Authentic
Movement:
Embodied
Witnessing of Transpersonal Experience
Ellen Emmet
John F. Kennedy
University
Summer 2005
INTRODUCTION
For the past four years, in a
group with three other women, I am mentoring
under the guidance of Janet Adler, a reputed
dance movement therapist, a key figure in
the development of Authentic Movement, a
film-maker, academic writer, wife and
mother. Together we explore the practice of
Authentic Movement as container and form for
moving and witnessing our direct experience
of personal and transpersonal material, of
physical and energetic phenomena. Both as
movers and as witnesses we discover states
of being which we struggle to put into
language. Our intention is to learn to
welcome and withstand transpersonal states
in our embodied experience and to come to
know the difference between personal and
non-personal direct-experience in the body.
As we discover certain attributes of
transpersonal experience we also work to
discover how language may offer a bridge
from unitive states back into relationship
with one another. Always we share our
longing to communicate a perfume or a
glimpse of these experiences back to the
collective circle. And often we are pointed
back to a shared experience of silence and
stillness which we recognize as the backdrop
of Awareness for all experience. Through
this work we open over and over again to
personal and transpersonal energy, sometimes
as mover and sometimes as witness and we
step again and again into the paradox of
speaking the unspeakable to one another.
Concurrent to my practice of
Authentic Movement, I have been sitting with
clients in the context of psychotherapy.
Each client is a different constellation and
each meeting elicits presence and invites
witnessing in a unique way. Most of us as
clients bring to therapy the density of our
personal struggle, the layers of our ego,
the intricate web of individual
circumstances, the narrative of our external
circumstances and all the patterns which we
most commonly identify with in individual
life. In the course of a session we relate
as therapist and client, from our respective
positions on chair and couch, using our
role-determined compass to navigate the 50
minutes that we share. And then there may
come a moment in which a shift is felt. It
is often sudden and difficult to locate in
time and space. No objective tracing of
causality is really possible, yet from one
moment to the next, all feels different:
there may be a palpable silence enveloping
the room, a stillness which wraps every
gesture in peace, a gaze devoid of personal
agenda, a waiting which no longer feels like
waiting, a spontaneous expression of
expansive connection with self and/or
otherГ…These are the moments which may
never be predicted or made to happen. These
are the moments in which therapist and
client's sense of being separate may
dissolve into a vaster presence of
witnessing; moments in which the
spaciousness within which all events arise
(movement, tears, words, eventsГ…) is
known directly as vibrantly alive and may be
recognized as the Self we all share as our
deepest essence.
I cannot know this space in an
objective manner, nor do I want to approach
it in any other way then with awe and
respect. Yet I find a recurrent longing and
necessity to open myself more and more to
this realm of phenomena and explore what is
known directly through such experience.
In this
paper, I wish to focus the inquiry on
the act of witnessing another's movement
and presence in the practice of
Authentic Movement and more particularly
the act and experience of witnessing
transpersonal phenomena. Such an
investigation may help illuminate the
act of presence in the broader context
of psychotherapy and perhaps stretch the
usual understanding of presence to
include a wider range of experience.
In Authentic Movement, there
are one or many movers and one or many
witnesses. As mover(s) enter the empty space
and close their eyes, they wait for an
impulse to move, and are invited to
surrender to this impulse moment after
moment, allowing to be moved into the
unknown rather then to direct their
expression in any determined way. At the
edge of the circle sit(s) the witness(es).
Their intention is to offer the mover(s)
their clear open presence, attending to the
moment by moment experience elicited through
their own perception: what do I see and how
do I see? Can I physically discern movements
and embodiments sourced in the personal body
and those sourced in transpersonal
phenomena? What am I aware of in my
perceptions, in my sensations, at the level
of physical boundaries, and in my emotions
as the personal appears to dissolve into
transpersonal experience? How does the
experience of time and space shift in such
moments? Do both personal and trans-personal
experience co-exist and what does this mean
at the level of experience? May I come
closer to a respectful exploration of the
mysterious qualities of timelessness,
spaciousness, peace and clarity which
sometimes pervades direct experience of
witnessing? What do I learn about Presence?
These questions although not formally posed
at the moment of witnessing are the
questions that propel my cognitive interest
and support the longing to develop a
spontaneous yet discriminating witness,
familiar and at ease with different states
of being and various qualities of experience
and presence.
As I come closer to
conscious relationship with another,
with "you" and at the same time remain
dwelling in my direct experience, I am
touched over and over by a living
mystery, an unfolding intelligence.
1- A PERSONAL JOURNEY
TOWARDS THE ACT OF WITNESSING NUMINOUS
PHENOMENA IN THE PRACTICE OF AUTHENTIC
MOVEMENT.
READING JANET
ADLER'S WRITINGS.
In the
late 90's I read a book titled: Arching
Backward, the mystical initiation of a
contemporary woman. In it,
the author, Janet Adler (1995) shares the
intimate and poignant story of her
spontaneous and dramatic energetic
awakening. She describes and transcribes
in poetic prose her direct experience of
the powerful and often terrifying primal
energy which erupted through her body and
psyche and required total surrender for
over five years of her life. Her words are
an offering from her inner witness as she
diligently returned to her practice of
Authentic Movement over and over again
both as a mover and as a witness. Janet
Adler's gift through her book and her work
in the discipline of Authentic Movement
have profoundly impacted my journey and
mirrored my own quest in ways I do not yet
understand.
