This segment, despite its name, comprises the back and front of the body above the waist, including shoulders and arms. Apart from being the site of deep feelings ("heart feelings" of love or anxiety) the chest segment is active in a huge range of expressive movement; therefore you should not leap to conclusions about any expression you see beginning from the chest and arms.

You will have already noted whether the explorer's chest is hard and muscled or relatively soft, whether it is mobile or stuck in an inflated or deflated position or somewhere in between. Work with the chest segment varies according to its initial position.

4:1 To begin, ask the explorer to lie face down, with the head turned sideways so that the breathing can be open.

4:2 Ask them, as usual, to sigh out audibly, keeping the mouth well open. Massage the back of the neck with the fingers and thumb of one hand and note whether it feels contracted (pulled down into the body).

4:3 Ask the explorer to try and keep the neck loose.

4:4 Now, leaning forward over the explorer's back, begin to press down with the heels of your hands on the muscles beside the spine as the explorer breathes out. These paraspinal muscles run down each side of the spinal column from neck to pelvis. You can safely push down on them anywhere above the level of the lowest ribs, but do not push over the kidney area, and do not push on the spinal column itself. You can work up and down alongside the spine, concentrating on any area where the muscles are visibly bunched or standing out. Encourage the explorer to make an open sound and breathe out fully each time you press down. The object is to encourage them to breathe out more fully than usual, and to prolong the out-breath, which should be held for a few seconds at the end of each breath.

If the explorer's voice begins to sound tight, simply ease off. Do not ask them to force air through the throat. If the throat tightens markedly, do further work on the throat segment as outlined in the previous section. It is usually enough to keep up reminders about leaving the mouth open. In some people the hand pressure on the back provokes the beginning of kicking movements from the legs.

4:5 Whether this occurs spontaneously or not, encourage the explorer to kick for a while, banging the front of the legs down alternately, moving them from the hip joint, keeping the knees straight. This tends to open up the breathing further. In a few people, it may encourage a real temper tantrum in which they become carried away in kicking and pounding. Let this happen, while cautioning them in a loud voice if injury seems likely. If you sense panic, bring the explorer back into eye contact. (This is why the capacity for eye contact must have been established.) More often the person will simply become a little fatigued after a few minutes kicking, but breathing will have opened and you can proceed to the next stage.

4:6 Ask the explorer to turn over and lie with the knees up, as in previous explorations. Ask them to keep the chest moving with the breathing, but put the emphasis on breathing out all the way. Encourage them to let the chest down. This is valid even if the chest tends to be deflated already. Encourage them to breathe out more than usual, and to pause at the end of each out-breath.

You may notice a tendency for the shoulders to be held rigidly; or, when the chest comes down, for the breathing movement to "pile up" in the abdomen and push it out; or for the pelvis to be pulled back. When the chest segment is well open, the breathing out resembles that evoked by gagging (without the same sensations): the body tends to fold forward as the chest goes down, the shoulders come up and forward, the head tilts back, and the pelvis comes up and forward. The breathing in and out can be like a wave movement in the body. But most often you will notice some kind of "jamming" of the breathing wave: the head and neck locked firm, the shoulders locked back or clamped forward; the abdomen held still or pushed out; the pelvis may be locked in a forward or back position. All this can happen even if the chest is moving down fully, although the combination causes discomfort.

4:7 For now, encourage the explorer to let go of the blocks below and above the chest by asking them to wriggle the shoulders up and down, then to wriggle the pelvis up and down, then to roll the head back and up again. Make sure they keep breathing.

Just a few seconds in each area may lead to some loosening. Now they can wriggle all over in a random way.

4:8 Now stop all movement and ask the explorer to concentrate again on letting the chest down all the way with the out-breath. Ask them to give in to whatever happens and whatever they feel. Say to them: "Don't make anything happen, don't stop anything from happening." Encourage them to breathe out and follow through.

This emphasis on the breathing can lead to a kind of soft convulsion of the whole body at the end of the breathing wave. Reich called this the orgasm reflex (see chapter 7). It can occur without an actual orgasm, merely from intensified breathing. It may or may not be familiar to the explorer. Encourage them to give in to any involuntary movement, unless, in your judgement it seems to be dangerous or is hyperventilation.

You may help the chest move downward by pressing with the heels of your hands on the upper chest with each out-breath.

