Alternative POIS Forum

 
17'correctness'. Reich called this full, free breath the 'orgasm reflex'; by definition, a reflex issomething which bypasses conscious control.Full, free breathing is not a state, but a direction: we can always breathe more or less than weare doing at the moment. Exploring what happens as we try to alter or increase our breath - orrather, to stop holding it back and distorting it - is a direct route to the heart of therapy,involving us in a long term project of melting armour in all parts of our body, all aspects of our character. When we find ourselves, for a while, breathing very freely, we experience allsorts of strange and pleasurable sensations in our bodyminds, an opportunity to directlyperceive the flow of life energy in ourselves, which Reich called 'streaming'.The flow of Orgone is immediately experienced as pleasure; its blocking as unpleasure.But pleasure, for most people, is very often bound up with anxiety. It makes the 'Spastic I' feelthat it is losing its identity; it brings back bodymind memories of childhood situations whereour pleasure was frustrated, together with the associated feelings of grief, fear and rage. If ourfirst reaction to pleasure beyond 'a certain limit is
no
rather than
 yes
, then our wires needuncrossing. We need to unpeel, layer by layer, the different negative feelings that have cometo overlay our innately joyful, playful response to energy flow.But it's plain too that making love isn't
vital
to being in a good state (as Reich seems to say itis). There are many people, for example, who are celibate but who use meditation or otherbodymind disciplines to keep themselves soft and clear. It's also
very
plain - as Reich waswell aware - that sexual activity as such is no measure of health or pleasure - frantic fuckingcan be precisely an avoidance of surrender.So if you don't seek orgasmic surrender, perhaps the best question is 'Why not?' Some reasonsare better than others. A long term relationship may go through effectively 'asexual' phases -and yet both partners feel it would be destructive to look for sexual satisfaction elsewhere.Also. sex and sexuality in our culture carry a tremendous weight of
 political
meanings whichmake it hard to simply follow our feelings - our feelings may be contradictory. Above all,heterosexual love - and therefore, homosexual love in a hetero society - is intimately boundup with power and patriarchy. We'll come back to these matters in Chapters 6 and 9; for now,we just want to say that because of this political charge, sexual surrender becomes even morefrightening. Surrender to our own feelings is not easily separated from surrender to someoneelse, or to a particular sexual ideology. It can be difficult to disentangle saying 'yes' to ourbodies from saying 'yes' to patriarchy, because in a sense we may experience our bodies ascolonised and imperialised by society's models of sexuality, power and pleasure.The way forward through this jungle, hard though it is, is surely to stay with exactly whatcomes up for us when we try to let go, breathe, and feel ourselves. If we can accept and ownour sensations and emotions, without judgement or denial, then we can eventually find theway through to our truth, a truth based on far more solid foundations than any intellectualmodel. This means being able to face the pain and fear of our original childhood confrontationwith sexual roles and rules.In the next chapter, we shall look at the way we tighten up each area of our body, eachsegment of armouring, against surrender to feeling, to pleasure, and to reality