IHR Podcast #14: Thoughts on Integral Theory and the associated community

In this episode of the Integral Health Resources Podcast, I discuss my current perspective on Ken Wilber’s “Integral Theory” and the associated community, especially in light of the recent New York Times article on Marc Gafni, a known sexual predator who is unconscionably endorsed as a leader in the integral community.

Related media:
Brief description of the “Four Quadrant” model of Integral Theory
– “A Spiritual Leader Gains Stature, Trailed by a Troubled Past” – New York Times article on Marc Gafni
Blog post by Judy Rogers, one of Marc Gafni’s victims
Articles critical of Gafni, by William Harryman of Integral Options Cafe
– My blog post on Ken Wilber, “Has Ken Wilber jumped the shark?

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Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes

Dr. Roger Walsh recently wrote a landmark article in the American Psychological Association’s flagship journal, American Psychologist. The article, Lifestyle and Mental Health, outlines eight major lifestyle factors that are woefully under-appreciated in the field of mental health, despite overwhelming evidence of their psychological (and physical and social) benefits.

Here’s the abstract:

Mental health professionals have significantly underestimated the importance of lifestyle factors (a) as contributors to and treatments for multiple psychopathologies, (b) for fostering individual and social well-being, and (c) for preserving and optimizing cognitive function. Consequently, therapeutic lifestyle changes (TLCs) are underutilized despite considerable evidence of their effectiveness in both clinical and normal populations. TLCs are sometimes as effective as either psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy and can offer significant therapeutic advantages. Important TLCs include exercise, nutrition and diet, time in nature, relationships, recreation, relaxation and stress management, religious or spiritual involvement, and service to others. This article reviews research on their effects and effectiveness; the principles, advantages, and challenges involved in implementing them; and the forces (economic, institutional, and professional) hindering their use. Where possible, therapeutic recommendations are distilled into easily communicable principles, because such ease of communication strongly influences whether therapists recommend and patients adopt interventions. Finally, the article explores the many implications of contemporary lifestyles and TLCs for individuals, society, and health professionals. In the 21st century, therapeutic lifestyles may need to be a central focus of mental, medical, and public health.

In my opinion, Walsh’s article has the potential to influence and unify the fields of mental health, public health, and medicine in much the same way as Dr. George Engel’s biopsychosocial challenge for biomedicine did back in 1977. The following is a list of resources related to Walsh’s article:

PDF of the article in American Psychologist

Lifestyle and Mental Health topic page on Dr. Walsh’s website

Dialogue between Roger Walsh and philosopher Ken Wilber (Part one)

Dialogue between Roger Walsh and Ken Wilber (Part two)

Full video presentation at University of California, Irvine

UC Irvine presentation in ten parts via YouTube:

(1) Impact of Lifestyle on Mental Health
(2) Exercise Benefits Body, Brain and Mind
(3) Eating for Mental Health: What Kind of Diet Is Best for Brain and Mind?
(4) Fish Oil and Vitamin D: Supplements That Benefit Body, Brain and Mind
(5) The Effects of Nature and Technology on Mental Health
(6) Relationships: The Most Powerful Factor Affecting Wellbeing
(7) Recreation and Mental Health: Good Times Make for Good Minds
(8) Relaxation and Stress Management:The Benefits of Letting Go and Letting Be
(9) Religion, Spirituality, and Mental Health
(10) Helper’s High—Feeling Good by Doing Good

There is also a documentary multimedia project in development, 8 Ways to Wellbeing, that will feature Walsh’s work on TLCs. Here’s the promotional video:

The Embodiment of Freedom: An integral approach to optimal health and personal transformation (Part 3: Bodymind dissociation)

The notion that a typical mature, well-adjusted person in our culture is alienated from or out of touch with their bodies may seem, at first blush, curious if not absurd. Most of us yelp out in pain when we stub our toes, enjoy the pleasure of making love, notice when we’re hungry, and are saddened by tragedy. Obviously, to say that one is relatively disembodied does not mean one is an anesthetized “floating head” bumping into things all the time. The issue is far more subtle and compelling, having to do with the quality of our relationships to self, others, and environment, and how our experience of those relationships is shaped by the processes of development and socialization. Disembodiment simply refers to a diminished capacity to be sensually aware and the subsequent inability to respond to life’s continual challenges from the fullness of such a sensually grounded awareness.