Through the gift of her
written words, I as reader am called into
deep witnessing.
Janet Adler (1995) shares in
words how her whole existence was shaken
through and through, as she faced extreme
physiological and psychological challenges.
She writes: "But death became an active and
consistent companion. As though with
intention to change my form, it entered my
cells through the direct impact of the
energy itself and it entered my mind through
recurring themes in the vision
imageryГ…the depletion of my physical
body became a serious problem, a problem
that at times became life
threatening"(pp.xvi).
With
little knowledge of transpersonal
experience or mystical initiation, Janet
Adler (1995) faced tremendous solitude.
She knew not where to turn to and received
little guidance from Western medicine.
Receiving teachings from the energy
itself, she tells of her experience of
surrender to the energy, of not knowing
and of receiving. She writes: "This fusion
occurred within my body, creating my
devotion to a path of not knowing, yet
trusting, a path of direct embodied
experience of divine energy" (pp.xvi).
Reading her words, I
remember feeling deep recognition.
Although I knew some of what she was
describing at the level of phenomena
and its equivalent in my own body, it
was the quality of awareness infusing
her words and her commitment to
surrendering and relating to direct
experience through witnessing, that
spoke to me so deeply and directly. I was
especially moved by the depth of the inner
witnessing as she navigated the layers of
personal and numinous experience. The
attention and presence shinning through
her prose was beautifully directed towards
the totality of her experience, personal
and transpersonal, ordinary and
non-ordinary, so that as a reader I was
brought over and over again to touch a
clear and spacious presence surrounding
all events. Reading her words, I remember
numerous moments in which the events and
content she shared, (always closely woven
into her bodily experience, and some of it
terrifying and intense), were presented
with such acceptance and spaciousness,
with equal value given to different order
of experience, and with a careful
attention to detail, so that I would begin
to be bathed in a peaceful tranquility and
a deep silence akin to what I had felt
entering sacred shrines in India or
sitting in the presence of wisdom.
Reading your words, I
feel gratitude. Your energy pointing to
stillness, your words pointing to
silence, Silence and Stillness
un-mistakenly here now.
Janet Adler's (1995) sustained
attention to the physical and embodied
aspects of her direct experience even when
the transpersonal energy was overwhelming
was also an important teaching which I have
followed since: I have learnt the importance
of grounding direct numinous experience in
the actuality of physical phenomena and in
the specific description of what is
happening on the physical plane at the level
of the body and sense perceptions: Over and
over again in her writing, Janet tells how
she learnt through her movement and
witnessing practice to strengthened her
inner witness and to very gradually develop
a deep understanding of how to relate to
this energetic phenomenon and allow
integration of its transformative fire: "As
an initiate, I had learned through trial and
error never to interfere with the energy on
its path, only to develop a respectful
relationship to itГ…I knew I must not try
to integrate such a force, knowing in my
bones that it would integrate itself. My
commitments continued to
beГ…strengthening my body by constant
attention to diet and rest, and clarifying
the relationship between surrender and will
regarding my experience with the energy"
(p.239).
I read Janet's words.
I see a woman surrendering more and
more consciously. I cannot know the
magnitude of this experience. Yet
there is recognition deep inside my
being. In the presence of this
mystery, I feel grateful.
The resonance with this
material was such that a few years later, I
had made my way from a busy life in NYC, to
the quiet setting of Sebastopol, CA, where
synchronicity was to allow me some deep
exploration of the practice of witnessing
under Janet Adler's guidance.
Working with Janet, I
learnt that surrender to the mystery
and the unknown are the only guiding
principles within the form of
Authentic Movement. In
welcoming personal and trans-personal
material as witness, there always comes
the moment within the practice where I am
required to open even more and to welcome
a difficult and even unbearable
manifestation whether a movement, an
expression, a cry or an energetic
experience. I learnt to accept the
unknowing state in which chaos may unfurl,
density may take its grip, discomfort
arise, thoughts multiplyГ…and also the
state in which peace may descend, silence
may surround, clarity may pervadeГ… In
those moments, I know nothing but that
which arises in my awareness moment after
moment, spontaneously.
PERSONAL
EXPERIENCES AS A DANCE THERAPIST.
Earlier in my experience as a
dance therapist working with autistic
children, I had been called over and over
again to offer clear open witnessing in the
presence of "non-egoic" phenomena. In a
session, a child would move in a seemingly
random and disorganized way eliciting in my
own experience a sense of fragmentation and
a quality of absence. I remember following
the invitation to surrender and enter this
unfamiliar movement and energetic field,
joining the child's manifested physicality
and movement in any way that intuition
suggested. As I would surrender to the
unknown, there would sometimes come a
moment, in which suddenly and mysteriously,
out of nowhere, out of absence, came
unmistakable presence: for a short timeless
moment the little body-soul would became
whole, and organized, a gesture would be
made which was infused with meaning: a hand
reaching, a clear sound uttered, a movement
towards relationship and contact as the body
became inhabited by presence. Always these
moments struck me as special, non-ordinary.
Many years later reading Janet Adler's
(1995) own experience with autistic children
her words would perfectly mirror my
experience. She writes: "The autistic child,
my first teachers about the numinous,
allowed me to participate in the arrival of
spirit into the body as they journeyed into
conscious time and space from another,
pre-egoic, time and space" (p.117).
