RESET and Emotional Release
I just got my RESET program a week ago and I'm slowly working up to the full technique. I've been getting some pretty strong emotional reactions when I get vibrating at a high frequency. (I had the same reaction about a year ago when I first started BodyFlow.) It made me wonder about what's going on.What is emotion anyways? I think Coach Sonnon described it in BodyFlow as "Energy in Motion." The more I thought about it our emotional responses are just that - motion. When we cry our abdomen pulses in and out. When we laugh our whole body shakes. When we're afraid, or even very excited we can start trembling. Think of a three-year-old throwing a temper-tantrum. He's on the floor, screaming, kicking his legs, flailing his arms, much to the embarassment of his parents if there's company around. There's also the mental/hormonal component going on. I don't know much of the science behind it, but somehow, our nervous system is releasing chemicals and sending messages to make these movements happen.
So what happens if we need to suppress an emotion. We can't switch off the chemicals obviously, so we settle for stiffling the emotional response. At least that way no one will know we're emotional right? So if we're going to stop the movement there's a very simple way to do that - fire the antagonistic muscles. The problem is that the chemical messengers are still there, we can't prevent the emotional motion, so we put the brakes on it with our antagonists. You can probably guess where this is leading - radiating tension, residual muscle tension, sensory motor amnesia - Fear Reactivity and Bound Flow. It's like driving around with the emergency brake on.When we finally unbind our flow through RESEST, or CST, or whatever, it's like taking the emergency brake off of our car - with the gas still going full-throttle. We can finally express that long suppresed emotion - the trick is to do in a way or a place where we're safe from further embarassment. (I've often wanted my own padded room.)
Psychologists since Sigmond Freud have worked under the assumption that a suppressed emotion is harmful to your psychological well-being untill it is released. Freud called this process catharsis. Since we're now looking at the human being as an interconnected body-mind, I'm trying to describe the process in our new language. I'm interested in hearing other people's thoughts on this theory, does it make sense?
Thanks and Peace,
Conor
Makes sense. We cut off access to part of our experience for the temporary reduction of sensations. To regain the motion, those feelings need to be re-experienced. The trick is doing it in a way that it doesn’t cause more trauma, so the incremental progression paradigms from CST can apply just as much to emotions as to the body (the two are inseparable, but you know what I mean, the emotion component of the body mind complex.) The thing about the term catharsis is that it usually means an isolated peak experience, rather than an unceasing refinement that varies in intensity. The sustainable version of catharsis is a practice. I think of the fear reactivity as a cringe (not necessarily forward.) A tool I find useful is to purposefully increase the contractions involved in the fear reactivity. This feels increadibly comforting at first, because you are increasing your muscular armoring, which feels like a security blanket. However, the extra effort involved in maintaining such an exagerated contraction soon becomes apparent, and the desire to relax becomes stronger. From my experience with Somatics (the system deveped by the man who coined the term sensort motor amnesia) I’ve learned that relaxing slowly gives the body a chance to reset its configuration of muscle tone. There is a strong tendency to release the tension quickly, but then little will change. By releasing the tension slowly, you reach my normal point of muscle tone, and then find that you can relax even more. This can be very interesting with any motion, but can be especially profound with contractions relating to fear reactivity, which I think Coach Sonnon rightly places after SMA in the progression of degeneration. After the tension is released as much as it’s going to, there is often a desire for to move in the opposite direction (extension after flexion, for instance.) After you go back and forth a few times slowly, then the motion usually starts to become faster (and perhaps smaller) without any effort as it becomes more efficient. Then the goal is then to get an equal sensation of effort in both directions of movement. This balances muscle tone dynamically, training a more even distribution of tension even in motion. Of course, this will reduce fear/reactivity and SMA as well.
A related technique from somatics that has done me no end of good is the method of contracting, then relaxing the parts where you feel it most, then contracting the parts that had less sensation, then releaxing where you feel it the most and so on. You can repeat it as many times as feels good, and then relax and start over again. This can be very slight, just a barely perceptive ratcheting, or quite large, both are useful. It is one of the most relaxing thing I have discovered.
Conor, you migh want to check out the work of Wilhelm Reich, a disciple of Freud who was one of the pioneering body centered psychotherapists. Some of his ideas are pretty out there, but his notion of character or muscular armoring is pretty straight forward. It is very similar to your ideas about holding back emtions with tension. He thought that the transverse muscles in the body were the primary ones implemented to supress the sensation through the core (inhibiting the wiggling snake of our spine.) The seven groups that he concentrated on were the mouth, eyes, throat, thorax, diaphram, stomach and pelvic floor. Using the contract and slowly release technique from Somatics, the muscle tone of each one of these can be raised or lowered as needed. However, because the tight muscles are like dams holding back uncomfortable sensations, it is wise to address the hypo-toned (weak) areas first so that your defenses aren’t lowered with no new support added
Eli Mead
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stillness_moving
"The trick is doing it in a way that it doesn’t cause more trauma, so the incremental progression paradigms from CST can apply just as much to emotions as to the body (the two are inseparable, but you know what I mean, the emotion component of the body mind complex.)"
