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| ISBN-13: | 9781578630332 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 11/01/1998 |
| Pages: | 214 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.49(d) |
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Energetic BODYWORK
PRACTICAL TECHNIQUES
By Rita J. McNamara
Samuel Weiser, Inc.
Copyright © 1989 Rita J. McNamaraAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57863-033-2
CHAPTER 1
The Living Artifact
Our forms are composed mainly of bone and muscle mass. The length of the bones and the size and shape of the muscles are largely a matter of fulfilling genetic potential. Nutrition plays the major role in the material development of these tissues. Like a tree, we develop from a particular genetic code. This code is like a blueprint, a construction plan to build a Jones-type rather than a Smith-type, in the same way that a pine becomes a pine and not an elm. And like the tree, we need nutritional substance from the earth in order to construct and manifest our form. An old tree physically reflects its encounters with storms, disasters and misfortunes. We can see how it has been fed and whether it has had to twist and turn to reach the light. We too reflect, through the silent language of posture and patterns of muscular tension, not only our genetic and nutritional status, but also how we survived and adapted to the psychological and emotional climate surrounding our development.
The tissues of the body become a subtle living memory of our experiences and the attitudes, beliefs and defense mechanisms we develop to survive. We are living, breathing artifacts of our own interactions with life.
We are all familiar with the ways in which the human form can be shaped and molded by repetitive movement or posture. A freight handler's upper body muscles develop differently from those of an office worker. But how is it that muscular development and body alignment can also be affected by attitude and emotion? The answer to this question is: electricity.
Although bones and joints provide leverage and form the body framework, they are not capable alone of moving the body. Movement results from the contraction and relaxation of the muscle tissues attached to bones. Muscle fibers contract (shorten) or relax (lengthen) as a result of electrical charges and changes in the ionic environment of the tissues. The human body is a natural battery, generating electrical energy within a fluid ion environment. The human electromagnetic field is guided by polarity laws similar to those of classic magnetic fields. By means of the autonomic nervous system, emotional response stimulates the release of microchemicals from the endocrine glands into the bloodstream and tissues. These microchemicals alter the ionic conductivity of body tissues. electrical polarity by indirectly altering the ionic environment of the cells and tissues. To understand the ways in which emotion affects specific muscles and tissues, we need to understand the Oriental system of electrical body circuits called meridians.
Although Chinese medicine has much in common with Ayurvedic healing and other Oriental therapies, meridian therapy using acupuncture and acupressure is uniquely Chinese. The earliest written treatise on the subject is entitled The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine. It was written in 2697 B.C. and continues to this day to be the fundamental reference work for meridian study and therapy. The text resulted from hundreds of years of observation and recording. It was observed that particular skin areas became hypersensitive when certain illnesses and organic diseases were present in the body. These observations led to the mapping of energy points and corresponding lines or meridians on the body's surface related to the condition of internal tissues and structures. We know now that the body meridians contain a colorless, free-flowing, non-cellular fluid which conveys electrical energy throughout the body. Modern science has verified and mapped the meridian circuits using advanced technological methods and equipment to track them thermally, electronically and radioactively. The body's electrical circuits are divided into fourteen major meridians.
The meridians, though divided in terms of the organs and tissues they supply, actually form a continuous, single, looped circuit which conveys electromagnetic energy throughout the body. This continuous energy circuit is composed of a network of interconnections called acupoints. The acupoints are electromagnetic centers, consisting of small oval cells called Bonham Corpuscles. Acupoints function like resistors in an electrical circuit, adjusting the speed and force of energy flow along a meridian. When body polarity is disturbed, the acupoints along the circuits respond to readjust the energy flow. If the polarity disturbance is recurrent or chronic, the impaired meridian flow begins to affect corresponding muscles, tissues and organs. When we understand which muscles are supplied by each meridian and how emotion impacts the meridian circuits, we are on our way to understanding how emotion and psychological conflict generate muscular tension and weakness or postural misalignment. We can begin to know how our own tree —the human body —is twisted and contorted as a result of emotional and psychological stress.
The meridians are named according to the internal structures they reflex and supply. See figures 1 and 2 on pages 6-7. There are twelve organic meridians and two storage meridians. Each of the organic meridians supplies a muscle group (or group of muscles) in the body, as well as a group of internal tissues. Six of the organic meridians are called yin meridians. The yin circuits convey negative electromagnetic energy throughout the body and supply the yin organs: heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidney and circulatory vessels. The remaining six organic circuits are called yang meridians. The yang meridians convey positive electromagnetic energy throughout the body and supply the yang organs: stomach, large and small intestine, gall bladder, urinary bladder and adrenals.