These moments, often very short
lived stand out vividly in my memory, as do
images of clients and peers that I have
witnessed in specific moments, through the
form of Authentic Movement: moments in which
something is happening of another order,
when spirit seems to be infusing and
re-organizing reality through the body, when
consciousness seems to recognize itself
directly in a timeless moment, and when
gestures as well as whole body movements
take on an utterly spontaneous and sacred
quality. These moments bring an intangible
yet unmistakable quality of that which the
mind most likely can never know. Along with
the movement expression perceived, the
specificity of gestures or position in space
and the sense that the mover is being moved
and that witnessing is also happening
spontaneously, such moments invariably also
bring a sense of impersonal presence which
may be experienced as an open, even and
effortless attention. It is frequent that
mover and witness are awed by a shared
feeling of non-personal unfolding, where
attributes such as timelessness,
spaciousness, clarity, intelligence, beauty,
order, silence, stillness are offered as
words pointing to a direct experience of
which nothing can really be known.
As my witnessing practice
teaches me, I can never understand with my
mind what constitutes these phenomena, nor
can I objectify them in any way. But I may
recognize them as sacred offerings from life
and a clear invitation to come closer and
inquire deeply into Truth itself.
2: PERSONAL AND
TRANSPERSONAL EXPERIENCE IN THE BODY.
DEFINITION AND
REFLECTIONS ON THE MEANING OF TRANSPERSONAL
IN PARTICULAR APPLIED TO BODY, IN THE
CONTEXT OF TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY.
The meaning of the word
transpersonal is explored by Cortright
(1997) as he investigates the prefix trans.
When meaning "above or beyond", trans
attached to "personal", means a reaching
beyond the individual story into other
realms (spiritual, energetic,
mysticalГ…). With the meaning "across"
the word also includes the personal and
individual dimensions and story which one
traverses, but suggests a larger framework
or context within which it is all held. In
an inquiry into witnessing transpersonal
embodied phenomena the question is: what is
this larger framework or context and how is
it experienced, perceived, felt as an
embodied experience? What other tradition
and belief systems have known it and
celebrated it? And, how can it inform the
healing work of attending to clients?
The writer and philosopher,
Dane Rudhyar (1983), exploring the origins
and meaning of the word psychology with the
prefix trans(personal), mentions a possible
connection with Carl G. Jung: "I have used
the term since 1930 to represent action
which takes place through a person, but
which originates in a center of activity
existing beyond the level of
personhoodГ…To my knowledge I was the
first to use the term, though C.G. Jung may
already have used it in GermanГ…" (p.86).
The author is referring here to what Jung
named the super-personal unconscious and
which he also briefly referred to as the
transpersonal unconscious now known as the
collective unconscious. As a pioneer of this
field, Carl G. Jung believed that the
individual psyche exists within a numinous
and intelligent all encompassing realm,
revealing patterns, and intricate universal
meanings (Wittin, 1987). Archetypes and
embodied archetypal energies constitute a
kind of interface within the conscious and
unconscious realms, and between the ego and
the Self (understood as the essential core
archetype of individual existence). Jung
wrote: "The ego receives the light from the
Self. Though we know of this Self, yet it is
not knownГ…In reality its experience is
unlimited and endlessГ…If I were one with
the Self, I would have knowledge of
everything." (as cited in Frager,1989 p.
48). His words here point to how thoughts
may never grasp the Self since they
themselves appear within the Self. This
understanding supports Jung life-long
engagement with imaginal processes including
dreams and active imagination, in which
intuition, images and understandings are
welcomed from that larger framework. Jung
undoubtedly was a formative influence in the
field of transpersonal psychology. Mary
Whitehouse, the founder of Authentic
Movement as a discipline had a strong
Jungian orientation. In the therapy
modalities inspired from Jung's work,
wholeness is sought through a search for the
Self. This search (to simplify greatly),
unfolds through the activation of the
relationship between the waking ego and the
realms of dreams, unconscious, symbols and
all numinous material. Moreover the process
of self-actualizing is often presented as
sacred and/or mystical, akin to ancient
esoteric traditions and evocative of the
mysteries from which Jung drew his wisdom.
"Its subjective experience (the
individuation process), conveys the feeling
that some supra-personal force is actively
intervening in a creative way" (Von Franz as
cited in Bogart, 2003 p. 25).
Jung's model of the psyche and
his understanding of a collective
unconscious have often deeply resonated with
my experience of witnessing in the modality
of Authentic Movement. Here, through a
stepping into the unknown both as mover and
as witness, one invites and activates the
numinous realms of the unconscious as if
entering a dream. Sometimes, there is a
tangible experience of the collective
unconscious, unfolding through specific
archetypal movement, themes from ancient
myths, dance gesture, synchronistic patterns
of movement, through which is expressed the
individual and collective longing to meet
the Self. As witness, one may be honored to
see and participate in a re-enactment of a
universal and collective archetypal journey
or recognize themes found in specific
mythsГ…
In a session working with a
young woman, R., I was recently invited to
witness a beautiful example of an archetypal
narrative. This young woman, a wife and a
new mother, had been struggling with her
longing to remain the innocent, idealized,
pure beauty and free spirit which she had so
identified with as a child and young adult.
