The Distance Between Spiritual Experience and Interpretation

The Distance Between Spiritual Experience and Interpretation
Posted on Feb 3rd, 2008 by Julian






This is a favorite subject of mine - the distance between experience and interpretation. It is undeniable that human beings in all times and cultures have been hardwired for spiritual experiences – some of course more than others. But is this proof of any of the multiple metaphysical belief systems that we tend, I would suggest, to superimpose onto the experience?

The central difficulty here is that the altered state of a spiritual experience is so convincing (and so important, beautiful and meaningful in its own right) and we are so suggestible during and afterward, that it is almost ubiquitous to be convinced that the experience is undeniable (or at the very least strong) proof of whatever belief system the ensuing interpretation is coming from - when actually the two may be barely related!

Humans love to go into altered states. There is not a culture in the history of the planet that has not come up with some way of fermenting, drinking, eating, fasting, dancing, sweating, drumming, smoking, snorting, chanting, breathing, meditating, stretching, sensory depriving or sensory overloading its way into altered states of consciousness.

In addition some people have more labile neurophysiology than others – be they epileptic, hypo-glycemic, bipolar, schizophrenic or merely garden-variety creative, empathic types with thin ego-boundaries.

Thankfully we have developed an ever-deepening understanding of some of the more extreme dysfunctions of the brain and have ways of diagnosing and treating these problems that are more effective than ever before. One cannot help but be curious about the similarities between say religious and schizophrenic statements about reality and wonder how much of the difference is one of degree, and to what extent the vocabulary of experience being used is coming from the same part of the brain.

How do we make sense of the fact that for both a) the person in thegrips of an ardent religious conversion as well as b) someone experiencing clinical insanity, the novel and metaphysical revelations being described are not only convincing but are held as extremely important, often not only for the individual in the grip of the experience, but for all of humanity?

I want to suggest that this is an extreme form of an activity of our physiology and its related interior - the psyche, that at its best can be positively transformational, healing and creative and at its worse can be fundamentalist, violent and crazy.


Three Layers of Spiritual Experience

I think it’s interesting to think about this phenomenon in terms of three layers:

1) The universal (with varying degrees of intensity) human proclivity toward not only experiencing altered states but also towards finding those altered states to some extent meaningful and significant.

2) The personal stage of development from which one
a) Interacts with or “co-creates “ the experience and
b) Interprets the experience – both based on one’s psychological profile.

3) The socio-cultural context within which the experience both
a) Occurs in the first place and
b) Is then interpreted

I think too that there is a powerful relationship between this proclivity toward altered states and the dream-like imaginative activity of creating mythology. The language of myth is one of metaphor and symbol - I think of it as a cultural dream. Myth is no less significant, numinous and meaningful than a potent personal dream or powerfully transporting piece of art.

Dream, art and myth all come form the same place; the deep unconscious psyche, and it is in altered states of consciousness that the pathway is opened between the conscious mind, with its steward the ego and the unconscious mind with, at its center, what Jung thought of as "the Self." I also like the word "soul" in this place.

So we find ourselves in a complex matrix of meanings, conditioning, emotional associations, instincts, primal forces and numinous energies whenever we deeply interact with dreams, high art, mythology and the altered states that give us access to the same layers of human consciousness.

Myths have always been a way to explain what we do not understand, a way to try and answer the unanswerable big questions about how the world began, what happens after we die, why things happen the way they do, what the purpose of existence is, where evil comes from etc..

This does not mean that cultures that dream up myths necessarily think of them metaphorically! The story-telling is taken as literally true when it is created, and most often what we see is that the myth is believed to have been "revealed" to the shaman or the holy man, or the wise elder or told to them by an animal, a spirit, an angel, god himself. But the point is - in a manner of speaking, the collective psyche dreams up the story. It comes from the deep unconscious and as such, just as with personal dreams, it speaks the language of symbol, metaphor, and archetype. I think of this as being the "soul language."

(As an aside I want to add that Joseph Campbell called myths "masks of god." He said that the high function of the "mask" was to help us see beyond it to what cannot ever be represented concretly.)


Three Functions of Myth

For the moment, let's say that there are three functions that myth serves:

1) Offering a poetic vocabulary with which to approach a state of awe, wonder and reverence for the world we live in, consciousness and life itself.
2) Reducing existential anxiety by explaining the unknowable and containing the fear of death.
3) Creating a shared psychic cosmology that is a container of belonging and belief for the culture.

These three functions are directly related to the above three layers, so let's put them together:

1) The universal tendency toward altered state/spiritual experiences needs a vocabulary with which to express and explore the largely non-verbal, non-rational states.
2) One of the ways we manage existential anxiety and psychological conflicts is often through spiritual or religious belief, petitioning, superstition, self-soothing etc.
3) The powerful sense of belonging, identity and taboo enacted by the socio-cultural context creates a convincing template within which the spiritual experience or altered state should be interpreted.

In other words there are reasons that Catholic nuns do not have visions of Avalokiteshvara on their deathbeds and that Tibetan monks don't have visions of the Blessed Virgin under similar circumstances. There are reasons there are "no atheists in foxholes," or that under conditions of extreme stress otherwise non-religious people may find themselves praying for a situation to turn out a certain way. There are reasons that the "soul language" that gets so sliced and diced into word-salad by schizophrenics tugs on our sleeves with its appearance of deep cryptic meaning. There are reasons that when people have powerful conversion experiences, open up emotionally, commune deeply with nature, take mind-bending drugs, experience intense trauma, or other altered state experiences they tend to come out the other side with a meaning that fits a fairly predictable socialized interpretation and that can often be seen as serving a particular personal psychological purpose - for better or worse.

(Of course this gets trickier in the multicultural/postmodern world in which (particularly in the West) there are now ever evolving sub-cultures that often draw threads of interpretation and belief from multiple sources - but though the collage may be more complex, the functions remain detectable and demonstrable. I must also add as an aside here that there is a level of radical spiritual experience in which one is actively going beyond acculturated metaphysical beliefs, experiencing revelations that subvert one's psychological defense structure and that make a strong enough impression on the right kind of psyche that the second two functions above are inactivated in the service of the first. This is most often the exception to the rule and for me marks the difference between transformational and translative spirituality...)


Cross-Cultural Examples

A 12-year-old boy in the Bible belt falls on the floor and begins speaking in tongues - he knows this is proof of the Holy Spirit and gives his life even more fully to Jesus. He vows to become a missionary in Africa.

An 18 year old girl on Ecstasy in London gazes in rapt absorption at the dance floor, her heart blowing open, mind stunned by the beauty of ordinary people and the power of music to unite people into a single moving organism of love and celebration, she is convinced that the Universe has led her precisely to this moment and that the Wicca initiation she received from her aunt the week before has connected her to her destiny.

The 22 year old couple hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains stand at the look-out point and breathe deeply as they do partner yoga stretches, the vast blue sky above them, the sun gleaming off the leaves of the trees and the warm rocks, they know without a shadow of a doubt that they are soul mates and the earth is a conscious being radiating love and wisdom at them.

The 29 year old woman goes to darshan with Amachi, the hugging saint. Her psychic reader has told her that she clearly has past-lives with the guru and that intersecting with her energetically in this life will help her to overcome the pain she feels at a failed relationship and recent abortion. In the arms of Amachi she feels accepted, filled with love, recharged energetically and blown away at the accuracy of the psychic's "information." What's more - gazing into the eyes of the guru she knew without a shadow of a doubt that God forgave her abortion, that it was the right thing to do and that she would have another chance to be a mother when the Universe was aligned.

The 35 year old Muslim man finally makes his pilgrimage to Mecca. A thousand men circle that most holy of stones - the Kaaba. This is the most important moment in his life and he is filled with awe, tears streaming down his face, he is caught up in the power of the presence of the prophet of the inevitability of his own destiny. He renews his commitment to bringing Islamic rule to the whole world for the glory of Allah and to donate as much of his income as he can to the cause of removing Israel from the face of the planet.

