STUDY WITH ALFONS

„Karl Popper says, a law of Nature is not prescriptive but descriptive.” – Hans Selye

When Bert Hellinger first introduced his Family Constellation sessions in Germany, he created quite a big buzz in the by-then already well established order of therapists. If you’ve ever watched a Family Constellation therapy session yourself, you couldn’t help but ask: What am I looking at here? What is happening? How is this even possible? And you probably couldn’t help but shed some tears yourself, and stand in awe for the soothing revelations, mystery, and truth. Finally the order that is healing became visible, literally so.

Bert Hellinger’s work is phenomenological. Instead of a „find a problem fix a problem” approach, he sets up conditions in which we can observe movements and tendencies within families (what he later called Movements Of The Soul) and let them return to their natural order. And from decades of observations, students finally distilled a couple of principles they could usher into manuals and textbooks—which made Family Constellations better accessible, but also more scholarly.

For example: Hellinger™’s first basic principle of life goes like this: „All who belong to a family have the same right to belong.” Which also means that as soon as a member of a family is denied or refused this belonging (by whom?), disorder arises with far-reaching consequences in terms of health, fortune, and life path.

The second basic principle of life is called the order of precedence. It demands that, „Everyone in the family take their rightful place, which is theirs alone.” This order of precedence is a hierarchical order: in the family there are some who come first and others who come after them. The order of precedence is determined by the time of belonging. Thus, the parents come before their children, the first-born child before the second, and so on. „If a person who joined later elevates themselves above someone who was there before them, they violate this order of precedence.” Quotes from hellinger.com

In his seminars Bert Hellinger used to tell stories—concise, beautiful and touching. I myself participated in a Family Constellation seminar (two decades ago), and also watched many such sessions. Furthermore, I bought a couple of his books and fell in love with his stories and way of openness.

Now, this all makes quite a bit of sense in the world of family and therapy. But I can’t help asking:

But does it?

Despite my questioning, there’s a couple of undeniable underpinnings, for example, time provides us with an order: the order of precedence.

My grandparents joined my family before my parents did. I joined next, as my parent’s first son. My brother was born second and therefore joined after me, and third my sister came after him. My sister passed away when she was three years old. Yet, in the ranking and order of things, she keeps her place. This order of precedence is easy to grasp, easy to observe, and easy to follow.

But is it?

Neither my brother nor I have children. My parents divorced, my mother stayed single, my father re-married immediately. His new wife has a grown-up daughter, and a son who passed away many years ago during her previous marriage. That’s as much as you would need to know to start a session. The plethora of real world problems (financial and personal quarrels, perceived injustices, inheritances, apartments and possessions, addictions, illnesses and deaths, etc.) all are said to arise from the orders of life and its violations, and become visible in such a Family Constellation.

To conclude:

1. According to Hellinger™, in every family there is an order of precedence.
2. The way to violate that order is through behaviour—if a family member behaves in a way that defies that order of precedence.
3. There’s quite a few more phenomenological observations (which were then identified as incidents, principles and ways to violate those principles)

So, to conclude, my question is this: can any of this be adapted or applied to the physical body and movement learning? Does the physical body, too, have such an order of precedence? Could physical health (and growing ability) be as simple as finding and restoring such order?

Can we prioritise one body part over the other by the point in time the parts came into being, as we grew from a two-cell’er into a full grown human?

It seems like as if the mighty greek titan Cronus, the god of time, did not give the human body an equally easy to observe order of precedence as he gave to families.

In order to make sense, and to find order in chaos, Andrew Biel wrote in his famous and industry defining anatomy book, „Trail Guide To The Body”:

„Wherever possible, a region’s bony landmarks have been strung together to form a trail. These trails are designed to help you understand the connections between structures. Without a path to follow, you, the traveler, would be lost in a jungle of flesh and bones with no idea of your trail’s location.”

Anatomy emperor Thomas W. Myers took this idea even further. In his landmark book „Anatomy Trains” he wrote:

„The absolute dominance of the isolated muscle presentation as the first and last word in muscular anatomy leaves the current generation of therapists unlikely to think in any other way. This form of seeing and defining muscles, however, is simply an artifact of our method of dissection – with a knife in hand, the individual muscles are easy to separate from surrounding fascial planes. This does not mean, however, that this is how the body is biologically assembled. One may question whether a muscle is even a useful division to the body’s own kinesiology.”

But, is it enough to identify parts and string them together? String them together by what means? Weight, density, function, the amount of force it can produce? By some sort of internal value system maybe? What is the body’s order? And what does violate that order?