I witness her movement:
I see you move through
the space. You are walking and now
almost skipping, your hands and arms
moving lightly through the air,
caressing the space around you. A light
smile is on your face, as it turns
upward as if to feel the warm caress of
the sun. Witnessing you I feel free and
care-free, my body light and ethereal,
my world safe. And now I feel the
delight of a mother as she beholds her
virginal daughter. All around the air is
clean, a gentle breeze, grass swaying
here a butterfly and there a pretty
flowerГ…
And now I see your
movement changing. In a slow transition
I see your heels are digging into the
ground, and rhythm appears to punctuate
your movement. I see you stop and
listen, your face serious. Your pelvis
moves up and down, and I hear a deep
guttural sound coming out of your body.
Down you come on all fours, pounding the
earth, rooting your pelvis. You are
crying. I see you rolling onto your
back, legs bent, slightly apart, open.
You are crying as your pelvis moves up
at times. Witnessing you here, I feel a
descent into a deeper darker place
within my body. As I see you descend, I
feel my own descent and with it the pain
and grief of surrender in my flesh.
Witnessing you here I feel a surge of
sexual and instinctual energy at the
very root of my body. Witnessing you
here I feel the sadness of a mother
loosing her daughterГ…
Beholding my client, it became
suddenly very apparent that I was witnessing
a re-enactment of the myth of Persephone. I
felt the delight and innocence of Kore as
she indulged in her young carefree
sauntering. And I clearly saw and felt the
transition towards the underworld.
Witnessing her descent I could sense the
forces of the darker instincts ravishing
this young virginal energy. The experience
was powerful in my body. And as I
contemplated my client lying on the floor
struggling and crying, I felt the despair of
Demeter losing her own daughterГ….
Since this movement session, my
client has continued to explore her
internalized split and has taken beautiful
steps towards integrating a more grounded
and mature experience of her feminine
nature.
Psychoanalytical work inspired
by Freudian thought opened the door to the
idea of an unconscious realm, a place where
things happen beyond ego control. Maslow and
the field of humanistic psychology
introduced new ideas to the realm of human
experience which included notions of
transcendence and peak experience. Maslow
believed in a fourth Force Psychology:
"transpersonal, transhuman, centered in the
cosmosГ…going beyond humanness, identity
self-actualization and the likeГ…"
(Maslow as cited by Frager, 1989, p.128)
Many other leading names
include somatic and body approaches as
important contributions to the field of
trans-personal psychology. It has become
obvious in my experience, that consciously
re-inhabiting my body constitutes a true
portal into the mystery of spirit as it
incarnates. Because I as most Westerners
am/was mostly imprisoned in thought and
mind, working towards conscious embodiment
can constitute an enormous realm of
experience in which the senses and the soul
meet. To step back into the body is to step
back into wholeness or in the words of
Jungian Analyst Robin Van Loben Sels (2005),
"The threshold of consciousness is a bodily
threshold even for dreams. Without body we
cannot bring our psycho-physiological
experience to a felt experience. The body is
a part of soul. That called body is a
portion of the soul discerned by the five
senses" (p.220).
Modalities
focused on conscious embodiment such as
Feldenkrais or Alexander, systems of
energy work focusing on defense
mechanisms as they are held in the body
such as Reichian, bio-energetic or Lowen
approaches, Systems of Eastern exercises
such as Tai Chi Chuan or Yoga, all focus
on the whole person and facilitate a
broader awareness of experience.
Authentic Movement offers its own unique
way to re-discover our essential
relationship to the body experience in
that it allows a simultaneous experience
of the manifest (whether personal,
collective or transpersonal embodied
phenomena) and the invisible so that in
a journey through sound we are brought
to silence, in our journey through
movement we are brought to stillness, in
our journey through confusion and chaos
we are brought to order and clarity.
A BRIEF
EXPLORATION OF PERSONAL EXPRESSIONS OF THE
BODY IN MOVEMENT.
It is arbitrary and risky to
distinguish between personal and
transpersonal experience and embodied
phenomena. For although it is apparent that
experience unfolds along a continuum which
comprises different qualities of experience:
some ego-based and some seemingly
trans-egoic, it seems that the only perfect
experience is the one which unfolds right
here and right this moment, be it of an
emotional nature, a reflexive nature, a
mystical nature etcГ…The danger of
labeling this one personal and that one
trans-personal lies in the not so subtle
implications of language: trans-personal
experience is of a higher order of
experience and is idealized while ego-based
experience becomes shameful, distasteful,
ignored. And thus the spiritual by-pass
develops as a norm. In my personal work in
an on-going group of Authentic Movement, our
inquiry has focused on energetic phenomena
of an impersonal nature. Although there was
never an explicit hierarchical
discrimination between personal and
transpersonal material, this split occurred
quietly, as an unconscious bias. Eventually,
I had to examine my underlying preferences
concerning the nature of experience and how
I organized phenomenal events according to
their "rank" as transpersonal or personal:
witnessing myself in this process of
unmasking, I saw once again the infinite
ways that the ego creates to feed the
illusion of control. Seeing this, I could
once again be open without intention.
Clearly
in the journey towards consciousness, we
must enter the density of our deepest
darkest experiences as they are ready to
be brought into the light of
consciousness. As we travel in and through
the dark unknown we may emerge back into
the light of wholeness. This can only
happen through our bodies. As Rumi says "The
physical form is of great importance:
nothing can be done without the
association of the form and the
essenceГ…the body is fundamental
and necessary for the realization of
the divine intention."
