Category: Philosophical

Next up is Grey, with his grounded perspective on the whole ball of wax. Once again, I’ll be busy at the hospital for most of the day, but I hope to chime in later this evening. And yes, I’m getting nervous about having to produce my own essay by Friday.

Hokai’s contribution to the conversation on Integrative Spirituality is up and ready for readin’. Check out the comments section, where I’ll be posting my thoughts later in the day.

Julian kicks off the Integrative Spirituality Symposium with his Grounded Contemporary Perspective.

Today I’ll be working at the hospital ALL day, so no time for commentary. I’ll chime in more tomorrow.

Julian Walker is an emerging rockstar on the Integral scene. He is taking great pains to articulate a vision of the spiritual life that incorporates the most useful, powerful insights and techniques available while eschewing the dogma and fuzzy thinking that has infected so many traditional and new age approaches.

Julian is organizing an online symposium to facilitate some dialogue on the topic of Integrative Spirituality. The blog-fest kicks off on Monday [see details below] and yours truly will be sounding off on Friday. I’m honored to be participating, although the thought of making some grand statement in public has me feeling a bit anxious and intimidated. What can you do.

*Special Event: Zaadz Symposium on Integrative Spirituality!*
Posted on May 3rd, 2007 by Julian
This is a special announcement about the event I am co-ordinating on Zaadz starting this Monday!

The Symposium is called Integrative Spirituality: Grounded Contemporary Perspectives and will feature 7 blogposts over 7 days from 7 different posters on this fascinating and powerful subject!

Sounding magnificent yet?

Mind-body, meditation, philosophy, psychology, healing, art, atheism, spirituality, energetic initiation, critical thinking, shadow-work, developmental stages, Integral and otherwise will all be on the table in this format that we hope will give you a window on the growing edge of Zaadz dialog.

Stay tuned all week long Monday May 7 through Monday May 14 when I will be doing the final round-up.

On deck to share their perspectives: myself, Hokai, Grey, Elektroglide, Bob, Mr Teacup, and Balder.

Each of us will approach the subject at hand from our unique perspective and then throw the conversation open to the always juicy debate and discussion in the comments section.

We hope you will join us for this experimental event that promises to be information-packed, experience-rich, provocative, fun and a potent next step for our emerging Zaadz blogosphere!

Get ready for a wild ride!

I’m up first – see you Monday,

~Julian Walker

Saul Williams rocks. I came across this thoughtful letter while sipping my morning coffee. Enjoy:

April 18, 2007

Dear Ms. Winfrey,

It is with the greatest respect and adoration of your loving spirit that I write you. As a young child, I would sit beside my mother everyday and watch your program. As a young adult, with children of my own, I spend much less time in front of the television, but I am ever thankful for the positive effect that you continue to have on our nation, history and culture. The example that you have set as someone unafraid to answer their calling, even when the reality of that calling insists that one self-actualize beyond the point of any given example, is humbling, and serves as the cornerstone of the greatest faith. You, love, are a pioneer.

I am a poet.

Growing up in Newburgh, NY, with a father as a minister and a mother as a school teacher, at a time when we fought for our heroes to be nationally recognized, I certainly was exposed to the great names and voices of our past. I took great pride in competing in my churches Black History Quiz Bowl and the countless events my mother organized in hopes of fostering a generation of youth well versed in the greatness as well as the horrors of our history. Yet, even in a household where I had the privilege of personally interacting with some of the most outspoken and courageous luminaries of our times, I must admit that the voices that resonated the most within me and made me want to speak up were those of my peers, and these peers were emcees. Rappers.
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Yes, Ms. Winfrey, I am what my generation would call “a Hip Hop head.” Hip Hop has served as one of the greatest aspects of my self-definition. Lucky for me, I grew up in the 80’s when groups like Public Enemy, Rakim, The jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, and many more realized the power of their voices within the artform and chose to create music aimed at the upliftment of our generation.

