Posts Tagged ‘movement’

“No mat­ter how much I move myself around, my strongest ten­dency is to move in the same ways that I have always moved, guided by the same deeply seated pos­tural habits, sen­sory cues, and men­tal images of my body; but if I can suc­ceed in sur­ren­der­ing to the move­ments that another per­son imposes on my body, with­out my own sys­tem of cues and responses inter­fer­ing, it is pos­si­ble to treat my mind to a flood of sen­sa­tions that are novel in impor­tant ways, sen­sa­tion that may well be able to indi­cate things I have been doing that have pro­duced aches and pains at the same times as they have rein­forced my nor­mal sense of self.

And even more impor­tant, this move­ment of sur­ren­der and new sen­sa­tion can demon­strate to me that I am not per­ma­nently obliged to con­tinue act­ing out a habit­ual com­pul­sion. I can see that habit is habit, that I am some­thing else, and for that moment at any rate, I can choose to repeat it or not.  And if I can drop a com­pul­sive behav­iour or atti­tude for a moment with­out caus­ing a cri­sis, then per­haps I can dis­pense with it all together.  As any physi­cian knows, this kind of insight can often be worth more than any num­ber of drugs or pro­ce­dures for the rever­sal of a chronic condition.

In other words, just as the mind organ­ises the rest of the body’s tis­sues into a life process, sen­sa­tions to a large degree organ­ise the mind. They do not sim­ply give the mind the mate­r­ial to organ­ise; they are them­selves a major organ­is­ing principle.”

Deane Juhan – Job’s Body (Intro­duc­tion xxvii)