The 42-year-old homeless woman is transfixed, staring into the window of the restaurant. The customers are uncomfortable with her intent gaze and do not realize that she is looking at her own reflection. They are even less aware that she is seeing the Virgin Mary reflected back at her. She offers her unconditional healing love to all the world and knows that she must come again each morning to this spot until the police come and tell her to move, at which point she becomes again the bitter, persecuted crazy lady screaming foul curse words at the cops.

The 55-year-old therapist's young son is killed in a car wreck. As he walks past the cafe where his son loved to hang out and sometimes played his music at the open mic night he hears Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" coming through the open door. He stops in his tracks and weeps. He weeps for all the things he never said and for all the things his son will never do, he asks forgiveness for he ways in which he knows he failed him. When the song reaches it climax he feels a soft breeze on his skin that covers him in gooseflesh and imagines his son's voice singing a low harmony on the chorus. He tells his wife and she is sure this was a communication from the spirit world, but he doesn't think it was anymore or less than a powerful moment of grief, gratitude, forgiveness and expansion.


Conclusion

I suggest that it isn't enough to merely affirm (though we should do this at the very least) these experiences in a non-ethnocentric way - I think that if we want to a) understand, facilitate, and integrate them better and b) keep creating more and more effective world-centric humanistic contexts within which to more adequately interpret the experiences, we need to tease apart the mystical, psychological and socio-cultural layers of the experience.

When we are able to do so, we can see ourselves more clearly, use the power of the experience more effectively and side step some of the classic traps that too often make spiritual experience the domain of superstition, fundamentalism, psychological denial and rationalization, cultish belief, ethnocentric nationalism and basic delusion about reality.

So far the laudable contemporary liberal desire to be affirming of all forms of spiritual experience does not do this teasing apart and so has a tendency to uncritically embrace the cultural baggage and defensive psychological distortions along with the universal sense of awe and deep opening.

Of course, on the other side, the laudable modern desire to be rational tends to throw out the baby of the potent and meaningful experience with the bathwater of the superstitious cultural baggage and the rather obvious defensive psychological distortions.

Both of these impulses are based in partial truths that end up missing the point. Finding out which part is true and which is mistaken is essential if the two are to be integrated.

The fact that all human beings are wired to some extent for experiences like these and that in certain cases such experiences can be positively transformational to our lives, in no way makes any of the culture bound and anxiety reducing interpretations any more true in the literal sense.

My sense of it is that we need to be able to differentiate a) what is truly universal in our physiology and it's experiential counterpart the deep psyche and even in the general archetypal form and themes that underlie the specific content of the mythic/metaphysical interpretation, from b) the interpretation itself.

Its a tricky task but one that is quite doable if we are rational and honest with ourselves.

Its about picking apart metaphor from reality, literal from figurative, defensive from expansive, conditioned from transcendent etc, in an attempt to understand both the meaningful trans-rational power of spiritual experiences and the ways in which their pre-rational interpretation can be deceptive.

To forego (or fudge) this task out of multi-cultural PC politeness, sentimental attachment to the supernatural, or soupy relativist confusion leaves us spiritually and intellectually impoverished and no closer to understanding this remarkable and central human concern.

it is possible to forge a 21st Century Spirituality that harnesses the exquisite transformational beauty and power of spiritual experiences without the non-essential cultural baggage, metaphysical belief and reality distorting interpretations.

If we:

a) Enact an inquiry-based practice that initiates us experientially into the universal physiological and psychological mind-body energetics, state shifts and stage-wise growth,
b) Maintain a space for shadow-work and other forms of psychological process/awareness and
c) Keep integrating and developing rational cognition and critical thinking,

we increase the possibilities of reaping the benefits of spiritual experience and side-stepping some of the long-standing drawbacks.

JIll Bolte Taylor and Some Spiritual Fallacies

Above is a video that is getting a lot of play in the spiritual community, I wrote this post when it originally aired on the TED channel, but as you may know this new blog is a place I am gradually uploading to from an archive on Gaia.com - which was recently shut down.

The video is inspiring, it's exciting, it's deeply personal, poignant, intelligent and funny - but ultimately I think the message and it's underlying assumptions are hugely problematic.

I am going to save my comments until this has been up for a little while, and let any readers make their own observations.

My suggestion: watch it once and take the emotional/altered state ride - its great! Then watch it again and pay more attention to the details...

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INTRODUCTION

OK - let's think this through a little, shall we?

* Let me say first of all, this is not intended in any way to be hostile toward Ms. Taylor. She is obviously a bright and sincere woman, who has recovered from and struggled to make sense of a very intense experience of brain injury. She is clearly in touch with a feeling of wanting to share a message that is positive with the world. Her talk is engaging, intelligent, self-revealing and impactful.

At the same time, she is unwittingly enacting a set of fallacies that a basic knowledge of transpersonal psychology, integral theory, philosophical reasoning and recent studies on meditation and neuroscience can enable us to see.

Why does this matter?

Well, the subjects she is touching on regarding the brain, altered states of consciousness, stagewise development and the future of humanity are important and meaningful ones - and they not only deserve to be addressed with more clarity, but when misrepresented as she is doing perpetuate misconceptions that do none of us any good, let alone the ideal of world peace and unity.

Now before you get all bent out of shape, let me acknowledge that yes, of course this is opening a door for many who might otherwise not link these subjects or be exposed to certain possibilities. At the same time I maintain, as I have done with The Secret, What The Bleep, Steve Pavlina's blog and other purveyors of these kinds of fallacies - that it is sometimes better to not be exposed to important ideas than to be exposed to distorted, poorly-reasoned, incorrect manglings of important ideas, dressed up as the next big thing...

For those who will say - ah but this is stage appropriate, don't be so mean to people who think this way, I have one statement: fallacious arguments are not the domain of any healthy stage, especially once one has developed the capacity to reason. There is a healthy version of the interaction between Ms. Taylor's experience and an interpretation that weaves together spirituality, science and philosophy that would represent what integral calls healthy Green - this however is not it.

Here's why:


ALTERED STATES & THEIR INTERPRETATION

1) The talk falls into the trap of conflating an altered state experience with an uncritical interpretation of that experience, without differentiating the two and creating a three strands of science set of well described links and hypotheses. Now, I know its a short talk, but this could be done in a more exciting, though grounded/conservative way, that would map out some very fertile territory for future inquiry, instead of jumping right into a very grandiose narrative about saving the world by choosing to be in your right brain as much as possible.

What i think is going on here is that Ms. Taylor has yet to integrate the experience of this radical altered state with her scientific/cognitive abilities. Understandable - it was a radically different state of mind than she had ever experienced. Furthermore, as the talk progresses it becomes apparent that Ms. Taylor is in a bit of an altered state on stage, this is captivating at first, but read as a little hysterical and manic on second viewing. again - no judgment or mean-ness here, this is just a subjective observation of her mental state. I mean the words "hysterical" and "manic" in their technical usage - not as some kind of ad hominem.

I have written at length here about the importance of recognizing the distance between altered state experiences and the conditioned interpretations that we are all prone to filter them through based on three factors:

1) The universal (with varying degrees of intensity) human proclivity toward not only experiencing altered states but also towards finding those altered states to some extent meaningful and significant.

2) The personal stage of development from which one
a) Interacts with or “co-creates “ the experience and
b) Interprets the experience – both based on one’s psychological profile.

3) The socio-cultural context within which the experience both
a) occurs in the first place and
b) Is then interpreted

You'll notice that Ms.Taylor does something that a lot of badly structured attempts at integrating science and mysticism do - she starts off with simple but good scientific information and then dives right into spiritual assertions without carrying over a similar kind of rigor or analysis. Notice the cadaverous human brain, the qualifications, the scientific background that make us take her seriously - but then as soon as she goes into the emotive, exciting, compelling and humorous discussion of her stroke experience, she starts using certain words without defining them via, unpacking them with, or linking them to, the brain science she is using as their support.

Unfortunately, the listener may get the impression that Ms Taylor's empirical objectivity carries over into her subjective and socially conditioned statements of interpretation and conclusion - lending them more than their deserved objective weight.

This means that even though she gives a very faithful and balanced account of her experience in the body of her talk - the inability to use her muscles, the inability to think, understand language, the presence of extreme pain and chaos etc - as well as the novelty, beauty, wonder, freedom of being in an expansive state, she still somehow manages to arrive at a conclusion in her talk that is unsatisfying.

