PATHS OF BREATH - PATHS OF LIFE

“Sitting still is a way of falling in love with the world and everything in it”

(in Babauta 2015: http://zenhabits.net/distraction/).

 

The following text is the literature review of my MA research process. This is an existential phenomenological exploration, opening up to intimate experiences of the unfolding now, as experienced from within first-person perspectives, through cycles of movement and creative responses. In a modern world where a lot of value goes to quantifiable and measurable doing, this study aimed to discover, experience, and bring wonder to the mystery of human beings, and further create pathways of understanding and meaning, where being can flow, in individuals,

communities and the world at large.

 

Working on my research I wished to start the process from a place of being in touch with the real and precious nature of life. I see how the topic of connection, being central during the whole research process, arises in relation to the cultural paradigm of the west, where the value of what is, is ignored for the sake of what can be.

In opposition to the eastern cultures typically portrayed as being oriented, the west is seen as having a focus towards measurable and quantifiable doing, highly valuing productivity,

individuality, future oriented achievement and prestige. Growing up in modern culture, the alienation from being is internalized from early childhood. Based on an “objectifiable experience of body and mind” (Almaas 1988: 274), the child internalizes a self-representation that is cut of from, or in conflict with the inner sense of being. Seeking the acknowledgement of the parents, the inner feeling sense of right and wrong, is replaced with the value judgements of society; the child adapts to good, bad, right wrong, yes, no, reward and punishment. Founder of Humanistic Psychology Carl Rogers, speaks about the learning process of children emerging from infancy: “…to buy love, we relinquish the valuing process. Because the centre of our lives now lies in others, we are fearful and insecure, and must cling rigidly to the values we have introjected” (Rogers 1961:256).

Somatic practitioner and writer Andrea Olsen reflects on effects of adapting to ideals and behaviours of society: “Adapting to outer images…makes a division between our inner

impulses and our outer manifestation” (Olsen 1998: 12). This division is carried under the skin, and what is not accepted as part of a self image is devised to live in the shadow. Linda Hartley confirms: “Past experiences that we have been unable to integrate, or which have been forgotten or repressed, are stored in the body tissues and fluids as bound energy; they

are also stored in the unconscious psyche as images” (2004: 55).

Psychotherapist and somatic practitioner Linda Hartley, sees processes of psyche, soma, and

spirit as deeply intertwined. She (2004) explores an holistic approach to body psychotherapy

and transpersonal psychology, and states: “We are both individual and unique human beings

of physical matter and form, and also beings of conscious spirit connected in mysterious

ways to the whole of existence” (2004: 19). Hartley refer to the work of Jung and Reich as

similar attempts “to free individuals from the bonds and constraints of the collective norm,

and to help them realize their potential for a creative and uniquely fulfilling life” (2004:21).

Wilhelm Reich, psychoanalyst and major contributor to the development of Somatics,

viewed all psychic and physical energy as expressions of life force. He understood

disconnection from being as a result of holding back life energy (1949). Building on the work

of Reich, Bioenergy Practitioners hold the view that body armouring are fixed behaviour

patterns, “structured in the body as chronic and generally unconscious muscular tension”

(Lowen 1976a: 136). According to Lowen, holding-patterns are accompanied by mental

attitudes, rejections and projections that we on a subconscious level identifies with. These are

connected to strategies for seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, keeping a person away from

an immediate feeling sensation of the present moment (ibid). As Brennan confirms: “We stop

feeling by blocking our energy flow” (Brennan 1988: 99).

 

In order to see how disconnection is maintained, one can look to the mental attitude and the

bodily tensions as two sides of the same coin. They maintain each other in a loop where

mental and emotional images sustain a body posture, and a body posture sustains a mental

and emotional attitude, keeping a person from being. This can only happen as long as he/she

identifies with the attitudes and bodily sensations, which involves our subconscious

participation through our imagination. Bringing awareness to the present moment body,

though sensing, touch and movement, held in an allowing embrace, we can release our

life energy from identification with habitual patterns and reconnect with ourselves in our

becoming. “The defence does not define a person, the core does… whose soul has an inborn

brilliance and beauty…” (Pierrakos 1990: 93).

 

The soul

Another clarification of the disconnection from being can be found by looking to Jung,

founder of analytic psychology. He was concerned with the disconnection from the

subconscious, which he, according to Hartley regarded as a source of wisdom, potential and

healing. She describes: “Jung’s primary contribution was the search to heal the split in the

psyche of modern man and woman that alienates us from the deeper roots in our soul, in the

archetypal realms, in the spiritual dimensions of being and in our connectedness to the whole

of life” (Hartley 2004: 23).

 

Jung’s understanding of the collective conscious, is underpinning the validity of embodied

imagination though movement. According to Jung “psyche is the living body and the living

body is animated matter” (Jung 1967: 76). The individual psyche has its true basis in the

collective subconscious “the realm of the archetypes and our ancestral heritage, which is

shared by all beings, human or animal” (Hartley 2004: 23). Accessing the subconscious

through imagination can be seen as a way to support integration of a fuller sense of self. For

Jung the collective subconscious came more and more together with his experience of nature.

 

As the sensuous body is nature, through sensing and movement it reveals itself as a major

gateway to the silent hidden wisdom of biology. He said: “Nature is not only matter she is

also spirit”(1967: 229). “If one touches the earth one cannot avoid the spirit” (1976: 5). In

this sense, the body as nature may also be seen as a gateway to spirit. James Hillman, taking

the work of Jung further, talks about “the sensate presence of the world as body.” He says:

"Let us imagine the anima mundi (the world soul) as that particular soul spark, that seminal

image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form" (Hillman 1997: 101).

