beautiful spinning wheel, pricks her hand and falls
asleep.  So in the end, de spite all the king's precautions, the wicked
witch, unacknowledged and unrelated to, has her way at last. 
	Here, retribution for our denial of the frog world finally catches
up with us.  By 'forgetting' that which is unpleasant in life, we leave
ourselves vulnerable t o its effects, as they work unconsciously, casting
their spell on our lives.  In one of the most compelling passages in the
whole book of Grimm's fairy tales we a re told:
	"And this sleep fell upon the whole castle; the king and queen, who
had returned and were in the great hall, fell fast asleep, and with them
the whole court.  Th e horses in their stalls, the dogs in the yard, the
pigeons on the roof, the flie s on the wall, the very fire that flickered
on the hearth, became still, and slep t like the rest; and the meat on the
spit ceased roasting, and the cook, who was going to pull the scullion's
hair for some mistake he had made, let him go, and w ent to sleep.  The
wind ceased, and not a leaf fell from the trees about the cast le."
	So it is, and with as much completeness and finality that the life
of our bodies , the movements and sensations that are its expression, can
be quietly removed fr om our consciousness, and lost, into the world of
the unconscious.
	But there is more.  The ability of bracing not only serves as a
powerful agent i n putting our body awareness away from responsiveness to
life, it also builds a p rotection, both physical and psychological,
around the place of injury, making su re that the spell will not be
disturbed. 
	"Then roundabout that place", continue the brothers Grimm, "there
grew a hedge o f thorns thicker every year, until at last the whole castle
was hidden from view, and nothing of it could be seen but the vane on the
roof."
	A powerful picture of the bracing that we too do around an injury. 
The hedge ar ound the castle shows its twofold purpose.  Besides bracing
from the effects of f urther injury to our being, we control the movement
of the injury into our lives.  In the same way that we would respond to an
oil spill or a nuclear disaster, we contain the area of trauma and attempt
to control the spread of its influence on the rest of our body
consciousness.  This effectively controls much of our exper ience of body
trauma but at a price, and although muffled, the voice of the traum a, and
its effect on the body still refuse to go away. 
	As our connection with the sensate life of our body fades, a
bracing arises that protects, but is also a visible indicator that this
part of the body has the bra cedness of a cast, and the unresponsiveness
and brittleness of a branch that has lost its sap.  The form is still
there, but the responsiveness and inner strength that come with life have
gone.  The brittleness of the bracing makes these parts of the body most
vulnerable to reinjury and most resistant to any deep level of response to
body therapy.
	This bracing to form a protective circle around the place of
injury requires a g reat amount of energy.  Moshe Feldenkrais, the
originator of Feldenkrais Method b ody therapy describes it like this:
	"In every action in which a degree of difficulty is anticipated the
body is draw n together as a protective device against this difficulty. 
It is precisely this reinforcement of the body that requires the
unnecessary effort and prevents the b ody from organizing itself correctly
for action...  Further, this self-protection and superfluous effort in
action are an expression of the individual's lack of s elf-confidence.  As
soon as a person is conscious that he is placing a strain on his powers he
makes a greater effort of the will to reinforce his body for the ac tion,
but in fact he is forcing superfluous effort on himself.  The act
resulting from this attempt to reinforce the body will never be either
graceful or stimula ting, and will arouse no wish in the individual to
repeat it."  Here again, we fi nd ourselves trapped in the web of body
control.
	As effective as bracing is in responding to stressful experiences,
the containin g and controlling abilities of bracing leave the traumatized
area locked out of a ny sense of immediate connectiveness with post-trauma
experience, including the n eed of the body and mind to heal.  Sensory
awareness of the body is lessened.  Wi thout this information the worlds
of the mind and body begin to drift apart, with the mind only able to
approximate the correct forms of body movement needed.  In the face of a
lack of information from the body, the mind moves faster, trying t o
compensate for the lack of body information by creating scenarios of how
to res pond to life.  The mind becomes prone to misjudging new situations
and creating fantasies built more out of its heightened defence awareness
than the reality of the situation.  It becomes more difficult for the
racing mind to sleep and let g o of control, unable as it is to sense the
safety of the environment it would be leaving consciousness of.  We become
disconnected from a sense of immediacy of li fe, and any sense of
aliveness in the body.  But as Feldenkrais points out, where -ever we deny
that awareness, we become locked out of body feeling and the sense of
aliveness and energy that it brings us, left able to only mechanically
manipul ate the body by will, forcing our bodies onward through the
motions of living.  L ike a runner blindly pushing his way to reach the
end of a marathon, we submerse the calls of body pain so that we can go
forward. 

