Your Guru The Body – Part Nine

There is an extension to the Seed Approach. It is to use the basic seed approach in a group format.

When using the starting point of the seed you are giving the unconscious a ready-made structure to work with. Because you may be unfamiliar with a completely unstructured approach to your inner processes, such a structure gives at least some sense of familiarity and confidence. Even so, some people find they want everything fully described, scripted or choreographed. The very point of using this approach, however, is to begin moving beyond the known in yourself, towards creative newness and the unexpected. If you cannot do this, you will not be able to discover what is presently unknown in your unconscious. You will not be able to open the meaning of an obscure dream symbol. So even if some anxiety is felt, you need to gradually move beyond such resistant feelings.

To use this approach a few extra things need to be learned. This is because the group action is an integrated one, and needs some structure to help it in the early stages. So if you are working with a group of three or four, and one of the group is the seed, the other two or three can be in the roles of earth and water to the seed. The aim is to support the growth of whoever is the seed by physical and emotional contact.

Whoever is the Seed starts by standing in the middle of the others, who take time to make contact with her/him. They allow time to find an attitude that enables them to get closer physically and emotionally than in usual social roles. So without forcing or acting mechanically, the members touch and draw near to the Seed. When this is established the Seed curls up on a prepared space – with blanket or cushions – on the floor. The members draw near and make contact again. Get close, cover the Seed’s body with yours, penetrate with your touch, as earth and water does with a seed.

As a guide to this, it is helpful to consider in human terms, if you are in the water role, how you would penetrate the seed to stimulate its growth process? If you are in the earth role, again in human terms, how would you relate to the seed to give it a medium in which or from which to grow? If you are in the seed role, then you allow your spontaneous reaction to this. Allow yourself to move in any way that arises, just as occurred in the ‘seed alone’ approach. Do this without considering what you should do. Trust your inner process. You do not need to hold on to the roles rigidly. If you find you are being led into a spontaneous response, allow it. But remember, it is the Seed’s time, not yours. Do not take over the action, but support that of the Seed.

The group is an intimate one. It has many dimensions of experience possible. Not only is it a meeting of people in a way not usually possible socially, but it is also a place to learn human contact, how to give caring and support to another human being, and how to communicate with others non-verbally. The support it gives can allow a very deep release of inner feelings, of creative spontaneity, of self-discovery.

Because there are so many different ways people experience the seed group, I will quote a few responses.

“I’ve never been with people in that way before. I think it was the first time I really relaxed with a group.” — “When I was the seed I didn’t have any urge to move or grow at all. At first this worried me. I kept wondering if the others would be bored or disappointed. When I told them, the worry disappeared; they were all just enjoying being close.” — “Being the helper was great. I got so much pleasure from supporting and being near the Seed and the others in the group. But when it was my turn to be the Seed I didn’t enjoy that at all. I felt restless and claustrophobic and quickly pulled out. It has made me realise for the first time in my life that I find it difficult to receive that sort of closeness from others. I have to be the giver.” — “Until I became the seed I had never realised how hungry I was to have other people near me. I wanted to hold and touch in a way I had never allowed myself before. Since then it has been easy for me to hold people, babies, my wife, with more giving than I could in the past.” — “First I was just curled up. I felt comfortable, and relaxed into whatever happened spontaneously while the others completely covered my body with theirs. It really was like being planted. After a while a flicker of movement arose pushing my head out. This came in waves, increasing in strength, until my head was pushing out and up like a plant growing. I didn’t try to think what I ought to do, just went with the pleasure of it. In the early stages this didn’t seem to involve the others, although I could feel them close. But by the time I was up on my knees there was such pleasure flowing through me, such joy at being close, being able to feel the soft skin of a face against mine, that my pleasure involved the others. It is the nearest thing to making love without sex I have ever come across. I felt all the flow, the contact, without in any way going into areas that are unacceptable. When I was standing, growing from the sheer energy of movement welling up from within, we all seemed to be one moving, living process. I felt I had given something of myself to the others without saying one word. And I also experienced them as distinct qualities around me. At the end I could sit with them for a long time, holding hands, head on them, without the need to speak.”

I have used the seed group with just three people, or with a hundred or more. Each group become self-initiating, each person taking it in turn to be the Seed, and to be supported by the others. Whoever is the Seed, it is up to them to determine how long to be in the middle. Obviously this depends to some extent on available time, but also on the dynamics of what they experience. It might take quite a long time for what is unfolding to complete itself. It might be short. So the Seed needs to occasionally tell their supporters what is happening, just to keep them in touch. The Seed also needs to decide when to finish. When this is done sit up and relax for a while, and share the experience by perhaps telling what happened more fully, and what it was like to be in the supporting role.

Everything good is costly, and the development of person­ality is one of the most costly of all things.  It is a question of yea-saying to oneself, of taking the self as the most serious of tasks, keeping conscious of everything done, and keeping it constantly before one’s eyes in all its dubious aspects–truly a task that touches us to the core. Carl Jung, in Secret of the Golden Flower.