As a student at Morehouse College where I studied Philosophy and Drama I was forced to venture across the street to Spelman College for all of my Drama classes, since Morehouse had no theater department of its own. I had few complaints. The performing arts scholarship awarded me by Michael Jackson had promised me a practically free ride to my dream school, which now had opened the doors to another campus that could make even the most focused of young boys dreamy, Spelman. One of my first theater professors, Pearle Cleage, shook me from my adolescent dream state. It was the year that Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” was released and our introduction to Snoop Dogg as he sang catchy hooks like “Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks…” Although, it was a playwriting class, what seemed to take precedence was Ms. Cleages political ideology, which had recently been pressed and bound in her 1st book, Mad at Miles. As, you know, in this book she spoke of how she could not listen to the music of Miles Davis and his muted trumpet without hearing the muted screams of the women that he was outspoken about “man-handling”. It was my first exposure to the idea of an artist being held accountable for their actions outside of their art. It was the first time I had ever heard the word, “misogyny”. And as Ms. Cleage would walk into the classroom fuming over the women she would pass on campus, blasting those Snoop lyrics from their cars and jeeps, we, her students, would be privy to many freestyle rants and raves on the dangers of nodding our heads to a music that could serve as our own demise.

Her words, coupled with the words of the young women I found myself interacting with forever changed how I listened to Hip Hop and quite frankly ruined what would have been a number of good songs for me. I had now been burdened with a level of awareness that made it impossible for me to enjoy what the growing masses were ushering into the mainstream. I was now becoming what many Hip Hop heads would call “a Backpacker”, a person who chooses to associate themselves with the more “conscious” or politically astute artists of the Hip Hop community. What we termed as “conscious” Hip Hop became our preference for dance and booming systems. Groups like X-Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubian, Arrested Development, Gangstarr and others became the prevailing music of our circle. We also enjoyed the more playful Hip Hop of De La Soul, Heiroglyphics, Das FX, Organized Konfusion. Digable Planets, The Fugees, and more. We had more than enough positivity to fixate on. Hip Hop was diverse.

I had not yet begun writing poetry. Most of my friends hardly knew that I had been an emcee in high school. I no longer cared to identify myself as an emcee and my love of oratory seemed misplaced at Morehouse where most orators were actually preachers in training, speaking with the Southern drawl of Dr. King although they were 19 and from the North. I spent my time doing countless plays and school performances. I was in line to become what I thought would be the next Robeson, Sidney, Ossie, Denzel, Snipes… It wasn’t until I was in graduate school for acting at NYU that I was invited to a poetry reading in Manhattan where I heard Asha Bandele, Sapphire, Carl Hancock Rux, Reggie Gaines, Jessica Care Moore, and many others read poems that sometimes felt like monologues that my newly acquired journal started taking the form of a young poets’. Yet, I still noticed that I was a bit different from these poets who listed names like: Audrey Lourde, June Jordan, Sekou Sundiata etc, when asked why they began to write poetry. I knew that I had been inspired to write because of emcees like Rakim, Chuck D, LL, Run DMC… Hip Hop had informed my love of poetry as much or even more than my theater background which had exposed me to Shakespeare, Baraka, Fugard, Genet, Hansberry and countless others. In those days, just a mere decade ago, I started writing to fill the void between what I was hearing and what I wished I was hearing. It was not enough for me to critique the voices I heard blasting through the walls of my Brooklyn brownstone. I needed to create examples of where Hip Hop, particularly its lyricism, could go. I ventured to poetry readings with my friends and neighbors, Dante Smith (now Mos Def), Talib Kwele, Erycka Badu, Jessica Care Moore, Mums the Schemer, Beau Sia, Suheir Hammad…all poets that frequented the open mics and poetry slams that we commonly saw as “the other direction” when Hip hop reached that fork in the road as you discussed on your show this past week. On your show you asked the question, “Are all rappers poets?” Nice. I wanted to take the opportunity to answer this question for you.