(To be Continued)

Note:1.No copying for use in making a financial profit
         2.All copies must include full body of text including author credit
            and these notes

--
Matthew Van Der Giessen              email: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
6304 109A Street                     phone: (403) 438-3757
Edmonton, AB, T6H 3C7

From mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca 13 Apr 1995 14:15:43 GMT
From: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca ()
Newsgroups: alt.backrubs
Subject: Re: Embracing the Beast
Date: 13 Apr 1995 14:15:43 GMT
Message-ID: <3mjbmf$f3m@news.sas.ab.ca>

EMBRACING THE BEAST
by Matthew van der Giessen

PART III/2
THE WORLD OF SLEEPING BEAUTY

Aside from the ways in which bracing affects our ability to feel, and
initiate mo vement, there is also an influence on the amount of conflict
that is involved in movement.  As long as imaginal commands are
unconsciously controlling how we move our bodies, every movement will find
that particular part of the body trying to listen to two messages at once. 
	Those of you who have had a frozen shoulder will know that as much
as you might want to raise your arm, it seems as if there is another force
in resistance, maki ng the movement impossible, and painful to attempt. 
Every movement that we do in an area that is still under the control of
old messages will have a similar expe rience to it.  We will be constantly
fighting against restrictive motion. 
	The accumulated effect of this conflict of messages results in
every movement be ing harder to do, using up more energy, and leaving us
with a feeling of limbs th at are heavy and muscles that feel strained. 
Although we generally accustom ours elves to this slow closing in on the
body's expressive freedom, a measure of the success of most body therapies
will be a renewed sense of lightness and freedom o f movement in the body. 
	Again the experience of being stuck in our own web shows itself. 
At this point, all attempts at change will be tainted with the still
prevailing perspective of "damage control".  With consciousness outside
the protective hedge of control, we can't feel in touch with the place of
injury, so every attempt that is made to a ffect change will move from the
perspective of external control: force without fe eling; deprived of
feeling in touch with, and the body softening that feeling bri ngs. 
	 As our ability to feel in the traumatized area is cut down it
becomes difficult for any new imaginal messages to take effect.  This
means that our mind's abilit y to define and direct movement becomes hazy,
clumsy, and as Feldenkrais points o ut, forced.  As well, the information
that we need to form our sense of body imag e is cut down.  In bodywork,
this will show up when people will often say that th ey don't have a sense
of parts of their bodies; that they don't have legs, that a n arm feels
thinner or shorter than its physical reality. 
	To the degree that we pull away from feeling the trauma, there is
a tendency for the last imaginal message, most often the message to brace,
to stay in control o f the muscles.  Muscle tension or 'bracing' becomes
the physical expression of th is stopping of body experience.  And as we
continue to distance ourselves from th e pain we feel, we push away the
whole experience of body connection, losing cont act even with the
imaginal directive of bracing so that it sinks more and more in to the
unconscious.  A gap between what we consciously envision of our body and i
ts nature, and the actual responsiveness of the body occurs.  Not only are
we lef t with gaps in body awareness, we also have tension that we can't
seem to let go of: shoulders that will not relax, continual reoccurrence
of pain in legs or lowe r back from muscles that will not release, and
unhealthy postures that seem deter mined to have their way.  The body, as
Feldenkrais tells us, will not respond to our disenfranchised attempts to
'fix' it.  The messages we are sending to it can no longer adequately
reach the world of the traumatized body.  As the body feels segmented, the
language of separation becomes stronger. It is then that people wi ll
often makes statements to their therapist such as, "If only you could take
off that neck, and replace it one that works better."  Feeling separated
and out of touch with the area, our bodies are caught in a frozen reaction
to trauma, still fighting a battle whose purpose is long past.  The body
has been truly abandoned.
	With body and mind asunder before the experience of pain, where do
we turn for h elp?  And where do those of us who are therapists turn as we
attempt to help hea l this rift that grows within human consciousness? 
For this question is not just one of the individual in society, bearing
our private wounds.  With all our wond rous ability to manipulate nature,
this is a culture that is sadly and dangerousl y out of touch with nature. 
Learning to relate again through the body is not jus t a lesson for the
individual, it becomes a profound lesson in healing the wounds between
human-kind and the body of life that we are part of.  Seen this way, our
relationship with our body becomes a living metaphor for our relationship
with l ife.  With this in mind, let us once more hear the thoughts of
Moshe Feldenkrais. 
  	