This was a long post in order to arrive at these questions. And maybe one last question: does any of this matter?

Last Sunday I had tea with my neighbour, Trang. We were talking about meditation practices and language. I was trying to make a point that language abilities increase with age, which she didn’t seem to buy at face value. Therefore I tried to quote a thing (or two), to add substance to my argument, and recalled that there’s a page in Thomas Hanna’s book „Somatics” in which he made a good point. But I couldn’t recall the details and my argument fell flat on its face. Nevertheless, we had a stimulating talk and for the next week agreed to go for a walk.

I read up on the details today:

In his book  „Somatics” (1988) Thomas Hanna states that the 21-year Seattle longitudinal study of adult psychological development by K. Warner Schaie „is the backbone of this book.” Which I found surprising, since I always thought Moshé Feldenkrais’s movement based lessons and Hans Selye’s work on stress were the backbone of this book. Thomas Hanna quotes the Seattle longitudinal study like this:

„Different intellectual abilities took different lengths of time to mature. For example, the ability to think with numbers does not reach its peak until age 32; reasoning ability peaks at 39; speech and word fluency do not hit their peaks until age 46; and comprehension of verbal meaning does not reach its stride until 53 years.”

That’s what I wanted to quote to Trang. But that chance is missed, and now I’m curious of how to use this quote to make some improvements to my own intellectual abilities.

Both Thomas Hanna and Warner Schaie were looking for explanations why the fore-mentioned intellectual abilities mature in some people and not in others. While Thomas Hanna merely added two more paragraphs to his book’s chapter, Warner Schaie seemed to have added two more decades of research. 

Schaie’s original assertions, „a favorable, less stressful personal situation; and freedom from arthritis and cardiovascular disease” still seem to be valid today. However, in 2010 he added „Midlife openness to experience is associated with midlife memory and executive ability change.”

(Richards, A. L., Madhyastha, T. M., Borghesani, P. R., Schaie, K. W., & Willis, S. L., 2010, April. Improvement in cognitive abilities is related to openness to experience.)

So, yes, then, how about a few positive affirmations toward greater openness? Let me first make sure we’re talking about the same thing. The Seattle Longitudinal Study uses The NEO Personality Inventory to describe openness:

„Openness (O) Open individuals are curious, willing to entertain novel ideas and unconventional values. They experience positive and negative emotions more intensely than do closed individuals.”

Having this definition secured, let’s write down some positive affirmations, shall we? 

🙌 I am open to entertain novel ideas and unconventional values. ❤️

🙌 I am open to experience all emotions, positive and negative. ❤️

🙌 I feel safe to encounter the new and unknown. ❤️

🙌 I always find back to good balance. It’s easy. ❤️

🙌 I am open to enjoy warm and loving relationships with the people around me. ❤️

🙌 I am open to appreciate the fullness of life. ❤️

So, what do you think about that?

As I’m trying to get back into meditation I come to realise that holy smokes it’s not that easy. Most of the prep meditations still work fine and I feel very happy with them. Overall I already noticed quite a range of improvements, for example a slightly more positive outlook, less worrying, enhanced depth perception in all senses, increased color range, more complete capture of invariance, feeling more inspired and creative overall, being able to make more connections. Quite amazing actually, considering the little work I put in so far.

However, for the main meditation practice… I just seem to float like an old log in an abandoned meander channel somewhere on the one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…

A couple of strategies come to mind:

1. Put more emphasis on the prep meditations
2. Identify conceptual candidates from my work in Somatic Education and apply them to meditation
3. Focus up more with the help of positive affirmations

I think I will work on all three of them, all of them seem worthwhile. And fun. Let’s see…

I deserve to have well functioning knees. I love squatting and running. I am great at squatting. I am great at running. My knees bend and extend with great joy and ease. I am gentle with my knees. I love my knees and my knees love me. I am proud of my knees, and they are proud of me.

How does that sound for a quick brainstorming into positive affirmations? Furthermore, I can see useful and (maybe) highly effective strategies in Bert Hellinger’s Family Constellations, some of his Basic Orders of Life seem like great candidates to adapt and re-purpose for movement based affirmations.

Oh, now it’s about movement and the body again, not so much about meditation, huh?

All is well in my world.

