Author Topic: Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton  (Read 1069 times)

truthaboutpois

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Re: Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton
« on: April 15, 2015, 07:05:29 am »
 
21
their comfortable limit - no need to strain, then bring the eyes very slowly back round until, asthey face forward again in the head, they 'pick up' the head and both continue moving back round to the front of the body. The illustration should make this clear. The point is that theeyes should move continuously, without jumping, so they 'sweep' the field of vision, carryingthe head along with them. Keep breathing while you do it!
 Most people find this exercise very difficult - to let their eyes move slowly and continuouslyrather than jumping forward in spurts, impatient to see 'what's next'. This impatience has aquality of fear in it, and repeating the experiment a few times to each side can make usconscious of a great deal of anxiety about seeing,
really seeing
, the world around us. We tendto filter reality through a screen of prior judgement so as to protect ourselves from dangerousexcitement or pain, and this anxiety is bound into tense muscles around the eyes.A similar process happens with the ears, and with our thinking processes. The words we useabout thinking embody these connections: 'I see what you mean', 'I don't like the sound of that'. In French, 'entendu' means both 'heard' and 'understood'.The core of the armouring is actually
inside
the head, in the small muscles that move our eyes,and in the muscles behind our ears and at the base of the skull, some of which are reflexly co-ordinated with subtle eye movements. Blocking in all these areas can give a hard, blank,superficial expression to the eyes, or a cloudy 'absent look - both masking deep fear.Shortsightedness, longsightedness, deafness, etc., are very much bound up with armouring of the eye segment, and the same goes for inability to smell - a very powerful and fundamentalsense linking us with our animal heritage.Repression of contact with the world through eyes, ears and thinking covers up a deeper
neediness
. Eye contact which is loving and supportive gives us a fundamental anchoring inthe world: it says 'you exist, I see you'. When the channels are open, the heart speaks throughthe eyes, and comforting sounds and smells can give an almost equally deep reassurance. If this sort of validation is missing in very early childhood, then someone's ability to make


 
22proper contact through the eye segment can be profoundly injured. They tend to 'go away inthe eyes' and in their thinking: closeness can be experienced as invasive, threatening - only inisolation are they safe.Similarly. they may develop ideas which are bizarrely isolated from how most people see theworld.With less extreme damage, the urge for contact may simply take a diversion, and expressitself in a way which is distorted and therefore less threatening: as with people whose life isorganised around a
need to see
- voyeurs, intellectuals, detectives, journalists - and therapists!Which is a good moment to stress that reaching out with eyes, ears and mind is a healthy,creative process - unless it coincides with a block to making deep emotional contact.As well as being windows, the eyes are doors: they are a channel for emotional expression.
 All
feelings, to be fully released, need to come out through the eyes. Besides the obviousexample of crying, the eyes must release fear, anger, joy, and so on in appropriate ways inorder to stay soft and open. Different people tend to be able to show different feelings throughtheir eyes, and to block other ones; and these tendencies can often be seen in the way we holdthe muscles of this segment
 Exercise 3
  Look in a mirror, and raise your eyebrows as far as you possibly can. What does this look like? What emotion does it convey? Now screw your eyes up tight, lower the brow: see what the apparent emotion is now. Keep breathing, and move as fast as you can between these two positions, several times; how does this make you feel? Is it easy for you to do? Is one positionharder than the other? Relax into your normal eye position for a moment, let yourself breathe,and see how you look in the mirror and how you feel inside.
 As we hope you will agree, the wide open eyes show an expression of
 fear
; and if you keptbreathing in this position, you may even have felt some of this fear. People who habituallykeep their eyes like this are generally unaware of it, getting them to exaggerate, or converselyto screw their eyes up tight can make them suddenly aware of the extreme tension there, andof the underlying fear and sadness. It's a position which helps one cope with being seen, andis common in politicians, but also in people who have had very frightening visual experiencesin childhood.Screwed-up eyes may convey several different emotions: anger. desperation to see, anxiety.Notice whether your cheek muscles also screw up tight, turning your face into a mask. Whenpeople habitually use their faces in this way. it's as if their eyes have retreated into their head -'I can see out, but you can't see in'. Flat, stiff, heavy cheeks, on the other hand, are oftenholding tremendous grief and unshed tears.Another emotion often held in the eye segment is
worry
: the wrinkled brow and fixed gaze of compulsive thinking. It doesn't matter what the person is thinking about
now
- it could beabsolutely anything; but originally they will have taken refuge in thinking as an escape routefrom intolerable childhood pressures - for example. trying to work out how to satisfycontradictory demands from mother and father.The 'ivory tower intellectual' is demonstrating a similar, perhaps more successful, form of escape: the skull is a literal ivory tower, high and dry above the scary and confusing world of
 
23the body. Intellectuals who try to ignore body and emotions have concentrated on the genuineerotic pleasure of thought to the exclusion of most other things.Thinking is a real, healthy pleasure, but surely only in harmony with other functions, not inisolation from them. Often there is considerable panic bound up in this stance - about sexualfeelings, and also about bodily assertiveness and rage. The opposite form of defence is foundin people who fog up their own thinking processes as a protection against painful realities,
making
themselves stupid and incompetent, and giving their eyes either a dull smug look, or apeering vagueness.These are some examples to stimulate your own observation of what people do with theireyes. The eye segment will be involved in suppressing any and all feelings; but thefundamental blockings here are of very
 young
emotions and experiences, our primalinteractions with the world, starting at birth or earlier. Through the crown of our heads and thespace between our eyes, we are linked to sky and cosmos, to webs of subtle energy, tosomething much bigger than our individual self. Pain and danger may make us close thesechannels down, or may make us retreat into a 'spirituality' which is ungrounded in the realityof our bodily life.Apart from defects of vision and hearing, the most obvious physical symptom connected witheye segment armouring is chronic headaches - stemming from tense muscles at the base of theskull and around the eyes. We believe as well that specific ailments like styes, conjunctivitis,sinusitis and so on can be linked with eye segment armouring; often they all occur when aspecific feeling is being held back about some life situation, and in particular when someoneis not allowing themselves to cry