That conclusion, that begins at around 15:30 is that we could "choose" to step to the right of the left hemispheres and live in peace and beauty. Observe how emotionally charged this idea is for her and how it becomes the central driving force toward her recovery.

Then, at around 16:50:

"So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. "

Nirvana. Spirit. Energy. Surrender. Not the choreographer of my life. One with all that is. My moment of transition. Planes of reality. Life force power of the universe.

All of these are words that carry emotive power - and that's fine, they are descriptors of a experience, and they also exist within a context of meaning - but what would do her cause a better service and make the talk more than a cool story that seems to bolster somewhat superficial spiritual ideas, would be if she did more of a step-by-step linking of what integral theory labels the Upper Left (UL) and Upper Right (UR) quadrants. it would also help to step back a little and look at the socially constructed (LL) phrases used above and bear in mind that these are non-empirical observations - which is fine - but they should be identified as such! Instead it all kinda blurs together in an undifferentiated way that could be mistaken for integration or holism, but alas is more of a fun mess..

In other words, how about: I was experiencing something that felt to me like what I had heard called Nirvana. How interesting that a stroke that limited the function of certain aspects of brain function would induce a state of spaciousness, freedom from fears and pre-occupations, wonder at my connection to the universe. Perhaps this has to do with such and such structure in the brain that I know from my background deals with such and such processing, which makes me wonder what a healthy version of this pathological side-effect might be and what would make that possible.... This would ground her interpretation instead of sling-shotting it into speculative metaphysics and emotive argument that stumbles into several naive pitfalls.

This leads to my second point:


CHOICE AND BRAIN STATES

2) Again somehow Ms. Taylor comes to the conclusion that we can "choose" to be in the right brain, and that being in the right brain is the answer to our problems and the prescription for peaceful Nirvana.

Really, this is laden with two fallacies. One is that the left brain is 'the problem," the other has to do with an overstating of the possibility of choice regarding states of consciousness. (Stages too - but I'll get into that in a moment..) Bear in mind she was thrust into this expereince by a stroke - no choice there...

This plays too easily into the approach to spirituality that, rather than encouraging an integration of cognition, emotions, creativity, embodied experience - a real embrace of all that we are, pushes what I call the "self-attacking" position that something, whether it is sex, or 'the ego," or as in this case, the left brain, or materialism, or emotional attachments, something about what and who we are is in the way of being free and enlightened, and if we could just get rid of that, overcome it, choose something else that would be the key!

This is a dualistic oversimplification of any serious process of self-transformation and it does us two forms of dis-service. First: it feeds the fantasy that there is a simple answer, a utopian prescription that we could all just "choose."

Second: because of the previous heady misconception - it serves to keep people in an unfortunate cycle of failing at the impossible (just choosing to be in the right brain, transcending the ego altogether, not having sexual desires, completely controlling my emotions) but holding onto the idea that its their fault and they aren't trying hard enough, setting strong enough intentions, being disciplined enough, surrendering to the guru enough, choosing deliberately enough to be "in love" and so on.. This cycle is basically a dead-end, even though we all go dancing merrily down it with a gleaming hopeful eyes and well-intentioned hearts.


BRAIN PATHOLOGY = ENLIGHTENED AWARENESS

3) The third problem here is the most glaringly obvious: the talk conflates brain injury with enlightenment. It conflates disorganized pathology with integrated development and then draws conclusions from one based on the other, again without creating good links a la some kind of quadrant analysis.

This mistake shoots itself in the foot, because the quadrant reductionism and the variation on the Pre/Trans Fallacy being enacted here allow one to easily arrive at additional poor conclusions, thus: maybe spiritual experiences are just brain pathology, or maybe what we call the healthy brain is in the way of being more spiritual. This doesn't do brain science or any kind of viable spirituality any favors whatsoever!

While a reading of contemporary neuroscience and its study of meditative states (a la Newberg) gives a solid set of links between areas of the brain that serve particular functions and the experience one has as those areas are "turned on or off " by meditation, nowhere does one find the kind of conflating that suggests that states of mental illness are identical to states of meditative absorption.

Differentiating the qualitative value of various altered states and what they do and don't mean is a crucial responsibility that this kind of research needs to be engaging.

(It's also unfortunate that she mentions her brother's schizophrenia and then leaves that loose end dangling while making a case for her brain disorder as a doorway into Nirvana - the implications are obvious and unfortunate - again they do neither meditators nor mentally ill people any favors... and leave the rest of us giddily confused on the matter.)

To quote Meister Eckhart " The madman is drowning in the same waters in which the holy man is swimming."

(I have gone into some depth and detail about this in the Kundalini Dragon post you can find on this blog.)


STATES vs STAGES

4) Altered states of consciousness are one thing, stages of development are another. We learned through the 60's and 70's (and had mapped out by Transpersonal Psychology) that one could experience meditative rapture, psychedelic ego-death, darshan from the great master, and the euphoria of mass demonstration or celebration and still return relatively unchanged to one's existing stage of development.

This niggling reality forced theorists to make a distinction between states and stages and try to make sense of which states were useful glimpses of higher stages and how they could then be translated into a developmental process that would turn the altered state into a permanent trait.

What the research clearly shows, is that one does not develop stagewise by wishing it so, by believing, by choosing, by magical intervention, or by one-off altered state explosions - one progresses through stages of development at the higher end of the spectrum by hard work, practice, self-inquiry, process, healing, study etc...

As inspiring as an altered state - or someone else's account/interpretation of their altered state may be as fuel for transformation - leaving out a map that actually engages the process of transformation renders the inspiration somewhat empty and lacking in direction.


IN CLOSING

Let me end by saying that I am immensely sympathetic to the message, the emotional tone, the intentions of this talk, and I have immense compassion for Ms. Taylor and her experience. At the same time, i think that identifying the popular fallacies that limit the healthy and differentiated integration of mind-body, brain/spirituality, stages and stages, science and mysticism, empiricism and idealism - and offering alternative lenses, is an important, grounding and forward-looking task.

It is the passion I share with Ms. Taylor for the subject that inspires this critique. May it be of service!

Riding the Kundalini Dragon: Integrating Altered States

It Begins

"Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the right stimulus, and at a touch they are there is all their completeness…

No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question…"

William James The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 388


With this quote from a book published in 1901 by a man whom many regard as the father of psychology, I would like to begin a consideration of both the importance and the trickiness of altered state experience and phenomena, be they energetic, psychological, physiological and/or spiritual.

(Note: I got so involved with the information/perspectives I wanted to share here that a more personal account will appear in the comments section below..)

For now let me just say that my journey began at a young age - I began meditating at 15, emulated my 60's idols by experimenting with psychedelics in an intentional way after reading Tim Leary and Ram Das at 18 while exploring minor rock stardom in South Africa, came to the USA and started yoga at 19. I chased the light of new Age peak experiences in my early 20's - travelled to India, spent time in the ashram with Osho sanyassins, sat with countless satsang teachers, tried hard to create my reality, kill my ego and become one with the universe while remembering my past-lives and putting out the intention to call in my soulmate.......

I ended up realizing that therapy was indispensable, that I was in fact using spiritual beliefs to avoid my deep emotions and the reality of suffering, put in many, many hours on the Holotropic Breathwork mat, went on intense meditation retreats, practiced hardcore yoga early in the morning for years, had my body and psyche ripped open by kamikaze bodyworkers, struggled to make sense of the combination of of light and shadow in my charismatic mentor figures and eventually differentiate from them - and over time developed my own approach to integrating and facilitating energetic and altered state process work via yoga, bodywork, dialog, dance and breathwork.

How then to unpack the power, beauty, terror, magic and wonder of altered states and Kundalini experiences?

I will start by putting my perspective in a context. Ken Wilber's Four Quadrant model from Integral Theory works nicely.