The genius, as far as the marketability, of Hip Hop is in its competitiveness. Its roots are as much in the dignified aspects of our oral tradition as it is in the tradition of ”the dozens” or “signifying”. In Hip Hop, every emcee is automatically pitted against every other emcee, sort of like characters with super powers in comic books. No one wants to listen to a rapper unless they claim to be the best or the greatest. This sort of braggadocio leads to all sorts of tirades, showdowns, battles, and sometimes even deaths. In all cases, confidence is the ruling card. Because of the competitive stance that all emcees are prone to take, they, like soldiers begin to believe that they can show no sign of vulnerability. Thus, the most popular emcees of our age are often those that claim to be heartless or show no feelings or signs of emotion. The poet, on the other hand, is the one who realizes that their vulnerability is their power. Like you, unafraid to shed tears on countless shows, the poet finds strength in exposing their humanity, their vulnerability, thus making it possible for us to find connection and strength through their work. Many emcees have been poets. But, no, Ms. Winfrey, not all emcees are poets. Many choose gangsterism and business over the emotional terrain through which true artistry will lead. But they are not to blame. I would now like to address your question of leadership.

You may recall that in immediate response to the attacks of September 11th, our president took the national stage to say to the American public and the world that we would “…show no sign of vulnerability”. Here is the same word that distinguishes poets from rappers, but in its history, more accurately, women from men. To make such a statement is to align oneself with the ideology that instills in us a sense of vulnerability meaning “weakness”. And these meanings all take their place under the heading of what we consciously or subconsciously characterize as traits of the feminine. The weapon of mass destruction is the one that asserts that a holy trinity would be a father, a male child, and a ghost when common sense tells us that the holiest of trinities would be a mother, a father, and a child: Family. The vulnerability that we see as weakness is the saving grace of the drunken driver who because of their drunken/vulnerable state survives the fatal accident that kills the passengers in the approaching vehicle who tighten their grip and show no physical vulnerability in the face of their fear. Vulnerability is also the saving grace of the skate boarder who attempts a trick and remembers to stay loose and not tense during their fall. Likewise, vulnerability has been the saving grace of the African American struggle as we have been whipped, jailed, spat upon, called names, and killed, yet continue to strive forward mostly non-violently towards our highest goals. But today we are at a crossroads, because the institutions that have sold us the crosses we wear around our necks are the most overt in the denigration of women and thus humanity. That is why I write you today, Ms. Winfrey. We cannot address the root of what plagues Hip Hop without addressing the root of what plagues today’s society and the world.

You see, Ms. Winfrey, at it’s worse; Hip Hop is simply a reflection of the society that birthed it. Our love affair with gangsterism and the denigration of women is not rooted in Hip Hop; rather it is rooted in the very core of our personal faith and religions. The gangsters that rule Hip Hop are the same gangsters that rule our nation. 50 Cent and George Bush have the same birthday (July 6th). For a Hip Hop artist to say “I do what I wanna do/Don’t care if I get caught/The DA could play this mothaf@kin tape in court/I’ll kill you/ I ain’t playin’” epitomizes the confidence and braggadocio we expect an admire from a rapper who claims to represent the lowest denominator. When a world leader with the spirit of a cowboy (the true original gangster of the West: raping, stealing land, and pillaging, as we clapped and cheered.) takes the position of doing what he wants to do, regardless of whether the UN or American public would take him to court, then we have witnessed true gangsterism and violent negligence. Yet, there is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch by censoring the leaves.

Name calling, racist generalizations, sexist perceptions, are all rooted in something much deeper than an uncensored music. Like the rest of the world, I watched footage on AOL of you dancing mindlessly to 50 Cent on your fiftieth birthday as he proclaimed, “I got the ex/if you’re into taking drugs/ I’m into having sex/ I ain’t into making love” and you looked like you were having a great time. No judgment. I like that song too. Just as I do, James Brown’s Sex Machine or Grand Master Flashes “White Lines”. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll is how the story goes. Censorship will never solve our problems. It will only foster the sub-cultures of the underground, which inevitably inhabit the mainstream. There is nothing more mainstream than the denigration of women as projected through religious doctrine. Please understand, I am by no means opposing the teachings of Jesus, by example (he wasn’t Christian), but rather the men that have used his teachings to control and manipulate the masses. Hip Hop, like Rock and Roll, like the media, and the government, all reflect an idea of power that labels vulnerability as weakness. I can only imagine the non-emotive hardness that you have had to show in order to secure your empire from the grips of those that once stood in your way: the old guard. You reflect our changing times. As time progresses we sometimes outgrow what may have served us along the way. This time, what we have outgrown, is not hip hop, rather it is the festering remnants of a God depicted as an angry and jealous male, by men who were angry and jealous over the minute role that they played in the everyday story of creation. I am sure that you have covered ideas such as these on your show, but we must make a connection before our disconnect proves fatal.

