Doing pandicular movements, that is,
doing somatic education exercises,
is akin in rhythm and spirit
to brushing ones hair.

In a movement through a wave
there may be a “catch”,
a temporary hold-up,
a glitch,
a halt,
a hitch in your ‘git-along’.

Maybe a brain-fart?
or a string of brain farts,
irregularly spaced …

rhythm interrupted,
mind, derailed,

One adjusts ones “push”
to accommodate the capacity
of the medium,
the hair,
the life,
to change, to move anew.

Snags are re-approached
with good timing
and repeatedly, if necessary
until they come loose
and the smooth wave
the easy move
ensues.

Otherwise,
it’s just smooth sailing
and stylizing —
creative gesturing
in the smooth and rising rhythm
of the wave.

Passing through in repeated strokes,
going deeper,
feeling more,
getting smoother.

The problem comes when we got gum in our hair.

Ah, a pretty pickle, that is.

We have a choice:
clean it
or cut it loose.

Patience is a virtue
and timing determines things.

Sometimes, a little sorting out is needed,
a little pulling things apart,
separating them more finely
so that they are more free to change.

and so on

Let me explain something.  When somatic education “takes off”, it will not do so, “like a gentleman” or “in a ladylike way”, saying, “Here we are, ladies and gentlemen,” like some spawn of academia or science.  It will not introduce itself to polite society, asking for approval and acceptance.  It will not play by the rules.

It will be explosive, viral.
You know how virii spread?  They don’t spread “arithmetically” — by addition: “1 + 2 + 3 …” — not geometrically — by multiplication: “1 x 2 x 3” — but exponentially, like the expanding Universe — the longer it expands, the faster it expands, the only limit being “the maximum speed of information transmission”. If you can imagine it, it’s faster than that.

The difference:  there’s no immunity to somatic education.  It’s a cosmological imperative arising out of The Big Bang (of which Thomas Hanna spoke as our origin and nature). There may be resistance from the old order (as in Chris’ reference to the AMA attacking HSE), but that will “cave in”.  There may be the inertia of obliviousness (as in people not recognizing what it is), but that will be temporary.  Since we dealing in ideas, information and transformations deeper than acculturation, and since the need is cross-cultural, there’s no way of heading it off.  It will not wait for us to keep up — or to catch up.  It will come upon us like a tidal wave, when the time comes.

Think of the spread of cell-phones throughout the world, even to the poorest African nations.  Faster and more pervasive than that.  Think of our technological revolution (in progress and accelerating). Think of the information explosion (in progress and accelerating).  Think of how yawning and laughter spread from person to person, involuntarily: Somatic Contagion.  It’s built in to humanity.

What will “go viral” will not be merely “clinical somatic education”, like some form of medicine or bodywork.  It will be full-spectrum somatic education.   When it catches on, it will be a chain reaction, a wave that transforms everything in its path, every social sector I mentioned in a previous entry and more, every discipline, and from all directions.

I don’t say, “Be ready.”  I don’t think we can “be ready”.  That implies a “gentlemanly” or “ladylike” continuation of the status quo and “the expected rules”.  It will go viral unexpectedly at the moment it reaches “critical mass”.  The operative word, here, is “unexpectedly”.

What we can do is respond with the greatest integrity and competence of which we are capable at the moment when the effects reach us, when the world-wide information network carries the message broadly, starting first as small streams into local backwaters, and expanding — and the onslaught of public interest, fueled by need, begins.  It will change our lives, as well.  It will be “quite a ride” and it’s barely begun.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote of the five stages of grieving a loss.  Her words are relevant because most people (especially those with a vested interest in conventional methods) are attached to their ways — and to switch to our way entails a loss — a loss of face, a loss of ego, a loss of status.  People avoid “beginner’s mind” and The Zone of Incomprehensibility

Her five stages of grieving:
1) denial
2) anger
3) bargaining
4) depression
5) acceptance

In practice, people who hear about HSE, who are not otherwise desperate for help, first deny our validity by ignoring us.

Then, they ridicule or invalidate us, and if not to our faces, then in their minds. (anger).  This observation applies to chauvinistic “Feldy” types who prefer to think Tom Hanna was an upstart usurper, as well as to most physicans and physical therapists.

Then, they allow a little of what we have to say to penetrate (“They may have a point — but it’s unproven.”), while seeking to maintain an attitude of superiority or seniority — their usual viewpoint (bargaining/jockeying to maintain position/status).  Tom Hanna’s first act, with us Wave 1 people, was to ask us to put everything we knew about bodies and bodywork “on the shelf”.  He knew.

Then, when they realize that they’re screwed (by their own condition and/or the limitations of their approach), they begin to submit, but in the mood of “I’ve lost.” (depression)

At last, when they actually take action and get the benefits, they accept HSE and advocate it — and encounter the same pathetic five stages in the people with whom they want to share HSE. (acceptance)

That’s what’s in the way of mainstreaming HSE.

Once HSE gets a toehold in the culture (we scarcely have that, now), and the mass media are giving us some play, they’ll still have to go through the stages, but they’ll go through much faster.

In the meantime, as we do our work and make our communications, we’ll polarize people:
1) driving the most hard-headed away from us
2) gradually infiltrating the thinking of those less hard-headed, getting their skeptical and unsympathetic attention
3) intriguing the attention of those with some curiosity, drawing them toward finding out more about our work
4) attracting people toward us for one-on-one conversation
5) attracting people to use our services
6) having people advocate our work to others
7) attracting new trainees in HSE

In summary, we’ll polarize people either into running away from us as fast as they can or coming to join us — and every stage in between.

Our best candidates are those those know that they’re screwed and they’re looking for something — they don’t know what.

I’ve noticed that I’ve had scant success getting clients from conversations in public places (maybe it’s my personality), or from advertising. 

For years, friends and clients have wondered why this work isn’t more popular, why friends they’ve told about somatics don’t come to me.  This piece may reveal the heart of the matter: people are attached to what they already know, haven’t realized that they’re screwed without somatic education; they aren’t desperate enough.

The desperate who are looking find me on-line or hear from friends who were clients.  They come and they reach “stage 5”.

Hallelujah.

I need more hands.

But failing that due to my own genetic limitations, I’m asking people to lend me their ears.

We have an opportunity and we face a potential danger — that being the definition of risk.

The danger?  the success of Thomas Hanna’s contribution — in other people’s hands than ours — at a lower level of contribution than we could make.

The opportunity?

The potential to have somatics integrated into mainstream culture with such poise, mastery and assurance as to take our place as a matter of course.

Why now?

2. A need exists beyond the need for people to be out of pain.  

• One school of Pilates has developed enough sophistication about
  movement and coordination that it could incorporate pandiculation.
• John Barnes has said that his advanced training incorporates something similar to pandiculation, if not pandiculation, itself.

1. Feel whether you agree with the gist of this message.

Though it may be taken to be otherwise,
what we call, “body”
is a resonant field
imbued with feeling (sentience)
the property of occupying space
the capability of movement,
and with the ability to move among other resonant fields
living beings.
It is what we mean by, “soma”.

Our minds are not entirely our own,
but resonate with the field of all minds
modulate that field of thought and feeling
through interaction with memory and original activity
and reflect it back into the field of all minds
transformed.

What we call, “body”
is really, “soma”,
sentient,
resonant in the field of all minds,
responsive,
initiatory,
remembering,
intelligent,
changing,
accelerating the process of change
occurring in and as the Field of All Possibility.

Physiology resonates and physically manifests
the ways of mind.

The ways of mind
are not “the” mind,
since there is no fixed identity
no permanent identity
to earn the appelation, “the”
(though personal names imply such a permanent identity).

There is only a persisting and yet changing process
constantly inscribing upon memory
endless moments of time
connected by memory
or disconnected in amnesia.

The amnesia shows up,
somatically,

as awkwardness
both in terms of clumsiness of movement
and in terms of dis-ease or disgrace,
as discontinuity of feeling during movement
as lack of sensibility during action,
of which we are unaware, oblivious,
since a long-term lack of sensation goes unnoticed

as lack of fluidity,
a kind of stodginess in certain movements, such as walking
slowed walking or unsteady walking

as dis-comfort in certain positions

as somewhat crude control of movements,
so that they’re “all on” or “all off”,
but not so well controlled in “the in-between”

This is part of clumsiness.

Elite athletes excel in “the in-between” between “all on” and “all off”,
and not just in “the extremes” of high performance
and so exhibit uncommon grace.

The amnesia, the obliviousness
shows up as habits of behavior and memory
which we take to be ourselves
and which others recognize as ourselves

all lumped into one as our way of moving
and of going into and coming out of rest,

Psychology and the physiology are the same one
perceived from two different viewpoints.

Psychology is the experience of physiology
and
physiology is the play of psychology as living matter.

Experiential memory holds them as one.
Conceptual memory holds then as two.

We, somas, are the musical instruments that play
the Music of the Spheres,
the “music” (and noise) of the centers of influence we all are
resonant fields apparently centered as “selves”
located by others
and experienced by ourselves
as centers of memory

memory, embodied physiologically
memory, resonant with the Field of All Minds
the Field of All Possibilities
ever-changing
ever appearing to persist as a center-self
a resonant field of mind
transforming physiologically and psychologically
as changes of our level of rest or activity
as changes of our state of attention,
as changes of our muscular activity
of our neurology,
as hormonal changes
and changes of our blood pressure and breathing rate.

Thought is the flickering of attention among memory patterns
among arousal states
inscribed upon memory
as things sensed
things felt
and impulses to act or react
to feel or not to feel,
all inscribed upon memory
with gaps of amnesia,
things forgotten

like a Hitchcock tale.

Emotion is the tension set within which thoughts occur.

Emotion gathers related, mutually triggering memories
together

into a state of suspense

that may persist or that may change
over short or very long periods of time.

The physiology gets stabilized at a certain pattern of homeostasis
or “best approximation of ‘home'”
which, as we know
has gaps and deviations

both physiologically (as perceived from one perspective)
and psychologically (as apperceived from another).

The kicker is that apperception (the perception of self-soma by self-soma)
has amnesias and unawakened potentials
and so soma-self’s image
is subject to
“The ‘not-knowing” of all I never knew I didn’t know.” (oblivious ignorance)
and
“All the ‘knowing’ that I’ve forgotten that I know, that’s still running the show.” (amnesia and habit)
— in other words,
incomplete and inconclusive
beset by seemingly hidden influences,
but seeming, because of memory,
to be complete and conclusive,
present as physiological states of readiness
to take actions remembered
toward different things as they are happening, now.

And they call that maturity.

But it’s incomplete.

The perspective of “the other”, another person,
another viewpoint toward oneself that one is capable of taking in,
may reveal the hidden memories and blind spots
that have been running the show from behind the scenes.

And the two somatic perspectives,
from outside
and
from within
give a more complete view,
but still,
always,
incomplete and inconclusive
subject to
“The ‘not-knowing” of all I never knew I didn’t know.” (oblivious ignorance)
and
“All the ‘knowing’ that I’ve forgotten that I know, that’s still running the show.” (amnesia and habit)
— whatever we may know in memory
and mistake for the present moment.

Now, here’s the thing about mainstreaming Hanna somatic education:  It promises to change the tenor or emotional climate of whatever scenario is involved.


Case in point: The Medical Profession

Anyone who’s been involved in mainstream medicine has experienced the brutality of it.  Procedures (and sometimes examinations) hurt.  The examination room contains instruments made of metal that promise to hurt, when employed, and prompt patients to fear, every time the doctor or attending nurse goes to that little table at the back of the room, what medical torture may be about to ensue.  Many drugs have side effects and those taken orally taste bad. Surgeries, however necessary, leave patients with a painful recovery and often, limiting after-effects. Therapy is expected to be painful.  Pain management is part of the speciality, anaesthesiology.  That, alone, is telling:  a person has to cease to feel to feel an approximation of, “ok”.

Enter somatic education.

Our clients actually do feel better.

What would (or will) happen when clinical somatic education infiltrates the medical profession?

Our entry point may be nurses, who experience the brunt of difficulty serving patients.  Lifting injuries are common.  Stress and burnout are also common.

I imagine what happens as a nurse gets the relief from somatic education that she hasn’t gotten from physical therapy.  She actually feels better.  She now knows that there’s something available that can help not only her and her colleagues, but also the patients who come through their care.  The reputation spreads: At the end of the “tunnel” of medical treatment, they know, is a process that can rapidly still the anxiety of their patients, restore their comfort, leave them feeling whole, ready for life.  The medical procedure has resolved into a great calm that leaves them feeling OK, instead of feeling as if they’ve been through a war.  We are first a resource that helps the most beleaguered in that profession, the nurses.  Then, on to physicians’ assistants and nurse-practitioners, who are very influential.

Am I exaggerating?  I don’t believe so.  What do you feel?

Now, what happens within the larger medical profession, as not only word, but reputation and regard for somatic education spreads?  After the initial skepticism and dismissiveness and results have had time to show themselves, some of the emergency mood of medicine dissipates.  A kind of reassurance develops in the background, underpinning mood of the profession.  Why?  Better outcomes.

And what happens in the attitude of the general public?  They come to regard medicine as more nurturing, more humane because even though medical procedures may still be traumatic, the overall outcome is better, calming, reassuring because things actually turned out well — and cost less, too.

Any improvement over the status quo has its beneficial effects.  Someone with vision can foresee them.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

1. Daydream the scenario I just described.
2. Write to me.