Four Quadrant Gloss






UR = Upper Right
UL = Upper Left
LR = Lower Right
LL = Lower Left


Chemistry and Brain States

We know that from an empirical point of view (UR, Objectivity) consciousness, and more specifically our state of consciousness is a function of brain states and biochemistry. Too little serotonin and one is depressed, too much dopamine and one is in the midst of a manic episode, scarring from head trauma can produce epilepsy, ingest just the right amount of LSD or mescaline and the folds in one’s trousers or the architecture of a rose (as Aldous Huxley famously described in The Doors of Perception) can become imponderably mysterious, beautiful, fascinating and spiritually rich. So too the sense of spaciousness, expansive loss of ego and connection to the cosmos one experiences in deep meditation can be tracked in relationship to brain function as in the recent work of Dr. Andrew Newberg:

"During meditation, people often feel a sense of no space. Scientists investigating the effect of the meditative state on Buddhist monk's brains have found that portions of the organ previously active become quiet, whilst pacified areas become stimulated. Using a brain imaging technique, Dr. Newberg and his team studied a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks as they meditated for approximately one hour. When they reached a transcendental high, they were asked to pull a kite string to their right, releasing an injection of a radioactive tracer. By injecting a tiny amount of radioactive marker into the bloodstream of a deep meditator, the scientists soon saw how the dye moved to active parts of the brain.

Later, once the subjects had finished meditating, the regions were imaged and the meditation state compared with the normal waking state. The scans provided remarkable clues about what goes on in the brain during meditation. "There was an increase in activity in the front part of the brain, the area that is activated when anyone focuses attention on a particular task," Dr Newberg explained. In addition, a notable decrease in activity in the back part of the brain, or parietal lobe, recognized as the area responsible for orientation, reinforced the general suggestion that meditation leads to a lack of spatial awareness.

Dr Newberg explained: "During meditation, people have a loss of the sense of self and frequently experience a sense of no space and time and that was exactly what we saw." The complex interaction between different areas of the brain also resembles the pattern of activity that occurs during other so-called spiritual or mystical experiences."

See here for some informative Q&A about Newberg’s work.


Experiential Awareness and Stage-Based Interpretation

In the subjective personal realm (UL), one’s state of consciousness, and particularly how one interprets those states can be discussed with regard to stages of psychological development, traumas (or complications in that developmental process), self-awareness, spiritual practices, education etc. Most significant here for me are the psychological, spiritual and cognitive lines of development.

I will go into the area of stages of development later, but as to spiritual practice, one of my favorite lines comes from New York Zen teacher Baker Roshi, who says “Enlightenment is an accident, but meditation makes you accident prone.”

In other words: the altered state of consciousness sought by the meditator and the stabilized stage of development in which that state is integrated are not guaranteed by meditation – but meditation does set up the conditions within which that process can occur.

Even more than meditation, we see an ever growing interest in yoga practice, especially because of the positive state change that it creates. While most beginning meditators have a good few years of difficult, boring, frustrating and confronting mental excercise ahead of them before states like the one's Newberg is describing start showing up for more than 5 or 10 seconds at a time, yoga is more predictable more quickly, given the specific stimulation and soothing of the nervous system, glands and brain and the circulatory effects of the physical practice.

I would argue that with specific regard to states of consciousness the UL and UR (or subjective awareness and objective biochemistry )are in an interwoven relationship that is almost impossible to separate. The changes in state that yoga and meditation produce are clearly rooted in physiological processes that involve glandular activity, the nervous system, areas of the brain etc – those processes depend upon an exercising of awareness that trains one in generating the physiological activities that drive the state change via either movement, breath, posture and intention/concentration.

Gopi Krishna’s famous initiation into kundalini is a perfect example. This was an ordinary man practicing meditation without a teacher who happened upon a powerful and harrowing experience of his own UR/UL relationship that led him to the conclusion that there is a biopsychic evolutionary principle dormant in the body. For more see his eloquent and powerful account in the classic Kundalini The Evolutionary Energy in Man.

(Please note that whenever I recommend this book I do so with a disclaimer that will follow further down the page. )

Here in the meantime is a short introduction to Krishna, as well as video of an excellent interview with him. It's worth your while to watch this and perhaps have it open in another window as you keep reading....

Regarding the UR/UL relationship, this line from the interview particularly stands out “Yoga was developed in India to make experiments on the brain.”

A man after Dr. Newberg’s own heart!


Mythic and Cultural Interpretive Overlay

Now on to the cultural context (LL) within which states of conscious arise, are conditioned and interpreted. Of course, both the UL&UR factors described above emerge (or fail to emerge) and are made sense of within a cultural (LL) framework. States of consciousness that are universally possible in human beings will be given very different kinds of support or repression, training and interpretation depending on the society in which they are experienced. It is an individual of rare brilliance, disposition and self-realized insight that can step back from their own cultural framework and see their spiritual/altered state experience on it's own terms and as something ultimately transcendent of that framework.

Notice how Gopi Krishna, whose defining experience happened in 1937, has an absolute clarity about the universally human nature of the revelations that arose for him. He expresses in the interview a (way ahead of his time) multi-cultural inclusivity, but we do still also hear his underlying Vedic philosophy and metaphysics.


Principle One: Consciousness and Physiology are Deeper (More Universal) to the Human Condition than Cultural Differences.

In support of the above principle, see this remarkable article by researcher, yogi, professor and psychotherapist, Dr. Stuart Sovatsky on the cross-cultural similars to Kundalini in which he notes that:

“Kundalini/pranic awakening and its cross-tradition similars—the spontaneous spinal rockings known in Judaism as davening and in Sufisim as zikr; the "taken-over" gyrations of gospel "holy ghost" shaking and dancing and charismatic/pentacostal "mani-festations"; the Dionysian "revel"; Quakerism’s and Shakerism's autonomic quaking and shaking; Tai Chi guided by chi itself; the shamanic trance-dance; Buddhism’s and Raja-Yoga’s effortless "straight back" (uju-kaya) meditation; the yogically derived ecstatic belly-dance and Flamenco; and even the full-bodied, spontaneous Reichian "reflex"—literally embody the spiritual path.”

Sovatsy too is pointing out the innate/endogenous nature of transformational processes in the mind-body matrix.

Social Infrastructure

Lastly (and mostly for symmetry’s sake) I will mention the LR quadrant. Suffice it to say that in the West we have almost no social infrastructure, religious or psychological for understanding and interpreting altered states. Religion has mostly become the domain of belief – with little room for direct experience and introspective/psychophysical practices of the sort that engage initiatory energetic experiences. Psychology with regard to altered states remains mostly the domain of psychiatric intervention and homogenization of consciousness. Notable exceptions are the budding yoga/ecstatic dance/meditation communities – they are doing good work, but there is a lot more to be done with regard to initiating, integrating and contextualizing authentic, discerning stage-wise growth.

I would however be seriously remiss not to mention the work of Stuart Sovastky, Lee Sannella and Stan Grof in creating clinical resources for those going through intense psychophysical (kundalini) process. See here for some interesting info on that...

What seems most important in the creation of intelligent and supportive LR infrastructure/institutions is an integration of both the mind-body spiritual/energetic awareness of what may be occurring for the individual and it’s possible value – as well as the cold-eyed realism of DSM-based psychological assessment. After all, in the words of Meister Eckhart “ The madman is drowning in the same waters that the Holy man swims in…”

In other words a good starting point is this: all kundalini is not psychosis and all mental illness is not kundalini.


Bless This Dragon and All Who Ride Her

So, what is Kundalini?

Well I want to begin by putting this word where I feel it belongs. In India, Kundalini is the name of a mythic serpent goddess, said to reside at the base of the spine – to be awakened from her slumber by yogic practice or spiritual grace. On awakening she moves through the chakras, or major energy centers of the body, cleansing them of physical and emotional blocks and initiating a powerful psycho-spiritual awareness process.

I think it is very important to bear in mind that “kundalini” is one culture-bound signifier for an experience that transcends culture. Also we should bear in mind that mythic symbols always lose a great deal of their potency when interpreted literally – especially with any kind of exotic idealized projection of magic onto another culture or time.

The experience signified by the word “kundalini” – as pre-eminent scholar on the subject , Stuart Sovatsy indicates above, is common to many cultures and goes by many names.