	" The limit of ability", says Feldenkrais, " must be widened by
means of study a nd understanding rather than by stubborn effort and
attempts to protect the body. "  Here are words to be remembered when any
of us are seduced into the use of for ce in an effort to effect change
within ourselves. 
	But there is something else being said here that we shouldn't
miss; some referen ce to a different way of relating to the body.  It
would seem that Feldenkrais is saying that we need not so much to do
something to the body but rather to be a s tudent of the body;  to slow
the rush of the 'fix it' perspective of the rational mind and learn to
listen instead.  After all, with the relationship between body and mind in
disarray it is clear that some new way of relating to the body must be
learned. In the next chapter we will explore what that new way of relating
mig ht be. 

(To be Continued)

Note:1.No copying for use in making a financial profit
         2.All copies must include full body of text including author credit
            and these notes

--
Matthew Van Der Giessen              email: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
6304 109A Street                     phone: (403) 438-3757
Edmonton, AB, T6H 3C7

From mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca 14 Apr 1995 14:18:01 GMT
From: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca ()
Newsgroups: alt.backrubs
Subject: Re: Embracing the Beast
Date: 14 Apr 1995 14:18:01 GMT
Message-ID: <3mm06p$l4p@news.sas.ab.ca>

EMBRACING THE BEAST
by Matthew van der Giessen

PART IV
COMING HOME
"...for this my son was dead, and is alive again; 
he was lost, and is found"
-Luke 16:24

	How do we 'come home' again to the body?  In Grimms' tale, the
legacy of the king's approach to resolving the problem continues in the
rescue attempt as well as we hear, "...from time to time many king's sons
came and tried to force their way through the hedge.  But it was
impossible for them to do so, for the thorns held fast together like
strong hands, and the young men were caught by them, and not being able to
get free, died a lamentable death."  Or as Feldenkrais warns us, "stubborn
effort and attempts to protect the body" will not avail us in solving the
problem of healing the rift between body and mind.  Trying to break in by
the use of force only brings up the stronger force of bracing that is our
'damage control' around the injury. 
	The very unconsciousness of the control can be heard in the
experiences of those I work with.  Bodywork is essentially involved in
bringing consciousness to areas of unconscious holding in the body, the
places we call tension.  Despite the wish on the part of both client and
therapist that the tension should leave, often the harder the therapist
works at the tension, the more resistance he or she will encounter.  When
I work with areas where a deep bracing is at work, it is common for my
client's first awarenesses of the area to come as I will be told, "I can
feel myself resisting but I don't have any control over it.  In fact,
often, the first movements towards release do not come in a softening of
musculature but in a heightened bracing as the body has a chance to fully
feel and express its need to defend itself.  Of course, reunification of
body and mind, and the release of muscle tension that accompanies it
occurs often enough to keep people going back to massage therapists since
ancient times but any time that there is not any real depth of
responsiveness, it is a sure sign that the experiences associated with the
braced muscles have not yet resolved themselves enough that they are able
to release the body to fluid expression again. 
	Bringing feeling to areas of unconscious control is best mediated
through focusi ng the mind, and the use of breath.  Just as breath control
is so amazingly affec tive in pain control, breathing again can be the
only way of finding feeling in t he body again.  Its action is so specific
that I can sometimes find an area of th e body that shows by its physical
reactions that it is on the edge of wakefulness , except that my client
feels nothing there, and the body is not responding.  At these points,
simply breathing in what is felt, even if it is only the pressure of my
hand, will often be all that is needed for the place to immediately become
s ensitive, and for muscular awakening and response to commence. 
	Heightened awareness of the body is an essential first step to
helping it heal but it is only the beginning.  It is a long step from the
initial awareness of re sistance to the renewal of response that brings
with it the reunification of body consciousness.  It is the challenge that
faces any prince who stands outside the hedge of thorns pondering the
enigma of its existence, and the question that it presents.  How to find
the way through the hedge of thorns that so capably pushes back any
attempt to change its hold on the body?  How to do more than raise
consciousness of the wounds of the area?  It is a problem that faces body
therapists whenever they are working with any one in pain.  But the same
issues also quietly present themselves in bodywork whenever the body is
still and unresponsive to th e most determined attempts to reawaken it. 
It is certainly a problem each of us face whenever we seek to explore the
sleeping worlds that lie within us. 
	 At this point in fairy tale and life experience, when all the
tools that we hav e about us have failed, we have need for something other
than that which we know.  This is the point we come to when all else has
failed, when the attempts of our wounded perspective have not found the
way, when every attempt to break down the wall of control that protects a
wounded body have been rebuffed, and frustrated, we can find no way back
into the world of the body, that world we so easily and quickly turned our
back on. 
	