That human beings become increasing able to think as they mature into adulthood obviously endows the developing person with greater potential and possibility in life. Contrary to the popularized personal growth motto of “lose your mind and come back to your senses,” any holistic inquiry into personal health and healing realizes the value of cognitive development. But there is a difference between adding a layer of depth in human awareness (moving from a vibrant, feeling-centered being to a being who also has a well developed capacity to think — a “bodymind” if you will), and losing touch with basic levels of awareness (becoming a thinking-centered being who has lost much of their capacity to express themselves from a sensually-grounded awareness). The latter is a pathological state of affairs that, unfortunately, is built in to the very fabric of modern society, shaping the lives of individuals in ways that distort and deny the fullness of experience.

Phenomenologist Elizabeth Behnke calls the tendency to distance ourselves from our own bodily lives the “I-it structure of experience,” which often manifests in our culture as the unshakable sense that our perceiving selves are situated somewhere “in our heads.” From this I-it perspective, my legs are perceived as “down there” as opposed to me being “up here.” When I feel pain in my back or head I say that “it” hurts. My sense is that I have experiences or that experiences happen to me. An emotion, for instance, might be perceived as if it were some “thing” that was temporarily affecting me in some way.

This mode of bodily experiencing, undoubtedly the norm for most of us most of the time, has to do with our sense of identity or who we take ourselves to be. While bodily impulses and feelings may be perceived, they are experienced as outside of one’s essential identity. Philosopher Ken Wilber (in his book No Boundary) has described this way of experiencing as one in which an artificial boundary is perceived in regard to one’s total organism, such that the entire bodily-felt realm is projected outward as not-self. Thus, a typical Westerner is likely to claim that they are their mind while they simply have a body. In the mature, well-adjusted, normal adult, this bodymind fragmentation doesn’t mean that one would fail to notice being on fire. It does mean, however, that one operates from a “locus of identity” that is situated on the ego side of an ego-flesh perceptual boundary. An individual centered on the mind or egoic side of this boundary may be aware of bodily experience, but only as an object of awareness. As psychologist R.D. Laing (in his book The Divided Self) describes this “unembodied” self: “The body is felt more as one object among other objects in the world than as the core of the individual’s own being.” In this subtle yet telling way, mind and body are dissociated in awareness, and perception of self and world is thereby distorted to fit that dissociation.

It is fairly clear that this level of bodymind dissociation is considered normal and healthy in our culture. Many of us certainly live as if we were essentially minds at the helm of our bodies—keeping them healthy and satisfied for as long as we find ourselves in them. When we experience back pain, the typical response is to go to a specialist to get it fixed or adjusted, just as we do our cars. Anxiety, especially when not consciously linked to obvious circumstances, is often treated as a “thing,” a symptom to be vanquished by medication or positive thinking.

The difference between the dissociated and embodied modes of experience may sound trivial in the abstract, but we’ve all experienced the contrast keenly in our daily lives. It is the difference between merely recognizing you are sad, and feeling that sadness in the full release of crying. It is the difference between merely believing you love someone, and actually being in love with that person, feeling the intensity of connection in the moment. Anyone who’s ever “lost themselves” in a sunset, or in a musical jam-session, or in the tender embrace of a loved one, can recognize this shift toward full-bodied perception. Actually, one’s “self” is not at all lost in this manner of experiencing. What’s lost is only one’s tendency to keep their attention confined to the thought-centered processes of the total psychophysical organism.

In contemporary society, our capacity to deeply enter into the sensual flow of experience is typically utilized less and less as we adapt to an increasingly mind-centered lifestyle, and it becomes atrophied and left poorly developed. This relative disembodiment places unnecessary limits on people’s personal health and growth. Thus, a person may recognize that they’re sad, anxious, or depressed, perceiving these feeling states well enough to talk about them in quite sophisticated ways, yet nonetheless remain stuck in the same familiar patterns. Consciously unable (and unconsciously unwilling) to engage personal issues in their sensual fullness, we necessarily struggle to get through and beyond the inner conflicts and issues that hold us back in life.