Principle Two: Names and Beliefs are Always Secondary to Practice and Direct Initiatory Experience.

In my own study, personal experience and clinical practice, I have observed phenomena that have led me to the conclusion that the serpentine imagery invoked by both the Kundalini mythology and the caduceus/Hermetic symbology refers to an innate physical process in which the body makes spontaneous movements that :

a) at their most basic level of expression release tension and stress,
b) as they are expressed more deeply bring deeply held emotions to the surface, and
c) as the stress, trauma and conflict get processed ultimately express as an ecstatic and pleasurable full-bodied fluid aliveness.

These movements are called “kriyas” in the yogic tradition, the “reflex” or the “orgasm reflex” in Reichian body-based psychology, “unwinding” in Craniosacral therapy, and are said to relate to “primary process” in Primal Therapy. They are also seen in Network Chiropractic, Shiatsu, Ecstatic Dance and Holotropic Breathwork. The Kalahari Bushmen in Southern Africa have an all-night dance ritual in which certain participants will begin to shake and experience a burning in their spine which they will then be able to share with others in the group via a healing laying on of hands.

The awakening of energy and softening of what Reich called the "body armor" or chronic muscular tensions has implications for every aspect of our psychological and physical functioning - instinctive, sexual, emotional, creative, spiritual etc...

My perspective is that the UL experience signfied by the words chakra, shushumna and kundalini respectively have UR correlates in the nerve plexi that branch off the spinal chord, the dural tissue that surrounds the brain and spinal cord, and the biopscyhic life force energy that is running body and mind.

The video that follows down the page will illustrate how I interact with this reality on a daily basis. What you will not see is the powerful opening into the unconscious and the ensuing psychospiritual process that can also emerge.

Somatic Experiencing creator Peter Levine is a Phd. Biologist who has done fascinating research on the way animals release intense nervous system activation after life-threatening situations by laying down and surrendering to full-bodied release that looks like they are just vigorously “shaking it off” but when the videotape is slowed down it reveals sequences of movement that look like running and biting, fleeing and fighting. The nervous and glandular energy aroused to sustain the threat to survival has been discharged. Levine also teaches that a natural nervous system homeostasis that cycles between tension and release, resource and trauma can be re-accessed and utilized to allow managable and integratable processing of unresolved intense stress that still lurks in our physiology.

So breath, touch, movement, emotional process, all can serve as an entry point into this altered state in which the mind-body system processes, releases, re-enlivens and rebalances itself. In my work I use yoga, dance, breathwork and hands-on bodywork as doorways into this powerful process. The novel and revelatory experience of energy can serve as a resource, as can elements like touch, breath, sensation, music, trust etc...

To learn more about my work see my 8 CD set of lectures and experiential classes: Radical Transformation: A Map to Mind-Body Ecstasy.

To experience my work come on a Transformation Retreat.

In the video below, I, and some close friends from my bodywork and yoga world use breath and touch to release stress and tension – and enter an ecstatic state. In a more formal healing session this work would go on longer and start to access both emotional process and physical structural shifts. Music at the end is by my friend Jesse Hozney from his CD Music for mass Transit. Unfortunately can't find info on the main track - let me know if you recognize it....


Open Sky Bodywork




If you haven’t seen energetic process like this before, it will usually bump right up against the cultural taboos we all carry- taboos about the body, vulnerability, touch and sexuality. Think of the images you are seeing as illustrating the awakening of an embodied ecstatic state of consciousness that is not limited by the shame that those taboos enforce. We are conditioned to live in a very limited framework that does not allow for very much emotional honesty, pleasure, open-ness or vulnerability – and yet it is in the discovery and development of our capacity for precisely those things that we become more fully ourselves and that we awaken to authentic and grounded spirituality.

I would hazard a guess that it is this kind of ecstatic group ritual space that the Christians in ancient Europe (and wherever else they colonized) were so offended by and branded as Satanic or related to witchcraft. In the article above Sovatsky mentions both the pre-Patanjali ecstatic Tantras of ancient India as well as the Dionysian revels of ancient Greece. It should however be noted that the naturally occurrance of energetic process in ancient cultures does not mean that their interpretation or integration benefited from the contemporary perspectives (Integral analysis, mind-body integration, depth psychology, modern science, postmodern insights etc..) we can now bring to bear! The way lies ahead, not behind us...


Breathwork

My initial experiences of energetic unwinding/kundalini came through Holotropic Breathwork, an experiential therapy that involves deep sustained breathing, pre-programmed evocative music and the occasional application of physical bodywork techniques.

The work (like any truly effective practice or therapy) softens the barrier between the conscious and the unconscious mind, and allows physical tensions, repressed emotions, memories, longings and insights to emerge into awareness and be processed in an experiential, embodied way. It produces a profoundly altered state of consciousness in which instinctive animalistic body states, infantile and childhood memories and feelings, unacknowledged truths and deeply spiritual capacities can and do all arise. As this process unfolds it is standard to go through the unwinding/kundalini processes I have been describing.

Entheogens

One of the most striking, perplexing and undeniable stimuli toward altered states has to be psychedelic or entheogenic sacraments.

For the sake of brevity, this piece of writing can only gesture toward all the different reference points I am wanting to establish, so for now I will just say that the use of plant medicines that produce altered states is something that anthropologists have found to be ubiquitous and widespread, from Mesoamerica to Africa to India to Ancient Greece, to Egypt and Sumeria, to the Amazon Rainforest to Mexico to Siberia. For more on this a good starting point is the book Persephone’s Quest by R. Gordon Wasson et al.

There is considerable evidence and highly educated guesswork that suggests that humanity’s interactions with potent psychoactive plants and fungi may have played a major part not only in the development of culture, mythology and spirituality/religion, but also in evolution itself. For more on this see references in Joseph Campbell as well as the more explicit work of ethnobotanist Terrence McKenna and writers like James Arthur, Daniel Merkur, Robert Forte and pre-eminent scholar of world religion Huston Smith.

Stan Grof – called by Ken Wilber the world’s greatest living psychologist, spent his early years doing extensive clinical research on the psycho-spiritual implications of altered states and specifically of the information revealed via psychedelics. He later developed Holotropic Breathwork as an alternative approach when psychedelics were outlawed.

Integration

Personally, seeking out and then learning how to integrate altered states has been a central thread in my life story as an adult. From early experiences with psychedelics (like Jack Kornfield, Stan Grof, Ram Das and most of my counter-culture spiritual heroes) to meditation retreats, psychotherapy, bodywork, holotropic breathwork and yoga, I have found that altered states present two very difficult problems with regard to integration:

Principle Three: States and Stages Are Not the Same Thing.

In the altered state the barrier between the conscious and the unconscious mind becomes more permeable – creativity blossoms, mythic archetypes emerge, long hidden emotions and memories arise and potential spiritual capacities like compassion, insight, and equanimity may be experienced.

See Stan Grof for more on this, but also Abraham Maslow, particularly his idea of “self-actualizers “ who guide their lives by their “peak experiences.”

What Transpersonal Psychology has grown to understand in the last 40 years is that entry into a peak altered state, while convincing and authentic at the time is not the equivalent of having reached the stage of development to which the state is alluding.

In other words a vision of the mountain top doesn’t mean you don’t still have to start climbing from the bottom when the vision fades...

Principle Four: While Altered States are Available to Everyone Regardless of their Stage of Development, One’s Interpretation of the Altered State will be Entirely Dependent on One’s Psychograph (or combined developmental profile.)


In other words: One’s general stage of development will determine how one interprets the altered state once they are back in their steady state. So the same experiential territory might be interpreted completely differently by someone with a literalist faith in mythic religion, as opposed to someone who has done a lot of psychological work, as opposed to someone who is very invested in New Age metaphysics, or someone who has a background in Adveita Vedanta. The tricky part is that because the (primary) altered state is so convincing, our (secondary) interpretive lens will be lent an often unwarranted authority….

This is a very difficult trap to side-step - and then proceed with as grounded and accurate an interpretation as is possible...

So integration has to include perhaps both the attempt to step back and look at the experience with some degree of objectivity, as well as consulting with guides or “community of the adequate” members whom we trust and respect. This will help put altered state work squarely in the necessary "three strands of science realm."

