BODYMINDING 2

...................................by Stanley

Bodyminding is not a replacement for focusing. It is certainly a useful exercise in itself, but it is also an essential as part of focusing. Without the ability to stay with the body, focusing is much more difficult. Time and effort is used up in therapy because the person simply has no idea how to stay unhurriedly with their body – metaphorically they have lost touch with the heart.

The first learning step in a focusing session is: “Make yourself comfortable in the chair, feel your body and get yourself in the room”. Gendlin has said that this step is often treated as a mere introduction, a preliminary; but it is probably the most important step of all. In bodyminding I am simply taking this advice very seriously.

There is one observation that makes bodyminding worth considering. With focusing, a person gives attention to the non-verbal felt-sense of a problem. In doing this, a process goes on out of sight that eventually produces a valuable change of viewpoint about the problem. Prior to this conscious shift such a hidden process must have been going on to make this shift possible.

Let me put this another way: when the focuser gives attention to the felt-sense of a problem, all she is aware of is the murky, body-feel of the problem. After a few moments of getting the body-feel of it, something will emerge that carries the problem further, producing a valuable shift of viewpoint. What I am stressing is that some process must be occurring out of sight during that moment of silent attention to the body sensation; it is certainly nothing that the focuser is doing. The subsequent shift of conscious viewpoint is the result of that unseen body process.

We have no idea what is going on in that unseen process. All we can say is that the conscious shift arising from it indicates that something is going on; and it happens only when the person gives a certain kind of attention to what the body is manifesting as a sensation.

But the question immediately arises: why should the body need my attention to do this unseen work? Remember, though, in focusing we are giving the body a certain kind of attention. Perhaps we do not always give it conditions favourable for it to do its work – just as pathogens around a wound are unfavourable for the body to do its repair work, maybe some of our ‘infected ideas’ impede natural processes. It may be that the body needs a certain kind of attention analogous to the kind of attention the client needs to move forward in therapy. In essence this could be summed up as ‘being with’ the person – not demanding, not suggesting, not criticising – simply being with. Perhaps this is what the body needs from me to do its work effectively.

The body has work of its own that has nothing to do, at least directly, with my conscious activity: it has its own processes that can’t be influenced by thought, any more than cognitive meddling can assist the body’s fight against a virus. The body has its own methods, as when it induces a feverish high temperature to inhibit invading bugs. The body knows how to do all this – I don’t.

But there are many ways to make it difficult for the body to do its work. Smoking, drugs and drinking are the most obvious. But also some of our health prescriptions are counter-productive. For example, one is supposed to breathe properly right? – right!

But also wrong if you try to impose correct breathing.

In not breathing properly you will notice a sensation of physical restriction. Now, when you find your chest tight and your breathing constricted it is not a good idea to impose ‘positive breathing’. Tightening and constriction is where you are stuck – maybe from a time when you inhibited breathing to hold down emotion. The body wants to unfreeze, to move on, but it has to go down its own track to do so. You interfere with such a process in trying to get the body to do what it should do. But the trick is to tune in to the sense of tightness and be with the body in its tightness. Let it do what it wants to do – not what you think it should do – what it wants to do. Maybe it wants to experience the tightness even further. Find out!

Look at the analogy of going through the grieving process. When a person is in grief they have to fully experience it before they get through it. When a person is in grief and just about to cry, one way to freeze them in grief is to tell them to look on the positive side. In therapy you don’t tell people how or what they should feel. You stay with them as they go through their own process. In the same way, you don’t tell the body how to process itself by trying to make it breath properly.

Another difficult condition to impose on the body is the attempt to relax. ‘Relaxation’ exercises are said to be a way to help oneself mentally and physically. There are all kinds of prescriptions to progressively promote physical relaxation. Now, it is quite true that relaxed states can be achieved this way. It can also be done with various altered states using drugs or hypnosis or booze; their fatal attraction is that they do give temporary relaxation.