Movement that finds its source
in personal experience presents certain
specific qualities which a witness will
perceive recognize and respond to. As Mary
Whitehouse (1965) writes: "The body is the
physical aspect of the personality and
movement is the personality made visible.
The distortions, tensions and restrictions
are the distortions, tensions and
restrictions within the personality. They
are at any given moment, the conditions of
the psyche" ( p.17).
Gestures and movement of a
personal nature which arise in Authentic
Movement present with a defined sense of
agency, the presence of an "I". The impulse
behind such movements and gestures is often
emotional, connected to the mover's
individual history, trauma,
struggleГ…Movement sequences unfold along
a linear timeline with a clear beginning
middle and end. There is often a narrative
with a clear sense of a subject relating to
itself or the environment. Emotions which
live beneath the surface of our daily life,
find a channel of expression through the
body.
There is the individual
movement of sadness and grief: I
see you lying still waiting. You lay
waiting. I see your fists close as you
roll to your side, bending your knees
towards your forehead. I hear crying.
There is the individual
dance of anger: I
see you standing over there in the
space. Now you are walking slowly and
now faster. Your lips are tightly shut
and I see you stop now as you stamp
your feet, pounding the ground. Your
pelvis moves, your knees bend as you
stamp rhythmically. I hear a loud deep
cry resonating in the space. I am
clearly aware of the contour of your
body.
Defense mechanisms will be
revealed for what they are at the somatic
level and often be dismantled in the course
of practicing Authentic Movement. Repression
for example may be embodied as a contraction
held in the upper torso and neck area which
inhibits the movement. This inhibition if
explored may become a dark character with a
full range of expression and negative
emotions: anger, control, hateГ…If
expressed and moved to its completion, there
may be a transformation of the energy and
its expression into a fuller, livelier and
ultimately healthier manifestation of
vitality.
Often when there is a group of
movers, contact is made between individuals:
I see you lying on the
floor, you are crying. Now I see a
second mover crawl up to you and stop,
her hand outreached. Now she is touching
your back, exploring this body part. I
see you roll awayГ…
Here one's habitual patterns of
relationship are elicited as well as the
deeper, older emotions held in our bodies
and in the gestures of reaching, opening,
turning away, coming towards, caressing,
touching etcГ… In moving patterns of
relationship there is tremendous potential
to witness vulnerable personal material as
it seeks a new resolution or simply a fuller
expression.
Unresolved stages of a person's
developmental experience commonly surface
here as the energy that is stuck in the
cellular and muscle memory is allowed
release and manifestation. As historical
unconscious material is welcomed into
embodied consciousness, a mover may re-visit
infantile states, re-live a particular
trauma, and experience the emotions which
rule a specific stage of development.
Perhaps a developmental block will be
re-experienced with less fear and a new
element of growth discoveredГ…
A BRIEF EXPLORATION OF
THE PROCESS OF WITNESSING THE PERSONAL BODY.
Witnessing a mover as she
embodies phenomena of a personal nature
offers an opportunity to experience
kinesthetic and somatic empathy and
counter-transference. There are many ways in
which this may unfold in the body of a
witness and only a few will be mentioned
here. For example, a specific emotion
embodied by a mover in the space may elicit
a corresponding feeling inside one's own
body. Or an absence of emotional expression
as the mover embodies a struggle or
difficult experience may awaken the
"missing" affect in the witness. Sometimes,
sitting at the edge of the circle, the
witness may become very aware of a specific
body part, feeling a constriction, a
density, a quality of energy, or an
awakeningГ…this is invariably a
kinesthetic and somatic response to a
physical and energetic state experienced or
about to be experienced by the mover. A
dance-movement therapist I. Fiedler writes:
"Kinesthetic empathy is, more particularly
the bodily process of taking in or tuning
into a client's movement and bodily
responses. This mutual bodily experience
leads to a simultaneous reverberation of
related feelings, to synchronicity as a
state of kinesthetic empathyГ… The dance
ГвЂmovement therapist uses her body to
receive, contain and interpret the patient's
felt experience; Thus the therapist's body
becomes a resonating chamber" (p.41).
In my own experience as a
witness, there are discerning characteristic
of being in the presence of personal
experience. I am always aware of being
located inside my own skin, in a specific
area of the space, and often very aware of
my boundaries. I may for example feel the
temperature on my skin or sense the edge of
the wall where my back meets it. I always
have an overall proprioceptive sensation of
my whole body posture oriented in space,
aware of the anatomy of my person-hood with
a head sitting on a vertical spine, with
"my" thinking center located in the
forehead, and "my" feeling center located in
the heart. The general experience thus is of
"you" moving over there, and "I" sitting
over here. The localization of the "me-ness"
and the "you-ness" is marked in space
through all these perceived experiences and
by the experience of the empty space which
seemingly separates us. As you the mover are
identified with an emotion or a piece of
your story, I the witness may very well feel
a corresponding density of identity, felt in
my soma and also through the thoughts
feelings and personal memories which may
appear during the experience.
