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Weekend 4: Bones as Inner Ground and Structure It was early February 2003, and a relief to settle into the grounding presence of the bones as the inevitability of war loomed, and anger and distress escalated around the world as the split deepened. Bones as a core of support, strength and containment - good to remember this in times of stress and trauma. We fear this war will fracture the structure of our world as we know it. Weekend 5: Nervous System - Sensory-Motor Processing We met again on March 15 and 16 2003, just days before the war began. We met to study how the nervous system mediates cycles of receptivity, activity and recuperation, inner and outer, the balancing of the autonomic nervous system. We explored sensing - taking in, and expressing - moving out, and disruptions to the sensory-motor loop which often occur in our formative years. We looked at shock and nervous system reversals, and some primitive reflexes which support the basic instincts to bond and defend. When our outer membranes do not adequately contain and protect us, we may seek to defend through the nervous system, through a hypervigilance which is borne out of fear and the expectation that we will be attacked or invaded, or that there will not be enough so we must fight for every mouthful. Muscle tone is on high-alert and we are ready to be fired off at the slightest provocation. Startle and defence reflexes dominate; the ability to bond is weakened and we may come to feel isolated and at war with the world. As if caught in an incomplete Moro reflex, we have startled and opened, but been unable to close, embrace and find protection and comfort. We can do nothing but attack in order to defend from this vulnerable position. Just days before the war was to begin. The sky was clear blue and a brilliant sun shone down upon us. There was a full moon at night, piercingly bright. So much light! And so much darkness amassing over Iraq, and in our hearts. On Sunday we gathered to practice Authentic Movement together. After Saturday’s work people were full. They named their rage, their fear, their despair, the grief they already felt at the deaths to come, as we gathered once more in the circle. They began to move. Again and again I saw someone entering the circle full of rage, or fear, or despair. Again and again I saw them move their pain and fear, and I saw rage transformed into burning passion, I saw grief transformed into overwhelming love, I saw despair transformed into power, and fear into joy and delight. I felt so deeply privileged in all that I witnessed that day, as we came together at the end in joy and awe and deep respect for a process we may never fully understand. I felt so grateful for this opportunity to go with so much light and consciousness into this dark passage. We may never fully know the meaning of what happened at that time, but I felt the darkness so strongly balanced by light that I was given hope. 20 03 2003 (this is how we write the date in the UK) - the day war began. What is the significance of this number? It seems so balanced and complete within itself that I wonder what might be its mystical significance. Reflecting on this, and on the intense coincidence of so much light and so much darkness that weekend, I wonder about paradox and a greater source which can contain duality, the opposites so often in conflict. I am reminded of holding a circle of women on one of the SBMC summers where there was great discord, and we could not find a meeting place. Then one member of the group asked everyone to name their birth sign. It turned out that we were sitting in a perfect mandala of zodiac signs balanced in an extraordinary way around the circle. We dissolved into uncontrollable laughter as the mysterious form revealed itself, and the conflict dispersed. When we met the following week we sat down in the circle and immediately dissolved into laughter again. No more conflict! Perhaps, in a few hundred years or so, history will look back on this time and place these events within a greater order, recognise a pattern it was part of, and forgiveness may flow. But for now the conflict prevails. Weekend 6: Connective Tissue and Integration We came to our final theme with a body system which could help us move towards integration. Connective tissue, in its many gel and fluid states, connects every part, each cell and membrane and tissue of the body, into a unified whole. Wrapping and flowing around each part, it both differentiates - clarifying boundaries and defining the uniqueness of each - and also integrates them into one whole. This system embodies the inseparability of the one and the many. Coming towards the end of the series of workshops, a feeling of warmth was evident within the group, but also a sense of people readying themselves to separate, to part. Embodying the connective tissue helped each one to reconnect to a sense of containment and inner integrity, in preparation for leaving. With so much violence and fracture in the world we deeply needed this. It was May and we were also nearing the end of the shocking war, at least the ‘official’ part of the war. As