Rekindling Pleasure: Seven Exercises for Opening your Heart, Reaching Out … · 63
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blood and energy? If not, you may need to repeat the above steps 3 and 4. You may feel some twitching in your fingers, wrists, arms and shoulders. Gradually rotate your hands faster and faster, and at some point make a decision to let them move involuntarily. Making a continuous sound and keeping breathing will help you ‘let go’ to the involuntary movement. If you could allow this to happen, do your fingers, wrist and arms feel looser, freer, tingly? Did you feel the energy invested in the struggle between Natural Child and Defenders? To perceive pleasurable sensations in your body, see Step 9, Exercise 1.
Exercise 3: Releasing Anger in your Hands/Arms through Involuntary Movement (sitting) We saw in Exercise 2: Struggling for Control that our Natural Child’s spontaneous impulses to reach out to the world were thwarted and consequently have been inhibited by the Defenders. Generally, the movements that are more inhibited are those for reaching out assertively to possess, to embrace lovingly, and to touch gently. The inhibitions lead either to a muscular rigidity or its opposite, muscular flaccidity, in our shoulders, arms, wrists and hands. Emotionally, we feel frustrated/angry, or passive/victimized/ hopeless. Bioenergetically, we first have to release the inhibitions in our aggressive movements; only then can we express the tender caring and loving movements. My experience is that surrendering to involuntary movements is the most reliable, easiest and quickest method of releasing muscular tensions and their associated emotional feelings. The goal of Part A of this exercise is to surrender to your Natural Child’s anger/rage at being restricted in its assertive reaching. The goal of Part B is to surrender to the assertive reaching itself. (The caring tender movements will be explored in Exercise 6.) Equipment: a chair without arms. Prerequisite: Do Exercise 2: ‘Struggling for Control’ immediately before doing this exercise.