In Oriental philosophy, the concepts of yin and yang represent the manifested duality of Oneness. Every aspect of the physical universe, from the atom to cycles of light and season, are reflective of the constant shift between polar opposites. And yet the terms yin and yang are completely relative. There is no "pure" yin, no "pure" yang. Each contains the shadow or inference of the other. The longest night of the year (yin) has been celebrated since ancient times as a festival of light (yang) because from that moment onward the days would become longer. Night follows day, rest follows action, death follows birth. When something is classified as yin —whether it is a season, an organ or a plant —it means that the qualities represented or manifested are more yin than yang. Understanding the cycles and interrelationships of yin and yang can widen and deepen understanding of ourselves and our universe. Table 1 on page 8 helps to develop and delineate concepts of yin and yang. From Table 1 we see that the feeling states which are primarily "other-directed," such as anger, intolerance and jealousy, are classified as yang; while the "self-directed" emotions, such as guilt, depression and shame, are yin.
Emotion upsets the natural balance and flow of electromagnetic energy in the body by subtly altering the chemical state of body tissues and their ionic conductivity. The yin emotions cause the body tissues to be flooded with negative electromagnetic energy. The negative congestion chokes off and deprives the yang/positive circuits and the muscles and tissues supplied by them. The converse is also true: yang emotions flood body tissues with positive electromagnetic energy and deplete the yin/negative circuits and the muscles and tissues supplied by them.
Think, for instance, of what is called the "Type A" personality —striving, perfectionistic, competitive and impatient —a very "yang" profile. Medical science has determined the Type A personality to be a prime candidate for heart and blood vessel diseases. The yang Type A conflicts and emotions weaken and deplete the yin organs, the heart and blood vessels. The meridian section of this book describes each of the organic meridians in detail and outlines, among other things, the types of emotion and conflict which weaken the meridian and the tissues it supplies. For now, it is important only to understand that the yang emotions represented by states of agitation and over-involvement overload the positive electromagnetic polarity circuits and deprive the negative channels. The yin emotions, represented by states of fear and withdrawal, overload the negative polarity body circuits and deplete the positive ones. This is basically how emotion and conflict electrochemically affect body tissues.
We know that just as calm follows the storm, no one is permanently angry or sad. Yesterday's gloominess gives way to today's lighter attitude. The emotional balance moves back and forth, yin to yang, shifting organic polarity in its wake. Since the body polarity is constantly adjusting and changing, attempting to return to balance and homeostasis, why should there be any imprinting, any "memory" left behind on muscles or tissues? Why isn't the body-mind slate wiped clean after each shift, experiencing the moment's reality, unmindful of former states?
This is a complex question. One of the answers is that, as humans, we possess the ability to reflect, to remember and to visualize. We can hold images, memories, and fantasies in our mind's eye. These are mental constructs—they do not, in fact, appear before us. But the internal body reacts to them as though we were experiencing them in actuality. A fearful dream stimulates the autonomic nervous system as though we were experiencing the alarming scenario in the "real" world. We relive some emotions and conflicts again and again through the mechanism of memory, dream, and recollection. Another part of the answer to this question involves the body's glandular centers.
There are seven glandular centers, sometimes called chakras, within the body. The glandular centers function like transducers along the two main storage meridians. Each time there is a shift in organic polarity, there is a shift in the chakra center energies. The chakras regulate the exchange and transfer of polarity energies and record the reason for the transaction. In this way each of the chakra centers becomes an electromagnetic accumulator, or data bank, storing information about the nature and type of the organism's polarity shifts. This is why an individual receiving a polarity treatment will often experience revelatory emotional sensations, sometimes briefly reliving or re-experiencing an emotional episode from the past. By activating the centers through the electromagnetic shifts in the treatment, images and feelings are often startlingly released.
The chakra centers, as body-mind memory banks, appear at first to be a distinct physical and psychological disadvantage. Because of them, we seem to be at the mercy of both today's and yesterday's emotional expenditures. The chakra centers appear to be seven implements of torture, capable of keeping us in a state of continual electrochemical stress. Why should we be fitted with mechanisms of such doubtful merit? Perhaps we need to examine our most basic and ancient understandings of ourselves as beings to determine how these centers implement our evolution.
Our oldest bio-cosmologies describe the human being as an entity resident not only on the physical, three-dimensional plane, but as a complex being composed of several bodies both phenomenal and non-phenomenal. The non-phenomenal bodies provide the vehicle for evolution and development on levels other than the purely physical. In these systems, the seven glandular centers (chakras) serve as a communicational network between the physical body and its subtler counterparts.
