Physical Exercise

You may do whatever your normal exercise is at the same time you are doing the Reichian work, with one exception. If you are doing weight lifting, that is few slow repetitions against a heavy weight, then you are building tension into your body that will fight this work. If you do many fast repetitions against a comparatively small weight, that is no problem for this work.

Few slow repetitions against heavy weights builds bulk and tension into your muscles. That is, to use the medical terms, it builds tension rather than tonus. Many fast repetitions against lighter weights build tonus (what is usually called: definition) into your muscles without building chronic tension.

ALWAYS TOO SLOWLY.

I can not emphasize this too strongly. Some of the exercises seem almost too simple, and yet they can be very powerful even though seemingly simple. If you find that you are moving very slowly, don't be troubled. That is fine. But if you find that you are becoming too upset or that the changes are happening too quickly, then stop the work for a while. Allow your subconscious time to adjust to the change.

The subconscious resides in the more primitive parts of the brain and has more contact with the body than does the conscious mind. In effect, it is the subconscious mind that maintains the rigidity of the body. If your work is too threatening to that mind/ body system, your subconscious has all the resources to produce many physical and behavioral and emotional effects which stand in the way of living well. That is not the idea of the work.

It is simply not possible for me to emphasize too strongly that you should respect the power of your own subconscious and proceed slowly with the work.

Medical Issues In The Therapy

At the appropriate points in the book I will repeat parts to this section. You don't have to attempt to memorize these issues here. I inserted these medical issues here, right at the start, because, after all, this is a book on body-based psychotherapy and that inherently means there are medical implications.

Hyperventilation

Reichian therapy utilizes deep breathing. The deep breathing results in a condition called hyperventilation. I will discuss hyperventilation in Chapter three. Hyperventilation is not without some medical implications.

If you have or might have epilepsy, deep breathing can bring on seizures so it is best for you to skip this type of self-improvement work

There are also reports in the medical literature of hyperventilation causing heart attacks. This is very rare, but I would be remiss to not even mention it. You can read about this at: http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/gw/Cmd, use the search terms of: hyperventilation myocardial infarction.

Push Breathing

Push breathing is an exercise I will introduce in Chapter five. You can always skip this exercise, but if you use it there is a medical issue to be considered.

This exercise raises the pressure inside the brain cavity (the inter-cranial pressure). This can result in death for someone who has a silent aneurism in his brain. If you have had an amphetamine habit, don't do this exercise. Also there is a genetic condition called a "berry aneurism." It is rare, but it is also silent until it ruptures. There is a medical way to test for the presence of a brain aneurism, but you are very unlikely to get any physician to prescribe it absent any present medical indication of its need.

There is also a medical issue in this exercise if you have elevated blood pressure. Many pharmacies have a free blood pressure test stand that you can use or you can purchase an automated blood pressure device at the pharmacy. If you have a doctor, then your blood pressure is in your medical records and you can call your doctor's office to get the values.

Footnote 6. For my European readers, what is called hyperventilation in the States is called DeCosta's syndrome in Europe.

Footnote 7. I have had one patient who, while I was working on her neck, had a short petit mal seizure. So it is a real problem.

Footnote 8. An aneurism is a weakening in the wall of a blood vessel.

If you are on medication that is reducing your blood pressure to a normal value, then this exercise should be OK. If you are in doubt, ask your treating physician. Because he might easily misunderstand what you are doing, this exercise IS NOT the same as a valsalva maneuver.

The Jaw In Exercise

This exercise is discussed in Chapter 13. Any exercise with the jaw has a medical implication because of the fragility of the jaw joint.

The jaw joint that allows the mouth to open and move side to side for chewing is a very small and therefore fragile joint. You should either abort or not do at all any exercise that produces any pain or even discomfort in your jaw joint. The joint is located about 1/2 inch forward from your ear. If you place your hand on the side of your face and then open and close your mouth you will be able to feel where this joint is located. This exercise will produce pulling in the muscles of the jaw, but that is not the same as strain on the jaw joint.

I repeat, if you have even a suspicion that you are stressing the jaw joint by any of the jaw exercises, then don't do that exercise or perhaps even any of the exercises in Chapter 13 on the jaw. Let me put it this way: if you injure that joint you can have pain with every single bite of food. No Reichian work is worth that consequence.

Returning To A Cleared Area

I'll mention this issue once more in Part Two just to remind you of it. It is a curious thing about "armor" that when it has been eliminated, it has a tendency to recur. That is, as an example, you might entirely clear up your forehead and eyes only to find that six months later they are no longer cleared up. They have "rearmored." What this means in practice, in doing this work, is that you will need to periodically return to previously fixed areas of the body to see that they have not retensed.

How To Use The Audio

Download accompanying audios. The zip archive contains 5 audio files. If your computer doesn't already have software to open .zip archives, you can use 7zip on Windows/Linux or find the latest software for Mac here.

The audio that accompanies this book, entitled The Sounds of Reichian, will aid you in producing each of the sounds that are used in Reichian. The audio lists examples of wrong sounds and the desired correct sound. As with almost everything else in this book, the desired sound is a goal, not a standard. Do your best at any given time in the work and accept that as your then present level of ability. Perfection is a nice idea for gods, it is a foolish idea for humans.

The audio is constructed from four patients in the therapy plus the sounds of the author. While a major goal of The Sounds of Reichian is to let you hear the normal 'ah' sound, it also provides one or more examples of all the other sounds used in the therapy process. As an example you will hear the 'ah' sound from the shake the shoulders loose exercise from Chapter 16 done both properly and improperly.

On Mixing This Work With Other Body Work

I already mentioned physical exercise and problems possibly associated with that work. As for Yoga, I had a patient some years ago who had trained in Yoga in India and now taught it here. For all this person's competence in Yoga, his or her (to not give out any clues as to gender) body did not show the least effect of the Yoga on any Reichian "armor." Thus doing Yoga at the same time as this work will neither aid nor hinder the work.

This also applies to Pilattes. I had a Pilattes teacher as a patient, and, moreover, one who was formally trained. For all the training and the daily doing as he or she taught the method to others, again it made no difference in the Reichian "armor." So Pilattes like Yoga neither helps nor harms this work.

I have no personal experience with the various martial arts like

Judo or Karati or Tai Chi or the like. Thus I am not able to authoritatively say whether any of this type of training and practice will or will not have any impact - beneficial or harmful - to the therapy.

As to meditation, the medical literature indicates that it is medically beneficial. It is especially useful in overcoming phobias by focusing on the phobic situation until the anxiety is moderate and then moving to a peaceful and rel a xi ng visualization or thought. The process of approaching the phobia and then leaving it is repeated on successive sessions until the prior phobia has lost its impact.

In context of the Reichian therapy, it is a benign procedure (neither helpful nor harmful) provided the focus is not on the body and body sensations. If the focus is on the body, you are in effect doing a passive session (CHAPTER 21, page 304) and if you have not progressed to that level, this is too powerful an exercise.

Footnote 9. In psychology, all forms of meditation are variants of the procedure known as Jacobsonian Progressive Relaxation.