Truth
The Hypnotists
To the extent that a hypnotist can influence the controls, pain can be turned off and on.
Mary Baker Eddy absorbed the ideas subsequently included in Christian Science during bodywork sessions with Phineas Quimby. She became the richest woman in the country. What she didn’t get about mind healing was what Mesmer did get, and what got him accused of quackery.
Ben Franklin was one of the examiners who thought Mesmer a quack. But it wasn’t because Mesmer didn’t get results, or, at least, testimonials. It was because Mesmer had originally believed it was the magnets causing the effect, but discovered he could do it without magnets. It was him doing it. He postulated that there was an invisible fluid running through the body of living things, and that when it is blocked, disease occurs.
Sound familiar? This is a description of Chinese medicine, that there are energy meridians carrying Qi energy, and when the Qi is blocked, you get disease.
Mesmer was deemed a quack for realizing what was foundational to Chinese medicine and Asian philosophy.
Quimby, like Mesmer, and many others, was investigating a mind cure for disease, and whether pain and pleasure can be turned on and off with conscious intention. It can be. Whether it will be or not is another question. The emotional pain is entwined with the physical pain. I combined technique from craniosacral therapy, and the concept of still points as the place where a pattern is interrupted, with trigger point release.
The movement is followed when it cycles and when it begins to move back out to repeat the cycle, pressure with a fingertip senses the phasing and blocks it moving out again. This creates a moment of confusion, when the pattern just stops. This is a still point. When the pattern stops the suggestion is given to let go of any tension and make the body heavy, which engages the extensors. Cranio sacral therapy postulates that the connection between the sacrum and the cranium rhythmically contracts and expands. One phase might take several minutes, so working with it is very subtle. One becomes an aquatic plant. The cycle is followed to the next expansion, which is blocked with gentle but sufficient pressure by a fingertip. The cycle stops. That is the still point.
In session I would often use the word sensation instead of the word pain, because sensation is open to interpretation, and pain is amorphous. The emotional component exaggerates the sensation rather like an explosion of pain from an ignition point where it feeds on all previous pain.
The objective observer brings conscious attention to the ignition point. The quality of the attention does anything beyond that.
Bodywork isn’t just physically pushing and squeezing a muscle or holding a trigger point, it’s about the engagement and movement of Qi. This second body is there and not there, depending on whether you are looking to see it, or feeling it as an energy body. When I was learning hypnosis, I used to record inductions, put on headphones, and see if I could induct myself into ever deeper states. I had been aware of there being another body but now I felt my leg shoot up, rigid, 90 degrees, and if I looked the leg would be on the bed, totally relaxed, but the internal sensation was unmistakably that the leg was extended straight up.
I reasoned that the body is mapped on the cortex and can disengage in deep sleep or deep trance. This progressed to the most surprising energy phenomenon, a pressure on the bottoms of my feet so strong it could not be resisted, and my feet were like rockets, blasting me into the air. Nobody was paying me to be a space cadet, then, but it wasn’t long until they were.
Images vibrate in me like music on a keyboard.
My western conceptual thinking was combining with the philosophies of Chinese medicine and Asian martial arts. These movement practices of Qi, or chi, have in common that they assume two bodies, one, energetic, and inside, available as direct experience, and the other, material body, an extension of it into time. The movements, the bodywork, the yoga, the dance, bring the attention to moving the Qi in patterns, harmonizing the energy from the inside.
When you see the body as being in two forms, the invisible body and the material body, you can readily see the difference between eastern and western mind. The refinement of the Asian mind is the full awareness in the energy body because that’s where the movement begins. The emphasis is on balance. Heaven and earth are harmonized.
The western mind thinks this second body can be hidden, like the portrait of Dorian Gray, and it won’t similarly become increasingly corrupt while the outer body continues to put up a good front. It is hidden from those who agree to not see it in exchange for the same consideration from them.
The energy body is always there and always known for anyone who wants to know. Mesmer had a strong energy body, and could move Qi in other people. This was well known in Asia, but in Paris they had to assemble the intellectuals and decide if this is real or not real. What’s a man of science to do? What’s true is what you can prove, and you have permission only to the limits of our understanding. No further than that.
The direction of evolution is west coast jazz, the album cover is an androgynous saxophone player on a Paris sidewalk, at midnight, under a street light that throws a pale yellow shadow, the yang in the yin, the gold in the shadow reclaimed, the energy body expressing emotions as jazz, born in the moment, call and response.
“So, man, what does the beret mean?” “The beret has to be felt.”