The I-it mode of experiencing is certainly not, in-and-of-itself, a bad thing. Problems can and do arise, however, when an I-it mode of perceiving and responding becomes so habituated that, without realizing it, human beings gradually lose their capacity to experience life in any other way. Instead of a mode of perceiving and responding consciously utilized in an appropriate situation, I-it objectivity becomes the unconscious way one approaches nearly all situations. As we shall see, the dis-identification with our sensual existence that characterizes the I-it mode of being, when operating in a habitual and unconscious fashion, can keep people stuck in unhealthy and unfulfilling ruts, distorting people’s experience in ways that interfere with the process of personal transformation. When you approach the world with only a hammer, so to speak, everything starts to look like a nail. And if this illusion becomes too convincing, things start to get all bent out of shape.

The Embodiment of Freedom: An integral approach to optimal health and personal transformation (Part 2: Defining terms)

"Transformation" by Rick Hocker (Click photo to go to http://rickhocker.com)
As a student of psychology, both academically and in the broadest sense, I have surveyed a number of practices and fields of study that strive to help individuals become more fully themselves. These can generally be described as approaches to personal transformation — endeavors that work to provide a supportive context where individuals can learn to become more fully aware of their personal world of experience, and are encouraged to utilize that expanded awareness as a source of intelligent responsiveness and self-expression. What transforms in this process is the mode from which a person experiences self and world, such that the quality of one’s relations to self, others, and environment changes in enriching ways as one’s depth of awareness and range of responsiveness grows.

This process whereby people move from a relatively unhealthy, inefficient, unfulfilling mode of functioning toward one of increased livelihood, health, and growth potential, has been understood in many different ways. The approaches that have had the greatest impact on my own life are those that understand personal transformation in terms of embodiment. A variety of theorists and practitioners — representing such fields as psychotherapy, somatics, phenomenology, ecology, psychology, and mindfulness meditation — have contributed a wide range of overlapping, interpenetrating perspectives that recognize the transformative potential of developing one’s capacity to be aware of and consciously responsive from embodied modes of experiencing (by which I mean experiences of bodily sensations and feelings — i.e. somatic/kinesthetic/proprioceptive experience in general). These perspectives share a broad understanding of the transformative process, which can be generally stated as follows:

Human beings often remain stuck in relatively unfulfilling, unhealthy patterns or ways of living in large part due to a diminished state of basic self-awareness. Many individuals in this state are considerably diminished in their capacity to be aware of and respond from feelingful, sensual levels of experiencing . In order to move toward health, fullness of living, and actualization of potential, a person in this dissociated state must develop his or her existing self-sensing capacities and learn to authentically express him- or herself from this deeper, fuller sense of self.

This general view of personal transformation has been understood in at least the following ways: in terms of psychological processes (i.e. dissociation and integration), interpersonal dynamics, socio-cultural/political factors, people’s relations with the earthly environment, sensorimotor functioning, and spiritual realization. The following inquiry is offered as one of many possible integral approaches to optimal health and personal transformation. I use the term integral in a broad sense, understanding an integral approach to be any that brings multiple perspectives together in an effort to address the multiple dimensions of human life. In this sense, integral is more or less interchangeable with terms like integrative and holistic or any other term meant to convey “whole person” approaches to health and personal growth. Although integral is perhaps less familiar than the other terms mentioned, I use it simply as a matter of personal preference, no doubt owing to the influence of both Haridas Chaudhuri’s model of Integral Psychology (Chaudhuri was the founder of the California Institute of Integral Studies, where I studied for several years) and to Ken Wilber’s “four quadrant” integral theory, which I find to be quite useful in framing “big-picture” multidimensional perspectives.

In my next post I will explore this inquiry’s primary assumption: that life (at least in the modern West) is indeed plagued with a tendency toward alienation and dissociation, an attitude that drives a wedge between the thinking and feeling dimensions of being human. This fragmentation of consciousness not only renders us strangers to ourselves in a deep sense, but it also distorts and deadens the quality of relationship that is possible interpersonally, and between people and the earthly environment. Then I’ll look at some ways of facilitating personal transformation that arose in response to this alienated psycho-social situation, focusing on a select few approaches within the fields of somatics and psychotherapy.

Integrative Spirituality

28kbbob51107.jpg[The following is my contribution to an online symposium that Julian Walker organized several years ago called Integrative Spirituality: Grounded Contemporary Perspectives. The website that hosted the symposium no longer exists, so I’m reposting my essay here for posterity (in a slightly edited form, to fit the new context). Some of this essay might overlap a bit with my Embodiment of Freedom articles and, like those pieces, it’s a bit more academic/theoretical in style compared to how I typically write these days. Also, this was written before neuroplasticity became such a hot topic, and before the recent explosion in interest of mindfulness-based health interventions. It’s heartening to see how much progress is being made toward a more integral understanding of health and well-being.]