In most
of the literature concerning transpersonal
psychology and spiritual emergency the
importance of ego strength and the
capacity to contain transpersonal
phenomena is frequently stressed. It has
been my experience that I began to be
interested and to actively challenge the
frontier of my conscious identity and
self-identification at a time when I was
stronger from an ego point of view. It was
the work I had done in my earlier verbal
therapy as well as maturing through life
experience which seemed to have
strengthened my ability to contain new and
more numinous and intense experiences. Yet
paradoxically the welcoming of
numinous or transpersonal experience
always coincided with a certain
psychological terrain. It was through
the embodied experiences of very core
wounds that I was invited to enter
into a vaster and more expanded state.
It was often in times of extreme
vulnerability, when my sense of self
felt disorganized and chaotic, when I
surrendered to an almost overwhelming
experience of grief or rage that an
opening took place, infusing my body
and my movement with new energies and
new experiences. Cortright (1997),
tells us that trauma and personal
wounding, "create more tenuous
intrapsychic structure so that the
individual's boundaries are more
porous and open to unconscious
forcesГ…" (p.168). Janet Adler
(2002), notes the relationship between
traces of trauma in the body and
transpersonal manifestation in
Authentic Movement. She writes: "It is
not uncommon for a gesture that forms
within a body memory of a trauma to
become the gesture which marks a
gateway into transpersonal
experiences" (p.232).
TRANSPERSONAL ENERGY
EMBODIED.
"In the beginning, there was
not the word, but rather there was the
symbolic action, a union of body and psyche.
In the beginning, dance was the sacred
language through which we communicated with
the vast unknown. In these earlier times,
the dancer was at the same time healer and
priest. Then through the centuries, in the
name of progress and civilization, mind and
body were split apart" (Chodorow 1984,
p.39).
Through my interest in Indian
Vedanta and mystical experience in general,
I have read or heard of the lives of many
saints and/or mystics in India and other
places. It is my understanding that
"non-ordinary experiences in the body" have
been a part of human existence for thousands
of years. States of Samadhi, spontaneous
movement or mudras, ecstatic chanting or
dancing, speaking in tongues, visions,
non-ordinary energetic statesГ…are
considered the hallmark of awakening to
spirit in many cultures and mystical
traditions.
As movers
in the practice of Authentic Movement,
we step into an empty space, closing our
eyes and opening ourselves to the
emptiness. Often we have lit a candle;
maybe we are wearing a special shawl or
holding a stone. Perhaps we have
contemplated the emptiness in the quiet
presence of others before entering the
circle. Perhaps we have made eye contact
with our witness as a ritual way to
acknowledge the sacredness of the form
and to mark the threshold which is about
to be crossed. What has guided us to
this moment of surrender and to this
movement practice is unquestionably a
mysterious and powerful longing to
surrender.
In this longing:
"I see you walk three
times around the stone bowl. Now you
lie on your back, slowly and carefully
stretching your limbs, opening your
arms, offering your palms up,
breathing. You are open, you are
waiting. "
In this opening:
"I see you kneeling
down towards the ground. Your cupped
hands are making repetitive parting
gestures. You are opening the earth,
opening the earth. I hear you cry into
the ground, calling, callingГ…"
In this waiting:
"I see you kneeling
facing this specific way. Your hands
are folded on your lap, you are still,
you are waiting in perfect
stillnessГ…"
Longing, opening and
waitingГ…
Ramakrishna (1836-1886), a
great Saint of India reportedly experienced
intense states of trance in which he merged
with the Goddess Kali, often dressing
himself as a woman and spontaneously
exploring the edges of transpersonal
identity (Isherwood, 1965). He wrote "the
energy by which the body is pervaded is the
same as that which illuminates the world and
maintains alive all beings" (Ramakrishna as
cited by Sannella, 1981, p.20), and
reportedly described kundalini energy
as"five kinds, in which one feels the
sensation of the Spiritual Current like the
movement of an ant, a fish, a monkey, a bird
or a serpentГ…" (Ramakrishna as cited in
Irving, 1995 p.76).
Sainte Therese de Lisieux
(1873-1897) a French Carmelite nun,
experienced states described in writing as
"convulsions occasionally so violent that
she would be thrown out of her
bed"(Sannella, 1981, p.16). Swami Muktananda
writes in his biography of his experience of
kundalini energy: "My body was heated up and
my head became heavyГ…the spinal base was
rent with painГ…" (Muktananda as cited in
Sannella, 1981, p.21).
As the energy begins to move,
certain qualities of transpersonal phenomena
may be known and described. It seems
important to remember that the purpose of a
description is neither to generalize not to
objectify, but to attempt to evoke qualities
of energetic phenomena which seem to recur
in movers experiences.
As a mover opens herself over
and over again to layers of energy and
movement which may feel deeply unfamiliar,
irrational and even crazy, a lot may happen
at the manifest level. In the process of
letting go of ego structures, and the will
to control experience, there is often a
descent into chaos, as thoughts feelings and
habitual patterns are expressed randomly, as
they come up, seemingly out of logical
sequence. At the same time, there may well
be a struggle to remain in control by the
forces of the ego as well as the unleashing
of strong inner critic material attempting
to prevent the breakdown of what holds the
ego in apparent safety. One may become
overwhelmed with grief, shame, and despair
as old constrictions are felt, as new energy
is unleashed, as one's identity is
shattered. At such times it may be useful
for a facilitator, a therapist and even a
person opening to such intense material to
be provided with some theoretical framework
grounded in the Western thought system. This
can provide additional support, in addition
to the descriptions of mystical experiences
within the Eastern traditions.