	In fairy tale language, the answer to the hero or heroine's
troubles comes from the unexpected, from that which might have been
overlooked, or perhaps looked dow n upon.  Whether it comes as the frog,
or one of the many other nature symbols th at appear in myth and fairy
tale to offer the opportunity of a new world view, on ly those seekers who
find value in that which seems valueless may find the help needed to
resolve the unresolvable problem, and eventually the secret's answer. 
	In bodywork, the answer to unresolvable body tension most
frequently lies in the place where we would least want to look for it, at
the place of greatest pain.  For as we shall see in our next tale, the
indication of where we must turn for re lease is at the very place we were
not expecting it; in the the world of the unknown, from the frog's well
of the unconscious, where separation of body and mind l ocks our pain, in
troubled sleep within us. 
	The question at this point in bodywork, when the area of trauma
has been awakened to consciousness, its injury felt, is learning to
relate to pain.  This is the most difficult place to work through in
bodywork.  Pain is not a pleasant subject - we are not pleased to
experience pain in our lives.  As we have seen, we will go to great
lengths to control its influence on our lives. 
	Yet learning to relate to pain seems to be the source from which
healing comes forth in bodywork.  In fact, there is every indication that
much of our continued experience of pain is bound up in the very tension
that holds it.  Ida Rolf, the originator of a deep pressure form of
bodywork called Structural Integration, or Rolfing, once wrote that the
intensity of pain levels increased directly with the degree of resistance
in the body.  From a psychological perspective, Carl Jung wrote a similar
thing when he said that at their basis, he felt all neurosis' were the
result of the bearer denying his or her fate.  It is as if, at the moment
of greatest pain, we have said, "stop the world, I want to get off", and
with that word 'stop', have pulled out from the body the life of conscious
feeling and froz en that particular scene of life.  Bereft of feeling, the
stuff of life, the body lies then, like Sleeping Beauty's sleeping
courtyard, or an insect caught in amb er, in a frozen act.  It responds
only to the denied messages of pain; a physical monument, silently
honouring a forgotten memory.
	The connection between pain and denying life impulses is also a
theme that arise s in the drama of the fairy tale.  Let us look at what
happens in the story of fairy tales when there is no longer a denial of
life experience and the hero or her oine finally turns to meet fate's
call.  In the story, 'Beauty and the Beast', pain moves through the story
in many themes.  First, there is the pain of the famil y's fall from
fortune; their friends turn away from them and they move to a cotta ge in
the country to toil in poverty. 
	Then there is the fear and pain of the father's meeting with the
Beast.  He has plucked a rose for his beloved daughter Beauty from the
Beast's palace garden, where he has received shelter from the storm. 
	"Ungrateful wretch", says his previously unseen host.  "Who told
you that you might gather my roses? ...Your insolence shall not go
unpunished."
	The terrified father begs for the Beast's forgiveness and it is
finally granted, but only on the condition that the father will return in
one month to give the Beast one of the merchant's daughters.  And she
must come willingly.
	The wretched man goes home to his family and, as they can see his
despair, is eventually compelled to tell them the story.  Feeling
responsible for her father's misfortune, Beauty decides that it is she who
must return with him to the Beast's palace.  Having born the sacrifice of
her former life style with grace, she now is faced with the sacrifice of
her very life for that of her father.
	Our common reaction to pain is akin to that of Beauty's sisters,
who unlike her, never fully accept their fall into poverty.  We too would
distance ourselves fro m the experience of our fall from grace, whether in
body or soul.  We would try to make the experience of discomfort one of
an object, and most particularly, an o bject that is other than ourselves. 
We disinherit the experience, projecting it out into a hostile outer
world.  In our language, this is commonly seen when we say things like,
"This chair is uncomfortable", rather than saying, "I feel uncomfortable
in this chair".
	In bodywork, it is common to hear a client talk about their body
and its experience in this objective way.  When we become the victims of
injury in the body, we tend to disallow any value to our own experience
and more credence in the views of others, especially experts. As we
disinherit our wounds, we also give up a degree of of our own sense of
empowerment.  In this vein, it is interesting to note that when told that
they have cancer, it is more often the person who gets angry and gets
ready to fight the death sentence of the diagnosis who will live long pa
st their medically projected life span. 
	Because we can feel at a distance from, and devalue body signals,
in the initial interview of a bodywork session I especially want to hear
what my client thinks and feels about their body, not the ideas, however
correct, of some other.  And in the therapy session itself, I have found
it important to place the highest value on what the client actually feels
in the body; for in bodywork, all change starts at the places of feeling,
where body and mind meet. 
	As she moves toward her fateful meeting with the Beast, Beauty
shows the ability to meet life experience, even when it is most painful. 
Instead of turning away from the unpleasantness of life with denial, she
is willing to engage with the reality of her experience.  But now she
must meet the Beast. 
	It is seldom that we go looking for discomfort in our lives.  It
is more often that it comes to us.  Like the forgotten witch's curse in
'Sleeping Beauty', that which we have pushed away from our conscious life
creates the conditions through which we are inevitably bound to that which
we would deny, and eventually confron ted with the coped with, silent
wound. 