Integration, as well as even being able to manage altered states is also a function of something I call the “trauma/resource ratio.” Each of us has a different ratio between overwhelming traumatic occurrences and resources that support groundedness, self-esteem, compassion, courage etc…This is not something we choose but is the product of the complex relationships between genetics, life experience, childhood, gifts and abilities we have been able to develop etc… The trauma/resource ration will determine how well we are able to manage and integrate altered states of consciousness and energetic process.

Difficulty in managing and/or integrating altered states and energetic process can show up as:

* Ungroundedness or Dissociation
* Regressive Worldview/Belief System
* Overwhelming/Out of Control Physiological Symptoms
* Psychotic Delusions
* Extreme Narcissistic Inflation
* Obsessive Chasing of the Peak State
* Rationalization/Denial of Reality in Favor of "Other Realms"
* PTSD
* Complete Lack of Self-Care Resources

(Sidenote: Cults and toxic Gurus rely on these elements to keep people disempowered and "hooked in".)

Although we do not choose the trauma/resource ratio we start with, we can choose to become authentically aware of our situation and do the crucial work to cultivate resources while finding safe spaces to process trauma. At various stages in one's cycle it is often necessary to step away from practices that evoke energetic proces and/or altered states and spend some time doing the crucial but unglamorous work of grounding, soothing, re-orienting and integrating.

In Closing


I said earlier that I always recommended Gopi Krishna's classic book on Kundalini with a disclaimer/caveat. the reason for this is that Krishn'as experience as recounted in the book is terrifying and somewhat psychotic in places and I have my own theory regarding this aspect of the book.

My observations:

* He had no physical practice to keep him grounded and facilitate processing the powerful energy that was washing though him.
* (In predictably culturally influenced ways) He reveals a very puritanical attitude toward sexuality and
* A very stoic attitude toward emotions. ( So neither his sexuality nor his emotions were outlets for expression, release and relief - they were held in dualistic regard as not being sacred or part of the process. Danger!)
* He felt he had to hide his experience from others. ( A set-up for deepening alienation and paranoia.)
* He had no guidance and no community.

This is a perfect set-up for a pretty bumpy ride. Lots of repression and very little resource - his journey really is very traumatic. That said it is still an eloquent and powerful account of energetic initiation and deep self-realization.

In contrast and by way of conclusion i want to reiterate that energetic process and altered states are powerful, universal human experiences that can, under the right conditions, be utilized responsibly, beautifully and in ways that create not only exciting experiences but also genuine stage-wise growth. This possibility is well-served by:

* An Integral 4 quadrant framework.
* Active cultivation of resource.
* Safe space for processing trauma.
* Responsble, knowledgable and experienced teachers/guides/healers
* Transformational community
* Physical practices that move energy.
* Shadow work that allows for deep emotional process.
* Three strands of science type methodology.
* Continuing education and practice.

These combine well with the four principles I suggested through the piece, and which I will reiterate here:

* Consciousness and Physiology are Deeper (More Universal) to the Human Condition than Cultural Differences.
* Names and Beliefs are Always Secondary to Practice and Direct Initiatory Experience.
* States and Stages Are Not the Same Thing.
* While Altered States are Available to Everyone Regardless of their Stage of Development, One’s Interpretation of the Altered State will be Entirely Dependent on One’s Psychograph.

Thanks for your time!
Namaste
~Julian


Reading/Media List:

As listed above, my CD set Radical Transformation: A Map to Mind-Body Ecstasy
Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man Gopi Krishna
Peter Levine Waking The Tiger
Ken Wilber Collected Works Volume Four: Integral Psychology & Transformations of Consciousnesss
Stan and Christina Grof The Stormy Search for the Self
Alexander Lowen Bioenergetics
Donald Kalsched The Inner World of Trauma

Science & The Sacred: Mirrors of Compassion

While teaching a workshop recently, I tried something I had never done before: I demonstrated a sequence without speaking a word. In the hushed movement of our shared breath, the participants observed my modified sun salutation and organized themselves into pairs to take turns witnessing one another. I was hoping to engage a recently identified capacity of the brain that we use all the time, called the mirror neuron system. Discovered by accident when researchers noticed that the same neurons in a macaque monkeys’ brain fired when the monkey reached for food, as when the monkey saw a researcher reach for food, mirror neurons have since been the subject of much study and speculation. Whether we’re considering the brains of macaques or humans, certain brain cells fire as if we were performing the same movements we see in others – even when we are completely still.

The breakthrough technology of functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) – which allows us to track the areas of the brain that are active, while actually engaged in tasks or activities, has found a more complex mirror neuron system in human beings, as compared to the simple mirror neurons in the macaque example. The application of mirror neurons in rehabilitating injuries is being studied, since a person could watch someone else performing a physical task and engage the brain function. There may also be profound spiritual implications. In my workshop exercise, I wanted to facilitate a shift out of the realm of verbal instruction and into this more immediate transmission of mind-body information; this wasn’t just monkey-see, monkey-do – I had an additional, deeper intention.

It turns out that some theorists (amongst them Stephanie Preston and Frans de Waal) believe the mirror neuron system may be involved in how we feel empathy, which is the capacity to intuit someone else’s feelings and imagine them as our own. It is the case that there are mirror neurons for emotions as well as for movement. Studies by Christian Keysers at the Social Brain Lab in the Netherlands show a correlation between experiencing more emotional empathy and having a high degree of activity in the movement mirror neurons. This suggests that the two systems may be linked.

Click here to read the rest of this post at layogamagazine.com

Toward a 21st Century Model of Healing

Toward a 21st Century Model of Healing
Integrating Yoga, Bodywork, Neuroscience and Somatic Psychology

* Weaving The Strands

In my recent Introduction to Open Sky Bodywork seminar, the pertinent question was raised as to what we mean by the word "healing" and if indeed the sometimes dramatic and powerful experiences that people can have on the massage table can be designated as "healing." We didn't have time on the day to really get into this important and juicy conversation, so I wanted to take a little time right now to share some of my thoughts on the matter.

There are three schools of thought I want to reference in pointing out what I think are substantive claims of healing:

1. The Somatic Experiencing work of biologist Peter Levine.
2. The broad understanding of the post-Reichian body-based psychologists. (That’s Reich, not Reiki in case you’re wondering!)
3. The rapidly advancing discipline of Neuroscience or brain research.

As we will see these three converging areas of inquiry have significant overlap with one-another as well as with yoga and bodywork.

* The Physiological Self (Nervous System)

Peter Levine created his physiology-based trauma healing model because as a biologist he observed that animals in the wild handled trauma differently than did contemporary humans. After surviving a life threatening interaction, like being hunted as prey, getting into a territorial fight or being scared by a helicopter that carried biologists who were tagging the animal for conservation research – he noticed that the animal would go through a physiological discharge of the “energy” that had been mobilized via the secretion of adrenaline, autonomic nervous system activation, increased heart rate, blood rushing to the fight or flight muscles etc.

To do this, when safe again the creature would lie down, shake and tremble. Slowed-down videotape of their movements revealed reveal that their bodies were going through the motions of running, biting, clawing – in other words their systems were enacting the instinctive fight and flight responses in order to complete the process begun by the activation. Even though we still have the same instinctive and physiological responses to stressful situations, for the most part human beings no longer allow this process – a kind of physiological re-set, to occur.

Levine's Somatic Experiencing techniques are a meditative body-based way of accessing this physiological intelligence and allowing for the manageable discharge of this pent up energy. His observation of the physical process that animals go through is, as you will see as we continue, consistent with data from other fields and with some of what we are working with in Open Sky Bodywork. A central idea from Levine that I have borrowed is that of identifying "resources" in one's experience that help create a sense of safety, grounding, compassion and empowerment - and using these (in the form of images, words, colors etc) as a way to mediate the energy discharge associated with trauma or overwhelming experience/feelings.