Michael
Washburn (1995) in his book The
Ego and the Dynamic Ground offers a
developmental view of a human life,
drawing from ego psychology, Freudian
thought, Jungian and existential
psychology ideas as well as trans-personal
psychology. His model seems to provide an
interesting frame of reference for the
experience of transpersonal energy moving
through the body. In his comprehensive
understanding of human development there
are potentially three main stages,
pre-egoic, egoic and trans-egoic. If and
when the latter stage (trans-egoic)
unfolds, an individual experiences a
"regression in service of
transcendence"(Wasburn, p.7), by which the
ego returns to its place of origin: the
Dynamic Ground. Here a mover may be
experiencing chaos, broken sequences of
movement, unfamiliar sensationsГ…
Through a renewed dialectic
relationship to this original matrix from
which all emerges, there unfolds a
transformative process of regeneration by
which the spiritual dimension of human
experience is more fully lived (Washburn,
1995). This process in Washburn's view is
not a linear unfolding but rather a
spiraling and changing dialectical
relationship between the ego-identity and
the original matrix named the Dynamic
Ground. In his writing, Washburn is able to
evoke and describe an organic experience
while including concepts drawn from ego
psychology and psycho-analytic thinking. A
closer look at Washburn's theory resonates
with my own embodied understanding of
energetic phenomena and spiritual emergency.
His idea of the Dynamic Ground is inclusive
of Freud's concept of libidinal realm and id
and of Jung's idea of psychic energy, the
deep unconscious and collective unconscious.
However, the Dynamic Ground is vaster then
these ideas and inclusive of all energy,
power, spirit, and life force. The language
this author chooses to describe Dynamic
Ground evokes a quality of aliveness and
potentiality found in descriptions of
Kundalini energy. In Wasburn's lexicon, it
is the "source and the flowing power", "the
energizer of all psychic processes", it is
"gravitationally or magnetically
attractive", and can also "seize" the ego
sometimes "absorbing and dissolving" the
ego. For most people, the Dynamic Ground is
"reduced to a dormant state" until it does
break through and "awakens". The experience
is both an "upheaval and fall" for the ego,
i.e. a return of the repressed: upheaval,
and a regression of the repressor: fall.
Later the Dynamic Ground reveals itself in
its "pure or pristine" form, "luminous
consciousness, freed spirit" (Washburn,
1995, pp.121-130).
As described by individuals who
have experienced transpersonal states,
Washburn describes a process whereby,
repression is lifted and the force of the
Dynamic Ground emerges sometimes with
violence and/or bizarre symptoms. He writes
that in pushing against tensions, "the power
of the ground may at times feel like a heavy
energy current or searing molten liquid",
and "the body becomes polymorphously
sensual" (Washburn, 1995, p.197).
Particularly evocative and resonant with my
own understanding of the direct experience
of transpersonal phenomena is this author's
vivid description of what he names "the
purging of mental-egoic resistance"
(Washburn, 1995, p.207). Here the process is
compared to the labor of giving birth and
the language used to describe the experience
is embodied in such a way to echo direct
experience rather then objectify it. The
difference writes Washburn, between physical
labor and spiritual labor, is that physical
labor is "expulsive", while spiritual labor
is "infusive"(Washburn, 1995, p.211).
The depth
and breath of this author's investigation
and description is a gift to the
individual who is traversing a seemingly
desperate and solitary situation at times.
For a kinesthetic person in particular, Washburn's vocabulary
and concepts evoke a strong connection
between the body and the energy of the
earth, which in Authentic Movement,
constitutes the principal phenomena.
Over time,
as a mover returns again and again to
the practice of Authentic Movement, as
she opens and surrenders, allowing all
this material to move through, she will
begin to trust the impulse of a new
quality of energy. Janet Adler(1992)
writes: "I re-awakened to the sacred,
directly experiencing the numinous as
physical sensation in my body rather
than channeled through my mind or
emotions" (p.118). And she describes a
new way of knowing "as though one is
being moved, taken, penetrated,
rearranged, infusedГ…without the
density of emotion or thought (Adler,
1987, p.209).
Gradually a mover may be moved
by an impersonal energy, inviting new
qualities, new movements and gestures, new
relationships to time and space.
Now I see you moving in a
new way. You advance through the space
slowly, evenly. You seem to float. Now
you stop and your head tilts up. I see
your mouth open ever so slowly as your
hands reach up towards your face.
There is often a weightless
quality which permeates transpersonal
movement, accompanied by a sense of seamless
flow. The movement can unfold very slowly,
sometimes in slow motion as if every
micro-movement was being opened, permeated
and perceived by a new and mysterious force.
Janet Adler (1999) remarks: "In mystical
experience, sensation is perception through
any or all of the five senses plus another
sense which is nameless" (p.166).
Other times the body may be
moved by quick jolts which seem to penetrate
areas of the body with suddenness, as if the
energy were forcing its way through density:
I see your shoulders
moving quickly and suddenly towards and
away from each other. The movement
happens so fast, traversing your upper
body like a flash of lightning.
New movements and gesture may
appear over and over again in a mover's
repertoire, signaling the presence of the
numinous and over time becoming part of a
sacred repertoire:
Now I see one hand and
now the other coming together. Your
fingers are parted, each finger making
contact with its mirror finger, your
hand forming an open triangle. I know
this gesture and have seen you make it
over and over again. I see you move this
triangle slowly towards your third eye
as your entire fingers move towards each
other. You touch your third eye with all
your fingers.
