Wilhelm Reich - An Introduction

I referenced Wilhelm Reich in a previous post, Internal Structure Part 2 - Structural Integration, and others have referenced him and/or his work in their comments on this site. While I learned about Freud and Jung in college psychology class, I never learned about Reich. I found the below biographical segments very informative and so I am re-posting them here.

Man's Right to Know: The Wilhelm Reich Story

"This introductory biography about Wilhelm Reich, M.D. was produced by The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust in 2002 as both the opening exhibit for visitors to the Wilhelm Reich Museum and as an educational tool for wider audiences. It provides a concise overview of Reich's life and work. Comprised of archival photographs and film footage, plus computer animation, this biography is not intended as a substitute for Reich's literature, but rather as an easy-to-understand introduction to Reich's life and to his discovery and investigations of orgone energy. This production also provides a succinct and dramatic account of the Food and Drug Administration’s campaign to destroy Reich's work."

(Watch the following videos on YouTube. Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner.)

Mans Right to Know: The Story of Wilhelm Reich, Pt 1

Mans Right to Know: The Story of Wilhelm Reich, Pt 2

Watch Part 3 on YouTube.
Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner.

Mans Right to Know: The Story of Wilhelm Reich, Pt 3

Armoring, Cycles and Crossroads

In December I awoke one morning feeling pain in my left deltoid muscle. I thought this odd as there was no recent single injury incident. When it didn't go away after a month, I went to the M.D. who diagnosed rotator cuff tendonosis. As I educate myself about tendonosis it looks like I injured myself, possibly through chronic poor posture; hunching eight hours a day at my deskjob. This was festering for a long time and finally came into consciousness. So what does this have to do with armoring, cycles and crossroads?

Tracing a spiral, going around, I arrive at the same place again. The same but different. The sameness part of the cycle is relaxing, opening and then clamping down, closing off. What is different is that the feeling of kinesthetically opening gets a little stronger each time and it takes a little more energy to block that off each time. Also, this pattern becomes a little more conscious each time.

Since the last post (where I described feeling opening), I've swung to the closing down. Why vacillate like this? Why not simply continue to open, open, open on a straight line trajectory to mastery? This is just who and how I am.

Part of the down-swing was due to feeling anxiety about the loss of range of motion and pain in my shoulder. How could my body let me down like this? Of course, my question represents a compartmentalized and dis-integrated frame.

"Then what do you mean when you say, 'My body is sore today'? Who is the 'I' who is separate from the body and speaks of it as a possession?"

Also, I'm becoming aware of how the "I know. They say." manifests not only in my personal life but also how it is revealed in my Wujifa Zhan Zhuang practice where “I know” could mean “opening” and “They say” could mean “closing”. The feeling, the presence, the "I know" arises and bumps into the armor, the fear, the “They say”. (see time point 3:06 - 4:17. John Gault & Wilhelm Reich, Part 15)

The choice to open or close (at whatever level of consciousness this happens) represents a crossroads. A fork in the road. Open? Close? Go with "I know" or "They say"? Or continue cycling between the two in an awareness increasing spiral until.... ?

How is all this revealed in my Wujifa Zhan Zhuang practice? I’m standing, relaxing, letting go, releasing, exploring how far relax can go. The back muscles release... ahhhhh... and then,SNAP! Oh! Stop! Clamp down! The breath grabbing muscle spasm across the lower or upper back. And I block the relax. In fear of inducing another bout of crippling lower back pain, I stop exploring and settle for some level of tension near the edge. For now. Until next time.

As I continue building integration and functionality, I wonder, How much longer can compartmentalization, dis-integration, and dis-functionality survive?

Recalling the Kinesthetic Memory

In Wujifa class, my instructor makes adjustments to my zhan zhuang stance. I then go home and try to recreate the feeling by recalling and focusing on all the little adjustments and corrections he made to my structure in class. How is this working for me? Not very well. I just can't put it all together to arrive at the same total, unified feeling that he can elicit.

So in my last class I got into a "lively discussion" with my instructor about this frustrating problem which ended something like this:

Inst: Go over there and stand.
Me: (I get into stance.)
Inst: Now, remember a time when you were doing stance here, after all the adjustments. Got it?
Me: Yeah, that time on the porch, July 2007.
Inst: Go there. Remember that feeling.
Me: (I do.)
Inst: There! You just had it!
Me: Right! You saw that?
Instr: Practice that.

(Note about July 2007: I stayed after a class in July 2007 and got some private zhan zhuang training with my instructor. After many adjustments, after getting me "tuned up", I experienced the most intense and nearly overwhelming feeling of what I called "being present" that I ever felt. I remember saying "My legs are fine. I don't know how much *presence* I can tolerate!)

So after this recent class, I went home and practiced and instead of doing what I had been doing for years, I completely changed my approach to practice. Now I quickly get into structure (see: Zhan Zhuang Alignment) and then recall the kinesthetic memory of that most intense zhan zhuang experience from two years ago.

The result is that I kinesthetically feel as if my body is in a constant inhale, almost like a holding without exhaling and yet, I am not doing any breathing techniques (just breathing normally) and I am not visualizing or imagining anything! I'm simply recalling a kinesthetic memory. The experience however, is no where near as intense as that day two years ago and that's OK. I now have something to build on!

I also notice that after just a few minutes of standing like this, a vibration starts in my abdomen area. This is kind of like the leg vibration but instead starts in the abdomen area. I don't know how or why this happens but I'm told that this is a good thing.