(To be continued)

NOTE:
1.No reproduction except in full with credits and notes intact
2.No reproduction for profit. 

--
Matthew Van Der Giessen              email: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca

From mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca 15 Apr 1995 14:21:31 GMT
From: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca ()
Newsgroups: alt.backrubs
Subject: Re: Embracing the Beast
Date: 15 Apr 1995 14:21:31 GMT
Message-ID: <3mokpb$ssr@news.sas.ab.ca>

EMBRACING THE BEAST
by Matthew van der Giessen

PART V
EMBRACING THE BEAST
	In my work, I very seldom see people because they feel good.  I
see them because they have not been able to find a way of dealing with
their bodies any more.  Either they have been so good at quieting that
they cannot feel anything any more or more commonly, the beast in their
body experience has become so strident and insistent that it breaks
through all efforts to contain it. 
	But before we can come into any relationship with the caged beast
within, we must find our way; like the prince, through the ring of
thorns, or like Beauty, through empathy, and through her heart. 
	Every day, Beauty is confronted with the frightening and repulsive
reality of the Beast but at night a strange thing happens.  In her dreams
she meets a young prince, handsomer than any one she had ever seen.  And
with a voice that went straight to her heart, he came and said to her:
"Ah, Beauty!, you are not so unfortuna te as you suppose.  Here you will
be rewarded for all you have suffered elsewhere .  Your every wish shall
be gratified.  Only try to find me out, no matter how I may be disguised,
as I love you dearly and in making me happy you will find your won
happiness.  Be as true-hearted as you are beautiful, and we shall have
nothin g left to wish for."
	In fairy tale, love is won and transformation wrought, most often
by those who are true-hearted.  In bodywork the same is true.  By a
heightened sense of empathy , by exploring what is felt, by following the
way of the heart; here too healing is wrought. 
	To get back in touch with the place of injury, we have to be able
to feel the place again.  For the reintegration of graceful and
expressive movement at a place of bracing, we have to get a feel for the
sense of self we have in that place, the sense of self that brings
expression to motion...as in any thing learned, or relearned, we have to
get a 'feel for it' again. 
	It is as if we have been pushed outside the experience of the body
in that movement or that place.  The movement of control, that movement
that Feldenkrais descr ibes, is the movement of form without feeling -
like the movement of the robot.  To find the feeling in movement, and new
movement in the body, it is essential to get back in touch with what it
feels like there, at the place where bracing shows the vulnerability of
injury. 
	But how to open the heart, to learn to relate in feeling again? 
The answer is in those signs of life that are so immediately controlled
when we brace in the face of stress: breath and movement. 
	Breathing connects us deeply with the rhythm of life.  It is a
rhythmical moveme nt itself, moving breath in and out, the rib cage in
expansion and contraction; and it has the amazing ability to move us into
and out of experiences, feeling the intensity of body sensation more with
an in breath, and less with an out breath.  When we control breathing, we
control that ability to expand and contract our dialogue with bodily life
- control on breathing physically controls our ability t o enter into the
experience of life. Movement too has a connection with involvement with
life.  If breathing gets us in touch with the feeling of life, movement
allows the expression of what is felt .  We are moved to laughter and
tears, we are moved to dance for joy and strike out in anger, we are
moved to embrace with love, and push away with disgust.  In fact, the
only time we are not moved to anything is when we can't feel. 
	And here we have Beauty, not feeling as if she can embrace the
Beast, and Beast, locked in his beastly form, needing her to embrace him,
if he is ever to become human again. 
	How often do each of us feel so tight and locked up in our bodies
that we don't even feel human?  And yet this is the very beastliness that
needs our connectiveness with its pain before it can be released to
itself again.
	Every night the Beast would come to Beauty, and every night before
he left her side he would ask, "Do you love me Beauty?  Will you marry
me?"  And each night, she would say that she could not, and he would turn
sadly away. 
	It is only when she has left him, returning to her family for a
visit, that she finally realizes how much he needs her, and how much she
misses him.  When she returns, it is almost too late.  She finds him
lying, almost dead, in the garden. 
	"Oh! he is dead, and it is all my fault," said Beauty, crying
bitterly.