* The De-Armored Self (Musculature)

Wilhelm Reich was a student of Sigmund Freud. What many forget is that Freud was himself a “nerve doctor” – and that the foundations of his psychoanalytic approach came from his theorizing about how patients expressed their inner lives through their physical symptoms of anxiety, trauma, grief and so on. Rather than staying with the “talking cure,” Freud's student, Reich began mirroring his patients physical postures back to them as they talked about their thoughts, feelings and experiences – and then experimented with using his hands to work on the muscles where he found “emotional knots.” Reich later also incorporated breathing exercises and physical movements into his hands-on approach to addressing the psyche through the body. Independent of input from any other traditions, Reich then observed something that we yogis/healers would discuss in terms of the words “prana,” “chi” or “energy.” (Of course we should note that in the current “spiritual” climate, most of what gets paid lip-service re: energy in a very vague way has very little to do with the kind of powerful, authentic and process-oriented reality being discussed.)

Reich found that when people released layers of muscular tension (which he called “body armoring”) and the often associated deep feelings, they would experience “streaming” sensations – as they went still further their bodies would express something he called “the reflex.”

Reich observed that the more people processed through their emotional repression, got in touch with their bodies and released their armoring, the more available they would be to honest vulnerability, authentic intimacy and full-bodied sexual experience in their personal relations. Because of this powerful connection between embodied feeling and sexual surrender he sometimes also called the reflex – the “orgasm reflex.” This wave like motion that included the whole body in a powerful and pleasurable experience of flow. Of course this movement would be impeded by body-armoring and by one’s resistance to certain core emotions or the unprocessed trauma.

This is of course related to the yogic description of kundalini.

* The Neuronal Self (Brain)

Neuroscience has been a most exciting exploding field of inquiry for the last 20 years or so. New innovations in technology have allowed us to photograph the activity of the brain while it is working – in real time as people are engaged in all manner of experiences, including emotions, learning and the profoundly heightened states experienced by long term meditators.

In addition, the last 10 years has given us the science of neuroplasticity – a new understanding of the “plastic” nature of the brain. It was thought for much of the 20th century that much more of the brain was hard-wired than is actually the case. Neuroscience research has shown that the brain is a lot more fluid in it’s neural pathways than previously imagined. With regard to spiritual practice and experience of healing states this is particularly fascinating and pertinent.

Let’s not jump the gun here – neuroplasticity does not imply that everything is absolutely change-able, or change-able in the blink of an eye, that’s a fantasy. Nor does neuroplasticity mean (as some like to claim)we can magically overcome the laws of physics just by willing it so - sorry! But it does tell us, for example, that the grieving process has to do with how we shed neural associative pathways and literally “let go” of old emotional investments. A key principle in this field is that “neurons that fire together wire together,” also that when the reward system is engaged the new wiring is that much stronger. The reward system is that combination of brain and endocrine (glandular) function that generates pleasurable feelings – elation, bliss, ecstasy etc…

What does this mean in practical terms? Well, if we think of transformational disciplines as being about rerouting brain activity, and breaking ingrained patterns – there is enough evidence now to be support the hypothesis that practices which take us into heightened states of consciousness, allow for release of physical/emotional tension and create feelings of well-being may deliver literal transformation and quantifiable healing. Also, that repeated entry into heightened states from the subtle to the ecstatic, may well be a means of positively transforming brain function.

Think of it this way – the negative experiences and traumas in our lives have created loops of association and left traces of un-integrated memories in our brains and nervous systems. Experiential practice, handled in the right way may be able to make us more conscious of those patterns and their meaning and allow for retraining of the neural pathways and hence our responses to, and experience of, our lives. This is not as simple as just magically “believing” the idea or doing some quick-fix ritual – it takes time and involves not only good guidance, but a lot of discipline, patience, compassion and courage. However, the implications are both encouraging and validating of experiences that I and many others have had of Open Sky Bodywork, yoga, meditation and other approaches like cranio-sacral therapy and holotropic breathwork.

To return to Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing work for a moment – one of the key dynamic principles in this model is the interplay between the “trauma vortex” and the feelings of being “resourced.” Training our physiology to have access to states of feeling resourced is one of the central aspects of this work. The question here is: What connects you to feeling safe, grounded, supported, in touch with beauty, love, gratitude, pleasure etc?

Sensations, images, places, people can all serve as resources – and the resources are the support system that allows for the manageable discharge of the pent up energy that gets “triggered” when we are confronted with situations that remind us unconsciously of the unresolved events or experiences.

One last observation from neuroscience that is also significant has to do with how we encode memory in the brain. When we are under the extreme stress of traumatic experience a part of the brain called the hippocampus gets shut down by the stress chemicals. The hippocampus is associated with encoding details of the memory like time and place and the sense of self in midst of it. “I was 10 years old, it was on the way home from school and the bully threw a stone at me.”

Another part of the brain – the amygdala encodes memory at a more primitive level – perceptions, raw emotions, without any time, place or sense-of-self information. Usually (after 18 months of age) the two work together in our memory system, but in the face of unbearable or overwhelming experience the hippocampus is shut down and the memory is only encoded at this raw, primal amygdala level.

This means that when associations trigger the unresolved scary or painful memory we often feel as if it is happening in the present. Think of the Iraq veteran who hears a car backfire outside the house and goes into a classic PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) response in which he hides under the bed for hours holding the broomstick as if it were a rifle. Healing involves integrating hippocampus and amygdala function so that those memories and their feelings and instinctive responses can be experienced, discharged, and contextualized - as we will see in a moment.

Luckily most of us do not have trauma that severe, but all of us have unresolved experiences and feelings – its just part of being human. Does this make us “broken?” No, not at all, it just mean that part of any spiritual path should include ways of addressing this unresolved material so as to help us grow, heal and feel more integrated.

The third level of the memory system has to do with neo-cortex functioning that allows us to make sense of our experience and weave it into the narrative of our lives. At this level, we interpret meaning and the memory is integrated as part of our long term identity, understood as belonging to a certain time and place, playing a role in shaping who we are, and as something we are either relatively OK with or still working out.

So the idea here is of a three stage process of memory in the brain that can be derailed by unbearable experience that we do not have the resources to manage. Healing in this context has to do with integrating those three stages or levels - so that we can make sense of our life experiences and understand the narrative of our lives (using the neo-cortex), locate the memory of the experience in time and place with a sense of self (using the hippocampus) and discharge the intense activation/trigger response (caused by the amygdala.)

My sense is that this i what happens when any transformational experience is truly effective - be it a psychotherapy appointment, deep meditation, yoga class, breathwork, ecstatic dance experience or Open Sky Bodywork session. Of course all of these different ways-in will have their own variables and flavor, and healing/integration is not the only thing going on - there may also be moments that are filled with the light of joy, playfulness, pleasure, relaxation, beauty, love and peace. However, approaches that intelligently make space for the shadow-work of deep healing paradoxically also open up space for more light - and for that light to be more grounded in the reality of being human.

* Getting Grounded In The Wild (Integration of East and) West

Given the above schools of thought I think we may now be ready to discuss what I mean when I refer to Open Sky Bodywork as an approach to healing.

Most often in more alternative/holistic/spiritual circles the word "healing" has one of two connotations, one pretty sublime and one fairly ridiculous! The sublime connotation has to do with entering a state of very deep relaxation, feeling cared for, safe - and by the end of the session, de-stressed. This is really nice. On the other hand, the ridiculous connotation runs the gamut from the “removal” of supposed alien implants to people claiming to heal traumas or "clear stuck energy" using everything from magic spells to supposed “quantum technologies” (don’t get me started on the ubiquitous and willful misinterpretation of quantum physics to back up nonsensical beliefs!) to “channeled spirit guides," wood sprites, still more aliens, to - well you get the idea...

This is most often fairly innocuous, well-meaning silliness with perhaps some beneficial relaxation. The tricky part is that these more exotic healing varietals usually require buying into some pretty far-fetched beliefs about the nature of the body, mind, life, hell - the entire universe itself! This presents difficulties in terms of being a well-integrated, grounded, emotionally honest human being - something I think any effective healing or practice-oriented modality should have as it's crucible.

I should quickly point out that the approach I am sharing in my yoga trainings, bodywork seminars and ongoing public workshops can be prone to it's own confusion. Start throwing around words like “energy” and “healing,” and you are bound to run into some pretty wild and wooly associations and beliefs.

