RELAXATION THERAPY

Tony Crisp

Recently I was present while a woman, her eyes rolled up, re-experienced having a tooth out as a five-year-old. She said to me afterwards, "It was strange, I even remembered the dreams I had while under anaesthetic." Her body had moved spontaneously into the position she had held as a child under gas - even to the rolled up eyes.

What may seem even more strange to many is that the woman was not hypnotised; she was not under the influence of LSD or any similar drugs, nor had she done anything of this nature before.

Another woman I watched go through what looked like the movements of giving birth. Her abdomen domed up, body tensed and pushed quite by itself. Afterwards she explained what she had experienced as follows.

Some years ago I did something I had not thought of since. I lived in Spain, had an affair with a man and became pregnant. Already having three children, I decided to have an abortion. During what I just experienced it was as if I gave birth to that child. Life seemed to speak to me from within and said, 'When you aborted, you hurt me.'

From what she went on to tell me "Life" did not then condemn her, but went on to complete the inner cycle she had cut off and wounded all those years ago. Seeing thus how we wound the Life processes in us, and how we can be healed, I cannot help but compare such experiences with Christ's words - "I come not to condemn, but to redeem."

Like the first woman, this person was not on drugs or under hypnotism. Both of them were simply relaxing. In doing so, using the technique taught in Relaxation Therapy, they experienced spontaneous healing of past shocks, pains, wounds to the soul, childhood traumas, or inner conflicts. Such people also often seem to experience Life - their own core self that is usually unconscious - communicating with them, explaining, teaching, strengthening. So what emerges is not simply a looking back and healing past wounds, it is also a growth toward greater awareness and expression of previously unrealised potential and insight.

Maybe we can explain this in another way by saying that they become aware of what the life processes in them want or have learned through their everyday experiences. Other people are led from within to experience spontaneous body movements that heal a physical illness - or re-experience things from the far past as they are cleansed of previous pains or mistakes - or find songs of love and praise pour from them.

How can all this arise from the simple act of relaxation? Is it in fact some new form of meditation?

To answer those questions, let me remind you of a few facts you perhaps take so much for granted you have most likely forgotten. They are, after all, such basic truths you have maybe overlooked their importance and built your life on things more complex.

Your body is millions of years old and is an expression of the wonder of LIFE

First of all, your body is self regulating. In other words, it spontaneously grows from conception to maturity in all its fantastic complexity. Blood pressure, heartbeat, body salts, size, shape, circulation, digestion, healing, etc., etc., etc., etc., are all dealt with by this same spontaneous self regulatory system. This is accepted by doctors and physiologists as the very foundation upon which all else exists in physiology and medicine. In medical terms it is called homeostasis or self-regulation.

As for the mind, the psychiatrist Dr. J. A. Hadfield says in his book Dreams and Nightmares:

“.... there is in the psyche an automatic movement towards an equilibrium, towards a restoration of the balance of our personality. This automatic adaptation of the organism is one of the main functions of the dream, as indeed it is of bodily functions and of the personality as a whole.

'This idea need not cause us much concern for this automatic, self regulating process is a well known phenomenon in physics and in physiology."

What a statement! The most basic law of our being need not concern us? Because of this attitude, most doctors, therapists, psychologists, and laymen have in fact done just that - overlooked the greatest power in us.

The power to heal and grow us

If we look at some of the basic facts now known about dreaming, some of the things the women experienced become more understandable. Laboratory tests that stopped people dreaming for a few days led the subjects to become mentally and physically ill. As Hadfield says, the dream is one of the ways self regulation occurs. If we block it we become sick in body and soul. But other research has shown that even in sleep and dreams we block this self regulatory activity to a large extent. Moral rigidities, guilts, a sense of sin, fear, intellectual rigidness, all influence our dreams. Freud found that because of shame and the feeling of sin in regard to sex that were common in his times, sexual desires in dreams were often disguised or only partially expressed.

But what is it that regulates us? Well, people have called it different names. Something unites our thousand billion body cells into a single organism. Something grew as from two sex cells. Something matured our personality from infancy onwards. Something keeps all our organs and systems working. Something unites the various psychological functions such as emotions, desires thoughts, intuition. What is it? Well, we exist, therefore it is. We can call it the Unifying Principle; the Self; the Core Self, or the Spirit, or whatever name suits your sense of it.

Also, remember that during the time we dream we are deeply surrendered - relaxed - and the dream process gives rise to physical movements, speech, emotions, sexual feelings, and of course amazingly creative imagery and drama. Relaxation Therapy enables a practitioner to allow this to happen consciously, thereby enabling more efficient healing, creativity, and personal growth.

