Life is a full contact sport and the more contact the more
life. Feeling more life means feeling more energy,
more awareness, more joy but also… sometimes more pain, more unpleasantness,
more anxiety.
In any
life experience there are many flavors; flavors which can be experienced as levels of truth, different perceptions, a banquet of sensations, memories from the
past… and all contribute to total
awareness and total experiencing.
Sometimes we can be confused by the “lying together of what seem to be
opposite circumstances – but ultimately these “dualities” will be seen as
opposite parts of the whole”. (Emmanuel’s Book – A Manual for Living
Comfortably in the Cosmos)
So what
does all of this “spiritual cosmic
philosophy” stuff from a guy named Emmanuel mean, and how does it relate to full contact
living? I understand this best by
thinking about my own experiences (as well as one that my sister had a while
ago).
The other day I was out walking and
was flooded with the smell of blooming lilacs.
This brought back some nostalgic memories of my childhood backyard and I
suddenly had an urge to stop and smell the flowers more deeply. As I leaned over to indulge – I barely
avoided also inhaling a bee that was buzzing around the blossoms. For a moment, I imagined the pain and
distress that having a bee up my nose would have caused me – but then laughed
as I thought about how two such opposite sensations might have been experienced
in my body – the sweet smell of the flowers and the intense pain of a bee sting
inside of my nose.
Not to over obsess about insects
and spiders – but my sister recently was riding on a roller coaster
experiencing the thrill of the air rushing past, the speed, and the
exhilaration of sudden rises and drops – when she felt a stinging pain on her
chest. She looked down inside of her
shirt and noticed that there was a spider who was biting her chest. She was unable to get the spider out of her
shirt while on the roller coaster and thus got a few more painful bites as she
simultaneously experienced the thrill of the roller coaster ride. It was all part of the experience – both good
and bad – opposite parts of the whole.
So how do flowers, bee stings,
roller coaster rides and spider bites relate to what I do as a therapist?
My thoughts on how to “practice therapy” are continually evolving but right now are
strongly influenced by a guy named Wilhelm Reich. Reich proposed the idea of psychological
armoring which is both psychological and physical “padding” which keeps us from
feeling the free flow of natural impulses and other unpleasant things like pain
and anxiety.
In our full contact sport that we
call life, all of us take on some of this padding. Some of it is necessary to protect us - but unfortunately it may also keep us from
experiencing the full flavor of life. Healthy padding is flexible – we can put
it on when we need it – and let it down when we don’t. Unhealthy padding gets rigid and doesn’t allow
free expression and movement. Reich said that when our true selves are
trapped inside our armor which has become too rigid – we began to feel unhappy
and develop psychological symptoms.
These symptoms are experienced as
unpleasant - but they can be a good
thing. Why? Because it is our whole self - mind, heart, body, and soul
expressing a need for movement, expansion, and growth. Our
symptoms are what tells us that life has been constricted in some way.
This is how I see therapy – as
“life enhancement assistance”. Therapy
should increase your capacity to experience life in an authentic way – to fully
feel the joy and the love, to move in the directions that you desire, and to be
able to tolerate the natural anxiety that comes with change and movement. I work
every day to be the kind of therapist who can do this with others because it is
part of my own experience and part of my own personal work.
May your journey be one where you
learn to live well and comfortably in
the cosmos.