In the Egyptian System of the Five Bodies, the vehicles are described as interpenetrating and interactive. Each of the bodies has a dimension and function of its own. The goal of human evolution, as understood from this perspective, is the full development of each of the bodies while consciously, functionally, integrating all five. See figure 3 on page 12 for an illustration of the chakras and the Egyptian system of the Five Bodies.
The body we are most familiar with is the physical body of organs, blood, bone and muscle. It is the organic earth body, named in the Egyptian system, Aufu. It is this body which houses the seven glandular centers (chakras). The bodies communicate with each other by means of these chakra centers. The chakras, in turn, influence every organ and tissue of the physical body via a network of subtle energy circuits (meridians). From this perspective, it is understood that the condition of the physical body can both effect and/or result from energy states in the other bodies. It is also understood that what we do with the physical vehicle —how we feed and move it, how we care for it, the environments we expose it to, even how we dress or adorn it — can reflex the chakra glandular centers through the meridian channels and effect not only the physical body itself, but also the hidden bodies. In the Egyptian system, the true function of the physical body is to serve as an instrument of the subtle bodies (and their forces) in the three-dimensional world.
The second body described by the Egyptian system is called the Ka. It represents the conscious mind or intellectual body, the body of Air. Ka's world or dimension is more subtle than Aufu's. Aufu's dimension —the physical world of form—is actually shaped and held intact by the work of the Ka body. Ka's true task is to strengthen itself through concentration and self-observation in order to become a disciplined and consistent form-builder. In an undeveloped state, the Ka is a reservoir of patterned/conditioned thought and attitude which unconsciously orchestrates physical reality. The developed Ka body becomes a bridge between the dream body and the physical vehicle, making conscious the unconscious. Today there is increasing research into, and evidence of, the relationship between mind and body, between thought and form. The marketplace is jammed with information on ways to recondition the intellect and consequently affect the physical self and its environment. These range from positive thinking and psycho-cybernetics to meditation and hypnosis for the purposes of behavior modification. The reason why so many of these methods, basically sound in principle, may produce initially dramatic effects but fail in the long run, is that many conditioned thoughts and attitudes have imprinted themselves in the muscles and tissues of the body via the glandular centers and meridians. These conditionings must be cleared, not only from the intellectual body, but also from the muscles and tissues in order to stop the pattern from reinstating itself. The muscular and postural vocabulary, a potent electrochemical language, keeps "talking" to the body tissues and overrides short sessions of mental retraining or hypnosis.
The third body in the Egyptian system is called the Haidit. It is the body of the unconscious mind, the Water body. In some traditions it is called the double, the dream or astral body, or the shadow. The Haidit body is functional in the landscape of myth, art and dream. Through lucid dreaming, the Haidit's task is to detachedly explore the contents of the unconscious and integrate its reality with the physical reality (Aufu's level) through the medium of the conscious mind (Ka's level). In this way the physical self is empowered by the personal myth and armed with a wider range of creative expression and resolution with which to confront and resolve the conflicts of physical reality.
The Fire or "magical" body is the body of the collective consciousness. In the Egyptian system it is called Khu. The Khu body is functional on the archetypal level of being. It is on this level that one contacts the teacher or "master." This is why it is so often said that "when the pupil is ready, the teacher appears." The teacher is always resident within oneself and accessed through the proper alignment and function of the subtle bodies.
Alignment can only occur when particular work — physical, mental and emotional — has been done to affect the glandular chakra centers. A physical teacher may point the way to this work and even assist in the process, but only the individual can do the work and awaken to the teacher within. True psychophysical work in healing and transformation is activated from this level of inner guidance. The hope and goal of the Khu body is to become a channel for the higher self into the physical plane.
The fifth body in the Egyptian system is called the Sahu. In some traditions it is called the luminous or transfigured body, or the diamond body. It is the body which links the human level with the God or Divine level of being. The work of the Sahu body is to attempt permeation of the lower bodies, through the Khu, in order to enable the highest level of work and purpose to evolve on the physical plane.
In the Egyptian system of the Five Bodies, we find a metaphor for alchemical work. The separated elements —Earth, Air, Fire and Water—symbolized by the four lower bodies, are refined and realigned into the reality of the Fifth —the indestructible Diamond Self, the Philosopher's Stone—the symbol of unity and realization.
The ancient Egyptian system illuminates a great deal, not only concerning the function of the chakra centers, but also concerning our purpose as total beings and the function of health and dis-ease in our lives.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Energetic BODYWORK by Rita J. McNamara. Copyright © 1989 Rita J. McNamara. Excerpted by permission of Samuel Weiser, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction
Chapter One The Living Attifact
Chapter Two Working with the Chakras
Chapter Three Working with the Meridians
Chapter Four Vibrational Therapies
Chapter Five Review
Chapter Six Case Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Suggested Reading
Resources
Index
About the Author