It would seem ironic that I was shown this door two years ago and I continued to beat the bushes for two years looking for the door when it was here all the while. Why would I do that? Well, I'm also learning how my typical data driven/mechanical/problem solving approach (which serves me well at work) influences my approach to a very different, kinesthetic feeling art.

Notice Differently

In Wujifa class we talk about "noticing differently". This pair of words never made sense to me. How do I notice differently when I only know how to notice the way I notice? How do I notice? What does it mean to "notice differently"?

In the mid-1990s, I read the book "Way of the Peaceful Warrior" by Dan Millman. Recently I watched the vaguely related movie "Peaceful Warrior" which inspired me to go back and reread the book. As I read, I noticed passages I did not highlight in my first reading. My focus had changed. I was noticing differently.

I asked my school brother one day, "Yeah, it's great that my focus has shifted over the last 10 years but how do I speed up the process? How can I notice differently today, here, now?" He then played a little game with me:

D: Pretend you're wearing colored glasses. What color are you wearing?
Me: Blue.
D: So everything looks kind of blue-ish? And this is how you usually see things?
Me: Yeah.
D: OK. Now pretend there are a pair of glasses with yellow lenses on the table. Take off the blue pair and put on the yellow pair.
Me:(I went through the motions)
D: And?
Me: Everything... Wow! There's a different feeling, perception, feeling, something...
D: It's really that simple. Notice differently.

Here's what I noticed in "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior" this time:

"Then what do you mean when you say, 'My body is sore today'? Who is the 'I' who is separate from the body and speaks of it as a possession?" [pg 81]

"It only burns where you have knots. If you were free of obstructions - if your mind was clear, your heart open, and your body free of tension - you'd experience the energy as an indescribable pleasure..." [pg 103]

"... but your muscles hold too much tension. Tense muscles require more energy to move. So you have to learn how to release the stored tension." [pg 140]

"Oscar meowed loudly. I patted him. "Now squeeze his leg muscles, slowly, to the bone.
"I might hurt him."
"Squeeze!"
I pressed deeper and deeper into the cat's muscle until I felt the bone. The cat watched me with curiosity and kept purring.
"Now squeeze my calf muscle," Soc said.
... I squeezed and was surprised to feel that his muscles felt just like the cat's, yielding like firm jelly.
"Your turn," he said, reaching down and squeezing my calf muscle.
"Ow!" I yelped. "I'd always thought hard muscles were normal," I said, rubbing my calves.
"They are normal, Dan, but you must go far beyond normal...
... I learned things about my muscles, ligaments, and tendons I'd never known before. ... It was amazing that I, an athlete, was so unfamiliar with the inside of my body. [pg 141]

... think less and feel more. [pg 161]

Noticing thinking...

Noticing absence of thinking...

Noticing beneath the skin...

Noticing feeling...

Noticing feeling of sinking, rising, expanding feeling together...

Noticing connecting...

Noticing differently...

Force, Balance, Limp

In my last Wujifa class I demonstrated how, using my intention, I was able to create a feeling of sinking and raising, a “stretch” from pelvis to head. My instructor pointed out that I was forcing creating the feeling. I thought I found the feeling through relax so I asked, “Is it possible to force ’Relax’?”

To get the kinesthetic I was feeling, he pointed out that I was tightening my lower abdomen, tightening my solar plexus and tightening my neck. Using force to "relax" does not result in relax.

We looked at the Primary Wujifa Triangle (Relax, Balance, Structure) and analyzed what I was actually doing in relation to this triangle.

When I started learning Tai-chi my instructors said to ‘relax’. Knowing only force, the only way I knew ‘relax’ was the opposite of force, namely, lack-of-force, or Limp. Sometimes I was too limp. Sometimes I was too force. So my Tai-chi sought and found a balance between Force and Limp. And I stayed stuck on this Force-Limp, Yang-Yin plane for many years. My former teachers either didn’t know the non-limp feeling of relax or they couldn’t explain or teach what they could feel, or I wasn’t ready or able to feel to that level.

When I started Wujifa, I heard, “Relax is not limp.” And working from my existing paradigm, I couldn’t conceptually understand what this meant and I certainly could not kinesthetically feel the difference.

The figure below (from my class notes) shows the Primary Wujifa Triangle in the center. The dashed triangles show the relation of Limp and Force to each other and to the elements of the Wujifa Triangle. Force is opposite relax. Limp is opposite structure. Force is opposite limp.

Back to the story, my instructor then asked me to once again demonstrate the sinking and raising, connected “stretch” feeling I was doing (with force). Then he told me to relax that forced feeling 75%. How does that feel? Next, he had me shake it out and then get into the Zhan Zhuang structure again, but this time take a deep breath and exhale with an audible “Aaaahhhhhh”. (The tone and pitch of the voice convey emotional meaning and getting the desired feeling requires a common and ordinary yet particular ‘ahh’ sound which I don’t know how to explain in words.) The resultant feeling was a sinking and raising, connected “stretch” feeling yet much more subtle than what I was forcing.

I noticed that both approaches yielded the same yet different feeling. Sourcing from force or from relax to feel that feeling each carry their own residual, body memory energy. (???) (Not to sound woo woo but I don’t know how else to explain it.) But this is what feels different about arriving at the "same" feeling through different approaches.

What I learned is that “Relax” has a certain aliveness to it (??? for lack of better words) which doesn't originate from force or limp and that “Limp” (what I used to call relax) does not have that feeling of aliveness. Truly, relax is not limp!

Through feeling and understanding how I was forcing a feeling, I learned more about what ‘relax’ means.