Hands may form mudras (sacred
shapes made with hands and fingers),
gestures may become highly ritualized, arms
may gesticulate in specific and rhythmic
ways, familiar and universal motions and
postures of prayer may manifest.
I see you kneeling, your
hands joined in prayer, your face bowing
down...
I see you prostrating,
your torso coming down, your forehead to
the ground, your torso coming up as you
turn your face to the sky, and now down
again.
I see your hands offering
out in front of you as you kneel. Your
face is looking slightly up.
I see your right hand
coming to your heart and your left
resting on your belly as you stand here
now, perfectly still.
There are often gestures
directed to the body orifices, eyes, ears,
mouth belly button, and yoni. In my own
movement practice a ritual gesture comes
back over and over: my fingers coming close
to the side of my temples and pulling
invisible strands of light out and away from
me very slowly. I have seen other mover's
patterns repeated time and time again like a
moving mantra. Sometimes there are not only
gestures but full movement sequences arising
from the stillness.
Breathing patterns take on
specific qualities, sometimes fast and
rhythmic sometimes very slow and quiet,
sometimes stopping for short moments.
Sometimes the inhale comes into the
foreground as a gesture or movement
manifests. On the exhale there is a return
to the stillness and neutral position of
waiting. It is a dance of manifestation and
dissolution through the breath.
Often, alignment and direction
in space can become impeccably specific and
ritualized.
I see you circling around
three times, counter-clockwise. You
stop. You are facing the stone bowl.
Now, you have shifted slightly, just so,
and again. And now you seem to find the
right alignment as you stand perfectly
still.
Movement of a transpersonal
nature can be accompanied by affect.
I see you walk out into
the space. At the center you stop and
lay your small carpet down. Slowly you
place your body on your back, knees bent
arms extended, palms open. You breathe
gently. Now your face contracts, your
torso heaves, you are sobbing. You
breathe. Around you there is silence and
stillness. Now the crying is stopping
slowly, on its own.
Expressions
of emotion appear yet they seem to travel
through and out of the body easily and
clearly, like a cloud through a clear sky,
free of any attachment or "personal
stickiness". Sometimes
the expression on the face presents an
image of great peace, quiet joy, or
lasting bliss. At other times an
expression of joy and expansion may
co-exist with racking sobs and sounds of
grief.
Movements of a transpersonal
nature can also be accompanied by sound.
These may be perceived as vibrations with
the body becoming an instrument for
resonance. Often what is heard sounds full
and resonant, crystal clear as it emerges
from a palpable silence. The mouth opens to
a determined shape and it is the whole body
which sounds whether letting out a deep
guttural sound or a high pitched cry.
Vocalizations appear as utterly spontaneous
and unpredictable. As with the specificity
of gestures and movement, the spontaneous
and impeccable chanting, humming, or
sounding which emerges feels guided by
intelligence beyond the mind.
WITNESSING THE TRANSPERSONAL BODY.
It is being found that there is
a recrudescence of people experiencing
"para-normal" states which go beyond
ordinary levels of consciousness and while
these phenomena may be pointing to a
positive development of inter-dimensional
consciousness, very few people have a
contextual framework to help contain and
support such an experience.
The cultural context seems in
many ways, to determine how the phenomena is
welcomed, understood and integrated. In
India as in many other cultures, the
spiritual dimension has not been split off
from human experience as in the Western
world. Thus a container is readily in place
for spontaneous spiritual awakening, and the
notion of spiritual emergency, used to
describe equivalent experience in our
culture, is un-necessary.
In contrast post-modern western
civilization has turned towards materialism
and away from spirit, has celebrated the
individual over the community, and has
empowered reason over intuition and wisdom.
This explains the intensity of experience
which individuals in the West describe as
they open to "spiritual states."
My first gleanings into the
topic of transpersonal phenomena have been a
welcomed surprise, as I find that this area
is in fact being investigated with serious
consideration by clinicians, psychologists
and academics who are interested in
questions of consciousness and its
evolution. As investigations have been made
into altered states of consciousness,
Eastern practices and psychedelic
experience, the forbearers of transpersonal
psychology, Carl Jung, Roberto Assagioli,
Abraham Maslow for example, have recognized
and delineated new frontiers for human
consciousness. Broader models and maps of
the human psyche and of individual
development have been offered. The concept
of transcendence, of going beyond the ego,
of connecting with the numinous and/or
spiritual object has been investigated
extensively. Some of the assumptions
implicit and/or held as facts in the models
proposed by "Orthodox" Western psychology
are being seriously challenged. For example
the idea that knowledge is a concept of the
mind, a hypothesis supported by sensorial
evidence and that there is no certain or
direct knowledge of anything is challenged
by transpersonal psychology which argues
that in fact there are modes of direct
experience and knowing in which certainty
and truth is revealed absolutely.
Transpersonal theory poses new questions
concerning for example where non-ordinary
experiences take place within the field of
consciousness, (is it a local or non-local
experience), how these experiences can be
built into a multidimensional developmental
model, how a clinician may work with a
client having such an experience, and how to
diagnose a transpersonal experience
integrating traditional psychological
assessment tools as well as more esoteric
and intuition based approaches.
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