Breakfast at Tiffany’s:
Last night I picked up my guitar and inexplicably broke into “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the mid-nineties hit from Deep Blue Something. I was killing time waiting for my wife to finish brushing her teeth and whatnot. She heard my rendition and started to sing along. Next thing you know we’re in the way-back machine, trying to remember that Blues Traveler song, you know, the one that was such a big hit. “No, not the ‘Hook’ song, the other one, the one that came out before that.” It was right on the tip of my tongue, and I’d only just begun to wrack my brain for the answer when my wife said, “Hold on, I’ll just Google it.” Ten seconds later, the issue was settled, but I wasn’t. It occurred to me that my reliance on Google was messing with my ability to access my long-term memory. Hec, in twenty years I might have to Google my own name to remember who’s looking back at me in the mirror.

This experience is just the latest reminder that everything I do has an impact on the way I am, and that the way I am places limits on what I’m able to do, and then round and round I go forming a pattern that becomes my way of life. Come to think of it, it’s pretty mind-blowing to fathom that something as seemingly trivial as Googling can, overtime, literally change the structure of my brain. Use it or lose it baby, and no matter if we’re talking muscle, bone, vision, hearing, or cortical neural networks, there’s no doubt that how we live literally changes who we are. It’s downright freaky, the sheer sense of responsibility.

The understanding here is that human beings, like all forms of life, are functionally malleable. That is to say, we continually adapt to the givens of our environmental situation, which for us includes a cultural dimension. The plasticity of our organisms, especially our central nervous systems, allows for the possibility, the inevitability really, of continual change as we flex and flow in dynamic relationship with ourselves, culture and nature. What’s also unbelievably mind-blowing to me is how this simple, commonsense understanding of the somatic foundations of personal transformation is so conspicuously absent from contemporary discourse in fields as far-reaching and diverse as medicine, psychology, and spirituality. That, in a nutshell, is my intention here, to show how a functional, somatic, experiential perspective can give an Integrative Spirituality some ground to stand on.

Who’s gonna do what now?
So what exactly is it that’s being integrated in an integrative spirituality? The question presupposes a dis-integration or lack of unity, a state of fragmentation or at least chaotic differentiation. For me, the integral impulse is primarily a movement toward the direct experience of integrity, a movement from a sense of alienation and disconnect to one of authenticity, conviviality and freedom. It’s about moving from developmental arrest to realization of our full potential as humans.

The rubber meets the road in the immediacy of my directly felt experience, right now, and integrity is embodied, lived out, expressed in my actions on a daily basis. This practical dimension is, in fact, what interests me most, and I will get to the nitty-gritty of my practice shortly. However, since I ground my understanding of integrative spirituality in terms of embodiment, somatic awareness, and movement, I want to be clear on some theoretical issues.

For my money, an integrative spirituality is a transformative spirituality, and as such it must get to the roots of our being. Philosopher Ken Wilber has consistently claimed that the centaur level — where “mind and body are experienced as an integrated self” – is the jumping off place from the realm of the personal to the transpersonal. In Sex Ecology Spirituality, he went as far as to herald the centaur as “the next major stage of leading-edge global transformation.” I agree with this completely, and would add that an integrative spirituality can be neither grounded nor optimally transformative without presupposing a firm centauric foundation, i.e. a certain degree of bodymind integrity.

As to the question “What transforms?” in the process of personal transformation, I’d say, well, “the person,” which at the centaur stage can be thought of as the bodymind or organism. This is a philosophical rabbit-hole I’d rather not go down here, but I should add an important caveat from Alan Watts: “Man is not so much an organism in an environment as an organism-environment relationship. The relationship is, as it were, more real than its two terms, somewhat as the inner unity of a stick is more solid than the difference of its two ends.” So, more precisely, I would say that personal transformation is about transforming one’s way of life, the mode from which a person experiences and participates in life. The point of all this being that most of us cannot continue to grow optimally or live fully without first and foremost understanding, accepting and effectively responding to the reality of dissociation and alienation. Of course, maybe I’m the only one with unfinished dissociative business to clear up, but I doubt it. In any event, there’s not much point in building more and more stories onto a building if the foundation is not properly in place.