We are a nation at war. What we fail to see is that we are fighting ourselves. There is no true hatred of women in Hip Hop. At the root of our nature we inherently worship the feminine. Our overall attention to the nurturing guidance of our mothers and grandmothers as well as our ideas of what is sexy and beautiful all support this. But when the idea of the feminine is taken out of the idea of what is divine or sacred then that worship becomes objectification. When our governed morality asserts that a woman is either a virgin or a whore, then our understanding of sexuality becomes warped. Note the dangling platinum crosses over the bare asses being smacked in the videos. The emcees of my generation are the ministers of my father’s generation. They too had a warped perspective of the feminine. Censoring songs, sermons, or the tirades of radio personalities will change nothing except the format of our discussion. If we are to sincerely address the change we are praying for then we must first address to whom we are praying.

Thank you, Ms. Winfrey, for your forum, your heart, and your vision. May you find the strength and support to bring about the changes you wish to see in ways that do more than perpetuate the myth of enmity.

In loving kindness,

Saul Williams

PS. Are you and Dave Chappelle still seeing each other?

I’ve been on a Bruce Lee kick (no pun intended) as of late. Okay, maybe the pun was intended. Anyway, I watched the following “Lost Interview” of Lee by the stodgy Pierre Berton. I was struck by the contrast in body language between the two men–Bruce Lee’s animation and joie de vivre compared with Berton’s stiff reserve. The interview inspired me to dig a little deeper into Lee’s philosophy and I was surprised to discover how beautifully he was able to articulate and embody the Somatic/Experiential principles I have been contemplating lately. Check it out:

From Bruce Lee:
Ultimately, martial art means honestly expressing yourself.

True observation begins when one is devoid of set patterns.

A good martial artist does not become tense but ready. Not thinking yet not dreaming, ready for whatever may come. A martial artist has to take responsibility for himself and face the consequences of his own doing. To have no technique, there is no opponent, because the word “I” does not exist. When the opponent expands I contract and when he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, “I” do not hit, “It” hits all by itself.

A martial artist who drills exclusively to a set pattern of combat is losing his freedom. He is actually becoming a slave to a choice pattern and feels that the pattern is the real thing. It leads to stagnation because the way of combat is never based on personal choice and fancies, but constantly changes from moment to moment, and the disappointed combatant will soon find out that his “choice routine” lacks pliability. There must be a “being” instead of a “doing” in training. One must be free. Instead of complexity of form, there should be simplicity of expression.

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

Art is the expression of the self. The more complicated and restricted the method, the less the opportunity for expression of one’s original sense of freedom. Though they play an important role in the early stage, the techniques should not be too mechanical, complex or restrictive. If we cling blindly to them, we shall eventually become bound by their limitations. Remember, you are expressing the techniques and not doing the techniques. If somebody attacks you, your response is not Technique No.1, Stance No. 2, Section 4, Paragraph 5. Instead you simply move in like sound and echo, without any deliberation. It is as though when I call you, you answer me, or when I throw you something, you catch it. It’s as simple as that — no fuss, no mess. In other words, when someone grabs you, punch him. To me a lot of this fancy stuff is not functional.

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

By adopting a certain physical posture, a resonant chord is struck in spirit.

Eliminate “not clear” thinking and function from your root.

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.

If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.