We can gain an idea of where this influence arises from using an analogy. A tulip bulb extrudes leaves, stem and a flower in the spring. This flower, the leaves, have never existed before. They are unique. When they fade and wither they have gone never to return. But the bulb draws back the essence from the leaves. Next spring another stem arises and a flower blooms. This flower too is unique. It has never existed before, will never exist again. But if it could look deep into its source, it would find the bulb from which it grew, and therein discover a connection with all the other flowers that bloomed in past years.

The Core Self is like the bulb. Our present body and personality are like the flower which flourishes and dies. Yet our essence is withdrawn into the Self or Core, and will give rise to further "lives".

Dr. Wilhelm Reich found that a force or energy created our body and flows through it uniting all the cells, organs, systems and consciousness into a vital union. He called it the orgone energy, linking it with organic or biological energy, though in later life he felt it was a cosmic process. Today modern physics has introduced the influence of the quantum particles as a force that gives rise to 'events' in the physical world. In the past it was seen as arising from God or at least from the cosmic processes lying behind all physical phenomena. So there are many explanations for it.

If we block this life process through guilt, muscular tensions; or if past shocks or hurts have introduced subtle patterns of tension, this flow is disturbed and disease, depression or lack of well-being follows, as when we block the process of dreaming.

Now perhaps we can answer the questions - How can this arise from relaxation - and is this a new form of meditation?

Relaxation Therapy is the learning of skill enabling true inner harmony

Relaxation Therapy simply helps to release attitudes, muscular and emotional tensions, that repress the self-regulatory process, thus allowing it to function with less interference. The factor behind dreams and the life processes in general are thereby released into consciousness.

In other words, we learn how to consciously hand our being over to the Core Self. Healing, teaching and growing then emerge as spontaneously as our heartbeat, or our growth from babyhood. It is not new, it is as old as life.

But part of this process of growth and healing is that our fears, hates, pains are thrust into waking awareness where they can be melted and moved beyond.

When we plant a seed and it grows, we see something similar to what happens with our own being. We have grown from a seed in our mother's womb. The potential of that seed slowly expressed to form our body and our personal awareness. But like any seed, conditions might have interrupted or blocked our full growth; the full outflowing of our potential. Relaxation therapy is a way of opening to that potential and letting it continue to unfold.

Relaxation Therapy has no secrets, no teachings, no copyright, no trained therapists, for there is only one therapist, one teacher, one secret - the Core Self.

Any person who totally surrenders to the life within them is practising Relaxation Therapy. Anyone who comes daily to the mystery that is at the core of their existence in surrender will have exactly the same experiences. In the past people have done this in all cultures. Perhaps they have explained it slightly differently, but it is there in Japanese Seitai, Chinese Qi Gong, Christian Pentecostalism, Yogic Shaktipat, and Anton Mesmer called it Human Magnetism.

It has to be remembered though that life is not an abstraction. Opening more fully to Life and its processes means you are opening to all that life is - movement, feelings, passionate responses to ones environment, sexuality, physical sensation, imagination and learning. Life is active. In the world it expresses as sunshine and earthquakes, growth and destruction. Opening to it is a dramatic experience.

The New from the Old

After all that, you may still be asking what Relaxation Therapy is. Well, I can now put it very simply. It is a technique used to relax blocks against the self regulating process in you. Initially you might need help to do this, but then the whole action is between yourself and your Self. After this initial help people usually start experiencing such things as described earlier. Although no further outside help is needed after this initial release of self regulation, most people practice in groups, but not all. This is for several reasons. Mutual support is enormously helpful as the experiences are often very intense and perhaps unlike anything ever experienced before. After all, few of us have remained lucid in powerful dreams. Having others with us travelling the same road is a tremendous support. Those who have had more experience than ourselves can sometimes be helpful in other ways also, helping us to understand what is emerging and work with it.

Although self regulation is like electricity - open to anybody in any country, of any race, skin colour or belief - there are only comparatively few people in the world consciously using it as yet. No particular beliefs are necessary to gain release through self regulation. After all, atheists and blasphemers still breathe, live and procreate; they still grew from that tiny seed in their mother's womb. Self regulation is everybody's support, and all can release this power to consciousness. But like physical movement, some people bring such grace and joy to it there is a world of difference between their gesture and that of another. So, too, the quality of trust, patience, perseverance and surrender we bring to self regulation gives to some a fuller experience than to others.

For a fuller explanation of SR see The Fundamental Process; Liberating the Body- For a longer and more technical examination of the self-regulatory process underlying Relaxation Therapy see: Self-Regulation. For a practical exercise in using Relaxation Therapy go to - The Arm Circling Exercise and The Seed Meditation.

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