	But she revives the Beast with water and cries, "Oh, Beast, how
you frightened me!  I never knew how much I loved you until just now,
when I feared I was too late to save your life."
	"Can you love such an ugly creature as I am?", says he.
	And at that moment when she realizes her connectiveness with him,
and acts on what she feels, he is returned to his true form, and they are
united. 
	Working with healing the body is much the same.  When there is no
answer to all our attempts at manipulating the physical shell, touching
through feeling, and being moved to the expression of what is felt frees
the body from the spell of denied life experience and reunites the body
with our being.  We breath in, and with that breath allow the flood of
sensory information to work on us, to move us.  We give give up control,
and in that moment, give ourselves the possibility of accepting and
internalizing, and owning a part of ourselves again. 
	In this reuniting of body and being there necessarily comes a
change in consciousness.  In each of our stories, change is brought about
in physical appearance by a change in consciousness.  For the prince in
Sleeping Beauty, it seems that he has to be there at the right time, to
somehow be connected with the flow of fate.  For Beauty and the Beast, she
has to learn to act from her heart, not from the appearance of the eyes,
the perceptual input of the rational mind.  Strangely enough, the Frog
King must endure a surprisingly different fate at the hands of his
princess.  But even she delivers him from his frogly constraints when she
finally succumbs to her fury at his impudent and persistent demands, and
gives it expression by tossing him against the wall. 
	In each case there is action out of feeling, and with it a
deepening of relationship, and change of form or consciousness because of
it.  Although we are not told by the Grimm brothers of what it was about
the prince in Sleeping Beauty that allows him to succeed where others
have failed, here too we see hints of the theme of transformation when we
are told that "When the prince drew near the hedge of thorns, it was
changed into a hedge of beautiful large flowers, which parted and bent
aside to let him pass, and then closed behind him in a thick hedge".  What
was there about this particular man that brought this thorny hedge into
its flowering?  Perhaps we have a clue if we know that the word, 'flower'
has it's etymological roots in a word (bhel) whose meaning speaks of
creation at its moment of exp ression, and of masculine and feminine in
creative relationship.  Wonderful images of the creative union of body
and mind. 
	In each of these stories we can see that transformation is wrought
when there is a change in the relationship to the bearer of the problem,
whether it be Beast, frog, or sleeping princess.  The body, reduced to its
unconscious or animal form needs a recognition of its inner needs, its
hidden truth, before awakening to full participation in conscious life
once again.
	It is seldom that we are aware of the movement into the world of
unconscious bracing in the way that the construction site worker was. 
More often we only recognize our created limitations by the constraints
they put on our lives.  How often have you suddenly been aware of a leg
that has fallen asleep, but couldn't say exactly when it started to
happen.  In this same way, the act of distancing ourselves from body
trauma puts the fairy's spell of sleep upon us.  And just like the a
wakening discomfort of a sleeping limb, it is only in awakening that we
truly start to feel again. 
	Reawakening is not all the experience of pain.  All body sensation
calls our attention to the body and gives us the opportunity of deepening
our relationship with life as the body presents it to us.  In bodywork,
sometimes the deepest and quickest change will happen at a place where an
itch has developed.  Only when the sensation levels increase in intensity,
and resistance to integrating the intensit y develops does painfulness
become a dominant part of body experience.  Still, whatever the type of
sensation, release from tension will always occur to the extent that we
can allow ourselves to internalize and be moved by what we feel. 
	Whether in fairy tale or everyday life, allowing ourselves to
internalize life experience means a change in consciousness.  Although a
frog may not leave a massage table as a prince, any time a release of
body tension occurs, the person who has experienced that release will
also feel different, released to the degree that they have experienced
that release at a body level.  Only those who can say, "I felt nothing",
will feel no change at a body or inner level. 
	Of course, it is possible to create body change without a change
in consciousness.  Certainly, any release in the body, however it is
achieved, will create a change in consciousness.  It is, for example,
part of the eternal attraction of massage that it leaves us feeling