If you want to learn to swim, jump into the water. On dry land, no frame of mind is ever going to help you. In building a statue, a sculptor doesn’t keep adding clay to his subject. Actually, he keeps chiselling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions.

Knowing is not enough, you must apply; willing is not enough, you must do.

Learn the principle, abide by the principle, and dissolve the principle. In short, enter a mold without being caged in it. Obey the principle without being bound by it.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

Put every great teacher together in a room, and they’d agree about everything; put their disciples in there and they’d argue about everything.

Styles tend to not only separate men — because they have their own doctrines and then the doctrine became the gospel truth that you cannot change. But if you do not have a style, if you just say: Well, here I am as a human being, how can I express myself totally and completely? Now, that way you won’t create a style, because style is a crystallization. That way, it’s a process of continuing growth.

The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or in defeat. Let nature take its course, and your tools will strike at the right moment.

The height of cultivation runs to simplicity. Halfway cultivation runs to ornamentation.

The void is no mere emptiness, but is real, free and existing. It is the source from which all things arise and return. It cannot be seen, touched or known, yet it exists and is freely used. It has no shape, size, colour or form, and yet all that we see, hear, feel and touch is “it”. It is beyond intellectual knowing and cannot be grasped by the ordinary mind. When we suddenly awake to the realization that there is no barrier, and has never been seen, one realizes that one is all things, mountains, rivers, grasses, trees, sun, moon, stars, universe are all oneself. There is no longer a division or barrier between myself and others, no longer any feeling of alienation or fear. Realizing this, results in true compassion. Other people and things are not seen as apart from oneself, on the contrary, as one’s own body.

From the traditional scientific viewpoint, people are observable, manipulable objects. Traditional doctors study people’s bodies; traditional psychologists study people’s minds. From the somatic viewpoint, people are more than just bodies understandable and approachable on a bio-physical level, and minds understandable and approachable on a psycho-social level. We are equally self-sensing, self-moving, self-aware, self-expressing, self-responsible subjects–we are somas. Somas who not only are shaped by their relations with the environment and other people in observable ways, but who also profoundly affect their own state of functioning through subjective beliefs, expectations, and through the power of their own self-awareness. Hanna and Wilber would agree that the first-person perspective discloses unique data, complimenting the third-person view of the human being, making it possible to move toward an integral understanding that recognizes the whole human.

Experientially-oriented therapy and somatic education are two distinct approaches with a common goal: to help people to move from an inefficient, unfulfilling, unhealthy mode of functioning to one of increased efficiency, fulfillment and health. That is to say, both approaches aim for transformation of the whole-person. On the surface, it appears each addresses separate levels of human experience, somatics being about improving people’s bodily functioning while therapy works to better psychological functioning. While the terms bodily and psychological do indeed refer to qualitatively distinct modes of experience, they are quite inseparable at both the structural and functional levels. As Hanna noted, all human experience–whether perceived as thinking, feeling, tasting, seeing or jumping–is a reflection of the functioning of the entire human soma, which is coordinated by the processes of the central nervous system.

As we discussed, from an objective vantage point, all our perceptions of self and world are routed through our brains via sensory nerves, while all our movements in the world and inside ourselves flow out from our brain down the spine via motor nerves. We saw how, through intelligent use one’s self-sensing abilities, a state of sensory-motor amnesia in a given area could be reversed by somatic learning. The implications that this understanding has for the field of psychology become evident when we consider the various qualities of psychological experience in their rootedness to this very same sensorimotor system. In fact, psychological modes of expression, such as thinking, verbalizing, and imagining, can all be understood in terms of the somatic process of movement, while the psychological constructs of self-consciousness and self-awareness can be understood in terms of the somatic process of self-sensing.

At first blush, such an understanding might appear reductionistic, but as we consider this perspective in light of both scientific (third-person) and somatic (first-person) data, we’ll see how such an understanding can only add to the psychological view and vice versa. If one understands that all self-expression manifests as the autonomous movement of living bodies (somas), then many of the characteristic problems plaguing contemporary society–typical forms of stress, fatigue, back pain, depression, anxiety—can be seen as the result of individuals’ diminished capacity for movement. This is easy to see when we’re looking at so-called physical problems, like back pain, but things get a little slippery when we consider mental processes, like thinking.

