Your Guru The Body – Part Eleven

Sexuality

To give an idea of how inner-directed movement relates to sex, it is helpful to think of how a plant puts forth its sexuality – its flower. The flower is produced only at a certain point in the growth or cycle of the plant, and the flower is usually very different in shape and colour to the leaves or stem. The visual experience of watching a plant form a small bud that gradually grows and opens to a flower is exciting. The process is vulnerable though. If you think of something interfering with the flowering, inhibiting it at some level, then the flower exists, perhaps only as potential, but is not yet functioning fully.

The complex opening of human personality and sexuality has some kinship with this. Certain aspects of it can easily be inhibited in their flowering – perhaps the materials of experience are not yet sufficient – or the spontaneous instincts which usually inform and shape the maturing are withheld, suppressed, turned away from their task and from full opening. Because inner-directed movement builds a link between your natural inner life and your conscious self, any aspects of your possible growth that have not emerged may be allowed to begin their growth. This is not an overnight thing, but it is a wonderful possibility. In fact few of us can reach maturity without some aspect of our nature, whether sexual, emotional or mental, being left behind, hurt or perhaps not given enough attention because other areas of activity were demanded by the needs of the time.

The action of inner-directed movement takes you away from the specific external needs which may have caused unbalanced tendencies in your nature. Because you let go of particular surface directions – because you do not set out to perform specific exercises, or work on particular issues, your internal self-regulating function can begin to express the areas of your nature that have been inhibited.

The Mind And Emotions

After some weeks of teaching a group of people in the small town of Porlock in Somerset, Julie, a woman in the group, told me something new had come into her life from what we had been practising. She said, “I never knew before that I have an inner life. This is such a wonderful thing for me.”

My understanding of what Julie was telling me was that she had never previously known what riches of experience and creativity, of insight and perception she already owned. She had thought of herself as just another housewife and mother, not unintelligent, but an unimportant person among billions of other unremarkable people living and dying.

The treasure Julie found that can be discovered through inner-directed movement is not to be confused with the realisation of intelligence or personal ability. A young and brilliant college student, Len, was recently describing to me his own realisation of his inner life through this practice. He said:

“I know this may sound strange, but the most powerful thing for me was that I realised I am alive. The realisation was accompanied by the sense of being life. I now know I am life and life is not just a chemical reaction or a set of biological drives or responses. As life I am always exploring, reaching out, becoming, learning what I am capable of and what I am. Just to exist is itself a great pleasure and miracle.”

As with Julie, Len’s realisation during inner-directed movement was not about his own intellectual ability or personal value. He had already proved his intellectual brilliance and ability in his scholastic performance. This had not given him the sense of being alive and liberated though. The contact with his own vital inner life enabled him to realise he was more than he thought he was. He learned through his own experience that the essential part of himself did not begin or end with his body, his emotions or his thoughts. From this arose a sense of freedom and liberation he had not known before.

Len’s changed experience of life was the result of just a few sessions of inner directed movement using the open approach. Previously he had been very reticent in relationships, yet often felt lonely. As he learned to let his own love shine out, he found it easier to make friends. He says:

“At first I found it difficult to let go enough for my body to freely express. When I did learn to do this my movements were very strong. At the time I was lying on my bed because my movements had started from quietness and stillness. They became so strong I fell off the bed at one point. My impression was that without realising it I had been holding back enormous amounts of my own energy. It was when I let the full current of my energy be expressed that I could achieve a new experience of myself. It is like having a dimmer switch on a light in an internal room, and all the time you have it just glimmering, and the room looks dark and dismal. Then one day you turn the power up and the whole room is transformed. All the colours glow, and features not seen before stand out.”

For many people this sort of release only occurs in times of crisis, high emotion, or if they are challenged by a public appearance and let themselves express at full power. At other times the dimming effect of social or intellectual conditioning anxieties, or not knowing how to let go, make us feel less than we really are. In fact you are more than you have ever believed.

Touching this vastness brings with it a sense of great wonder. In a recent letter to me Len describes what he feels when he touches what he calls ‘life’ through inner-directed movement.

“When I remember life and cry, as I am now, it is not sadness, it is everything. It is the beauty, the tragedy, the joy, the vastness, the thrill, the miracle, the mystery. It is a love from the depths of life of all creatures who have the courage to love, to embrace life in its vastness. From the firefly flashing its statement to the night, or the sparrow fetching worms for its young, to the dog running with joy toward me.”

Inner-directed movement gives you access to a new and vital experience of yourself outside the patterns of emotion and trains of thought from which you usually erect your self-image. It leads to a discovery of your own unique inner life more fully than most forms of meditation or mental disciplines.