Learning together about Processwork’s contribution to Bodywork and Health Care
As the new year begins, we (this is Arlene and Jean-Claude) hope to share a bit of what we’ve been working on .. This is linked to our upcoming February Intensive and course, ‘Dying to Live: Process Work’s contribution to Bodywork and healthcare’.
We keep coming back to simple and big questions about the meaning of life – very personal for us, and to wider collective and ethical issues of health…
When we have a symptom or illness, or a loved one has, we naturally want a good outcome and good health – and we wish that for everyone.
But that deepest urge to life (‘dying to live’) can get confused and swept up by a worldview that so values ‘functioning’ and being ‘productive’, that one can easily miss the body’s wisdom and vitality that comes from accurate awareness and valuing of what goes on inside …
When you have a symptom you might receive medical advice or lots of recommendations for diet and exercise, and a range of alternative therapies from various cultures and worldviews – this richness of knowledge and practice can make a life difference and is nothing to sneeze at.
But, it got us thinking about how notions of health as ‘functioning’ easily marginalize one’s deepest experiences – And how one’s search for wellbeing can also become what Chogyam Trungpa (Tibetan Buddhist teacher) used to describe as ‘spiritual materialism’. He spoke about how the genuine search for awareness and spiritual development can feed your identification. You get identified with seeking for enlightenment…
In a talk in 1970, he spoke about the tendency people have to collect spiritual teachings and ancient wisdom like you might collect antiques! He went on to talk about how knowledge is handed down – not as doctrine – but only as personal experience. That it doesn’t help to be a replica of your teacher – You are inspired by the teacher and the learning must come through grappling with your own experience, which you then pass on… And your students do so in turn.
He told of Naropa and Tilopa and Marpa and Milarepa and Gampoa, teachers of a particular lineage. “It was a living experience for them.”… The teachings, he said, “have the quality of warm, fresh baked bread; the bread is still warm and hot and fresh. Each baker applies the general knowledge of how to make bread to his particular dough and oven. Then he must personally experience the freshness …cut it fresh and eat it warm. He makes the teachings his own and then must practice them. It is a very living process.”
This seemed so fitting to the Processwork practice of learning from nature, by following and cooking the subtlest body signals. Arny (Mindell) has often said that it is the process who is the teacher. We also just like the image and smell of baking bread – and maybe also breaking bread together (so to speak) – a chance to learn and practice skills, learn from the process, and talk about personal experiences and the needs of our loved ones, as well as issues of health and medical ethics in society and the contributions we might try to make collectively.
Arlene and Jean-Claude Audergon