Integrating first and third person perspectives, Hanna noted several studies investigating the relationship between thinking and motor activity. Edmund Jacobson, who developed the clinical procedure called progressive relaxation, conducted research that showed: 1) when subjects engaged in abstract thinking, speech muscles were predominantly activated, and 2) all mental activity decreased to the degree that muscle tension decreased. In another study, researchers found that subjects were ineffective in mentally focusing on anything while all their muscles were paralyzed (by a curare-type drug that did not cause any lapse of consciousness).

Roland Davis found that when subjects worked out multiplication problems “in their head,” the muscles of the subject’s dominant hand moved as if he or she were writing. Working with a subject who reported auditory hallucinations, F.J. McGuigan found that, using electrodes placed about the subject’s speech muscles, there was a subtle, ongoing movement in these muscles beginning precisely when the subject reported hearing the voices (as if the subject were actually speaking to himself!). These and many other scientific studies suggest an undeniable connection between mental activity that is perceived as being “in our minds,” and motor activity going on “in our bodies.” Neurophysiologist Roger W. Sperry has gone as far as to conclude that the entire output of the human thinking mechanism goes into the motor system, so that when people think, they are activating motor neurons.

Hanna put it this way: “thinking is movement–actual movement of the living body.” He further noted that whenever we sense anything, what we are sensing is movement of some form. We often speak of being emotionally moved by an experience to communicate that we’re feeling or sensing some emotion. However, when one makes themselves as hard as stone through intense contractedness, one becomes to that degree immovable in terms of emotional experience. Since emotions are a variety of psychological experience with such clear ties to bodily-felt sensations, it is relatively easy to understand how one’s psychological awareness of an emotion is really not other than one’s bodily sense of that emotion. In other words, the knowledge or awareness that “I am angry” is possible only to the extent that I feel or sense certain changes in my bodily experience–perhaps an increase in heartbeat, the hairs of my neck standing on end, muscle areas clenching. Likewise, the bodily movements associated with that sense can be understood as an expression of that sense/awareness. Pissed off, I might express myself with a frown and clenched fists; or I might be moved to scream or pound my fists on something (hopefully not someone). And as we have seen, to suppress emotional expression is to dull our capacity to sense or to be aware of our feelings. So, in terms of emotionality, we can see how sensori-motor association is essentially the same thing as awareness-expression association.

The point of all this is to support the following notion: many of the physical as well as psychological problems characteristic of contemporary society will continue to be poorly understood and ineffectively approached until the somatic foundations of human experience are taken more fully into account. This somatic/experiential perspective, which has been outlined above, is a point of view which takes into account both third-person and first-person data, and thus has much to offer the traditional paradigm of human health, which relies rather exclusively on a third-person perspective.

At the core of this somatic/experiential understanding are the somatic processes of self-movement and self-sensing. The idea here is that many of the diseases plaguing modern people are best understood not as psychological disorders where are minds are out of whack, nor as physical problems of bodies falling apart; rather, we are faced with functional disorders that are the result of people’s diminished capacity to sense the state of their own somatic functioning and subsequent inability/unwillingness to move from that embodied awareness. Hanna sums it up nicely:

In functional disorders, what is required is not the exchange of words with the “mind,” nor is it the exchange of chemicals and substances with the “body.” The requirement is a change in the living system’s awareness of its own functioning. The somatic system needs more information of itself and more efficient control. In sum, the distorted human soma needs new sensory information and new motor control.