It is the lack of a smoothly integrated, firm foundation — in our ways of thinking, acting and in the very cores our being – that, in my opinion, accounts for the confusion and inadequacy that characterizes so much of contemporary spiritual discourse. I stress the notion of embodiment because I think it is too often glossed over that we experience life in, through and as embodied organisms, bodyminds that are typically plagued with habitual patterns of constriction. These constrictions are embedded in the very structure of our bodies and nervous systems, giving rise to a sense of dissociation and alienation, which in turn gets expressed in distorted perception, thought and action.

Given the right conditions, development happens of its own accord. An acorn will rather effortlessly become an oak tree, so long as there’s rich soil, adequate water and light, and so on. Throw an acorn in your closet, however, and it will only dry up and crumble into dust. I see human development in much the same light. It requires a healthy relationship with our environment, which for human beings has both natural and cultural dimensions. In fact, as Watts reminded us, this relationship is as much “what we are” as anything.

Enter the somatic perspective, my understanding of which is grounded in the work of my mentors in the field, Don Hanlon Johnson and Thomas Hanna.

Alienation vs. authenticity:
Johnson describes how the dissociative fabric of contemporary culture is sewn into individual lives through a “technology of alienation,” whereby beliefs and non-verbal body-shaping techniques are etched into our brains and bodies. This process leaves us cut off from the sources of knowing necessary for full living and continued growth. Since we respond to all situations as embodied beings, losing touch with the immediacy of felt experience will render us unable to perceive the subtle changes that allow us to sense whether a situation is likely to enhance or diminish the quality of our lives. To the degree we lack a firm sense of embodiment, we are ignorant of how to live situations in an authentic way.

Authenticity, as Johnson points, originally meant “to have a sense that one’s actions and feelings are one’s own.” When one is firmly grounded in the integrated centaur, one has access to a “sensual authority,” a mode of awareness and expression rooted in the self-directing, self-regulatory capacities of the healthy, non-constricted organism. It is the technology of alienation that arrests further development, keeping us stuck with a sense of void between my “mind” and my “body,” between “me” and “the world.” Lacking contact with our sensual authority, we look outside ourselves for some basis on how to live our lives. We give doctors authority over our bodies, psychologist authority over our minds, and religious leaders authority over our spirits. Unfortunately, the current discourse in all those fields mostly perpetuates the status quo of an unnecessarily pathological degree of dissociation and alienation. The shift from alienation to authenticity requires that we develop our impoverished self-sensing capacities and that we learn to check the dictates of outside authorities against this growing base of awareness.

Practice, practice, practice…
The processes that work to shape people into alignment with societal agendas, that lead to experiences of bodymind dissociation, influence people’s lives only to the extent that human beings are, like I mentioned above, functionally malleable. In contrast to the technology of alienation, which takes advantage of this malleability to undermine people’s sensual authority, Johnson described another way of integrating techniques, one that encourages people to develop and connect to their unique store of embodied wisdom. Johnson calls this alternative “the technology of authenticity”.

The many technologies of authenticity (including experiential psychotherapy, Gendlin’s “focusing” process, various somatic approaches, and many forms of mindfulness meditation) are practical strategies that: (1) facilitate the recovery and further development of an individual’s inherent self-sensing capacities (i.e. one’s sense of embodied authority), and (2) provide an environment or context where authentic expression of this newly expanded awareness can be explored, supported and encouraged.

Ken Wilber said the following in his book One Taste (Thanks to Hokai Sobol for pointing this out):

“There are four major stages of spiritual unfolding: belief, faith, direct experience, and permanent adaptation: you can believe in Spirit, you can have faith in Spirit, you can directly experience Spirit, you can become Spirit…. If you are interested in genuine transformative spirituality, find an authentic spiritual teacher and begin practice. Without practice, you will never move beyond the phases of belief, faith, and random peak experiences. You will never evolve into plateau experiences, nor from there into permanent adaptation. You will remain, at best, a brief visitor in the territory of your own higher estate, a tourist of you own true Self.”

This is a brilliant way to frame the process of personal transformation, I think. My own core practices [the specifics of which I’ll save for another conversation] stem from a set of principles that I apply to as many life situations as possible. This is a slightly different take on the concept of Integral Life Practice, in that instead of gathering a variety of existing approaches and techniques together for the purposes of “cross-training” or “exercising” various levels of my being and whatnot, my approach has been to explore, understand and experiment with the essential principles that seem to be operative during any and all my transformative or peak experiences, regardless of the context. I like the distinction Don Hanlon Johnson makes between principles and techniques. Whereas an emphasis on particular techniques can encourage imitation, repetition, and an over-reliance on those considered to be experts, principles are fundamental sources of discovery that encourage open-ended inquiry and can generate creative strategies for approaching unique situations.

