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The Embodiment of Freedom: An integral approach to optimal health and personal transformation (Part 2: Defining terms)

"Transformation" by Rick Hocker (Click photo to go to http://rickhocker.com)
As a student of psychology, both academically and in the broadest sense, I have surveyed a number of practices and fields of study that strive to help individuals become more fully themselves. These can generally be described as approaches to personal transformation — endeavors that work to provide a supportive context where individuals can learn to become more fully aware of their personal world of experience, and are encouraged to utilize that expanded awareness as a source of intelligent responsiveness and self-expression. What transforms in this process is the mode from which a person experiences self and world, such that the quality of one’s relations to self, others, and environment changes in enriching ways as one’s depth of awareness and range of responsiveness grows.

This process whereby people move from a relatively unhealthy, inefficient, unfulfilling mode of functioning toward one of increased livelihood, health, and growth potential, has been understood in many different ways. The approaches that have had the greatest impact on my own life are those that understand personal transformation in terms of embodiment. A variety of theorists and practitioners — representing such fields as psychotherapy, somatics, phenomenology, ecology, psychology, and mindfulness meditation — have contributed a wide range of overlapping, interpenetrating perspectives that recognize the transformative potential of developing one’s capacity to be aware of and consciously responsive from embodied modes of experiencing (by which I mean experiences of bodily sensations and feelings — i.e. somatic/kinesthetic/proprioceptive experience in general). These perspectives share a broad understanding of the transformative process, which can be generally stated as follows:

Human beings often remain stuck in relatively unfulfilling, unhealthy patterns or ways of living in large part due to a diminished state of basic self-awareness. Many individuals in this state are considerably diminished in their capacity to be aware of and respond from feelingful, sensual levels of experiencing . In order to move toward health, fullness of living, and actualization of potential, a person in this dissociated state must develop his or her existing self-sensing capacities and learn to authentically express him- or herself from this deeper, fuller sense of self.

This general view of personal transformation has been understood in at least the following ways: in terms of psychological processes (i.e. dissociation and integration), interpersonal dynamics, socio-cultural/political factors, people’s relations with the earthly environment, sensorimotor functioning, and spiritual realization. The following inquiry is offered as one of many possible integral approaches to optimal health and personal transformation. I use the term integral in a broad sense, understanding an integral approach to be any that brings multiple perspectives together in an effort to address the multiple dimensions of human life. In this sense, integral is more or less interchangeable with terms like integrative and holistic or any other term meant to convey “whole person” approaches to health and personal growth. Although integral is perhaps less familiar than the other terms mentioned, I use it simply as a matter of personal preference, no doubt owing to the influence of both Haridas Chaudhuri’s model of Integral Psychology (Chaudhuri was the founder of the California Institute of Integral Studies, where I studied for several years) and to Ken Wilber’s “four quadrant” integral theory, which I find to be quite useful in framing “big-picture” multidimensional perspectives.

In my next post I will explore this inquiry’s primary assumption: that life (at least in the modern West) is indeed plagued with a tendency toward alienation and dissociation, an attitude that drives a wedge between the thinking and feeling dimensions of being human. This fragmentation of consciousness not only renders us strangers to ourselves in a deep sense, but it also distorts and deadens the quality of relationship that is possible interpersonally, and between people and the earthly environment. Then I’ll look at some ways of facilitating personal transformation that arose in response to this alienated psycho-social situation, focusing on a select few approaches within the fields of somatics and psychotherapy.

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The Embodiment of Freedom: An integral approach to optimal health and personal transformation (Part 1: Introduction to the inquiry)

A view of the Organ Mountains from my neighborhood in Las Cruces, NM
We’ve all had moments when we feel particularly full of life, especially present to whatever we’re engaged in — times when we’re simply more on, more there, more tuned in to life than usual. I was in my mid-twenties when I started to realize that these experiences of wakeful presence and intense vitality were becoming few and far between in my life, scattered here and there amidst the languid grind of everyday existence. The more I inquired, the more it became increasingly clear that I was also progressively losing touch with the sense of wonder and possibility that I had come to know as the deepest, most precious part of myself. As the prize of maturity stood waiting for me to grasp hold, I was paralyzed by the fear that somehow this growing sense of disconnection and diminished vitality was simply the terrible and inevitable cost to be paid, the price of admission into the world of adulthood. Before too long, however, I’d be graced with another wide-awake moment and, for a time anyway, I would feel certain that there was a better way forward, a way of becoming more connected and more fully alive instead of less so as we get older.

Abraham Maslow used the term “peak experiences” to describe these windows of full-living, and my initial question regarding them was three-fold: What is the nature of such experiences; why are they becoming so few and far between in my life; and can I learn to live in such a way as to have more of them?

Over the years this initial inquiry has become a sustained, passionate pursuit of personal truth that has always been, at heart, toward a deceptively simple end: to be as fully myself as often as I can be. Along the way I have discovered a few things that I hope others will find to be interesting and useful. I also hope that writing my way through the process — of where I’ve been, where I am, and what may lie ahead — might open new avenues of inquiry and new territory to explore as I continue on this journey.

My intention is to update this series of posts regularly — at least once a week. In the next installment I’ll define in detail what I mean by the terms “integral” and “personal transformation”, and I’ll also lay out a broad outline of some of the territory I hope to explore.