DANCE

The objective is to become more spontaneous and free up our physicality so that emotions held in the muscles of the body can break out from there bonds. You can try a frontal assault on these trapped emotions using the bioenergetic exercises of Alexander Lowen ( follower of Wilhelm Reich ). Such methods produce resistance but your methods of avoidance need to be explored and become known. I think it is more creative and enjoyable to explore modern improvised dance. You need to find classes where the teacher has an interest in the release of repressed emotions, and encourages the use of vocal sounds to help or augment the dance. Not easy to find but they do exist. Events called " 5 rhythm waves " originated by Gabrielle Roth are run all over the world and are a good place to start on a free dance journey. A wave takes you through flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness with accompanying music. Such events are good places to find out what else is available in the world of free dance where you live. You can of course do your own dance in your own room to your own music but you do need to feel happy about making vocal sounds or playing loud music. Some find it helps to ride on the energy of a group, others find it inhibiting.

MASSAGE

Massage can be gentle or firm. Both can be very awakening to the emotions. Gentle massage is very caring and reassuring and will evoke memories of parental love or lack of it. Deep tissue massage will encounter the repressed emotions that are held in the muscles making it difficult or impossible to relax. This will be physically painful but if pursued will turn into emotional pain after a mixture of physical and emotional struggle. Some massage therapists will do this but it needs to be an explicit part of the work offered. it goes under many different names, deep tissue, rebalancing etc. but don't assume ask. Making a vocal noise is necessary for the process to work. A blocked off voice will choke off the emotions. Some discussion or debrief about what has happened is essential.

VOICE

If we are repressed emotionally so will our expressiveness be limited and our use of language stilted. if we want to discover who we really are we have to let go and risk feeling things that our system finds frightening. We need to be able to sing, shout, wail and whisper at will. We can explore this ourselves in our bedrooms with music turned up loud or on a deserted beach or on a windswept mountain top. Eventually we will let the emotions flow through us like a deluge. The best place is free expression voice workshops that allow and encourage the full flow of possible sounds but they are few and far between . Maybe we just join a choir and start off with what is definitely allowed.

SESSION

If you decide to have individual therapy it is necessary to challenge where the therapist is coming from. If they are good at their job they will welcome that and see it as an essential part of the process. One area that Freud was helpful about was on the subject of transference. This is the projection of feelings about our parents onto the therapist. This occurs because of the apparent power imbalance between therapist and client. This will happen and it is useful because it can be explored through the establishment of a different kind of relationship with the therapist. During the exploration many suppressed feeling will arise. Remember that no therapist is is a perfect therapist and they should be able to discuss their own problem areas but only as they are helpful to you as a client. Remember you ultimately have the power as you are paying and can always walk away but check to see if you are refusing to face something difficult. It is interesting to note that when Carl Rodgers did some work for the American government, to find which was the therapy that worked the best for soldiers returning from the Korean war, his researchers found it difficult to tell which theories a therapist was following by what they observed. He identified common characteristics of all therapy and called it Client Centred Therapy. I would avoid Freudian analysis because of its avoidance of actual childhood trauma. You need someone who understands that you're innerchild needs revealing and you need help in learning how to deal with it. You don't want to become dependent on a therapist as a surrogate parent.

GROUPWORK

I loved group work in its many forms, it was particularly suited to me as a therapist and participant. Luckily I lived through a period when Osho ( Baghwan Shee Rajneesh ) was still alive and some of the best therapists operated within the commune in the UK and India. Whatever you think of Osho he attracted some amazing people and I shall be for ever indebted to them for their insights of me and the skills they taught me. Whether it is an encounter, primal or bioenergetics group, there needs to be the courage for truth telling as well as caring support. Groups are exciting and challenging but for some people like schizoid character types they may disappear and find a suitable role to act. For me as an oral character type my innerchild found a situation that could hold and nurture him when I found the right groups. Some groups can be dominated by destructive unconscious inner-child energy from the therapist or group members. Differentiating between those groups and groups that are healthily challenging us is part of the process. But like all therapy the end goal is holding our inner-child comfortably inside us, not using therapy as a substitute parent.

Unfortunately you cannot judge a process by the scale of client outcomes. Many may approach the hidden traumas inside and turn away out of their own inner-child's terror. Only if the inner-adult is sufficiently mature will a person be prepared to face their childhood fear. After all the fear was sufficiently serious for us to assign those feelings to our subconscious and caused us to avoid situations where it might be triggered. The persons success will be dependent on their intrinsic drive for the truth and the quality of the guidance from those who help.

As most people have not faced their "demons" we must expect that conventional health practitioners will not help in the process as they are busy avoiding their own feelings. As societies move towards enlightenment, in the sense of knowing the truth, they will be hampered by conservative forces dragging us back to be dominated by ideas and practices that avoid the truth of our hidden childhood pain. They will restrict thoughts, inventions, play and fun. All that makes life worthwhile. They will use conspiracy theories and lies to get us to conform or keep in power those who would enforce them. So there is a real conspiracy under all the froth that will try to enslave us. The one most likely to lead us astray is our innerchild. So we have to learn about that child and take care of its fears and prejudices so we don't act on them using our adult intelligence and logic to find the right path. Trust only your own adult truth. Which has to be tested to check that your inner-child isn't hiding in there.

If you don't take care of you inner-child's needs then they will cause you to act out or act in the pain. This is what is happening in the world today because few people have connected sufficiently with their inner-child. Put millions like this together in nations and they will vote for parties or support dictators from their inner-child. Wanting "Daddy" or "Mummy" figures to save them instead of adults working together in a shared support system.

There is a gradual shift towards awareness of the impact of childhood trauma on our development but it is very slow and requires a society where the majority acknowledges the impact of child rearing practices for a real shift to a caring society. We currently live in one that helps mother's of young children to go out to work instead of helping them stay home to look after them. Schools should be open exciting places for children to grow in and should be entirely voluntary. A.S. Neil should be compulsory reading for all parents to be.

Mankind may have already sown the seeds for its own destruction and the universe's experiment in becoming aware of its own existence may be coming to an end but there will be other life forms that may succeed somewhere out there.