I don’t know when I’ll be allowed to travel again. The 4th lockdown here in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, started in Mai 2021, now it’s end of November and for me it’s still not possible to travel. No forest, no beach, no mountain, no nature. I hope for mid January 2022, even though some rumours hint at June 2022. Meanwhile, the self-elected Führer of my own country, Austria, is trying to find back to the glory of 1933. And it seems like he’s getting plenty of support. I’m not going to go back there as long as that’s what’s going down. Therefore…

I’m trying to get into meditation again.

Strangely, I have a talent for it. But I forgot how much work it is, the prep time is insane. When I was 17 it was all so easy. Casual, spontaneous, living in the moment, minimal responsibilities, priorities could be flipped like coins. Now my understanding for the complexity of life and the consequences of my choices is much deeper. Plus it’s been a good 20 years since I stopped extreme sports meditation.

From friends I know what it takes to be a passionate sports person, especially for surfers and wind surfers. They adjust their whole lives to it, holly hedge, they even pick their relationships in accordance to it. Especially as they get older. At 20yo you could party all night and nevertheless head out to the mountains at 9am to get some good snowboarding done. This doesn’t work so well anymore a mere decade later.

With meditation it’s no different. I have to follow a couple of rules—to build something I can only compare to what they call „fitness level” in sports. Nothing out of the extraordinary, but still worth mentioning: to improve sleep efficacy I need to stick to what my grandmother simply called „dinner”, and what in my youth was called „dinner cancelling”, and what is now called „intermittent fasting”. This means no food after 16pm (teetotal is a given). A sound meditation before bedtime. To bed at 22pm at the latest. If all that was successful I’ll be up again at 4am. A brief half hour of energy meditation to fill the tanks, easy. And finally… it’s practice time. Surf’s up!! 🤙

„Please sit and have your two legs spread long. Bend your right knee and place your right foot on your left thigh. Your left leg remains long. Pull your right foot toward your body using your left hand. Lean on your right hand [..]”

This is a quote from Moshé Feldenkrais, from the very beginning of a class he was teaching in his Studio in Tel Aviv, presumably around the year 1950 (lesson title „AY 4 Sitting Indian fashion”). He’s 46 years old at the time, has already published two books with movement instructions „Hadaka Jime (1942)” and „Judo (1944)” and was already working on another book with very precisely worded movement instructions „Higher Judo (1952)”. I love the clarity of him teaching at that time, the very straight forward instructions with bare bones suggestions (and comparably little insulting and belittling of students and other teachers). At that time he still seemed to have high aspirations and great expectations, his passion and purpose are almost tangible.

Let’s step through this short stride step by step:

Starting position

„Please sit and have your two legs spread long. Bend your right knee and place your right foot on your left thigh. Your left leg remains long.”

He prepares the starting position, in story mode. Instead of taking a shortcut with , „Sit with your left leg long and your right foot on your left thigh”, he walks you through a few steps that will lead up to this position. I see it as a lead into pacing, to create trust, and to reduce stress as well as overeagerness to perform. 

„There’s enough time. Do not rush. Just sit. Please sit. Take your time. Then extend both legs, out in front of you. Spread them out casually. Yes, that’s good. Ok. Then bend your right knee, and place your right foot onto your left thigh. Your left leg remains long. Nice!”, my treat.

The instructions of Moshé Feldenkrais, the engineer, are densely structured. I admire that. It’s the work of a mathematician, who can safely skip several steps in calculus without confusing an x for an y, and without losing his audience.

„Have your two legs spread long”, means to extend both legs out in front of you, but also to spread them out, as opposed to have them tightly held together. So simple, and yet so precise!

Adjustments and prerequisites

„Pull your right foot toward your body using your left hand.”

As the main movement — which is not revealed yet — will gradually become better, the right foot will move up closer to your left groin, the junction between the torso and leg. That’s going to happen naturally as the movement improves and the lesson progresses. Vice-versa, by pulling your right foot towards your left groin, the movement will become better. One hand loves the other. But there’s limits to the flexibility of your right knee and your right hip, so it’s best if it happens gradually, without coercion. And actually there’s no need to mention all that, because it will happen on its own anyways, as long as you keep going.

„Lean on your right hand [..]”

Leaning on your right hand will help to free up your pelvis, so it will be able to roll better. Also, your torso will be able to side-bend better to the right, which will take off pressure from your right knee, which in turn will create more movement possibilities and wellbeing for your right knee.

But again, why mention all this? Who watches movies with „English with Audio Description” turned on, so that everything you see is explained, instead of „English [Original]”?

Conclusion

No conclusion. I hope my musings are of inspiration to you. Alfons to Starbase One, clear skies today, end of blog post, talk to you later! 😅😎❤️