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The Embodiment of Freedom: An integral approach to optimal health and personal transformation (Part 3: Bodymind dissociation)

The notion that a typical mature, well-adjusted person in our culture is alienated from or out of touch with their bodies may seem, at first blush, curious if not absurd. Most of us yelp out in pain when we stub our toes, enjoy the pleasure of making love, notice when we’re hungry, and are saddened by tragedy. Obviously, to say that one is relatively disembodied does not mean one is an anesthetized “floating head” bumping into things all the time. The issue is far more subtle and compelling, having to do with the quality of our relationships to self, others, and environment, and how our experience of those relationships is shaped by the processes of development and socialization. Disembodiment simply refers to a diminished capacity to be sensually aware and the subsequent inability to respond to life’s continual challenges from the fullness of such a sensually grounded awareness.

That human beings become increasing able to think as they mature into adulthood obviously endows the developing person with greater potential and possibility in life. Contrary to the popularized personal growth motto of “lose your mind and come back to your senses,” any holistic inquiry into personal health and healing realizes the value of cognitive development. But there is a difference between adding a layer of depth in human awareness (moving from a vibrant, feeling-centered being to a being who also has a well developed capacity to think — a “bodymind” if you will), and losing touch with basic levels of awareness (becoming a thinking-centered being who has lost much of their capacity to express themselves from a sensually-grounded awareness). The latter is a pathological state of affairs that, unfortunately, is built in to the very fabric of modern society, shaping the lives of individuals in ways that distort and deny the fullness of experience.

Phenomenologist Elizabeth Behnke calls the tendency to distance ourselves from our own bodily lives the “I-it structure of experience,” which often manifests in our culture as the unshakable sense that our perceiving selves are situated somewhere “in our heads.” From this I-it perspective, my legs are perceived as “down there” as opposed to me being “up here.” When I feel pain in my back or head I say that “it” hurts. My sense is that I have experiences or that experiences happen to me. An emotion, for instance, might be perceived as if it were some “thing” that was temporarily affecting me in some way.

This mode of bodily experiencing, undoubtedly the norm for most of us most of the time, has to do with our sense of identity or who we take ourselves to be. While bodily impulses and feelings may be perceived, they are experienced as outside of one’s essential identity. Philosopher Ken Wilber (in his book No Boundary) has described this way of experiencing as one in which an artificial boundary is perceived in regard to one’s total organism, such that the entire bodily-felt realm is projected outward as not-self. Thus, a typical Westerner is likely to claim that they are their mind while they simply have a body. In the mature, well-adjusted, normal adult, this bodymind fragmentation doesn’t mean that one would fail to notice being on fire. It does mean, however, that one operates from a “locus of identity” that is situated on the ego side of an ego-flesh perceptual boundary. An individual centered on the mind or egoic side of this boundary may be aware of bodily experience, but only as an object of awareness. As psychologist R.D. Laing (in his book The Divided Self) describes this “unembodied” self: “The body is felt more as one object among other objects in the world than as the core of the individual’s own being.” In this subtle yet telling way, mind and body are dissociated in awareness, and perception of self and world is thereby distorted to fit that dissociation.

It is fairly clear that this level of bodymind dissociation is considered normal and healthy in our culture. Many of us certainly live as if we were essentially minds at the helm of our bodies—keeping them healthy and satisfied for as long as we find ourselves in them. When we experience back pain, the typical response is to go to a specialist to get it fixed or adjusted, just as we do our cars. Anxiety, especially when not consciously linked to obvious circumstances, is often treated as a “thing,” a symptom to be vanquished by medication or positive thinking.

The difference between the dissociated and embodied modes of experience may sound trivial in the abstract, but we’ve all experienced the contrast keenly in our daily lives. It is the difference between merely recognizing you are sad, and feeling that sadness in the full release of crying. It is the difference between merely believing you love someone, and actually being in love with that person, feeling the intensity of connection in the moment. Anyone who’s ever “lost themselves” in a sunset, or in a musical jam-session, or in the tender embrace of a loved one, can recognize this shift toward full-bodied perception. Actually, one’s “self” is not at all lost in this manner of experiencing. What’s lost is only one’s tendency to keep their attention confined to the thought-centered processes of the total psychophysical organism.

In contemporary society, our capacity to deeply enter into the sensual flow of experience is typically utilized less and less as we adapt to an increasingly mind-centered lifestyle, and it becomes atrophied and left poorly developed. This relative disembodiment places unnecessary limits on people’s personal health and growth. Thus, a person may recognize that they’re sad, anxious, or depressed, perceiving these feeling states well enough to talk about them in quite sophisticated ways, yet nonetheless remain stuck in the same familiar patterns. Consciously unable (and unconsciously unwilling) to engage personal issues in their sensual fullness, we necessarily struggle to get through and beyond the inner conflicts and issues that hold us back in life.

The I-it mode of experiencing is certainly not, in-and-of-itself, a bad thing. Problems can and do arise, however, when an I-it mode of perceiving and responding becomes so habituated that, without realizing it, human beings gradually lose their capacity to experience life in any other way. Instead of a mode of perceiving and responding consciously utilized in an appropriate situation, I-it objectivity becomes the unconscious way one approaches nearly all situations. As we shall see, the dis-identification with our sensual existence that characterizes the I-it mode of being, when operating in a habitual and unconscious fashion, can keep people stuck in unhealthy and unfulfilling ruts, distorting people’s experience in ways that interfere with the process of personal transformation. When you approach the world with only a hammer, so to speak, everything starts to look like a nail. And if this illusion becomes too convincing, things start to get all bent out of shape.

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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.

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The Embodiment of Freedom

At some point it occurred to me that my whole point of view, my basic mode of experiencing life, would shift during certain moments from a dissociated, half-alive, going through the motions type thing, to a wakeful, clear-minded, energized state of pure awesomeness. Basically, I became fascinated by my peak experiences. There seemed to be a quality about them that was not dependent on content or context. In other words I felt like the same process was happening regardless of what I was doing. I got the funny feeling that I was peaking or “peeking” into the same place, or entering the same state of consciousness, whether I was hitting a groove on the guitar, entering “the zone” on the athletic field, writing a poem or a song, having great sex, communing with nature on a hike, or getting showered with insight during meditation.

My master’s thesis was really nothing more than a sustained inquiry into this process of personal transformation, which I defined as a shift in one’s basic mode of experiencing toward greater vitality, awareness and expressiveness. I found that various theorists and practitioners understood transformation in different ways, but I also noticed a common thread between the approaches that moved me the most. Psychologists interested in transformation talked about the movement from unconsciousness to consciousness; the spiritual folks spoke of the journey from ignorance to awareness or enlightenment; creative thinkers were interested in moving from inside to outside “the box”; somatic practitioners worked toward refinement of sensitivity and an expanded range of movement.

It was the somatic perspective, I thought, that could ground an integral, multilevel understanding of the transformative process. I was searching for some basic principles of transformation with which I could generate a unique set of practices, in a sense building an Integral Health regimen from the ground up. I appreciated the maps of others, but I yearned to wander from the well-worn paths, to know the joy of making my own way through the wilderness. I also felt that the somatic perspective, especially as understood by Thomas Hanna, had the potential to radically transform our understanding of both psychological health and spiritual growth. I couldn’t shake the feeling that if these loftier endeavors were plugged into an understanding of somatic education, they would become far more efficacious paths, less prone to pitfalls.

Hanna rejected the distinction between psychological and physical problems, instead using the term “functional problem” to describe limitations of the unified organism in its capacity for both self-sensing and self-expression. Central nervous system functioning is fundamental to all behavior and experience, according to Hanna. Ken Wilber would agree with this, although he would point out that psychological and spiritual levels of being are more “significant.” In any event, from a somatic viewpoint, there’s no separation of psychological from physical health, and the majority of the typical “mental” and “physical” diseases of our society are learned as people adapt to a culture that supports dissociation and alienation.

So, if we want to ground our understanding of transformation in the living body, we can start with the most fundamental aspect of the central nervous system–the division between sensory and motor processes. Our perceptions of the world outside our bodies, as well as our perceptions of our internal bodily states, come into the brain via sensory nerves. And every action we express, every movement we make in the world and inside our selves flows out from our brain and down through the spine by way of motor nerves. This structural division is functionally integrated within a single neural system, the brain integrating the incoming sensory information with outgoing commands to the motor system.

The continual interplay of sensory information and motor guidance is referred to in contemporary neuroscience as a feed back system which operates in loops. As Hanna describes it, “the sensory nerves ‘feedback’ information to the motor nerves, whose response ‘loops back’ with the movement commands along the motor nerves. As movement takes place, the motor nerves ‘feedback’ new information to the sensory nerves.” Acknowledging that there are indeed physical and psychological problems that are the result of structural deformity and/or physiological imbalance, Hanna argues that many of the health problems afflicting people today are not about bodies or minds breaking down, but about individuals who have lost conscious control of their somatic functions. These functional problems are ones in which the person suffers from a loss of memory: the memory of what it feels like to move in certain ways, and the memory of how to go about moving in certain ways. This type of memory loss is what Hanna calls sensory-motor amnesia, a state of diminished self-awareness that is quite reversible–that is to say, a state that can be transformed.

Sensory-motor amnesia involves a dual loss of both conscious control of a particular area of motor action and conscious sensing of that motor action. As the human organism adapts to repeated stressful conditions, whether resulting from cultural conditioning or from uncontrived environmental circumstances (like extreme ecological conditions or biophysical trauma), there is a loss of conscious voluntary control of specific somatic functions. For example, faced with the stress of ridicule and/or punishment for crying or screaming out in public, the sad or angry child will contract certain motor areas of the soma (i.e., muscles) in an effort to hold back their authentic response. Crying or yelling out simply cannot happen when the corresponding muscle systems are held motionless, because crying and yelling are the movements of those motor areas. As this stressful response of contraction is activated again and again in similar situations, the response eventually becomes habituated and the child loses awareness of it (i.e., the muscle contractions can no longer be consciously sensed) and control of it (i.e., the child cannot voluntarily relax the contractions). The child has been successfully conditioned not to emote in public.

This innate tendency of human beings to develop automatic, unconscious responses in the face of stressful stimuli (i.e. the process of conditioning) was well documented by researchers such as Pavlov and Skinner. Hanna describes the loss of conscious volitional control as sensori-motor amnesia so as to emphasize two essential facts: 1) habituated, involuntary responses, like all somatic processes, are a reflection of sensori-motor functioning, and 2) what becomes unconscious, forgotten, or unlearned, can become conscious again, remembered, and re-learned. Thus, sensori-motor amnesia can be reversed by somatic learning.

Somatic learning is a process that results in the expansion of an organism’s range of volitional consciousness. This process takes advantage of the feedback/loop nature of the sensori-motor system and is described by Hanna in the following way:

“If one focuses one’s awareness on an unconscious, forgotten area of the soma, one can begin to perceive a minimal sensation that is just sufficient to direct a minimal movement, and this, in turn, gives new sensory feedback of that area which, again, gives a new clarity of movement, etc. This sensory feedback associates with adjacent sensory neurons, further clarifying the synergy that is possible with the associated motor neurons. This makes the next motor effort inclusive of a wider range of associated voluntary neurons, thus broadening and enhancing the motor action and, thereby, further enhancing the sensory feedback. This back-and-forth motor procedure gradually ‘wedges’ the amnesic area back into the range of volitional control: the unknown becomes known and the forgotten becomes relearned.”

So it is that a diminished state of self-awareness and a diminished range of conscious responsiveness can expand and transform at the basic level of sensor-motor functioning. Our emotionally inhibited child, now an adult, can learn to pay focused and sustained attention to subtle sensations in the forgotten contracted muscle areas and thereby recover in awareness the sense of being perpetually held back and fatigued. With this awareness that “I’m contracting my muscles” and “I’m holding myself back,” comes the realization that one can now begin to relax those inhibitions.

Although I’ve chosen to illustrate this transformative process with what would normally be considered a “psychological” example–the emotionally inhibited person–, the practice of somatic education (as typified by Hanna’s work and Feldenkrais’s Functional Integration) is normally applied to what are thought of more as “physical” problems. Middle-aged to older adults with gross-level range of motion restrictions or distortions, often the result of trauma or injury, are more typically the clients of somatic therapies. Many people who seek out and engage in somatic practices are primarily looking to feel better and healthier on a physical level, not especially considering the implications the work has for whole-person growth and healing.

The psychological implications of “body work,” although increasing evident and acknowledged, seem to be less than adequately understood. The example of the emotionally inhibited person hints at how an understanding of sensori-motor function can contribute greatly to psychological perspectives of personal transformation and vice versa. An integral viewpoint promises a deeper understanding of how various transformative practices can be utilized in a complimentary fashion to most effectively support an individual’s capacities for self-regulation, health and growth. This integral understanding also allows for the articulation of basic principles that can be applied to any number of experiences and life situations, principles that anyone can use to create their own unique practices and approaches to personal transformation.