 

Hillman’s encouragement to imagine soul might come from a similar recognition of what

LaMothe clearly is pointing to, that we co-create the world we experience through embodied

imagination: “What we create in and through the movement of our sensory self is reality

itself – the reality that is real for us” (2015: 33).

 

Fluidity and Fixity

Within a movement paradigm the self can be seen as a “dynamic open-ended process of

bodily becoming” (LaMothe 2015: 212). McNiff is imagining soul “as kinesis, process,

creation, interplay, and continuous motion” (1992: 54), and Thomas Hanna reflects that soma

is “a process of unified movement” (Hanna 1991: 5). Understanding thoughts as patterncreating

movement, rigidity, stuckness, static stillness can be seen as an effect of human

beings imagining themselves as separate isolated entities, while in our biology we are

processes of life deeply connected to everything. Stuckness arise as the patterns that form,

bloc the perception of the interconnectedness that shapes us. The idea of doing vs. being can

be seen as co-arising with the idea of the human being as a separate isolated entity.

Emilie Conrad, somatic pioneer and founder of Continuum, talks about how all life in the

universe is ultimately one fluid movement, connected through the principle of resonance:

“All fluids, whether in the cell, the body or the planet, function as a resonant intelligent

whole and can never be separated” (http://www.continuummovement.com/ov-fluid.php).

 

Physicist David Bohm known for his holistic view on the world as an undivided whole in a

state of becoming sees human crisis as arising out of a lack of this recognition (Bohm: 1980).

 

As Mary Starks Whitehouse, the founder of Authentic Movement said: “There is that in us

which has moved from the very beginning. It is that which can liberate us” (1963: 53).

 

We are patterns of nature

Somatic practice and research can be seen as reawakening and bringing back to life the basic

experience, that we may have lost contact with as we move in the world identified with our

cultural upbringing.

 

Through dance and movement we experientially get to know the pattern of energy in the

natural world. As Romanyshyn said: “In some unobservable way, consciousness and nature

are one. The being of nature is also a way of knowing it” (2007: 35).

 

Similarly Cohen poetically verbalizes how the body may support deeper self-knowledge:

“There is something in the nature forming patterns. We, as part of nature are also forming

patterns. The mind is like the wind and the body is like the sand. If you want to know how

the wind is blowing you can look at the sand” (Cohen 1993: 1).

 

Participating in a living field of presence

“There is an ancient longing wired in us as infants to be seen, to be felt, and to have our

surging, somatic-emotional world validated by another. When our subjective experience is

empathically held, contained, and allowed, we come to a natural place of rest. What is love,

really, other than fully allowing the other to be who they are, for their experience to be what

it is, and to offer the gift of presence to their unique subjectivity? In this sense, I love you = I

allow you” (Licata: Available from http://www.mattlicataphd.com/blog/the-mystery-ofholding).

 

The text above is Licata`s words to enliven the felt sense of a holding environment as

described by psychiatrist Winnicott (1991). The words reflect the sacred quality of a meeting

that happens in a space of trust and allowance,- intimate with experience, and still centered in

spacious and grounded presence. Winnicott confirms: “It can be looked upon as sacred to the

individual, in that it is here that the individual experiences creative living (1991 vol. 13: 39).

 

This kind of presence is a fundamental ground in most kinds of somatic co-creation work.

For movement to release, re-pattern, unfold and bloom, life needs to feel welcome. “Through

her attentive and embodied presence, the witness holds a safe space, a sacred circle, within

which the mover can enter deeply into her world” (Hartley in Williamson et al. eds. 2014:

25). Somatic dance and movement happens in a living realm, opening up to the felt

experience of what is. Seeing and being seen, curiosity towards the unknown, and dialoguing

in a verbal or kinaesthetic way with experience, opens the pathways to giving and receiving,

unfoldment and life enhancing transformation; thus participation in a living field of presence.

 

“Dialogue is something much more profound than mere verbal exchange. Its characteristic is

meeting and honouring the otherness of the other – a sacred other – which allows a mutual

alchemy to take place.“ In Bubers view “fully inhabiting the human realm… is to live in

dialogue” (Welwood 2000: 7).

 

The unknown

Tina Stromsted reflects that Authentic Movement is a powerful vehicle to awaken the whole body wisdom and “live a life that is richly informed by it” (2001: 41).To live in deep dialogue with oneself, others and life, requires a befriending of the known and the unknown. The characteristics of Authentic Movement such as meeting, openness, connection and unfoldment anchored in bodily presence can be seen as a way of living from the intimate unknown, thus from a deep sense of connection. Most somatic practices build on a trust that life if undisturbed naturally moves towards healing, opening and expansion. “The body-mind will usually, if allowed, choose the most natural, healthful, and efficient patterns available to further the tendency toward wholeness” (Hartley 1989: 99). 

 

Jung called the search for wholeness within the human psyche, “the process of individuation;” to become what you always were. This can be understood as the process of embodying being, and the qualities of being such as: love, spaciousness, allowance, joy, creativity, etc. that characterizes a holding space of awareness. It is a life long process of participation in life, going hand in hand with reclaiming oneself from conditioning and integrating doing with being. “If the soul is operating from her own inherent capacities... unfoldment will happen on its own. There is a force within our soul that is intelligent, responsive, and aware” (Almaas 2002: 204). 

 

Jung further claimed that the way to participate responsibly as a conscious member of the collective is through rediscovery of soul (Hartley, 2004: 23). According to Jung our evolutionary task now is “to bring the gifts of individuation into conscious membership in the whole, to find a way to be uniquely ourselves inside a sacred conscious circle” (Hartley 2004: 23).