Julian Walker is getting some discussions going about mind-body transformation, a favorite topic of mine. In fact, about ten years ago I wrote an entire master’s thesis about embodied transformation, and after mentioning this to Julian, he’s asked me to say a bit about it. For a while now I’ve intended to revisit and expand on these ideas, in light of another decade of living. Perhaps this (relatively) brief overview will inspire me to pick up the thread and follow it along a bit further:

Well Julian, it’s like this. At some point it occurred to me that my whole point of view, my basic mode of experiencing life, would shift during certain moments from a dissociated, half-alive, going through the motions type thing, to a wakeful, clear-minded, energized state of pure awesomeness. Basically, I became fascinated by my peak experiences. There seemed to be a quality about them that was not dependent on content or context. In other words I felt like the same process was happening regardless of what I was doing. I got the funny feeling that I was peaking or “peeking” into the same place, or entering the same state of consciousness, whether I was hitting a groove on the guitar, entering “the zone” on the athletic field, writing a poem or a song, having great sex, communing with nature on a hike, or getting showered with insight during meditation.

My master’s thesis was really nothing more than a sustained inquiry into this process of personal transformation, which I defined as a shift in one’s basic mode of experiencing toward greater vitality, awareness and expressiveness. I found that various theorists and practitioners understood transformation in different ways, but I also noticed a common thread between the approaches that moved me the most. Psychologists interested in transformation talked about the movement from unconsciousness to consciousness; the spiritual folks spoke of the journey from ignorance to awareness or enlightenment; creative thinkers were interested in moving from inside to outside “the box”; somatic practitioners worked toward refinement of sensitivity and an expanded range of movement.

It was the somatic perspective, I thought, that could ground an integral, multilevel understanding of the transformative process. I was searching for some basic principles of transformation with which I could generate a unique set of practices, in a sense building an Integral Life Practice program from the ground up. I appreciated the maps of others, but I yearned to wander from the well-worn paths, to know the joy of making my own way through the wilderness. I also felt that the somatic perspective, especially as understood by Thomas Hanna, had the potential to radically transform our understanding of both psychological health and spiritual growth. I couldn’t shake the feeling that if these loftier endeavors were plugged into an understanding of somatic education, they would become far more efficacious paths, less prone to pitfalls.

Hanna rejected the distinction between psychological and physical problems, instead using the term “functional problem” to describe limitations of the unified organism in its capacity for both self-sensing and self-expression. Central nervous system functioning is fundamental to all behavior and experience, according to Hanna. Ken Wilber would agree with this, although he would point out that psychological and spiritual levels of being are more “significant.” In any event, from a somatic viewpoint, there’s no separation of psychological from physical health, and the majority of the typical “mental” and “physical” diseases of our society are learned as people adapt to a culture that supports dissociation and alienation.

So, if we want to ground our understanding of transformation in the living body, we can start with the most fundamental aspect of the central nervous system–the division between sensory and motor processes. Our perceptions of the world outside our bodies, as well as our perceptions of our internal bodily states, come into the brain via sensory nerves. And every action we express, every movement we make in the world and inside our selves flows out from our brain and down through the spine by way of motor nerves. This structural division is functionally integrated within a single neural system, the brain integrating the incoming sensory information with outgoing commands to the motor system.

The continual interplay of sensory information and motor guidance is referred to in contemporary neuroscience as a feed back system which operates in loops. As Hanna describes it, “the sensory nerves ‘feedback’ information to the motor nerves, whose response ‘loops back’ with the movement commands along the motor nerves. As movement takes place, the motor nerves ‘feedback’ new information to the sensory nerves.” Acknowledging that there are indeed physical and psychological problems that are the result of structural deformity and/or physiological imbalance, Hanna argues that many of the health problems afflicting people today are not about bodies or minds breaking down, but about individuals who have lost conscious control of their somatic functions. These functional problems are ones in which the person suffers from a loss of memory: the memory of what it feels like to move in certain ways, and the memory of how to go about moving in certain ways. This type of memory loss is what Hanna calls sensory-motor amnesia, a state of diminished self-awareness that is quite reversible–that is to say, a state that can be transformed.

