When self-parts control the body too much
A story about how I influenced my body control.
Introduction
For some time now, I have been treating myself to a regular massage at Thomas Schum in Frankfurt. Every second Tuesday I get up in the morning, take a shower, jump into my clothes, give my wife a kiss in her sleepy face and jump into the car. Then I hope that the morning rush hour doesn't prevent me from being in Frankfurt on time. While the radio is playing eighties music, I'm already looking forward to the 90-minute blessing.
Thomas works on the third floor of a residential building.
When I think about it, I'm actually already fit when I've made it up the three floors through the stairwell to his front door. I think the way he does his massages is very good. In principle, he communicates with me through the body and its muscles. This is – supposedly – a lot of wisdom stored. This is also called somatic intelligence.
During the treatment, I am repeatedly made aware of special reactions of my body. And I would like to report on such a person here.
Prehistory
Maybe a short information about my background. I was the first of the twins to be born prematurely, suffered from a lack of oxygen and probably destroyed some cells of my brain stem. The result was disorders in muscle coordination. In short: spasticity. As a result, I trained every day as a child, with the aim of having other parts of my brain take over the coordination task. The constant training was quite successful, as I can perceive the remaining restrictions, but they are not really relevant.
A Pattern
So I undressed down to my underpants and decided to start lying on my back this time. Thomas came in and asked if I had any special wishes and I said no. Thomas got started.
When he moved me into a straight position – funny, why does "lying up straight" always feel so crooked – and also moved my arms, I realized the following: Something in me didn't allow Thomas to just take the arm and push it into a different position. No, my arms tried to guess in which direction they should be moved and actively participated in the movement. I was surprised. Somehow it was also clear to me that this was not the first such behavior of my arms.
Thomas walked around the massage table to the left side of my body. Lo and behold! The pattern repeated. So – "relaxed" is probably something else, I thought.
Thomas was now satisfied with the position of my body. He went back to the other side and began to work on my right foot. From there, he slowly worked his way up his leg. I told him about my perception with this robot-like behavior of my arms. He just said I should take a look inside myself and find out my motivation. I answered: "Okay!" and added in my mind: "But I'll do it my way!".
Determine motivation
After all, why have I been dealing intensively with communication and conflict resolution techniques in connection with mental space psychology for a long time?! By the way, it makes no difference whether there is a conflict between two or more people or whether the conflict takes place within one person. The pattern of how to change conflict behavior is the same.
Now it is a special challenge to enter a focused inner state during a massage and ignore all the impulses that the masseur gives into the body from the outside. But I've been mentally training for a few years now and can really focus on something. I withdrew into my innermost being and thought to myself:
"Hmmm, if my arm is actively moving and something unconscious is controlling it, what is the correct question?"
I decided on: "Who will take control of my body when I want to relax?".
Then I thought, "If there was a drink that represented the part of me that exerts control over the arm... What drink would that be?" In my mind, I went through all kinds of drinks and decided on a thick, brown, sticky Nesquik. For years, I've been drinking a cup of wonderfully cool milk with a good portion of Nesquik in the morning instead of coffee. However, not so thickly mixed.
Next, I ask myself the question: "If the thick sticky Nesquik was somewhere in the room, where would the Nesquik be right?"
ZACK! The Nesquik was already stuck to the back right of my neck. For example, to four o'clock, when the tip of the nose at the front is 12 o'clock. The feeling I associated with the Nesquik was powerful, strong and autonomous. I thanked the Nesquik for revealing it. Now I had a materialization, an object with which I could continue to work.
Now it was a matter of finding out what interest this part of my personality had, which had revealed itself to me, sticking to the neck.
So I imagined myself floating out of myself and into the Nesquik. If I were such a dark, brown, thick drink. Cool and with the specific strong taste of the Nequick syrup and staring directly at Rainer's neck. What is it about when I behave the way I do? Is it about FREEDOM for me? About SECURITY? About RECOGNITION? About POWER? INTENSITY or INTEGRITY? Maybe HARMONY? Or CARE? Maybe at this point I want to generate KNOWLEDGE and learn something that satisfies my curiosity. I checked the Conductivity the Adrian Schweizer , after years of practical experience with his clients.
My gut feeling told me quite clearly that I was mainly concerned with SAFETY. I, the Nesquik, make sure that Rainer gets through his life well. That's why I prefer to take control when something happens to the arm. Who knows what will happen if he just lets himself go?
I asked from the outside, from the "Meta", so to speak: "Dear Nesquik, thank you very much for wanting to protect Rainer. What character traits would you need so that you can have the feeling of being there for Rainer and protecting him WITHOUT having to intervene in every little thing - like in this situation?"
The result was: "I need TRUST!"
Initiating change
So I floated back into the Rainer and created a feeling of trust. I charged my body with this energy and enveloped myself with the energy of trust. The color of this energy was light blue. As I directed the energy from my center toward the Nesquik and imagined the energy entering the Nesquik, there was an immediate reaction from my body. My arms, which were supposed to rest flat on the couch, slumped "down". They relaxed. This happened very spontaneously. Thomas reacted by interrupting the massage of the upper arm, taking his hands back and waiting. I gave him a signal that everything was fine. Thomas resumed his beneficial work.
I now checked what had changed by looking at the Nesquik from the outside and "floating" back into this part of the personality. The position and consistency of the sticky drink had not really changed. It remained back there in the neck and was still rather dark, heavy and cold.
That was probably not it yet.
"What else would help you, dear Nesquik?"
The result was: "SATISFACTION".
Go back into the Rainer. Fill it with the feeling of SATISFACTION. Envelop the energy around the Rainer. Color: Green. Off with the energy beam to the Nesquik. Zack!
Oops! That was not possible. The energy didn't want to flow to the Nesquik towards the neck to burst...
I just thought: "Thank you dear Nesquik for this resistance!" I thought further. "I'm on the right track. If there is resistance to accepting satisfaction, then that is an important resource!" I now had to convince the Nesquik to drop the resistance.
Since I was working with myself and not with one of my clients, and I didn't have forever – Thomas was massaging my scalp in the meantime – I reflected on the three archetypal resources of Steven Gilligan . These are qualities that every person has from birth and that you don't have to learn separately. So I checked PASSION, GENTLENESS and PLAYFULNESS. And quickly came to the conclusion that PLAYFULNESS should be the key to success. If the Nesquik could be playful, then it could be more trusting!
Generating the feeling of playfulness shouldn't be a problem for me at all. After all, I've been meeting up with my friends every week for ages to play some board games. I put myself in just such a game night and transferred the energy of this feeling to Nesquik. After that, I tried again with the transfer of TRUST to Nesquik.
Experience change
The reaction of my body and the feeling associated with it was overwhelming! The moment I sent the green energy beam of trust in the direction of Nesquik and imagined that the Nesquik was permeated by this energy, there was a comprehensive reaction of my whole body. It was as if all the limbs were sinking down a floor. Thomas, who was just on my scalp, reacted immediately and caught my head.
I didn't even realize that the state I thought was a relaxed state was so tense!
The Nesquik now started to move and moved in a circular motion from the neck counterclockwise around the head. It gained height, moved to the forehead and penetrated the forehead. In the process, its properties changed. The Nesquik was no longer sticky, became lighter and lighter, rather yellow, warmer, lighter, friendlier. Terrific! It was definitely no longer a "Nesquik" at the end of the transformation.
At this point, I ended my change work on myself.
The change was still noticeable to me throughout the day. I walked through the day much softer, more relaxed. Especially in the neck and shoulder area, I felt greater flexibility.
During the next massage sessions, Thomas confirmed to me that my body was more relaxed. The change is working!
What is important?
I have personally learned several lessons from this experience:
- Being able to focus well is an important skill.
- I experienced once again what I have been convinced of for a long time! The methods of change work in mental space work! Knowledge has a different quality. You can't imagine the effect theoretically.
There is no substitute for lived experience. - Since I had worked almost directly with my body control, the biofeedback of my body was enormously fast and comprehensive. The reaction took place immediately after the idea that the feeling was transferred.
- I had shortened the methodology enormously here and in the end did not follow the AQAL model of Ken Wilber the result from all four perceptual positions is checked for resistance. Gradually, the "Nesquik" had moved back to a less favorable place later and I was allowed to rework it... Don't forget it!