I agree. One thing I find helpful in not reducing trauma is to keep in mind the uniqueness of the human mind/body - that is our ability to give meaning to experiences. Much of this material comes out of my experience with the Landmark Forum.
Human beings are the only animals that can give meaning to events, memories, or circumstances. A dog doesn't do that, a dog just is. For instance, when a dog gets stepped on and it yelps, it doesn't think about the yelp later and berrate itself for it. A male dog doesn't consider itself a b--ch for yelping. Human beings do have that ability, we can judge things as good or bad, and store memories of those judgements.
If we're having an emotional release, or working through some fear reactivity, the trick is to suspend any judgements about them - to not give them any meaning. The other day I felt some repressed emotions, and following my own advice, I released the brakes and just let them come. I started crying. Now I could have considered myself a sissy, or I could have insisted I discover the reason for my tears, but neither of those would have been helpful. I probably would have re-traumatized myself. Instead I just let the emotion be. My tears were neither good nor bad, they just were. There was no reason for them worth considering. They were empty and meaningless, and it was empty and meaningless that the tears were empty and meaningless. We probably do more damage to ourselves through our judgements. Then the judgements create more emotions, which create more movement, which of course we need to inhibit - hence the cycle continues.
Originally Posted by Stillness_moving
"The thing about the term catharsis is that it usually means an isolated peak experience, rather than an unceasing refinement that varies in intensity. The sustainable version of catharsis is a practice."
I like to think of it as a punctuated equilibrium. Through my practice I'll often push right up to an issue I haven't dealt with. From the outside it looks like a plateau, since for a while I'm not able to move any farther, or increase my strength, or whatever. Then I'm finally able to release the flood gates and bam - I have a huge emotional response. I return to my practice a day or so later and I'm able to do things I haven't before. After my last release I came back and did all of Diving Dolphin flow for the first time. Let me tell you how good that felt.On a related thought, The Dalai Lama often insists that human beings can train their emotions, whether they are anger and pettiness, or compassion and happiness. This never made sense to me until I thought of this idea of emotion as movement. We certainly train movements to be more efficient at them, we can probably also train emotional responses. The more we experience them, the more efficient we become at expressing them, the easier they come to us.
Hmm, and all this time I didn't believe His Holiness.
Thanks for the suggestions with Somatics and Wilhelm Reich - I'll have to check those out.
Peace,
Conor
I just got my RESET program a week ago and I'm slowly working up to the full technique. I've been getting some pretty strong emotional reactions when I get vibrating at a high frequency. (I had the same reaction about a year ago when I first started BodyFlow.) It made me wonder about what's going on.What is emotion anyways? I think Coach Sonnon described it in BodyFlow as "Energy in Motion." The more I thought about it our emotional responses are just that - motion. When we cry our abdomen pulses in and out. When we laugh our whole body shakes. When we're afraid, or even very excited we can start trembling. Think of a three-year-old throwing a temper-tantrum. He's on the floor, screaming, kicking his legs, flailing his arms, much to the embarassment of his parents if there's company around. There's also the mental/hormonal component going on. I don't know much of the science behind it, but somehow, our nervous system is releasing chemicals and sending messages to make these movements happen.
So what happens if we need to suppress an emotion. We can't switch off the chemicals obviously, so we settle for stiffling the emotional response. At least that way no one will know we're emotional right? So if we're going to stop the movement there's a very simple way to do that - fire the antagonistic muscles. The problem is that the chemical messengers are still there, we can't prevent the emotional motion, so we put the brakes on it with our antagonists. You can probably guess where this is leading - radiating tension, residual muscle tension, sensory motor amnesia - Fear Reactivity and Bound Flow. It's like driving around with the emergency brake on.When we finally unbind our flow through RESEST, or CST, or whatever, it's like taking the emergency brake off of our car - with the gas still going full-throttle. We can finally express that long suppresed emotion - the trick is to do in a way or a place where we're safe from further embarassment. (I've often wanted my own padded room.)
Psychologists since Sigmond Freud have worked under the assumption that a suppressed emotion is harmful to your psychological well-being untill it is released. Freud called this process catharsis. Since we're now looking at the human being as an interconnected body-mind, I'm trying to describe the process in our new language. I'm interested in hearing other people's thoughts on this theory, does it make sense?
Thanks and Peace,
Conor
Makes sense. We cut off access to part of our experience for the temporary reduction of sensations. To regain the motion, those feelings need to be re-experienced. The trick is doing it in a way that it doesn’t cause more trauma, so the incremental progression paradigms from CST can apply just as much to emotions as to the body (the two are inseparable, but you know what I mean, the emotion component of the body mind complex.) The thing about the term catharsis is that it usually means an isolated peak experience, rather than an unceasing refinement that varies in intensity. The sustainable version of catharsis is a practice. I think of the fear reactivity as a cringe (not necessarily forward.) A tool I find useful is to purposefully increase the contractions involved in the fear reactivity. This feels increadibly comforting at first, because you are increasing your muscular armoring, which feels like a security blanket. However, the extra effort involved in maintaining such an exagerated contraction soon becomes apparent, and the desire to relax becomes stronger. From my experience with Somatics (the system deveped by the man who coined the term sensort motor amnesia) I’ve learned that relaxing slowly gives the body a chance to reset its configuration of muscle tone. There is a strong tendency to release the tension quickly, but then little will change. By releasing the tension slowly, you reach my normal point of muscle tone, and then find that you can relax even more. This can be very interesting with any motion, but can be especially profound with contractions relating to fear reactivity, which I think Coach Sonnon rightly places after SMA in the progression of degeneration. After the tension is released as much as it’s going to, there is often a desire for to move in the opposite direction (extension after flexion, for instance.) After you go back and forth a few times slowly, then the motion usually starts to become faster (and perhaps smaller) without any effort as it becomes more efficient. Then the goal is then to get an equal sensation of effort in both directions of movement. This balances muscle tone dynamically, training a more even distribution of tension even in motion. Of course, this will reduce fear/reactivity and SMA as well.
A related technique from somatics that has done me no end of good is the method of contracting, then relaxing the parts where you feel it most, then contracting the parts that had less sensation, then releaxing where you feel it the most and so on. You can repeat it as many times as feels good, and then relax and start over again. This can be very slight, just a barely perceptive ratcheting, or quite large, both are useful. It is one of the most relaxing thing I have discovered.
Conor, you migh want to check out the work of Wilhelm Reich, a disciple of Freud who was one of the pioneering body centered psychotherapists. Some of his ideas are pretty out there, but his notion of character or muscular armoring is pretty straight forward. It is very similar to your ideas about holding back emtions with tension. He thought that the transverse muscles in the body were the primary ones implemented to supress the sensation through the core (inhibiting the wiggling snake of our spine.) The seven groups that he concentrated on were the mouth, eyes, throat, thorax, diaphram, stomach and pelvic floor. Using the contract and slowly release technique from Somatics, the muscle tone of each one of these can be raised or lowered as needed. However, because the tight muscles are like dams holding back uncomfortable sensations, it is wise to address the hypo-toned (weak) areas first so that your defenses aren’t lowered with no new support added
Eli Mead
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stillness_moving
"The trick is doing it in a way that it doesn’t cause more trauma, so the incremental progression paradigms from CST can apply just as much to emotions as to the body (the two are inseparable, but you know what I mean, the emotion component of the body mind complex.)"
I agree. One thing I find helpful in not reducing trauma is to keep in mind the uniqueness of the human mind/body - that is our ability to give meaning to experiences. Much of this material comes out of my experience with the Landmark Forum.
Human beings are the only animals that can give meaning to events, memories, or circumstances. A dog doesn't do that, a dog just is. For instance, when a dog gets stepped on and it yelps, it doesn't think about the yelp later and berrate itself for it. A male dog doesn't consider itself a b--ch for yelping. Human beings do have that ability, we can judge things as good or bad, and store memories of those judgements.
If we're having an emotional release, or working through some fear reactivity, the trick is to suspend any judgements about them - to not give them any meaning. The other day I felt some repressed emotions, and following my own advice, I released the brakes and just let them come. I started crying. Now I could have considered myself a sissy, or I could have insisted I discover the reason for my tears, but neither of those would have been helpful. I probably would have re-traumatized myself. Instead I just let the emotion be. My tears were neither good nor bad, they just were. There was no reason for them worth considering. They were empty and meaningless, and it was empty and meaningless that the tears were empty and meaningless. We probably do more damage to ourselves through our judgements. Then the judgements create more emotions, which create more movement, which of course we need to inhibit - hence the cycle continues.
Originally Posted by Stillness_moving
"The thing about the term catharsis is that it usually means an isolated peak experience, rather than an unceasing refinement that varies in intensity. The sustainable version of catharsis is a practice."
I like to think of it as a punctuated equilibrium. Through my practice I'll often push right up to an issue I haven't dealt with. From the outside it looks like a plateau, since for a while I'm not able to move any farther, or increase my strength, or whatever. Then I'm finally able to release the flood gates and bam - I have a huge emotional response. I return to my practice a day or so later and I'm able to do things I haven't before. After my last release I came back and did all of Diving Dolphin flow for the first time. Let me tell you how good that felt.On a related thought, The Dalai Lama often insists that human beings can train their emotions, whether they are anger and pettiness, or compassion and happiness. This never made sense to me until I thought of this idea of emotion as movement. We certainly train movements to be more efficient at them, we can probably also train emotional responses. The more we experience them, the more efficient we become at expressing them, the easier they come to us.
Hmm, and all this time I didn't believe His Holiness.
Thanks for the suggestions with Somatics and Wilhelm Reich - I'll have to check those out.
Peace,
Conor
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