released and more at one with ourselves.  But it is only a change that is
as deep and long lasting as the extent to which it moves into the
bearer's life relationships.  Because of this lack of internal change, it
is most common for the effects of bodywork to quickly wear off, usually
within a day or two.
	For this reason, I generally find most dynamic change in the
bodies of those who are doing inner work such as on-going psychotherapy. 
But even though it is extremely helpful to work within a psychological
form, working at the temple of the body with a commitment to relationship
will inevitably initiate changes in perspe ctive.  These will seep into
life situations and create the opportunity for a changed perspective on
life, one that has been described by one of my hardest working clients as
an 'attitude adjustment'.  Sometimes the realization can come in as simple
a form as watching tensions move back into the body as the daily work
schedule is moved back into - I remember one woman who told me that one
morning she was reaching in the cupboard for her morning cereal and she
suddenly realized that she was tensing up as she prepared herself for
work - but in each instance that it occurs, a new awareness of the
previously unconscious movement to bracing occurs at the same time as we
see a previously unnoticed way in which we relate to our lives. 
	Bodily changes that are created by force or by the manipulation of
body image will also create change -for example it is possible to train
the body to move in a more graceful way - but again, to the extent that
these changes are not accompanied by a change in consciousness, that we
are not transformed inwardly by their experience, the impulse that
originally created the body tension will remain a subdued force that
lurks below the level of our consciousness, waiting only until our will
weakens enough for their impulses to influence our lives again. 
	The results of this approach to the body can be seen in the
problems that often come to athletes as age approaches.  It can also be
seen in the failed treatments of body therapy, when the treated problem
only surfaces again in the same or altered form as the ways of relating
to life that created the problem in the first place work their will on
the body again. 
	Creation of imposed body patterns that do not deal with the
problems that initiated the symptoms can also be seen in the layering of
releases in the body.  This is something that is particularly noticeable
as there is movement towards deep release in bodywork.  What is initially
presented as the tension problem will change to a set of tensions of a
totally different dimension as the initial level releases.  Like an
archeological dig, the history of body responses is gradually laid bare,
the first felt parts of the tension patterns poking up with tell-tale
tenderness, like the bones of some long buried and forgotten skeleton. 
	In the body, the arrival at a new unrealized pattern of holding
will be most often heralded as tenderness or, with less resistance
surrounding it, at least as increased sensitivity.  It is always a place
of discovery, of sensations whose only awareness till now has been in our
memory.  Here is the place of the moment of truth.  This is the place of
meeting with the external face of the formerly denied body experience, it
is the moment of touching the wound.  It is the moment when the prince
must brave the touch of the hedge of thorns, the Beauty must kiss the
Beast, the princess must touch the frog.  It is the moment when we must
choose to touch the wound, with feeling.  Only then can the thorny hedge
turn to flowers, and open to the life contained within. 
	In bodywork this means that the therapist must find the right
touch to meet the needs of the wounded body to open to what is felt.  For
the bearer of that wound, opening with breath into embracing what is felt,
it means finding a way to express the release of experience, and the
bound up life energy that has been held in that experience.  The way to
expression can be as simple as a deepened breath that turns to a sigh;
for the athlete it may mean only moving in a way that moves from, and
feels responsive to the place of injury;for one whose hurt runs deep into
life experience it may mean dissolving the holding of that hurt with
tears, or nurturing the hurt body with candle-lit darkness and warm baths. 
The correct way to respond to the needs for release can never be fully
fathomed by the rational mind, it must be felt, and brought to life in
expression.  Only then will the wou nded body and being release to a new
relationship with life.  END

Note:1.No copying for use in making a financial profit
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To the reader:I hope you found this interesting or helpful.  If you have 
any comments let me know.

--
Matthew Van Der Giessen              email: mvdg@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca