Third Session: Emotional Growth Through Intensification (Chapter 5)

Page 77

1:1 Ask the explorer to find a position on the mat, following the first instincts—whatever they want.

1:2 Ask them to take stock: what are they aware of in their body? What tension or pain?

1:3 Ask them to describe what they are most aware of and to focus in on one particularly prominent area.

1:4 Ask the explorer to intensify tension in the area, to follow whatever urge they have so long as the tension is increased.

1:5 Ask them to maintain the tension just short of intolerable discomfort. (Do not let them push into severe pain; ask them to back off from it.) Tension may be maintained for up to twenty minutes.

1:6 Tell them, if they feel another tension developing elsewhere, to wait until it is as severe as the first and then shift the attention to this new area, intensify it, and maintain it.

1:7 Tell them, if they feel the urge to spontaneous movement, to pay attention to it and, when it begins to be irresistible, to go with it.

1:8 If the movement is continual, do not interfere except in the interests of safety. Encourage the explorer to stay on the mat.

1:9 If the movement is frantic and seems potential ly dangerous, call the explorer by name, make eye contact, and ask them to slow down.

1:10 If the movement is very rapid or seems potentially exhausting, suggest the explorer slows down.

Insist that they stop if the session reaches one and one-half hours.

1:11 While the explorer is maintaining tension, watch for signs of slackening off and encourage them to persist (short of pain).

1:12 Discourage continued reportage and talk but, every few minutes, ask if they want to make a brief statement of feeling.

1:13 If nothing happens within twenty minutes or so, suggest that the explorer move slowly into a position which seems to them opposite to the one they have been in.

1:14 After a few minutes in the new position, ask them to move slowly back to the original position. After a few minutes, suggest they move slowly to the opposite position again.

If nothing happens in the way of spontaneous movement, suggest they finish the exploration, stopping in the second, more extreme, position.

1:15 If spontaneous movement is toward an opposite position to the one the explorer has been in, encourage exploration of the second position or of the alternation between both. 1:16 If spontaneous movement is toward a new intensification position, do not interfere, do observe.

1:17 After the session, make eye contact and hold hands for a while.

Fourth Session: Dismantling Armor (Chapter 6)

This work can be done in one long session, provided a particular phase does not become absorbing. Alternatively, one or more segments can be taken in a session. However, later segments should not be undertaken before the early segments have been done at least once or before Chapter Six has been read. Before embarking on a new session starting at a lower segment, make sure that there is no serious blocking in the upper segments. This is particularly important for the eyes, which must be in contact.

Ocular Segment (page 90)

1:1 Ask the explorer to roll the eyes around, stretch them out to the sides, breathing out audibly, for a few minutes.

1:2 Ask them to look at you and tell them what emotion you see in their eyes.

1:3 Kneel behind the explorer's head and move your finger (or a pencil or pen) around about twelve inches above the explorer's face, asking them to track it with the eyes only, not moving the head. Make sure they continue breathing. Encourage them to stretch the eyes. Continue for about five minutes.

1:4 Ask the explorer to let the head move with the eyes and to track as if with the end of the nose.

Provided this is not painful, continue for a further five minutes.

1:5 Ask them to move hands and feet as if running on the spot, making continuous sound, while tracking.

1:6 Urge them to give in to any involuntary movement (so long as you judge it safe).

1:7 Ask the explorer to return to lying quietly on their back, and make a few slow passes around for them to track with their eyes only.

1:8 Ask the explorer to look at you and tell you how they feel.

Oral Segment (page 93)

2:1 Ask the explorer to make faces: open the mouth as wide as possible, close it tight, press lips together, stick lips forward, draw lips back, pull jaw back, and stick jaw forward; to keep breathing; to exaggerate any expression you notice coming through.

2:2 Press down on the jaw, ask the explorer to push jaw forward. Or, pull jaw gently downward.

2:3 Ask the explorer to bite down hard on a towel, while breathing out vigorously, while squeezing the eyes shut, and clenching the fists.

Then, as they breathe in, to let go of squeezing and biting; then resume biting and squeezing each time they breathe out.

2:4 Ask the explorer to breathe quietly, look around while gently moving lips, mouth and jaw making soft sound wa-wa-wa-wa.

2:5 Ask the explorer to scream, while squeezing the eyes shut, raising open hands in the air and shaking them, and, with head tilted back, to open the mouth in a big, square shape.

2:6 Make eye contact. Discuss.

Throat Segment (page 95)

3:1 Ask the explorer to make an open sound while breathing out and to find the position of the tongue which makes the sound most open.

3:2 Ask them to mobilize the tongue while making sounds—licking their lips, sticking their tongue out, stretching it, curling it; then to adopt the optimum position: tongue tip against palate just above front upper teeth; then to maintain it while sighing out, aaaah.

3:3 An alternative, or further, exploration to mobilize the tongue is to have the explorer curl the tongue down over the lower lip while making a sound.

3:4 With the tongue in the optimum position, have the explorer make a louder sound. Then ask them to make the sound louder while letting their tongue find a position which enables the loudest sound.

3:5 Ask the explorer to choke a towel, holding both hands close and twisting from opposite directions, and to make the sound louder and as open as possible.

3:6 If attempts to make a loud sound produce strangled or forced noises, ask the explorer to back off from the sound and make the loudest sound they can do easily. Make sure they continue the sound, even quietly, to the end of each out-breath. If making the sound is difficult try having them breathe under your hand with it on the diaphragm area and to push the sound from that point while breathing out.

3:7 Pause. Discuss.

3:8 Ask the explorer to gag, to let the head tilt back, to breathe out with a sigh; then, toward the end of the out-breath, stick their middle finger down their mouth and touch the back of the throat gently until the gag reflex comes without coughing and without swallowing.

3:9 Ask the explorer to look at you.