Principles of personal transformation:
Alan Watts said: “The way in which we interpret mystical experience must be plausible. That is to say, it must fit in with and/or throw light upon the best available knowledge about life and the universe.” Understanding and incorporating the somatic dimension does not mean that all we need to do is bodywork or focus on our feelings. We do, I think, need to understand how all aspects of life and culture play out on a somatic level, simply because the living body, in its structural and functional aspects, is fundamental to transformation as it unfolds on deeper (or more significant, in Wilber’s scheme) levels, such as the psychological and spiritual.

Here’s how I understand the relationships, in a nutshell: 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 feedback 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.” Hanna argues that many of the 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.

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. It is my contention that effective psychotherapy and transformative spiritual practices, as processes necessarily rooted in the central nervous system of the organism, are effective only to the degree they take advantage of the organism’s capacity for somatic learning. Psychologists from Carl Rogers to Eugine Gendlin have discovered as much, as have mindfulness meditation advocates like Alan Watts and Jon Kabat-Zinn.

The crux of the matter is thus: personal transformation is the movement that springs from authentic relationship, from embodied encounter. Transformation is the movement from alienation to authenticity; the movement toward progressively deeper and expanded levels of awareness and authentic expression. On the level of sensorimotor functioning we understand this transformation as the movement from sensorimotor amnesia to somatic learning. From a psychological perspective this transformation is the movement from psychological dis-ease to psychological growth and self-actualization, or from unconsciousness to consciousness, or from pathology to health. In terms of ecology we’re talking about the movement from ecological crisis to ecological balance in relation to the human species. Spiritual seekers might call it the movement from suffering to inner harmony and peace, or dissociation to integration, or ignorance to enlightenment. In all contexts, the same principles can be applied, and these principles can be understood to underlie a wide range of somatic/experiential practices designed to facilitate personal transformation, each understood in terms of particular contexts of relationship.

Deadlines and Deadends:
Thanks to Julian Walker for inviting me to carry this inquiry forward a little. Unless I’m responding to another person, in dialogue or with a set deadline, I seem incapable of doing this kind of thing. Death is the ultimate deadline, I suppose. Perhaps I need to meditate on that a while to motivate me to write the book that’s been rattling around in my head for years now.

Basically, this whole inquiry began when 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.

There is a way to live that opens me up and a way that shuts me down. For me, the whole process comes down to this: When I’m open (whether through luck, effort or grace), and I have the guts and faith needed to allow whatever form of self-expression that arises to unfold, then I open up more and feel more alive and connected. In my experience, this is the fundamental attitude that is a prerequisite for spiritual growth. On the other hand, when I choose, consciously or unconsciously, to inhibit this movement in favor of a habitual, conditioned response, I feel more and more cut off, and I contract again back into an unfulfilling daze.

Coda [From Alan Watts]:

“My ego is a marriage between my (necessarily false) image or concept of myself, and the chronic muscular tension which a child learns in trying to do things which must happen spontaneously: to love, to sleep, to attend, to have bowel movements, and to control crying, pouting, or blushing. But muscular tension does not necessarily assist neural efficiency, for it hinders rather than helps when we strain our eyes to see and furrow our brows to concentrate. Yet we are forever scratching our heads, clenching our fists and jaws, holding our breath, and tightening our rectal muscles in order to will or to keep control of our feelings, and the vague persistence of this tension becomes the substantial referent of the word “I,” and the image the emotional and conceptual referent. A futility married to an illusion!”

The Embodiment of Freedom, Part Two

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 [in his groundbreaking book Somatics] 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, Somatics].

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 our 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. [Somatics]

“Integral?”

Question: What does “Integral” mean? What’s the difference between integral, integrative, holistic, mind/body, wellness, etc.?

My answer: As I use the term, “integral” refers to any approach that brings together multiple perspectives in an effort to address the multiple dimensions of human life. In this sense, the term “integral” is basically interchangeable with “integrative” and “holistic.” As a matter of personal preference, I like the term “integral.” I graduated from the California Institute of Integral Studies, which is grounded in the Integral Psychology of founder Haridas Chaudhuri, and I’m also a big fan of Ken Wilber’s “four quadrant” integral theory.