If the chest is relatively immobile, several further explorations may help mobilize it.

Inflated Chest

For a chest stuck in an inflated position, the gagging maneuver described in the previous section may help.

Anger explorations are another alternative. You can get the explorer to slam the fists down on the mat beside the body with each out-breath, while yelling and focusing at a point on the ceiling. Be sure the arms are moving from the shoulders. Twisting a towel and yelling may be useful. Or stage a tug of war in which you stand over the explorer and each pulls on the ends of a towel saying something like "Give it to me," or "It's mine."

After some anger work, arrange to progress from the relatively hard emotional expression toward a relatively soft one as follows: 4:9 Stand on the mat with your feet on each side of the explorer's legs and, leaning forward, take a wrist in each hand, brace yourself by bending your knees and lift the upper body toward you on each of the explorer's out-breaths. Encourage them to be passive. Take all the weight yourself, do not let them hold on to you; ask them to let the head hang back while you pull their shoulders toward you. If you are strong enough, lift their upper body right off the mat and, again asking them to let the head hang back, encourage them to breathe out fully. This helps stretch the tight shoulder muscles that may be preventing the chest from going down with the out-breath. It is also work on trust: the explorer has to relinquish some control to give you their weight. Remind them to keep breathing. Do not be surprised if they feel some longing, or begin to cry.

If they cry, encourage them to roll on to their side and let their body fold forward while letting the chest down and holding onto your hand or a pillow. This lets their shoulders come forward and may help dissolve the block in which the shoulders are held back as part of an inflated chest.

4:10 As an alternative to 4:9, ask the explorer to reach up as high as possible toward the ceiling on each sigh of the breath out as the chest goes down (deflates). On each breath in, have them bring their hands back and place them on their heart as the chest moves up (inflates). Keep repeating while making an open sound. As the hands come up, make sure the shoulders come forward and up so that the explorer is out full stretch. Some people may tend to push upward with clenched fists in which case you can get them to exaggerate this and to yell aggressively. Others seem to more or less "give up" at the idea of reaching: the hands may droop downward or be turned outward, the elbows weakly bent, the shoulders hanging back. In meaningful reaching, the hands are facing each other and fully open. Ask the explorer to reach also with the mouth and eyes.

In general, any letting down of the inflated chest will only be mechanical unless accompanied by some emotion. The block only dissolves if there is emotional movement, which is why gymnastic exercises do not dissolve character armor. The explorer may be shy at first of expressing emotion in this context or take refuge in the idea that these explorations are "artificial"; but keep encouraging emotional expression, patiently. Rarely is anyone so frozen that no emotion emerges over several sessions of this kind of work. Eventually some emotional movement will occur.

Deflated Chest

If the chest is deflated you will notice that even if the lower ribs are relatively "popped up," the upper chest between the shoulders is collapsed and locked down.

4:11 A fairly good mechanical exercise to start with is to have the person stand up and swing the arms round and round in wide circles, moving the shoulder joints to the maximum extent, occasionally reversing direction. This can be more than mere gymnastics if the explorer keeps breathing fully.

4:12 With the explorer lying on their back, ask them to breathe deliberately into the upper chest, moving the shoulders back on the in-breath, forward on the out-breath. If continued for too long a time mechanically, this can lead to hyperventilation: watch for the signs, and discontinue if they appear. Alternatively, it may induce an emotional reaction: fear, if the person is blocking the raised chest and gasp which go with the startle reflex; anger, if the person is repressing this under a layer of depression.

In the case of fear, do the fear exploration mentioned earlier. (You might try and have them do this anyway, even if no fear has been expressed.)

Pounding on the mat with the fists, a tug of war with a towel, or a pushing match with a cushion may all be useful in eliciting anger which may begin to fill the upper chest as the explorer becomes more confident of being aggressive.

Again moving to the soft expression after the hard expression of fear and anger, have the explorer do the same reaching exercise (4:10) as above for the person with an inflated chest. Now, however, you will emphasize the filling of the upper chest as the hands are brought back to the heart on the in-breath. You are working, as it were, with the opposite set of emotional armoring and chest expansion is needed.

When aggression in general is blocked, even from awareness, the shoulders and upper chest tend to be locked and deflated; when it is in awareness but being held the shoulders will be locked back, the chest inflated.