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The traces of history in one’s own body
26 | 07 | 2015
Why do human beings repeat things we were sure we would do differently from how our predecessors did them? Why do so many German citizens fall into the same behavior that stages, once again, probably the darkest episode of German history in the 20th century, namely putting the blame for one’s discomfort on a scapegoat? I write about Germany because I am German, but people from all nationalities fall into the repetition of unconscious collective dynamics, unless they deliberately work on becoming aware of their patterns.
It is not easy to look inside and face the sensations taking place in there. Much more difficult still it is when these sensations have been adopted from previous generations. For people who lived during the two world wars and the Third Reich, the first priority was to survive, and then, to leave the horror behind as soon as possible. One overcomes many things, wraps them in silence and life goes on. But these things leave traces behind that become symptoms and disease and self/destructive behaviors, as long as they are not recognized and led on towards an effective treatment and/or action.
Repressed posttraumatic stress and denied shame and guilt after World War I created the conditions for the Third Reich and the Second World War. Those who couldn’t tolerate a pound of guilt, then, had to deal with a ton of it. When shame and guilt are repressed and projected onto a scapegoat, they increase and the risk of repeating the repressed dynamic grows exponentially. Human beings repeat what we do not want to remember.
If someone is ashamed for something bad s/he has done, that is healthy, because it leads the person to want to correct their mistake. But when one is ashamed for what one is, that is toxic, very unhealthy. What an adult represses through involuntary muscle tension, striving to keep it underneath the threshold of conscious experience, a child feels directly in his or her own body. Children have no way of understanding that really they perceive in their own body sensations their parents or grandparents cannot tolerate. All they know is that it is very unpleasant and even threatening. Since those sensations take place in one’s own body, it seems as if they belong to what one is. Therefore also this generation is going to strive as much as they can to keep those sensations outside their conscious experience. The consequences: symptoms, disease, self/destructive behaviors, etc., generation after generation.
This is how people who had not even been born at the time of the events, carry the traces of the shame and guilt of them in their bodies. Generally, nobody wants to have anything to do with this whole history. Some even believe they have the right to judge their predecessors. After all, they did not participate in the events! And people who were children during the Third Reich can hardly be considered guilty of what happened.
But those who were born in Germany, particularly those of German parents, belong to the German people irrevocably. This does not change as long as one lives. The more defensive one may be about the implications derived from belonging to one’s people, the more power they will gain over the person. Apart from unresolved trauma, genetically transmitted, during the first years of life many things are directly transmitted body to body, mind to mind through sensations. What adults push outside their awareness through the tension of their muscles, children adopt in the very same shape. They grow up being defensive about something without knowing what it is, or even knowing that they are being defensive or repressing anything. After all, it is normal, as it has always been.
This kind of sensations can be found underneath the threshold of consciousness in a great part of humanity battered by wars and violence, and especially also the German people, and most of the time they are being projected outside onto others. It is possible to gain access to these sensations and to learn how to leave the emotional charge that has been adopted from previous generations where they belong in order to be able to deal with the things that actually do belong to one’s present experience.
In the second half of life, at the latest, the things that were sacrificed –unknowingly- in order to conquer a place in the world begin to make themselves felt. Children cannot do anything else but to love and tune completely into the resonance of their family environment. This may mean that a true loving exchange may be impossible, when parents and grandparents are traumatized, ashamed to death due to the collective guilt and their organism automatically overrides the intolerable sensations. Loving care becomes a duty that is fulfilled, not because there is no love, but because the love there is cannot flow.
Some people are chosen by life and the fact that something is off comes to their attention earlier. Sometimes symptoms of disease make it impossible to continue on the same course one was on. It may be self/destructive tendencies like addictions (including the addiction to work), violence and abuse of power and also its reverse, the attitude of the powerless victim. Few people understand that these may be traces of collective history. Everybody has the history of their family, their country and all of humanity in them, even the history of the origin of life and the universe itself, and can find new life and new understanding in it.
Development always occurs in stages, step by step. Sometimes it may be possible to take a big step, others are tiny little baby steps, but each step is important. If we want to spare one, we stumble. If we do not take into account the heritage of our predecessors, we will run into it at the next corner. We may put the blame on others, but that will not bring us any closer to a solution of the problem. Quite to the contrary!
Each person’s body is a part of their country and their people. Everyone can learn to tune their own body into the greater force fields of the world. While we are defensive, even if it is against injustice, exploitation and violence, we are focused on these things and under their effect. But if we align our body in relationship with the coordinates of the gravitational field of Earth, we gain stability and strength, because anything we do then will be done with the support of the whole planet.
While our behavior is determined by unconscious patterns developed partly by ourselves and partly adopted from our direct environment, it is as if we were possessed and incapable of clear thought. But if we recognize these patterns, we can work with what is really our own and find ways to leave the old stories where they belong, where we can see them and learn from them.
I admit that this is not an easy task. But it protects and cares for one’s health in body and mind as well as for the health of society, humanity and nature in general.
In the depth of one’s body one can find the traces of history that are getting in the way of individual and collective development and put them at the service of developing effective alternatives.
Participants in the workshop explore their patterns through the regular movements of living: breathing, lying, sitting, standing, walking and communicating, individually in guided sequences and explorations with a partner, in small groups and the whole group. The theoretical part provides the necessary information to understand the mechanisms of trauma and the patterns that come into being around them and to discover how they manifest in the relationship between the body and the gravitational field of Earth.
The format of the workshop provides experiences and knowledge of added value to professional in the field of physical and psychological health, education, the arts, enterprise, sports and many others, but it does not require any prior training. One essential requirement is the willingness to develop a certain degree of sensitivity that makes it possible to perceive sensations in the body, independently of whether they are pleasant or painful, and to learn to manage their flow efficiently in order to be able to attend to the parts of oneself that are trapped in the conflict with the greater force fields of the world. The workshop provides the tools to develop this kind of sensitivity, even if participants have invested much energy in making themselves insensitive and do not know how to perceive their body.
Barcelona, August 21 – 23, 2015
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