In general, however, the terms integral, integrative, holistic, mind/body, and wellness are all meant to convey “whole person” approaches to health and healing, as opposed to the disease-focused system associated with conventional medicine.

Keeping in mind that most, if not all, healthcare practitioners—whether in conventional settings or integrative health centers—would claim to be treating the “whole person,” I agree with the following distinctions Dr. Elliott Dacher makes between conventional, complimentary and alternative, integrative, and integral approaches:

[Article featured on Davi Nikent.org]

The evolution of medicine in modern times has been from allopathic or conventional, to alternative and complementary, to integrative and now to integral.

These can be defined as:

Conventional: The traditional approaches of medical science.
Alternative and Complementary: Healing approaches outside of the mainstream of western medical science.
Integrative: The merging of conventional, alternative and complementary approaches under a single “umbrella” of care.

Each of the preceding approaches, as they are currently and predominantly practiced in western culture, primarily focus on the biological or physical aspects of healing, emphasizing the role of professionals and their specialties, remedies and therapies in the treatment of physical disturbances. It is the recognition that these approaches have not addressed the whole person and therefore limit what can be achieved in health and healing that has driven the development of an integral approach.

Integral: The expansion of the health and healing process to address the entire range of the human experience: biological, psychospiritual, relational and cultural. All are seen to contribute to the disease process and to health and healing. The expansion of consciousness, the inner aspect of healing, rather than the outer “medical tool kit” is a central aspect of the integral approach. The aim of integral medicine is broader than all preceding approaches to health and healing. The aim is to gain freedom from suffering and to experience the flourishing of the full potential of our humanity – the natural arising of an inner peace, wholeness, love, compassion and joy – that can sustain itself throughout the life cycle irrespective of the presence or absence of disease. This can only be achieved with an integral approach to healing that considers all aspects of the human condition.

From the Practitioner’s Perspective:

As a conventional practitioner I would approach the individual from the perspective of the physical symptom and disease, limiting my diagnosis and treatment options to those of western science. As an alternative and complementary practitioner I would approach the physical symptom and disease from the perspective of my particular training (acupuncture, chiropractic, nutritional, etc.) and formulate a diagnostic and treatment plan in relationship to my specialty. An integrative care approach combines conventional and alternative approaches to offer a broader spectrum of choices when treating the individual’s symptoms or disease. As an Integral practitioner I would approach the patient first looking at their entire life circumstance – biological, psychosocial, relational and cultural – focusing on the whole person rather than the disease, symptom, or my particular specialty, my diagnosis would include concerns in each of these areas of life and my healing plan would cover the broad range of needs and possible approaches necessary to move towards a larger health of the whole person. Because as an integral practitioner my vision is broader so also is that which can be achieved, a human flourishing vs. a physical healing. As an integral healer I must be in a transformative process myself as the driving force for a larger healing is not merely biological knowledge but an understanding and growth into a larger consciousness. An expanding consciousness is a key ingredient of an integral process.

Elliott Dacher, MD
March 2005

Integral Health Coaching

I’ve been working on a new project lately, namely to resolve this ongoing career dilemma of mine and finally start doing the kind of work I’ve been wanting to do for the past ten years. Through a stroke of good fortune/sweet synchronicity, I recently discovered Duke Integrative Medicine, which is right around the corner from me at Duke University. They have a brand new Integrative Health Coaching Training Program that is so “right up my alley” it’s just crazy. Check out the brochure if you’re curious to know the details.

I’ve been searching for years for a profession that would allow me draw upon my unique background, interests and strengths. This has been a struggle, because aside from my bachelor’s degree in Psychology and my fifteen years experience in mental health, most of my other interests and experiences are more “off the beaten path,” like my master’s degree in East/West Psychology, my training in Hanna Somatic Education, and my interest in mindfulness meditation. As an “Integrative Health Coach” (I prefer the term “Integral” to “Integrative” — which is nod to my grad school days at the California Institute of Integral Studies, as well as my fascination with philosopher Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory), I can bring all these things together, both to help people move toward better health and to help me finally feel at home in the work I do week in and week out.

So, I applied to the program, was accepted, and now damn it, I’m gonna do it! Look for my new website (integral health coaching dot com) a few weeks from now.

Boo-ya!