In some relaxation exercises you are told first to tense and then relax each part of the body in turn. This is nearer to what we are advocating and has some workability by all accounts. But the induced tensions and relaxations in these exercises are coming as commands – they are not originating from within the body, from body’s own processes; moreover, the order in which each limb is addressed comes as an imposed routine and so the body does not pick it up with its own steps to carry it forward. This system would be rather like telling a client in therapy: “Well, in today’s session we are first going to work on your problem with women; then we’ll move on to the eating; and then to your job. We’ll spend five minutes on each topic, first looking at the problem and then the solution....OK!”

The same difficulty is inherent in all forms of ‘exercises’ attempting to train the body. Many of these methods treat the body as a thing that can be conditioned, an object that can be manipulated. It’s our favourite western mode where the body is regarded a mechanism. So often though, as soon as you come out of the relaxed state, the stiff neck or tense shoulders return. There really has been no movement, and for good reason – the body has not been allowed to go through it’s own process. It has been given more commands on top of all the other ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ and ‘directives’ that put a strain on natural homeostasis – one more thing it has to cope with. Look at it this way: how much does your body have to cope with you? We underestimate the enormous stress we ‘normal neurotics’ place on our biological system with our curative methods and demands for improvement.

Returning to the point I made at the beginning: a common error for beginners in focusing is not staying long enough with the felt-sense: being in a hurry for meaning, impatient for ‘what is supposed to happen’. One misses then what is actually happening. Bodyminding slides easily into focusing because it is an essential part of it. But try it as a simple exercise in itself.

Remember that little number I wrote called Pausing to Focus. Bodyminding is good training in pausing.

Doing nothing is something you have to be able to do! How’s that for a Zen paradox ?

BODY MINDING

................................................. by Stanley

For most civilised people there seems to be a gap between the thinking awareness level and the physicality of the body. Sometimes, on a thought level, a problem or concern can seem trivial; but on a physical level it can have quite a big effect. My boss was rude to me yesterday. I think about it, sure. But it’s not a heavy deal. I am not consumed by it – it’s just life! I didn’t like it, but it didn’t worry me.

But, seemingly unconnected with it, I was tense and sleepless that night and felt unwell in the morning. I say to myself, “I often feel crap after a night like that”. That’s how I pass it off. The two phenomena: the minor incident with my boss and my physical body events – don’t seem to be connected. They are completely different orders of magnitude. The stress of my sleepless night does not match the trivial episode with my boss. If I were asked if there was a connection, I would probably laugh and say, “Oh yes, probably”, and pass it off.

But the truth is that my unpleasant physical experience was quite definitely a reaction to the incident with my boss the previous day. Something instantly happened in my body when my boss was rude to me. But I don’t live in my body; I live in my head where I by-pass bodily events, dismissing them so as to get on with the business of living. Thus, there appears to be completely no connection. My sleeplessness and headache come as though out of the blue. My physical bouts of unwellness seem completely random.

But there’s more to it: the incident with my boss is really only a trigger. My physical reactions have a deeper origin. Most likely as a child the original experience was a physically felt impact that the body has carried ever since. It triggers whenever someone treats me badly.

Real emotional impact is physical – felt by the total organism. In the engulfing physicality of the early incidents there is no split between mind and body. That comes later when we learn, as they say, not to let things effect us. But unknown to us the body goes on carrying the trauma.

Later, it only takes the merest reminder to jog the body’s memory where some small event can cause a massive physical reaction, giving us perhaps little indication of the trigger in present time. Like the incident with my boss I described above.

But even if we suspect the trigger, it still may not lessen the physical disturbance. Cognitively suspecting the connection is not enough.

Some time ago I started a small experiment. I thought to myself: ‘I wonder what it would be like to live in my body instead of in my head’. This led, in the course of time, to a little sideshow I called ‘Body Minding’.

Unlike focusing, I didn’t use interaction between the felt-sense and symbolising; in other words, I didn’t try to name what I felt. Instead, I paid attention to bodily sensations only. To put it another way, I made a space for the body to do its own thing, to carry forward its own needed processes without inquiring or probing, simply recognising non-cognitively what is happening physically. Not trying to solve any problem or difficulty. Not trying to do anything, in fact. It could be described as a time where one just lives in the body, rather than merely having a body. They were like little meditation sessions, except that my orientation was different to that of meditation. I was not watching my body, I was being my body.

What I called ‘Body Minding’ is like, ‘joining in’ with one’s physical sensations rather than merely observing them. You could say ‘being in’ sensations rather then ‘looking at’ them. Quite a trick until you get the idea. To begin with each session took me a little while to get there, but when I did it was quite noticeably different: being alive in my body instead of my head – the locus of myself ‘lower down’.

I have found that just a little practice in Body Minding has made me much more aware of my immediate physical reaction to present time situations. That gap I spoke of at the beginning – the gap between the thought level and the physical reactions of the body – is not so wide. I catch a physical reaction sooner and so I am much more aware of what turned it on. I seem to be more immediately responsive.

It’s not at all that I am practicing body minding all the time. It’s just that a little practice has made a difference to life when I’m not practicing it. Quite small physical sensations are more perceptible and their connection to events of the moment is sharper.

For example – and this is a true one – it’s nine in the evening; I’ve had my meal and washed up – and I think, ‘what shall I do now?’ Instantly I get the slightest empty feeling in my chest – almost unnoticeable. I nearly overlook it.

Ah, I know what that is. It’s the dread of nothing. I’ve known that one all my life. As a child one of the most awful feelings was: ‘there’s nothing to do’. It was more than just boredom, it was more like an anguished dread of nothingness – death’. And I got it too whenever it was time to go to bed which I would put off as long as possible, driving my parents crazy.

And interestingly, that little scene as an adult was at 9.0pm. Nearly bedtime !

But at least that evening I got just what was happening to me. A small thing? Yes, I suppose so. Not exactly life threatening or dramatic. Not the sort of thing they’d give you medication for.

But a win is a win. And a small win leads to others.

DEAR COMPUTER

............................by Stanley

......I live with my computer. We’re not married or anything, we just live together.

......It’s not a question of whether my computer has a life of its own, whether objectively it has a sentient consciousness – the point is, I behave as though it has. At a very deep level I’ve discovered I regard my computer as alive.

......I’ll be truthful: It is a she : a woman.

......Our interaction with each other has all the qualities of a serious ongoing relationship. After all, the true meaning of ‘relationship’ is interaction. We certainly have that; and, like all intimate relationships, it isn’t always easy. I have to say, sometimes she is difficult; she has unpredictable moods; and sometimes I can be quite selfish and thoughtless, using her without in the least acknowledging my dependency. Recently we have been in serious trouble. Suddenly, without warning, she stopped talking to me.

.....All this might seem most amusing, except for the fact that I was terribly upset. I’m not being funny now. I really mean this. When she stopped talking to me I was dreadfully upset. Looking back in hindsight I didn’t realise what was going on. My computer was just a machine and it was improperly telling me that my Vista was an illegal copy. I was so upset I knew something else was going on; and this is where it gets interesting.

.....I decided it was time I sat down and did some focusing. I cleared a space for myself and looked into my body. There was something vaguely there in my chest. The words ‘fluttery and nervous’ came. Overall, I actually felt worse than this but I stayed with this slight sensation of fluttery and nervous. It was barely discernable but I stayed with it. I remembered that focusing is the next step after you get in touch with your feelings.

......Then a surprising phrase floated by: ‘but I was a good boy’.

......What’s that got to do with it ?

......But I was a good boy’....what on earth does that mean...!

......No, get out of your head – stay with that phrase and the fluttery nervous sensation.

......Then I got: ‘something has been taken away from me’.

......I know what it is: My mum’s not speaking to me.

......That’s it ! There’s an unmistakable relief when you get it right.

......That’s what she used to do. It was her way of punishing.

.......I recognised the feeling of overwhelming anxiety. As a kid I wouldn’t know what it was. But I knew I must have done something wrong and I was a bad boy – often I was a bad boy when I thought I was a good boy.

......I’m not blaming my mum, but when she withdrew like that it was a catastrophic emergency. I remembered how all my attention was focused on getting her back. In this state I had no time or space to have myself.

......I can’t play.

......I lose me.

......I can’t play when my survival is at stake. I lose all capacity to follow myself, to have fun. I lose the immediacy of playing, of my own imaginative world, my curiosity, my childlike ability to learn, discover, unpack, delve, probe, fiddle and follow wherever my fancy leads.

......I lose me.

......That’s exactly the state I was in when my computer crashed.

......There were interesting discoveries to follow. As a child, when I have her, when she is functioning, when she is being mum, I can forget her and have myself and my playing life. Quite literally, I can ignore her and get on with my interesting little word.

......My computer is a sort of combination of these two aspects. I can play with my computer. It’s my window on the world. It lets me follow wherever my fancy leads. But when I am playing I can forget its functioning, I can ignore how it is silently working for me in the background. Didn’t I say: ‘I can be quite selfish and thoughtless, using her without in the least acknowledging my dependency? Isn’t that just like the life of the child?

......One interesting aspect of this little session with myself is worth mentioning. During focusing I could fully get how anxious I was as a child by tuning into my present anxiety. My anxiety over my computer and my childhood anxiety weren’t two feelings – they were exactly the same. It was as though my present anxiety gave me vivid access to my childhood state. I just knew how lost and scared I was back then.

......I usually put the computer into ‘sleep’ mode before going to bed. Not long after I had fixed all that trouble I woke early one morning. It was about 3:30. I wandered out into the lounge and saw that the computer had switched itself on. I said out loud: ‘You’re not supposed to be awake dear!’

......I smiled and laughed at myself.

LETTING IT SINK IN.

.....................................by Stanley
.....In the early days the picture of the counsellor repeating, parrot like, every word the client had just said was the butt of much ridicule. It was called ‘reflecting the client’s feelings’. It was a practice initiated by Carl Rogers and was the subject of much misinterpretation that Rogers endlessly tried to clarify. It seems to have passed into the mythology of the naïve beginnings of counselling that no one these days gives much real thought to.
.....Gendlin wrote about this: ‘When I think back to the struggle that Carl had with non-directive reflecting, always trying to drop whatever it was he had written, to re-establish the reality of the contact (with the client)... First he had the method of reflecting, then he said: "No that’s not it, it’s the attitude”’. 1
.....Late 1980 Rogers wrote, ‘Puzzling over this matter I have come to a double insight. From my point of view as a therapist, I am not trying to “reflect feelings.” I am trying to determine whether my understanding of the client’s inner world is correct – whether I am seeing it as he or she is experiencing it at this moment. Each response of mine contains the unspoken question, “Is this the way it is in you? Am I catching just the colour and texture and flavour of the personal meaning you are experiencing right now? If not, I wish to bring my perception in line with yours”. On the other hand, I know that from the client’s point of view we are holding up a mirror of his or her current experiencing. The feeling and personal meanings seem sharper when seen through the eyes of another, when they are reflected.’ 2
.....I think there are two important points here. Firstly, is Rogers’ absolute grasp of how important it is that the client’s meaning is exactly understood. And secondly, how easy it is not to exactly understand it.
.....He had this sharp and vivid appreciation of the absolute specificity of the client’s meaning and of how different it always is to the workings of his own apprehension. For me, above all, is overcoming the assumption that precise understanding of another person is easy. When it feels easy and I am too confident it is usually a projection of my own ideas.
.....But it is Roger’s last point that I would like to mine into a little bit. He said that personal feelings seem sharper when they are reflected. This is true, but there is a subtle twist behind it. It is often the case that the client may not really hear what they have just said. This is especially true when it is new and out of line with their usual thinking; it’s then easy for the client to blur the moment, to not really take it in. I think we overlook the fact that a client just saying something is often not enough because having said it, they miss it. Or they pass over it so quickly they don’t quite hear what they have just this moment said.
.....A client, who was generally quiet and moderate in expression, suddenly and surprisingly says:
.....‘I must have been really terrified of Mum – followed by a long silence.
.....I go along with the silence for a while and then very slowly I say: ‘You must have been really terrified of Mum.
.....I’m reflecting it as though I’m still meditating on it – which I am.
.....Another long silence.
.....But now I revert to the first person, which was exactly his mode, and I say softly, ‘I .. must ..have .. been .. really .. terrified .. of Mum.
.....I say it as though to myself, as though I’m still pondering it – which I am.
.....The silence continues for quite a while longer.
.....Three times I do this during the long period of silence.
.....The clarity of it is striking. Each time I reflect it I am hearing myself say it for the first time – and so is the client.
.....I’m pondering it – we’re both pondering it – letting it sink in.

.....The thing is, ‘I must have been really terrified of Mum is an interesting way to put it. Why ‘must have been’? This indicates that what he has just got is not quite experiential – ‘must have been’ is a deduction. If it was a direct experience he would have simply said ‘I was terrified of Mum. Being a deduction it can easily slip away as just a probability. As it was, by reflecting, pondering and letting it sink in for both of us, he got closer to experiencing it and thus could move forward on it.

[1] Gendin E.T. The Small Steps of the Therapy Process. In the Gendlin OnLine Library
http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/gol_all_index.asp
[1] The Carl Rogers Reader. Edited by Howard Kirschenbaum and Valery Land Henderson, Houton Mufflin, 1989

TAXONOMIC SCHEMA DISORDER

....................................... by Stanley

.....What the hell is that?
.....And well you may wonder.
.....It was the ironic label given to a well known and respected literary critic who tried to divide literature into ultimate categories: comedy, irony, tragedy and romance. The term really comes from classifying things in biology – but the compulsion to classify (Taxonomic Schema Disorder) is a very widespread intellectual illness.
.....Jung suffered from it quite badly: there had to be four ego functions, eight psychological types, and four stages of eroticism – not three or five – FOUR !!
.....In the bible there are seven deadly sins – how come there are not eight? By what feat of intellectual perspicacity do we arrive at just that number?
.....In astrology there are four elements – in physics there seem to be quite a few more. Searching the internet I find Stages of Life are quite popular. Two, twelve and three stages are favourites and are each announced by their proponents with magisterial precision and certainty.
.....Descartes said there were two fundamental substances in the universe: mind and matter – and we’ve been stuck with that ever since. The Catholic Church tells us there are three conditions of life after death: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven.
.....All though the Middle Ages they believed that everything above the moon was Godlike, pure, perfect and divine and everything below the moon, including all earthly things, was demonic, foul and corrupt.
.....There is no end to the compulsion to classify.
.....Transactional Analysis tells us we have three internal parts, The Parent, The Adult and The Child... Oh, sorry, we’ve found two more subdivisions. The parent is now either Nurturing or Controlling and The Child either Adapted or Free. Of course, one could probably further classify different types of ‘Free Child’ such as Free Wild and Free Reasonable. And no doubt there are different types of Free Wild.
.....Steven R.Covey found Seven Habits of Highly Successful People and Ken Wilber found four ‘quadrants’ to explain human beings.
.....The Myers-Brigg Type Indicator is based on Jung’s Psychological Types. It tells us there are 16 personality types measured by a person’s preferences, using four basic scales with opposite poles. The four scales are: (1) extraversion/introversion, (2) sensate/intuitive, (3) thinking/feeling, and (4) judging/perceiving. The various combinations of these preferences result in the 16 personality types. It is understood that no matter what your preferences, your behavior will still sometimes indicate the contrasting behavior of the opposite pole. Thus, no behavior can ever be used to falsify the type, and any behavior can be used to verify it.
.....Then there are ways of taxonomically categorising the emotions. Did you know there are 22 negative emotions on self-worth; 14 negative emotions on control; 24 negative emotions on love; 17 negative emotions regarding justice; 14 negative emotions on safety; and 6 negative emotions on trust?
.....And now we come to the Granddaddy of them all: the DSM IV (The Psychiatric Bible). The rationale is based on imaginary classifications. If you can describe a set of symptoms, then you can name a disease. There are always a certain arbitrary NUMBER of symptoms that make up a disease or disorder. The exact number of symptoms required to constitute a disorder is decided by a majority decision of the DSM committee – (a procedure unique in the annals of science). So, for example, the so-called ‘Factitious Disorder’ DSM-IV-TR specifies THREE criteria for factitious disorder:
1. The patient is intentionally producing or pretending to have physical or psychological symptoms or signs of illness.
2 The patient's motivation is to assume the role of a sick person.
3 There are no external motives (as in malingering) that explain the
behaviour.
The patient has to have all three symptoms – not two of them or one – to be diagnosed as suffering from Factitious Disorder.
.....There actually should be one further criterion; only this one should be about the psychiatrist not the patient:
4 That the psychiatrist really knows the patient is
‘pretending’ and that he really does know what the patient’s
motivation is.
.....Now, once we have named and established the disease, we can then claim it exists as a distinct ‘entity’ and that the patient has it. Where we go from there is anybody’s guess.
But I guarantee that Taxonomic Schema Disorder will never be on the DSM list because that is precisely what it suffers from.

......................................... *

Note: I am indebted to William Deresiewicz who described the famous literary critic Northop Frye as having an ‘excessive attachment to taxonomic schemas’.

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SERENDIPITY

..................................by Stanley

.....Delightful word, isn’t it? It dances off the tongue as though it enjoys life. And rightly so – ‘serendipity’ means chance events that have a happy outcome.
.....Wisdom tells us there is a time to plan and a time to let chance have a go. The value of planning and making goals is highly stressed in our action culture; but in some way we know that ‘letting things be’ can produce novel outcomes that are serendipitous in a way that the best laid plans would never even think of. Plans can disrupt serendipity, interfering where we would best let things fall out the way they would. Even in the middle of action there is a mode of letting things be.
.....Our fear is that in doing nothing, nothing will happen – or, that the worst will happen. So life becomes too active lest we will lose out. In Taoist philosophy the term ‘wu-wei’ means literally ‘nonaction’. Chuang-tzu says: ‘Nonaction does not mean doing nothing and keeping silent. Let everything be and allowed to do what it naturally does, so that its nature will be satisfied.’
.....We could note here straight away that one of the main characteristics of person-centred therapy is non-action on the part of the therapist. I always say that any success I have is not in what I do, but in what I don’t do! It’s not about doing nothing and keeping silent, but about allowing things to happen by themselves, about giving nature a chance. If I can give my client’s nature a chance then perhaps they too can learn to trust it.
.....But what is this nature we are giving a chance?
.....One of the main difficulties for many people in understanding Darwinism is the picture it paints of the complete lack of purposeful action in evolution. No one is controlling things or making plans. Organisms evolve by random, chance mutations, some of which are favourable. Over time, as a species gathers and keeps favourable changes, it becomes more complex and more adapted to survive. It moves forward by virtue of its own unintended variables, its heedless creativity, its accidental innovation. One variation may work – only then is it selected and retained. Not selected by the organism, but by the conditions of life it finds itself in. This has been called the principle of ‘blind variation and selective retention’
.....Bernard Shaw expressed a typical revulsion to Darwinism saying that there was a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly reduction of strength and purpose, of beauty and intelligence, that made his heart ‘sink into a heap of sand’. And yet there is no question that this very process has produced the overwhelming variety of life on our planet, everything from viruses to dinosaurs, from daisies to redwoods, sardines to blue whales, from bacteria to Bach. And with the discovery of DNA, the process of Darwinian natural selection is no longer a theory, but as indisputable a fact as you can get.
.....There is no guiding hand in evolution, no supernatural intervention. Isn’t that a perfect example of ‘letting be’ in the best Taoist tradition? When nature is given the chance it does a spectacular job. It produced us didn’t it !
.....When we give the evolutionary principle a chance in our personal lives by letting something be the outcome can be quite serendipitous, so we call upon strange spiritual mystiques like ‘synchronicity’ or ‘laws of attraction’ that really explain nothing. But there is a very precise way natural selection works. The key idea is ‘piecemeal’ – a little bit at a time. Small steps.
.....In a risky and unpredictable world we ourselves are constantly changing, randomly – one could say we are ‘blindly variable’. So many aspects of our being are constantly shifting: our moods, hormones, digestion, infections, our judgements, needs, impulses, our values, loves and passing obsessions. If we are open to the world, the world seeks out our piecemeal variables and selects those that mesh with the world we live in, enabling us to go on. The world educates us; what it gives back is a validation of our unintended creativity – a reward for ‘letting be’ all our variables and clashing complexes. That’s why we feel serendipity ‘happens’ to us – as indeed it does.
.....Evolution is ‘a little bit at a time’, steps that are so small that I do not notice them. And the world is giving me feedback every moment, shaping me, slapping me when one of my ‘variables’ clash; and giving me a cuddle when I unknowingly get it right. And when I do get it right it tells me loud and clear with that lovely, warm feeling that good luck and fortune are on my side !

TURTLES AND BUTTERFLY WINGS

...............by Stanley

.....William James, (1842 – 1910) who features in our logo above, was the author of the classic Varieties of Religious Experience and was the first psychologist to tackle religion as a naturalistic subject. After one of his public lectures a lady approach him avowing that “the world stood on a turtle”. “Oh”, said James, “and what does the turtle stand on?” “Another turtle”, said the lady. “And what does that turtle stand on”, said James, hoping to show the lady the difficulties in such an infinite regression. “It’s no use, Mr James”, replied the lady, “its turtles all the way down”.
.....Intriguing isn’t it? It’s obvious that this lady was intelligent enough to see what James was getting at, but not smart enough for it to make any difference.
.....Little wonder really because the greatest philosophers have had the same problem. Aristotle was smart. He came up with the ‘Uncaused Cause’: a cause that started the world off, but was itself caused by nothing. Clever lad ! The Christian theologians following Aristotle cashed in on that little trick in a big way. God was a sort of transcendental turtle ! It’s all a question of how things get started, isn’t it? And also, once it gets started is it all meant to be from there on?
.....Our word ‘process’ is a tricky little number. We use it all the time: we talk of the client’s ‘process’, our own ‘process’, our ‘journey’. But it’s never quite clear whether our ‘process’ is the way we are ‘meant’ to go or the way we find ourselves going. For me, how the present has actually turned out is the one thing I never imagined.
.....James Hillman wrote an elegant work on what he called his ‘Acorn Theory’, basically saying that we each have a unique seed we are born with that gives us our life’s purpose. A sort of psychological turtle. It is an immensely attractive idea – the notion that our psychological purpose is to become who we ‘really’ are and who we were meant to be. When we look towards the future it helps to give validation to what we feel is right for us; and looking through a rear-view mirror at the past it is encouraging to feel that we had a destiny.
.....Yehudi Menuhin said that from an early age he knew he would be a violinist. But as someone pointed out to me, what if he’d been born in Ireland when there were only tin whistles?
.....What if there are no turtles propping us up. And it all turns out right, not because it’s our destiny, but because the present it has all led to feels so inevitably factual and difficult to imagine any other way.
.....But back down the track, what if things had been slightly different. If you hadn’t gone to the supermarket that day you wouldn’t have bumped into your old friend Joel whom you thought was still in the UK. Well, then you wouldn’t have gone to his birthday party where you met your present partner. Ah! What then?
.....And where would you be now – and who would you be now – if, instead of marrying your Dad your Mum had married that guy she was keen on who was going to live and work in Hong Kong.
.....On the whole, people don’t like the idea that one’s life is contingent in this way. One feels a little less significant; and it’s all a bit chancy. They prefer turtles, acorns, or angels who write the script; and maybe they have a point. Maybe if you imagine things that way – well, maybe that’s the way they are. Maybe such an encouraging view makes a real difference, whether it’s true or not.
.....According to Chaos Theory in physics a leaf falling in Australia can affect a hurricane in the Bahamas. It’s known as the ‘butterfly effect’. The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado halfway across the world. This kind of interaction means is that everything is connected with, and affects, everything. Another image that describes it is that of a marble balanced atop a hill, two steep downward curves on either side. The tiniest, smallest inclination one way, the breath of a butterfly’s wings, and the marble goes careering off down one slope rather than the other to an entirely different life.
.....Personally, I find some comfort in this idea. For me, the critic can’t get any traction on it – I mean, my raving-mad superego can’t say I’ve failed to live up to my potential. So I can say with a little confidence that I have done my best with what life has handed me.

THE MEANING OF MAP.

.................by Stanley

.....At our first meeting of (MAP) MindBody & Personality Sir Ken Robinson, whose portrait adorns our logo above, spoke in the video on education. Funny and entertaining as he was, he made a serious point. It was that our present system of education is a terrible waste of human potential. Today, it is not enough to train our young people to learn and regurgitate facts. He said, “dancing, for example, should be given equal status to literacy. We all dance, don’t we? We all have bodies – or did I miss something?”
.....That is precisely the point of our new group. We have all missed something – particularly so in psychology. In MAP we are making an emphatic statement. It is that psychology is not just about what we call ‘the mind’ – we include ‘the body’ – or rather, we don’t regard it as separate in the first place. The single word: mindbody says it clearly. It means that the human person is a seamless, whole entity.
.....A person is a mindbody!
.....The problem is that we have missed something. We have been educated out of our instinctive knowing and taught only how to head-trip. And because we have been educated to stay in our heads we now have to begin to consciously pay attention to our body in a new way.
....Focusing is a practical expression of that endeavour.
....But let us be clear what we mean by ‘paying attention to the body’. We don’t just mean noticing it as a diagnostic indicator, the body as giving signals or signs about what is going on in the mind. This is to misunderstand the concept of mindbody. This mistake is still based on the split between mind and body and treating the body as a junior partner or servo-mechanism to the mind. If we treat this ghost called ‘the mind’ as the basic substance, it then has the full responsibility for changing itself – an impossible task.
.....But there can be some misunderstanding in all this. Focusing is not a psychological modality like counselling, gestalt, Jungian dreamwork etc. What we are saying is that any psychological modality must pay attention to the body side of the equation, it must do so either deliberately or implicitly, otherwise it is dealing with only half the person.
.....For about 30 % of people this focusing element of body attention and awareness is quite natural; such people are in touch with a certain depth within themselves. They will not name the body specifically as the source of their insightfulness. They will tell you that feelings, images and new ideas ‘just come to me’. This is because they are all-of-a-piece already. When they say ‘me’ they are referring to mindbody. Simple good communication works on them like a charm. They don’t have to deliberately focus.
.....However, most of us are somewhat effected by the tendency to live in our heads. For us, it is useful to consciously pay attention to the body. This conscious act is focusing proper. There are precise steps that show a person how to do this to begin with. The important thing is to know how to access oneself.
.....By focusing we mean giving the body its full partnership in one’s personality. This means listening respectfully to what, in its own way, it wants, feels, knows and perceives. For some lucky ones this is so natural that they have never considered anything else possible; others will say that their body doesn’t feel anything they don’t already know. Most people are somewhere in the middle: that is, somewhat neglectful of this deeper aspect of themselves.
.....Since its beginning depth psychology has always been fascinated by the so-called ‘unconscious’. It’s as though we’ve always known something was there and some very elaborate theories have been developed about it. What we have been looking for is a direct opening into it. It turns out that it is as close as it can possibly be – so close that we easily neglect it.
.....The meaning and purpose of MAP is to flesh out that neglect for the sake of a better life, no matter what our individual path and however we name it.