The experience is often of pretty fascinating heightened states of consciousness, our bodies go through spontaneous motions understood in various traditions as "somato-psychic release," "unwinding," "kriyas," "kundalini," or "the reflex" - for now let's just call it energetic process. But that's not enough - let's define the term as referring to the release of pent up tension in the body. Why use the word "energy?" Because in the felt experience of this kind of process there is heat, tingling, trembling and often an outpouring of emotion - it's a global experience of the body and mind that involves the nervous and endocrine systems and the brain in a very powerful innate response that is common to multiple cultures and traditions throughout human history.

The important question for a 21st century model is this: what is the common element in all of these methods/traditions? The answer of course is the human body and mind. It is not necessary to buy into any otherworldly supernatural or fanciful metaphysical beliefs to inquire into intellectually and embrace experientially the process I am describing and that we were exploring in the workshop. In fact those kinds of speculative, ungrounded beliefs can actually obstruct both the healing/awakening process and our understanding of it.

Myths, metaphors and symbols are by definition non-literal ways of representing experience and ideas. This is why poetry can so powerfully express what cannot otherwise be directly spoken. Think of the symbols I am about to reference as a kind of poetry that seeks to describe an innate human experience. The cultural context and style of the symbols will always be an expression of the given time and place, but the essential experience being represented is available to us now – and should not be confused with a superstitious literal “belief” in the cultural baggage that may also come with the poetry.

The caduceus symbol still used today by the American Medical Association, and seen in yogic, Egyptian, hermetic and alchemical iconography may be a remnant of this kind of experience being prevalent in esoteric traditions. The kundalini serpent goddess said to move through the spine of the yogic initiate, cleansing each chakra level of the body and mind as it moved is, like all mythic symbols, indicative of an actual (but not literal) experiential process. In other words the experience is real - but the serpent goddess is symbolic of the experience. How we then make sense of the experience is another question I will deal with in a moment.

The yogis chose serpents as the symbol of this energetic process because of their undulating motion - a motion me see mimicked in belly-dancing, echoed in love-making, a movement that has it's genesis in the spermatozoan swimming toward the ovum and even deeper than that in the movement of subatomic particles.

The human body is a pulsating, undulating organism. Think heartbeat, blood flow, the peristalsis of digestion, the contractions of orgasm, the movement of cerebrospinal fluid around the brain and spinal cord. When we are "moved" by emotion we tremble, shudder, giggle, leap and sometimes fall over – sometimes we dance or run or engage in the precisely controlled movement of playing a musical instrument to express those feelings.

Indeed, the experience of emotion is a physical event in the body involving blood, hormones, neurotransmitters, nerves, muscles and the brain itself. A simple way of thinking about it is this: the more contraction around any given experience or feeling we have the more we restrict this free flowing, undulating process from doing what it needs to do.

*Holy Trinity

The human brain can be divided into three portions, each a product of the evolutionary process. First the reptilian brain - responsible for instincts and impulses it is the oldest and most primitive part of the brain. Next comes the limbic brain, common only to mammals - it is what gives creatures like dogs, cats, monkeys, dolphins and humans our emotional intelligence. No mater how much you dote on your pet lizard she is quite simply never going to bond with you and be attuned to your moods in the ways exhibited by a Labrador. Next comes the neo-cortex - the most recently evolved brain structure, largest in humans and responsible for all the higher brain functions we associate with very intelligent mammals.

The neo-cortex makes possible poetry, architecture, music, this piece of writing, the computer you are reading it on, the fact that none of us died of smallpox, because a vacine was discovered – we could go on and on. But it has one interesting downside: the neo-cortex has the power to over-ride the limbic emotional responses (resulting in emotional repression) and the reptilian instinctive responses (resulting in the blocking of the discharge Peter Levine observed in other animals.)

Of course the ability to over-ride instinctive impulses and emotional reactions is not a bad thing! It is part of our evolving intelligence that has enabled us to live in peaceful societies, follow laws and consider the rational details of a situation or the perspective of another in situations where we might otherwise lash out violently or cling to a irrational emotional interpretation. So the way forward has to do with a healthy integration of our emotional, instinctive, rational and creative/imaginative faculties.

One of the central challenges lies in continuing to differentiate the inner and outer worlds so that we can understand more clearly the relationships between the two. This has not been done at all well by old world religion or new age spirituality – nor has narrow science done us any favors in this regard. But I will save that theme for a chapter I am currently working on for my book: The Scientist and The Sage.

* Open Sky Bodywork (click for video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNI2M89_xJg



The approach I have developed over the last 12 years integrates the above information with several key elements:

1. Hands-on techniques that both generate energy in the system and evoke heightened states of consciousness.
2. An understanding of the structural anatomy of the body.
3. A deep respect for the vulnerability and complexity of holding space for deepening awareness and profound healing, that includes bringing cognitive awareness to the process and exploring meaning and biographical narrative via dialog.
4. Working with a set of specific “high-charge” muscles that tend to allow entry into mind-body energetic/emotional process.
5. Finding ways to weave the “resourcing” aspects of the experience – pleasure, beauty, safety, novelty etc into the aspects that have to do with integrating previously unresolved feelings and traumatic moments that may be very vulnerable.
6. Exploring mind-body relationships regarding chronic tension and pain syndromes.
7. Educating clients and students about the powerful and beautiful possibilities of an integrated and effective 21st century approach to spiritual practice and mind-body healing/personal growth.

Over the years I have been privileged to support and bear witness to:

a) The reduction or healing of chronic pain syndromes.
b) The healing of deep emotional trauma in ways that created improved well-being and enjoyment of life.
c) The healing of sexual traumas in ways that freed up a previously fearful or inhibited relationship to the body, pleasure and intimacy.
d) The return to healthy menstrual cycle and ensuing pregnancy after years of frustration.
e) The relinquishing of long-held defensive belief systems that perpetuated dissociation, emotional blunting, self-blame and an unrealistic relationship to both inner and outer life.
f) The beautiful initiation into the further possibilities of embodied ecstasy, self love and re-sacralizing of the real world and one’s actual life.

*How does this happen?

I am of course not 100% sure – and I am excited to do a more in-depth empirical study, but here is what I think:

By engaging in our own ongoing dedicated, substantive practices we experientially cover the territory of mind-body process in our own lives and continue developing discernment, compassion, insight and our own integration.

By creating sacred safe space for others and relating to their bodies and minds with respect, kindness and curiosity, we open up the possibility for healing.

By enacting a grounded context with regard to the reality of suffering, the importance of authentic emotions and the healthy raised eyebrow toward dissociated beliefs we encourage healthy integration, grown-up spirituality, and genuine self-compassion.

By using asana, breath, touch, music, and any other environmental elements we start to activate energy and create a shift into heightened states of consciousness. Innate mechanisms in the brain, nervous and myo-fascial systems then emerge as we enter into mind-body process. We can guide this process by working with the high charge points and see how it relates to the structure of the body and places where chronic tension is causing pain – often there are underlying emotions and/or traumas implicated in these relationships. We can also respond in the moment to the process in a myriad of ways that generate feelings of well-being, safety, support etc. This helps smooth out the process and makes what was unmanageable before, manageable now. Which in a way might be a definition of “healing.”

Of course, how I do this on a daily basis may take a while to share, but hopefully this overview gives a sense of what the territory I am excited to share with you looks like!

Coming up:

June 11: Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind: A workshop with Hala Khouri & Julian Walker

August 29 - September 13 & November 3 - 17: Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind: 200 Hr Teacher Training Transformational Intensive

September 24 & 25: Touch, Energy & Healing Workshop

October 9 - 14: Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind Retreat at Esalen

November 3 - 6: Transformation Retreat to Ojai

Click here to learn more!

http://www.julianwalkeryoga.com for more info

Recommended reading:
Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine
Bioenergetics by Alexander Lowen
The Neurobiology of We by Dan Siegel
The Stormy Search for the Self by Stan and Christina Grof
The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge
Quantum Questions by Ken Wilber


That’s all for now,

Namaste
~Julian