I sat on the train on my way to London for our last meeting I reflected on what it was that could hold me through those terrible events. Immediately my heart came into awareness. I saw-felt its redness, moistness, the strong and vibrant movement of muscle. I felt its deep pulse within me. This is my key, my resource, my saviour, that which I must remember and nurture and trust. Then my bones became present - their firm, reliable, ever-present ground, the earth within, my earth-body. Gratitude. On this I can depend. Concluding words The story continues and there is still death and fear and grieving. I feel this war was morally, ethically, legally, politically and economically wrong; I believe there were other ways to pursue the problems. Yet my own experience of these events also suggests to me a greater and mysterious source which somehow holds it all, both the light and the dark. There is terrible suffering and horrendous cruelty, and yet there is also love and light - they arise simultaneously, they co-exist. The best and the worst in humanity have been evoked through terrible events and seem to hang in precarious balance. Suffering can be transformed - we know this through the work we do. And the shadow can be integrated, but only when there is the will to do so. Scapegoating and projection is easier, more familiar; facing our inner demons, embodying those shadowy, unembodied parts of ourselves which may hold intolerable feelings, is a challenge not everyone wants to take. Faced with such magnitude of suffering and conflict in the world, it is sometimes hard to believe that seeking to take responsibility for own little piece of it - embodying and integrating our own shadow, transforming our personal sorrows into compassion and joy - will help. Yet this is what we must keep on trying to do - sometimes all we can do in the face of forces so much greater than ourselves. Postscript Just days after finishing this article I was travelling to London where I work every Thursday. It was the morning of July 7th. As the journey began fragments of messages were filtering through - a fire at the station my train was headed for, an accident, a power surge, then finally, several bomb attacks on the London underground network. Halfway along the route we had to leave the train as all transport in and out of London was being closed down. Two weeks later I was again caught up in the transport chaos, evacuated from one of the London underground stations following the second series of attacks. As we had been expecting, the war had come to London. It was shocking for people here in the UK to learn that the first group of suicide bombers were born and brought up in this country. Is this something like a political autoimmune disorder, the cells attacking their own kind? A lot of soul-searching has been going on here since these attacks as to why young British Muslim men would do this, and what can be done to address the problems and the politics of these disaffected young men. An autoimmune attack is the result of an over-zealous immune system, stimulated by sympathetic arousal; the B-cells may not be adequately modulated by Suppressor T-cells, and the attack turns upon self-structures, the body’s own cells, wrongly identifying them as foreign enemies. As I follow the concerned debate about what these young Muslims need in order to integrate into British society, I also wonder if we can learn from this what our struggling immunity is in need of? Essentially they are saying they want a different kind of world, one based on (their own) spiritual values. I can sympathise with the essence of this desire, though not of course their methods or dogmatism. The health of the body also thrives in the presence of what we call spiritual energies - love, kindness, respect, harmony, peace, joy. It is hard to bring this discussion to a close as these issues are clearly deep, complex and widespread. The war is now on my own doorstep too, so I am compelled to reflect on the issues. Yet I must acknowledge that there cannot be real closure on these questions right now, as we are still very much in the midst of the unfolding of events that will no doubt shape the future of our world. References 1. Alfred Hassig, “Stress-Induced Suppression of the Cellular Immune Reactions: On the Neuroendocrine Control of the Immune System”. Medical Hypotheses, 1996, 46: pp551-555. Michael U Baumgarter, “Too much ‘HIV’-research, not enough AIDS-research: An introduction to the work of Prof. Alfred Hassig”. Continuum, Volume 3, No 4. 2. The ‘collective body’ is the name given by Janet Adler to a form she developed within the discipline of Authentic Movement. I use it here in a different context and with slightly different meanings, with gratitude to Adler for the naming of this experience. See Janet Adler, Offering from the Conscious Body. Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont. 2002. 3. Wilhelm Reich, Character Analysis. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, New York. 1972 @ Linda Hartley. 2006 Click here to return to beginning of article |
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continued … Boundaries, Defense and War |