Sensory-motor amnesia involves a dual loss of both conscious control of a particular area of motor action and conscious sensing of that motor action. As the human organism adapts to repeated stressful conditions, whether resulting from cultural conditioning or from uncontrived environmental circumstances (like extreme ecological conditions or biophysical trauma), there is a loss of conscious voluntary control of specific somatic functions. For example, faced with the stress of ridicule and/or punishment for crying or screaming out in public, the sad or angry child will contract certain motor areas of the soma (i.e. muscles) in an effort to hold back their authentic response. Crying or yelling out simply cannot happen when the corresponding muscle systems are held motionless, because crying and yelling are the movements of those motor areas. As this stressful response of contraction is activated again and again in similar situations, the response eventually becomes habituated and the child loses awareness of it (i.e. the muscle contractions can no longer be consciously sensed) and control of it (i.e. the child cannot voluntarily relax the contractions). The child has been successfully conditioned not to emote in public.

This innate tendency of human beings to develop automatic, unconscious responses in the face of stressful stimuli (i.e. the process of conditioning) was well documented by researchers such as Pavlov and Skinner. Hanna describes the loss of conscious volitional control as sensori-motor amnesia so as to emphasize two essential facts: 1) habituated, involuntary responses, like all somatic processes, are a reflection of sensori-motor functioning, and 2) what becomes unconscious, forgotten, or unlearned, can become conscious again, remembered, and re-learned. Thus, sensori-motor amnesia can be reversed by somatic learning.

Somatic learning is a process that results in the expansion of an organism’s range of volitional consciousness. This process takes advantage of the feedback/loop nature of the sensori-motor system and is described by Hanna in the following way:

“If one focuses one’s awareness on an unconscious, forgotten area of the soma, one can begin to perceive a minimal sensation that is just sufficient to direct a minimal movement, and this, in turn, gives new sensory feedback of that area which, again, gives a new clarity of movement, etc. This sensory feedback associates with adjacent sensory neurons, further clarifying the synergy that is possible with the associated motor neurons. This makes the next motor effort inclusive of a wider range of associated voluntary neurons, thus broadening and enhancing the motor action and, thereby, further enhancing the sensory feedback. This back-and-forth motor procedure gradually ‘wedges’ the amnesic area back into the range of volitional control: the unknown becomes known and the forgotten becomes relearned.”

So it is that a diminished state of self-awareness and a diminished range of conscious responsiveness can expand and transform at the basic level of sensor-motor functioning. Our emotionally inhibited child, now an adult, can learn to pay focused and sustained attention to subtle sensations in the forgotten contracted muscle areas and thereby recover in awareness the sense of being perpetually held back and fatigued. With this awareness that “I’m contracting my muscles” and “I’m holding myself back,” comes the realization that one can now begin to relax those inhibitions.

Although I’ve chosen to illustrate this transformative process with what would normally be considered a “psychological” example–the emotionally inhibited person–, the practice of somatic education (as typified by Hanna’s work and Feldenkrais’s Functional Integration) is normally applied to what are thought of more as “physical” problems. Middle-aged to older adults with gross-level range of motion restrictions or distortions, often the result of trauma or injury, are more typically the clients of somatic therapies. Many people who seek out and engage in somatic practices are primarily looking to feel better and healthier on a physical level, not especially considering the implications the work has for whole-person growth and healing.

The psychological implications of “body work,” although increasing evident and acknowledged, seem to be less than adequately understood. The example of the emotionally inhibited person hints at how an understanding of sensori-motor function can contribute greatly to psychological perspectives of personal transformation and vice versa. An integral viewpoint promises a deeper understanding of how various transformative practices can be utilized in a complimentary fashion to most effectively support an individual’s capacities for self-regulation, health and growth. This integral understanding also allows for the articulation of basic principles that can be applied to any number of experiences and life situations, principles that anyone can use to create their own unique practices and approaches to personal transformation.

Many people are familiar with Jon Kabat-Zinn from his books Wherever you go, There you are and Full Catastrophe Living. He’s been on my radar for a while, but now that I’m considering a move to Massachusetts, I am especially interested in his work at the Center for Mindfulness at UMASS Medical School.

Last night I watched the following video of Kabat-Zinn speaking at the University of San Diego. I was impressed with his down-to-earth, no-nonsense way of communicating the essence of mindfulness. Check it out: