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#Post#: 33--------------------------------------------------
Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton
By: truthaboutpois Date: April 15, 2015, 6:50 am
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PLEASE READ THIS FREE COPY OF THIS GREAT BOOK...written by Nick
Totton.
It is all VERY relevant to Post Orgasmic Illness Syndrome. Once
you start the therapeutic process to end your POIS, you will
come to understand this.
Apologies for the way the wording goes wrong every now and then-
it should still be readable though.
Reichian Growth Work has been out of print for some years, and
we have not yet managed tofind an English language publisher to
reprint it, although editions have appeared in
Spanish(Argentina) and in Dutch (Karnak Press). However, we
frequently get asked where copies canbe found; and although our
own work has moved on, along with our lives, we still feel
thatthis book has a valuable contribution to make. Therefore we
are making it freely available onthe Internet, in a version
which almost exactly matches the most recent (Dutch) printed
text:this offers some important updates to the original book,
without attempting to incorporateeverything we have found out
since 1988.We would be happy to hear from anyone interested in
discussing the book with us, or infinding out more about our
current work.(Click herefor Nick Totton's website,herefor
EmEdmondson.)
CONTENTS
Chapter 1: ContextsChapter 2: Energy and ArmourChapter 3:
SurrenderChapter 4: The SegmentsChapter 5: Growing UpChapter 6:
Character PositionsChapter 7: More on CharacterChapter 8:
TherapyChapter 9: PowerChapter 10: Primal PatternsChapter 11:
Cosmic StreamingChapter 12: Connections and Directions
Further Reading
1 CONTEXTS
In this book we describe a form of therapeutic work with groups
and individuals whichderives originally from the work of Wilhelm
Reich, but also from a number of otherdevelopments in therapy
and healing, especially since Reich's death in 1957. It is the
style inwhich we, the authors, were trained, but which we have
also developed in new directions.Although Reichian therapy has
always attracted great interest - and still does - there is
verylittle written about it which is useful for the ordinary
reader.Some of Reich's own books areinspiring and moving, but
those on the therapy itself and the theory behind it are
verytechnical and hard to follow, aimed at an audience of
medically-trained psychoanalysts. Theyare also very dated in
relation to the sort of work actually being done at the
presentIn writing this book, we have tried to avoid jargon as
far as possible. New words aresometimes needed to describe new
ideas and experiences, but we have defined each of theseclearly
when it first appears, and remind you of its meaning when we use
it again. Moregenerally, we have tried never to use a long word
when a short one will do. We have writtenfor the sort of people
who, we find, are interested in the work we do, many of whom are
by nostretch of the imagination intellectuals. The new interest
in therapy and growth work is part of a very broadly based
concern with
change, on an individual level and on a social one. Manypeople
in our society are deeply dissatisfied with their conditions of
life, and more and moreof them are no longer willing to be the
sort of person that society expects and forces them tobe -
mentally, emotionally, spiritually, even physically.This book is
for people who want to change.
Who Reich was
If you want to know about Reich's life and work, several books
are listed under 'FurtherReading' at the end of the book. In
brief, Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) trained as a young manwith
Freud in Vienna, and worked as a psychoanalyst. Besides making
some importantadvances in technique, he soon 'burst the bounds'
of psychoanalysis, moving into a deeperconfrontation both with
the clients themselves, and with the social conditions which he
saw ascreating and maintaining their problems.An energetic,
combative and 'difficult' man, Reich managed in a few short
years to attract theenmity of the Nazis, the Communist Party (of
which he was a member for several years), andthe psychoanalytic
establishment. As he travelled around Scandinavia and eventually
to theUSA as a refugee from the Nazis, he managed to achieve
some fundamental breakthroughs intherapeutic methods; in
particular, he created the whole new field of bodywork.Reich
became increasingly focused on life energy itself, and on
finding ways to unblock,condense, channel and strengthen that
energy, both in the human body and in the atmosphere.Above all,
Reich was a person with open eyes: he noticed a lot of things
which most peopleprefer to ignore, and this led him into many
exciting new areas of enquiry - and attracted a lotof
hostility.As well as giving therapy to individuals, and becoming
involved with the healthy upbringingof children, Reich created
devices like the 'orgone accumulator' (to concentrate life
energy)and the 'cloudbuster' (with which he believed he could
affect pollution and weather). Hebecame acutely sensitive to
oppressive conditions in the physical and social atmosphere,
andstruggled to find ways of combating these 'plagues'
#Post#: 34--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton
By: truthaboutpois Date: April 15, 2015, 6:53 am
---------------------------------------------------------
At the same time, Reich continued to come up against anger and
aggression; very largelybecause of his open and celebratory
approach to sex, which got him in hot water throughouthis life.
In the last few years of Reich and his circle, there was a
steady 'darkening', adistortion of feelings and perceptions,
which derived at least partly from a disastrous
'oranur'experiment using orgone accumulators to neutralise
radiation, but also from the constantpressure of both outside
enemies and internal disciples.Finally, Reich was prosecuted by
the US federal authorities, accused - quite falsely - of
peddling his accumulators as a fake cancer cure. Reich could
almost certainly have won thecase if he had fought on legal
grounds: instead he refused to recognise the court's
jurisdictionover 'issues of scientific truth'. The legal system
in turn saw Reich as an awkward, suspectforeign crackpot; he was
jailed for contempt, and died in prison of a heart attack
shortlybefore he was due for release. His accumulators were
destroyed, and his books burned by theAmerican government.Using
Reich's techniques and reading his books, it is sometimes hard
not to fall intodiscipleship. He was a person of extraordinary
perceptions, and of great compassion andcourage: a big-hearted
man. He was also, clearly, an extremely awkward customer,
andsomeone who expected to get his own way. He also had his own
hangups - an anti-homosexual stance, for example, with which we
very strongly disagree.
Who we are
We live together in Leeds with our young baby daughter and with
Em's son. We both work astherapists and group leaders, moving
into this work through doing a training in Reichiantherapy led
by William West. This training, which finished in 1982, was only
the beginning.As we started to work with clients, we found much
that we didn't know, and searched outways of learning it,
through books, through further training, and through talking out
ourexperiences together and with other people.A result of that
first Reichian training led by William was the creation of
'Energy Stream: thePost Reichian Therapy Association'. Three
training courses later - one led by William, two byourselves -
Energy Stream includes some thirty practising therapists, all
working in their ownpersonal style and with a range of
techniques, but all sharing the same commitment toReichian
work.We talk about 'Reichian work', but what is it? There are
many approaches which could claima right to that label. During
his career Reich worked differently at different times, and
thereare several schools of therapy descended from people he
trained in various ways. There arealso several schools developed
after Reich's death which have consciously changed his ideasand
methods; many of these call themselves 'neo-Reichian'.We see our
own work as very close to the essence of Reich's, but not
everyone would agreewith us. We certainly don't know whether
Reich would agree with us! We sometimes like tothink that he
might be working in this sort of way if he was still alive, but
there are manythings we do of which he strongly disapproved. So
this book is about
our work; and not,either, specifically about Energy Stream's
methods. However. we are very grateful toeveryone in Energy
Stream for their support, stimulation and encouragement,
especiallyWilliam West who originally trained us and gave us
therapy; Annie Morgan, Rika Petersen
and Sean Doherty, who helped lead the last training course;
Mary Swale; and HollyClutterbuck, Maxine Higham and Pam
Wilkinson, with whom Nick sorted out many of theseideas in a
supervision group.This book is not intended to be a manual for
therapists - although we hope it will be useful fortherapists.
It is aimed mainly at anyone trying to change, searching for
ideas about how tochange, about how we are and why we are like
that. We are writing about 'human nature',human beings as part
of nature, as natural beings. It is for a vision of
naturalness
, above all,that we thank Reich; and it is in pursuit of
naturalness (which ultimately cannot be pursued)that we have
learnt from and adapted many other ways of perceiving and
working withpeople. Thank you to everyone who has helped us
learn.We want to make it very clear that in writing a book about
therapy we are not claiming to be'super shrinks'. Still less are
we claiming to be totally clear, enlightened individuals who
havesorted out all our problems. Anyone who knows us would find
such an idea laughable. Wefelt that the book needed writing, and
we felt able to do it. Now we have to go on trying tolive up to
these ideas.You may notice that there are no case histories
included in this book. It's always good fun toread about a
therapist's clients and their sessions - as good as a novel -
and in some ways it isvery informative. But it is also very easy
- in fact, inevitable - to over-simplify the wholenessof a
person's life and struggle. We felt that any of our clients
would be bound to recognisethemselves, and that this sort of
thumbnail sketch would be disrespectful to their courage
andcomplexity. However, all our clients do of course feature in
these pages, and we want to thank them as well. together with
those who have attended our workshops, and especially thosewhom
we have trained. There could be no book without you.Our method
of collaboration has been for Nick (the verbally oriented one)
to write chunks of it and show them to Em (the feeling oriented
one), who has read them and explained to Nick how no ordinary
person could make head or tail of it. Nick then went away and
re-wrote untilit passed the test. Of course. we don't always
agree on every detail, and some of what followsreflects more the
views of one or other of us. But to a remarkable extent we do
agree aboutpeople and therapy (after all, it was through
Reichian therapy that we met in the first place).Meanwhile our
own work moves on. Like the rest of Energy Stream, we have other
interests,other skills. We have recently formed a separate
identity, 'Selfheal', as a vehicle for the wholeof our healing
work, including but not restricted to the 'Reichian' element.
This doesn't meanthat we have turned our backs on anything we
describe in this book. simply that the streamgoes on flowing,
broadening and deepening, meeting with other streams, merging
into agreater river, on the way to the sea.We hope that what
follows helps you to flow
#Post#: 35--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton
By: truthaboutpois Date: April 15, 2015, 6:57 am
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2 ENERGY AND ARMOUR
Our feelings and our bodies are like water flowing into water.
We learn to swim within theenergies of the senses.
Tarthang Tulku, Kum Nye Relaxation
He who remains passive when overwhelmed with grief loses his
best chance of recoveringelasticity of mind.
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and
AnimalsLife has energy.Or rather, life
is
energy: moving, vibrating, seeking, pulsing. We may not be able
to definelife energy, but we all experience it in our own
beings, and perceive it in other people:watching a fine dancer
or mime or Tai Chi exponent, making love, meditating,
expressingstrong emotion, receiving or giving hand healing. Many
people over the ages have givennames to the life energy and its
different forms - 'prana'. 'magnetic fluid', 'vital essence',
'chi','od', 'archeus', 'kundalini', and many more. Reich's name
for it was Orgone, which he made upfrom words like 'orgasm' and
'organism'.This life energy is the vitality of our being: when
we are moved, this is what moves. Emotionsare e-motions,
movements out; they are not just in our minds, but in our
bodies, in the chargeof energy that builds up and. with luck,
discharges; in the flooding of hormones, the surge of bodily
fluids and electrical potential, expanding from deep within us
towards the surface, orretreating into the caves of the abdomen,
or flowing through and out via head and hands andlegs and
pelvis, shifting form easily between muscular or electrical
tension, fluid, sound,movement sensation, emotion.For example: I
feel sorrow, but am inhibited about showing it. So as it 'rises'
in me, maybe mythroat contracts - I'm 'all choked up', mucus
forms and my throat aches; my chin tightens andtucks in as part
of the effort to restrict flow in my neck; maybe my fists tense,
and transmitthat 'holding' up my arms to my shoulders and throat
- I'm 'keeping a grip on myself'.If my grief starts to break
through the holding, probably I'll first sigh, cough or groan,
releasewhat I'm 'swallowing down' in the form of sound or mucus.
As a channel opens up, asensation of softening and melting flows
up the sides of my throat and jaw. Another personcan actually
watch my cheeks suffuse with fluid and colour, my face softening
as the emotionex-presses (pushes out) through my eyes in the
form of tears, with the piercing sweetness of release. At the
same time my hands will open, my shoulders come forward in a
vulnerable'giving' gesture as my chest heaves with sobs, my
'full heart melts'. As I surrender physicallyto my grief, my
mind may fill with corresponding thoughts, memories and
images.Thoughts, emotions, sensations, changes in electrolytic
fluid, muscle tension and hormonebalance, flow of life energy:
there is no point in saying that any one of these causes or
comesbefore the others. They are different aspects of a single
whole event in a single wholebodymind. We will focus on one or
other of these aspects depending on what we are trying tofind
out or do.Focusing on the play of life energy has the advantage
of being fresh and uncompromised byour society's dubious
assumptions about what feelings are. It gives the space to
include manydifferent aspects of the bodymind. It's a good
starting point, but we don't want to give theimpression that we
think energy 'causes' thoughts. feelings or bodily changes.
There is onlythe endless dance of transformation.
In fact we are all used to speaking about ourselves in
energy-images. These metaphors areoften very literal, as when we
say we feel full of energy, or drained and empty; our head
iswhirling or stuffed up; we feel electric; someone else is
magnetically attractive; we have itchyfeet; we melt with
desire.If we look at the human being as an organism among other
organisms, to see what it shareswith the rest of life, from
amoebae to elephants, then we will almost certainly notice the
role of pulsation.
Life is constantly expanding and shrinking, reaching out and
pulling back inresponse to internal needs and to outside
influences - the 'friendliness' or 'hostility' of
theenvironment. These continuous wavelike vibrations are the
organism's ongoing 'conversation'with the rest of the universe.
In humans, one expression of this continuous pulsing is
ourheartbeat, sending oxygenated blood out to the extremities of
the organism and bringing wasteproducts back. Another, and
particularly important for our purpose, is the breath.
Watch a small baby breathe, and you'll see how the whole of her
body is involved, committed,swept up in the smooth wavelike
expansion and contraction that reaches from top to toes. Forthe
healthy baby there's no resistance, no avoidance of the
involuntary breath-pulse; at the topof the out-breath the
in-breath is born and the top of the in-breath turns out again,
Yin fromYang and Yang from Yin, a constant exchange of
polarities with the universe (Yin and Yangare ancient Chinese
names for the two complementary poles of existence, the Active
and the Receptive).As we grow up and confront this difficult
world, however, a voluntary element soon creepsinto our
breathing, a hesitation, a holding-back, which likewise affects
our whole body fromtop to toes. In-breath and out-breath begin
to separate from each other, to lose their seamlesscontinuity,
to become more shallow and jerky, without the generous graceful
flow. We maydevelop a tendency to constantly hold our breath,
never fully emptying our lungs or,contrariwise, to keep our
lungs permanently half empty. And so we lose our basic
groundingin the universe, our identification with it. We become
separate, lost, lonely, anxious beings.Why does this happen? If
we
breathe freely and fully, then we feel freely and fully.
Openbreathing washes emotion through and out into expression; we
are unable to hide it, eitherfrom ourselves or from each other.
Yet from a very early age, most of us experience a need
tosuppress some of our feelings.This is because our environment
- initially mainly the adults who are caring for us - does
notsupport us in our feelings. They reject our neediness or
tears or anger. They threaten us withpunishment - including the
withdrawal of love. Or they simply do not give the validation
andcare which our baby-self needs in order to cope with powerful
feelings. This process canbegin at birth or even sooner, as we
shall see. It's no one's fault , generally speaking; all of
uswho are parents know how our own anxiety and pain and
practical problems interfere with thesincere wish to nurture our
children. But the effect
is that children learn to hold back onfeeling - by holding back
on its expression - by holding back on breathing.Don't worry if
you are finding this difficult to follow: it is a theme to which
we'll be comingback over and over again. But to make it a little
more concrete, consider two examples.Imagine a baby who cries
out as her natural way of expressing a need - hunger, cold, a
desirefor company - and no one comes. It will take a long time
for this to sink in: she will cry andcry again, but eventually
she will stop. She suppresses her crying by holding her breath
-which holds back her grief and anger, not identified
consciously as feelings, but implicit in the whole state of her
body.
Now imagine another baby who is picked up and manipulated by
cold hands: not so much physically cold, but emotionally
cold, uncaring. Babies feel thesethings, and there will be a
reaction of shock, a gasp, like the way we gasp if we step into
coldwater. If this experience of cold touch is repeated often
enough, then that gasp, that heldbreath, will become built in to
that baby's body nature.These are only examples from among many
ways in which an unfriendly environment caninterrupt the full,
whole-body, involuntary pulsation of natural breathing. Muscles
tenseagainst it, first in the diaphragm, which is our primary
breathing muscle (see Chapter 4), andthen spreading into the
chest, throat, back, belly, pelvis, arms and legs, face, head.
The entirebody is drawn into a battle against itself, against
its own natural impulse to breathe and feel.In effect the energy
'splits'. turns back on itself and blocks its own natural
movement; likeIndian wrestling with ourselves.Sometimes the
battle is conscious - whenever we deliberately tighten our jaw,
tense our belly,swallow down emotion. But the infant's basic
holding-back against breathing quite soonbecomes unconscious. If
you think about it, this must happen: the purpose of the holding
isprecisely to stop us feeling our feelings, and this can only
work if it stops us knowing whatour feelings are. Emotions are
bodily events; if they are blocked in the body, then they
don'thappen in the mind either. The fundamental holding acts as
a pattern
around which every laterdenial of feeling organises itself; we
get very good at it indeed, artists and technicians of
self-deception and self denial.
Exercise 1 Take a moment now to check out how you are feeling
and breathing. It's very likely that, whilereading the above,
you've tightened yourself up to resist the inward stirring these
ideascreate. So first put your attention in your belly and
diaphragm - all around your navel. aboveand below. Is it gently
rising and falling with your breath; or have you been holding it
rigid? Are you able to deliberately relax it and let the tension
flow out - perhaps with a sigh or agroan to help it along? Check
out whether your chest, too, moves as you breathe - as part of
acontinuous wavelike flow with your belly. If not, you are
probably holding your shoulders,hands, and/or jaw stiff. Try to
let them go, and experience the feeling they have been holdingon
to. Allow yourself to breathe easily and fully; just watch where
the holding is, if anywhere,and what thoughts cause an
interruption to the flow. As you go on reading, try to come back
periodically to a conscious awareness of your own breath and
body state.
Blocked breathing is the essence of armouring:
Reich's name for the state of chronic muscle tension and
emotional holding-back by which almost all adults in our society
are imprisoned.
Along with the suppression of breathing goes the suppression of
specific impulses - to cry, to yell, to laugh, to hit to reach
out for love, to run away. The muscles are tightened to stop us
e-moting. moving out, and if this tightening happens regularly
enough it becomes a chronic,unconscious habit, built into the
structure of our bodies - part of our sense of ourselves,
asfamiliar as an old scar.In fact, a lot of what we customarily
identify as a person's 'self' is really their pattern of
armouring: their high. tight shoulders, or stuck-out chest, or
pulled-back jaw, or wide-open or narrowed-down eyes. 'Well,
that's just the way I am,' they'll say. But in fact it's the way
that person has
become, by cutting off certain forms of self-expression and
emphasising others.Maybe one individual is constantly angry and
aggressive, never letting herself feel soft, sad and small.
Another is continuously polite and meek, censoring any
assertiveness. As we shall see later, there are specific
relationships between muscular armouring and emotional
armouring: these cut-off emotions are locked into tense muscle
patterns, locked in permanent,frozen battle with the suppressing
impulses. They are imprisoned there like genies, bottled upin
the rigid 'no' of our bodies. And, like genies, they can often
be released by rubbing!Our held-in feelings have power.
When we liberate a feeling we can liberate not only the energy
of the feeling itself, but also the split-off energy which has
been devoted to holding it down. In doing this, we allow our
breathing to open up, drawing on the infinite energy of the
universe around us.
#Post#: 36--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton
By: truthaboutpois Date: April 15, 2015, 6:58 am
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The 'Spastic I'
Unfortunately this empowering process has a frightening side to
it. It also involves releasingthe fear of consequences which
made us shut down our feeling in the first place: the fear of
adult anger or coldness or withdrawal, the fear of a dangerous
universe. Even more, it meanschanging the whole basis of our
identity - the sense of 'I' upon which our life is
founded.Opening up can sometimes seem like a threat to our very
survival.As Freud pointed out, our sense of 'I' (he used the
German
Ich
, though it was translated intoEnglish with the Latin word
Ego
) starts out in the
body
. As the infant grows, she begins toorganise bodily sensations
and impulses into a whole, to 'take command' of them and
developan image of 'me' - when she looks in the mirror she
realises that this image is herself, that thisis how other
people see her. In a healthy and supportive situation, she can
grow into apowerful, realistic capacity for self-management,
based on a strong but relaxed sense of identity and
wholeness.Tragically, our culture doesn't generally let this
process of self-management happen naturallyin its own time and
rhythm. Most children are fed and put to bed and toilet-trained
to fit inwith the needs and timetables of adults. They are often
forced with threats to learn rigidcontrol of processes like
excretion which should be developing spontaneously. Small
childrenliterally
cannot
control their anal sphincters: the muscle-nerve connections
aren't formed. Sothey must tense up the whole pelvic floor in a
massive, straining effort to 'hold it in', a tensionwhich easily
becomes chronic, extending to the whole body and tightening the
breath, so thatthe person 'holds themselves in' on every level.
11Similarly, if our feeding is controlled by timetable, or if we
are forced to eat food we don'tlike, then we 'swallow' an
external regulation of our bodily processes. and have to
swallowdown our rage if we want to get fed at all. These are all
examples of the way in which thewhole business of attaining
self- management in our own body, which can be a proud and
joyful affirmation of autonomy, very easily gets entangled with
patterns of denial andnegative, so that our very sense of 'I' is
bound up with bodily tension. Like boys at an old-fashioned
public school, we learn to 'get a grip on ourselves'. and to
identify
with that grip.Feeling tense becomes part of our continuous
background experience, so that full relaxationseems like a
threat to our existence, as if we are going to melt and drain
away completely.Just as muscles are forced into chronic spasm in
order to comply with external restrictionsrather than inner
self-regulation, so our 'I' develops a 'spastic', uncontrollably
rigid emotionaltone - a set of fixed attitudes towards the world
and other people which we are unable to varyin response to
changing circumstances. The 'I' becomes identical with the body
armour.'Armouring' is a good name for this process of physical
and emotional rigidification. Musclearmour, like its medieval
counterpart, is hard, stiff, restrictive, suffocating; also like
ironarmour, its original purpose was
defence
. We have no reason to feel guilty and inadequateabout being
armoured; on the contrary, it represents our skill and courage
to survive in verydifficult circumstances.We have always done
the best we can. making a rational decision to protect our
vulnerableinsides from an unsafe world - and. since we're still
here. we have succeeded! But the pricehas been high in lost
pleasure and potential. Now that we are bigger and stronger we
have theoption of melting our armour, re-experiencing our
feelings in a safer way - and letting our softpink insides out
to play in the sunshine!Of course, even now there isn't always
sunshine; it isn't always safe or appropriate to be soft.People
often get the idea that Reichian-type therapy will leave them
vulnerable to whatevercomes along. But the whole aim is to
regain the power to choose, the power to be loving andopen, or
to scorch with righteous rage' or to close off totally for a
while. Very few of us haveaccess to the whole range of possible
reactions.Another way in which muscular armouring resembles its
iron counterpart is that it tends to bearranged in
segments
: bands of tension that wrap horizontally round the body.
constrictingflow along the head-to-feet axis. If you imagine how
a worm or snake moves, in wavy pulses,this gives a good image of
the free unarmoured body. But if something pins the serpent
downat one point in its length, the graceful undulation turns
into jerking and thrashing.
12This is like a human body becoming armoured in one segment: it
can no longer expand andpulse in a smooth, expressive. unified
way - expression becomes distorted and ugly, bothphysically and
emotionally.Most of us are armoured in more than one place. It's
as if the snake is a child's wooden toy,split up into separate
stiff lengths and able to bend only at the joints between the
segments, ina parody of undulation. Having lost our sense of
unity with the world through disjointedbreathing, we lose our
sense of
internal
unity through the disjointing effects of the armouring.We'll
look in much more detail later on at the segments and what they
mean, but it's worthemphasising here that the specific details
of armouring, as Reich described them or as we usethem doing
therapy - so many segments in such and such places - are rules
of thumb ratherthan gospel truth. The human organism is
immensely rich and complex, full of subtlechannels, links,
patterns and mirrorings, and each human individual is in many
ways unique.But the more each of us is armoured, the less
freedom of expression we have, the lessindividuality and
richness; and the more we tend to operate in a groove to
correspond to themechanical system of the segments. It's the
armouring that has segments, not the person; andthe process of
therapy is precisely one of rediscovering our individual
uniqueness.
Armouring and Illness
We've used the word 'healthy' once or twice to describe the
state of natural, unarmouredopenness. It's also the case that
being armoured is the precondition for being ill in the
medicalsense. When energy can't flow freely through the body, we
get areas that are over-charged,where energy 'sticks' and
stagnates, and other areas that are under-charged, where energy
can'tget to at all. Over time, this sets up a chronic imbalance
in the tissues and organs, whichallows infection or functional
disorder to take hold.
13The sort of ailment which results is by no means random: our
illnesses express, in vividdumb-show, the issues around which we
tense and close off. To pick some trivial examples,most people
who have a cough are suppressing anger - if you pretend to
cough, and thenexaggerate it, you will find yourself roaring.
Similarly, most colds have to do withunexpressed grief - the
tears have to find some way out.This is a tremendous
over-simplification: every illness is the expression of a
complex andlongstanding set of issues. But we do see physical
symptoms as the bodymind's attempt toresolve conflict, to break
free from the constraints of the armouring. In Chapter 4 we
shalllook in more detail at the relationship between specific
illnesses and specific forms of armouring.
#Post#: 37--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton
By: truthaboutpois Date: April 15, 2015, 6:59 am
---------------------------------------------------------
3 SURRENDER
Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence. It cannot
be compared to anything else: it is so sharp, precise, obvious
and direct ... Once we open ourselves, then we land on what is.
Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual MaterialismIn the
last chapter we saw that what Freud (or his translators) called
the Ego can beunderstood as 'the grip we get on ourselves', the
self-image which knits together bodilyimpulses and sensations
into a whole. In practice we do this by rejecting a whole crowd
of impulses as 'not
really
me', thus making these feelings unconscious. This is what
happensmentally; the bodily parallel is that we take on a
pattern of chronic tension which is constantlypreventing certain
movements and expressions - they 'just don't feel natural'. The
'spastic I',with its terror of letting go, is identical with the
spastic musculature,
unable
to let go becausethe holding-on isn't even conscious.But the 'I'
doesn't
have
to be like this - or we would be in a real mess. It is possible
to have asense of self that is relaxed, flexible, open to change
and spontaneity, able to surrender to ourown impulses and to the
reality of the world around us.Any sort of self-awareness and
intention is going to carry muscle
tone
- the differencebetween a limp, flaccid arm, and one which is
relaxed but energised and ready for action.However, if we keep
ourselves
permanently
ready for action, we tend to lose the capacity torelax; this is
what is called a chronic anxiety state, or stress. It produces a
rigid, inflexiblebody, and an 'I' to match.So what makes
possible a relaxed 'I', a subtle, flexible, pulsating bodymind?
The keyword is'surrender': not to anyone or anything
else
, but to
ourselves
.For some people the idea of surrender to ourselves, to our own
feelings, will make immediatesense. For others it needs more
explanation: it involves one of the central ways in whichtherapy
is different from everyday ways of being in our society - one of
therapy's
radical
aspects.If it's raining outside, we don't generally say - or
not at least without conscious childishness -'But it
mustn't
rain any more, it's been raining all day and I don't
want
it to!' However, peopleconstantly take this sort of attitude
towards their emotions: 'I can't go on crying like this';
'I'veno right to feel so angry'; 'I must stop being frightened'.
14We suggest that your feelings are like the weather: there's no
sense in arguing with them.If I am in a state of sorrow, for
instance, then it makes no difference how 'good' or 'bad'
thereasons are. The sorrow is
there
, a unitary bodymind state, woven of ideas,
emotions,physiological changes, energy flows. I can't expunge it
by an act of will. All I can do is stopmyself
expressing
it, and perhaps blank out my consciousness of it. What this
ensures is that
my sorrow will continue
- forever, quite possibly; locked up in the muscles I've tensed
to stopmyself sobbing and weeping; locked up in my unconscious
mind. It won't simply go away.The paradox is that feelings
change through and in their expression. It's by opening to
mysorrow, or anger, or fear, or whatever, by truly accepting
that this is, for now, my reality, thatI am able to move beyond
it. To complete themselves, feelings generally have to pass
throughconsciousness and out again: it seems to be the only
exit.We experience this extraordinary miracle over and over
again: just by surrendering to ourfeelings, we see them change.
The trap that seemed inescapable, the wound that
seemedunhealable, the dilemma that seemed insoluble - suddenly
they are different - smaller, softerand more malleable; because
our whole bodymind is softer and more flexible in its approachto
the world.Surrendering to our feelings is not about giving in to
difficulties, but about liberating ourenergies to confront them
in whatever way is appropriate. To face the world we need to
faceourselves, as we are rather than as we would like to be.
Neither is this to say that we shouldswitch off our
intelligence. We have to acknowledge sometimes that our
emotional reaction isover the top, irrational, that we are
responding to old memories and not to present facts. Butthis
acknowledgement provides the context in which we can effectively
let go to the feelingsand thus let go of them - knowing them for
what they are.Emotions
always
have a rational basis. Fear is the bodymind's shrinking away
from realthreat; anger is the mobilisation to blast away
whatever blocks our creative expression -nature's Dynorod!
Often, though, this rational basis is in the past not the
present: we areresponding in ways that were appropriate for
vulnerable children, but are no longerappropriate for adults
with a potential for strong and independent action.So it is
often helpful to have a safe space in which we can express our
feelings away from thepeople who may have sparked them off: for
instance, a therapy session where we can beat upa cushion rather
than our lover. At other times, though, the appropriate form of
discharge is inreal life action, by getting angry with whoever
is oppressing us and making them stop.We can use our heads, and
other people's, to work out which sort of situation is which,
todisentangle the mixture of past and present which is usually
involved. We can deal with theSocial Security much more
effectively if we aren't seeing them as our mother, giving
orwithholding vital nourishment! Often it's good to try hitting
the cushion first and see whatrational here-and-now core of
feeling is left afterwards.The key point is that emotions are
e-motions, movements
out
, their natural function isprecisely to clear what stops us
moving on. Feelings are value-neutral, neither good nor
bad,simply
there
. It's not our feelings that cause us trouble, but our feelings
about
feelings, ourshame, embarrassment, denial - our resistance.
15'Resistance' is a word for all the ways in which people seek
to avoid their own movement,their own living process. And one
paradoxical form that resistance can take is to beatourselves up
about our own resistance! 'Oh God, I'm so blocked. why can't I
let go, why can'tI change?' It is important to see that
resistance in therapy is like resistance in politics -
itoriginates in
fighting oppression
.If a child finds its feelings invalidated by the adult world in
the ways we discussed in the lastchapter, this is oppression of
a very powerful kind. It's a life-threatening experience, and
thechild responds like a resistance movement in an occupied
country - by going underground.We have all built up defences
against outside threat and inside emotion for the best
possiblereasons, and in the best possible way. So let's
congratulate ourselves, and respect ourresistance as we might
respect a guerrilla leader from some past war of liberation. The
onlytrouble is that the guerrilla leader may have got stuck in a
posture that actually obstructs theliberation for which she was
fighting!Therapy is one way of investigating this sort of
situation. Almost certainly our circumstanceswill have changed
since childhood, and it would probably make sense to revise some
of ourpast decisions, let go of some of our resistance, let go
of some of the limitations we haveplaced on our
self-expression.What we are really talking about is surrender to
reality
, the reality of our own feelings, and of the interactions which
spark them off: the reality of the past, and of the present; the
reality of our body's need for breath, for pleasure, for rest,
for activity. Because the reality whichconfronts us is
constantly changing, we need to be very flexible in order to
deal with it: weneed to be secure enough to face the bad along
with the good, rather than run away intofantasy. That security
and flexibility are rooted in a sense of
belonging
, being part of theuniverse, being fed by it in a constant
pulsating exchange of energies: a sense that is part of our
natural birthright, and is inherent in full free breathing.
#Post#: 38--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton
By: truthaboutpois Date: April 15, 2015, 7:01 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Sex and Surrender
To stay soft and open, we need the capacity to discharge
tension that builds up in us throughthe stresses of living. Free
breathing helps to minimise this build-up - we let go of
tensionwith each out-breath. But the 'I' needs periodically to
let go completely, to 'melt' as thearmoured muscles melt, to
relinquish control and allow the spontaneous rhythms of
theorganism to emerge. A natural, innate, powerful way of doing
this is through lovemaking andorgasm: insofar as we can
surrender to our own body, its pleasure washes us free of
thetensions and blockings that have built up. The movements of
orgasmic release are wavelike,pulsating, an involuntary
contraction and relaxation of the whole body that
transcendsconsciousness.So can we all get healthy or stay
healthy by making love? If only it was that simple. For a
fewpeople it is, or nearly so. It's one of those Catch 22
situations: the more soft and open you arealready, the easier it
is to stay so. The way our body seeks to move in orgasm is
totallydifferent in nature from the controlled, circumspect
movements of the armoured bodymind.The 'spastic I' perceives
involuntary movement - in sense, quite rightly - as a dreadful
threat toits survival. It panics, and clamps down even harder -
perhaps tries to take control of theorgasmic movements, to 'let
go on purpose'. For most of us, making love creates tension at
thesame time as releasing it.
16Orgasmic surrender cannot really be separated from surrender
to life and spontaneity ingeneral, surrender to our selves. The
way we relate to sexual excitement matches the way werelate to
other sorts of stimulus: the way we live our lives. So the work
that we do is not 'sextherapy'; but neither do we seek to
disguise the central role of sexuality in life, and of orgasmas
a form of discharge. We are also well aware that much of
people's unconscious anxiety andtension has a specifically
sexual content.Orgasm in the sense of surrender to the
involuntary is something rather different from simplemechanical
spasm or heavy breathing. Many people influenced by Reich's
ideas have madesomething of a fetish out of the 'Total Orgasm',
treating it as a specific goal, something youeither 'get' or
'don't get'. This is unrealistic, and very much at odds with
Reich's central pointabout letting go and saying yes to our
pleasure wherever it takes us. (Reich himself was notable to
follow through consistently with his own best insights.) Sexual
release is a primaryform of discharge, a way to stay soft and
sweet. But it can be directly worked for and learntonly in
limited ways: it is above all a function of our overall openness
and capacity to handlepleasure and excitement.So our therapy
doesn't simply work on sexuality as such, or on tension in the
pelvic areaalone. It seeks to encourage an overall loosening of
the armour, a release of anxiety whichwill make it possible to
give in to our own impulse for genital pleasure. Breathing is
anaccessible yardstick of openness and spontanei- ty, and Reich
noticed that when a person isrelaxed and breathing freely and
fully, the movement of her body is similar, in a gentle
andunchanged way, to the movement of orgasm. As we breathe out,
lying on our backs, thepelvic rocks
forward
and
up
, while at the same time our throat comes forward as if to
meetour pelvis. Our head and shoulders fall back and open in a
vulnerable gesture of surrender.This is identical for men and
women
#Post#: 39--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton
By: truthaboutpois Date: April 15, 2015, 7:02 am
---------------------------------------------------------
17'correctness'. Reich called this full, free breath the 'orgasm
reflex'; by definition, a reflex issomething which bypasses
conscious control.Full, free breathing is not a state, but a
direction: we can always breathe more or less than weare doing
at the moment. Exploring what happens as we try to alter or
increase our breath - orrather, to stop holding it back and
distorting it - is a direct route to the heart of
therapy,involving us in a long term project of melting armour in
all parts of our body, all aspects of our character. When we
find ourselves, for a while, breathing very freely, we
experience allsorts of strange and pleasurable sensations in our
bodyminds, an opportunity to directlyperceive the flow of life
energy in ourselves, which Reich called 'streaming'.The flow of
Orgone is immediately experienced as pleasure; its blocking as
unpleasure.But pleasure, for most people, is very often bound up
with anxiety. It makes the 'Spastic I' feelthat it is losing its
identity; it brings back bodymind memories of childhood
situations whereour pleasure was frustrated, together with the
associated feelings of grief, fear and rage. If ourfirst
reaction to pleasure beyond 'a certain limit is
no
rather than
yes
, then our wires needuncrossing. We need to unpeel, layer by
layer, the different negative feelings that have cometo overlay
our innately joyful, playful response to energy flow.But it's
plain too that making love isn't
vital
to being in a good state (as Reich seems to say itis). There are
many people, for example, who are celibate but who use
meditation or otherbodymind disciplines to keep themselves soft
and clear. It's also
very
plain - as Reich waswell aware - that sexual activity as such is
no measure of health or pleasure - frantic fuckingcan be
precisely an avoidance of surrender.So if you don't seek
orgasmic surrender, perhaps the best question is 'Why not?' Some
reasonsare better than others. A long term relationship may go
through effectively 'asexual' phases -and yet both partners feel
it would be destructive to look for sexual satisfaction
elsewhere.Also. sex and sexuality in our culture carry a
tremendous weight of
political
meanings whichmake it hard to simply follow our feelings - our
feelings may be contradictory. Above all,heterosexual love - and
therefore, homosexual love in a hetero society - is intimately
boundup with power and patriarchy. We'll come back to these
matters in Chapters 6 and 9; for now,we just want to say that
because of this political charge, sexual surrender becomes even
morefrightening. Surrender to our own feelings is not easily
separated from surrender to someoneelse, or to a particular
sexual ideology. It can be difficult to disentangle saying 'yes'
to ourbodies from saying 'yes' to patriarchy, because in a sense
we may experience our bodies ascolonised and imperialised by
society's models of sexuality, power and pleasure.The way
forward through this jungle, hard though it is, is surely to
stay with exactly whatcomes up for us when we try to let go,
breathe, and feel ourselves. If we can accept and ownour
sensations and emotions, without judgement or denial, then we
can eventually find theway through to our truth, a truth based
on far more solid foundations than any intellectualmodel. This
means being able to face the pain and fear of our original
childhood confrontationwith sexual roles and rules.In the next
chapter, we shall look at the way we tighten up each area of our
body, eachsegment of armouring, against surrender to feeling, to
pleasure, and to reality
#Post#: 40--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton
By: truthaboutpois Date: April 15, 2015, 7:03 am
---------------------------------------------------------
4 THE SEGMENTS
The segmental arrangement of the muscular armour represents the
worm in man.
Wilhelm Reich, Character AnalysisNow let us look at how
armouring works in practice; where the different 'segments'
arelocated, the sorts of emotions that tend to be stuck
unexpressed and unexperienced in thetense muscles of each body
area, and the sorts of physical symptoms that tend to
accompanythese tensions. We need to remember that people usually
don't know about their ownarmouring: the muscle tension exists
to protect us from conscious realisation of our needs
andfeelings, which may come as an extreme shock to us when the
armouring gives way. It alsotends to make us unaware of the
tension itself, which through long familiarity feels 'normal'.We
must also bear in mind that as well as being choked up with
intense held feeling, asegment can in effect be 'emptied' of
charge by spastic muscles around the area keepingenergy and
feelings
out
, in an alternative strategy for self-control. There is more
than onelayer of musculature in any given area of our body; we
may be relaxed at one level, tight atanother.What follows is
necessarily simplified. Although the seven segments can be a
tremendouslyuseful way of seeing patterns of holding, they are
only a tool - only one way of seeing things.As we go through the
segments, we will be constantly pointing out interlinkings
betweenthem - other, equally valid, ways of understanding our
bodies. The segments are to a largeextent artificial, reflecting
the artificial bodymind pr~ of self-armouring.The seven
segments, as shown in the illustration, can be identified by the
main feature of eacharea: the eyes; the jaw; the neck; the
heart; the waist; the belly; and the pelvis and legs. Weshall
look at each in turn, working down the body in the direction
that an embryo grows in thewomb, the direction that our bodywork
tends to move, from crown to base.
19
The eye segment ('ocular')
The first and uppermost segment includes the scalp, forehead,
eyes, cheeks, ears, and the baseof the skull. It is an area of
intense charge, containing as it does two crucial 'windows' on
theworld, our organs of sight and hearing. Whether because of
this, or because of the location of the brain, most people
mentally place their '1' in this segment; this is where we watch
the
#Post#: 41--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton
By: truthaboutpois Date: April 15, 2015, 7:04 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Such notions and experiences are themselves a product of
armouring. They show the extent of cut-offness from our heart,
guts and sex. The mind is a bodymind - not a headmind -
however'natural' it may seem to be 'in our heads'.One very
common effect of working to melt the armour is that people's
centre of awarenessshifts downwards, into the 'heartlands' of
the body. We begin to experience our heads, weirdlyat first, as
just another limb like our arms or legs. We start to realise how
stiffly we have beenholding our head, so as to stay's' it; and
how tension in and around our eyes represents theneed to 'hold
ourselves up' through seeing, rather than through the support of
our legs and feet- desperately gripping on to the world with our
eyes, in the same sort of way that whenwewere learning to stand
we kept ourselves erect by gripping onwith our hands.As well as
being a vital channel for information and contact eyes and ears
have also been asource of
threat
in our lives. Scary and existence-threatening energy has invaded
us throughour sight and hearing - the coldness in the look of
adults who should be caring for us, forexample, the anger or
pain in their voices. Most of us came into the world in the
agonisingglare of hospital lights, the cacophony of hospital
noises, later, we may have tried to minimisedangerous excitement
by 'not looking', 'not seeing' stirring images, 'not hearing'
the confusingsounds of our parents making love.So very often the
eyes and ears are in a permanent state of blocking which says 'I
won't see -won't hear - won't understand'. Muscles inside and
around the eye sockets, and at the base of the skull, are in
constant tension, stopping us from really focusing on the world
around us,from opening up to reality.
Exercise 2
Try an experiment yourself.. sit upright, and bum your head as
far as it will comfortably go toone side. When it reaches a
stopping point let your eyes carry on round until they too reach
21
their comfortable limit - no need to strain, then bring the eyes
very slowly back round until, asthey face forward again in the
head, they 'pick up' the head and both continue moving back
round to the front of the body. The illustration should make
this clear. The point is that theeyes should move continuously,
without jumping, so they 'sweep' the field of vision,
carryingthe head along with them. Keep breathing while you do
it!
#Post#: 42--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reichian Growth Work by Nick Totton
By: truthaboutpois Date: April 15, 2015, 7:05 am
---------------------------------------------------------
21
their comfortable limit - no need to strain, then bring the eyes
very slowly back round until, asthey face forward again in the
head, they 'pick up' the head and both continue moving back
round to the front of the body. The illustration should make
this clear. The point is that theeyes should move continuously,
without jumping, so they 'sweep' the field of vision,
carryingthe head along with them. Keep breathing while you do
it!
Most people find this exercise very difficult - to let their
eyes move slowly and continuouslyrather than jumping forward in
spurts, impatient to see 'what's next'. This impatience has
aquality of fear in it, and repeating the experiment a few times
to each side can make usconscious of a great deal of anxiety
about seeing,
really seeing
, the world around us. We tendto filter reality through a screen
of prior judgement so as to protect ourselves from
dangerousexcitement or pain, and this anxiety is bound into
tense muscles around the eyes.A similar process happens with the
ears, and with our thinking processes. The words we useabout
thinking embody these connections: 'I see what you mean', 'I
don't like the sound of that'. In French, 'entendu' means both
'heard' and 'understood'.The core of the armouring is actually
inside
the head, in the small muscles that move our eyes,and in the
muscles behind our ears and at the base of the skull, some of
which are reflexly co-ordinated with subtle eye movements.
Blocking in all these areas can give a hard, blank,superficial
expression to the eyes, or a cloudy 'absent look - both masking
deep fear.Shortsightedness, longsightedness, deafness, etc., are
very much bound up with armouring of the eye segment, and the
same goes for inability to smell - a very powerful and
fundamentalsense linking us with our animal heritage.Repression
of contact with the world through eyes, ears and thinking covers
up a deeper
neediness
. Eye contact which is loving and supportive gives us a
fundamental anchoring inthe world: it says 'you exist, I see
you'. When the channels are open, the heart speaks throughthe
eyes, and comforting sounds and smells can give an almost
equally deep reassurance. If this sort of validation is missing
in very early childhood, then someone's ability to make
22proper contact through the eye segment can be profoundly
injured. They tend to 'go away inthe eyes' and in their
thinking: closeness can be experienced as invasive, threatening
- only inisolation are they safe.Similarly. they may develop
ideas which are bizarrely isolated from how most people see
theworld.With less extreme damage, the urge for contact may
simply take a diversion, and expressitself in a way which is
distorted and therefore less threatening: as with people whose
life isorganised around a
need to see
- voyeurs, intellectuals, detectives, journalists - and
therapists!Which is a good moment to stress that reaching out
with eyes, ears and mind is a healthy,creative process - unless
it coincides with a block to making deep emotional contact.As
well as being windows, the eyes are doors: they are a channel
for emotional expression.
All
feelings, to be fully released, need to come out through the
eyes. Besides the obviousexample of crying, the eyes must
release fear, anger, joy, and so on in appropriate ways inorder
to stay soft and open. Different people tend to be able to show
different feelings throughtheir eyes, and to block other ones;
and these tendencies can often be seen in the way we holdthe
muscles of this segment
Exercise 3
Look in a mirror, and raise your eyebrows as far as you
possibly can. What does this look like? What emotion does it
convey? Now screw your eyes up tight, lower the brow: see what
the apparent emotion is now. Keep breathing, and move as fast as
you can between these two positions, several times; how does
this make you feel? Is it easy for you to do? Is one
positionharder than the other? Relax into your normal eye
position for a moment, let yourself breathe,and see how you look
in the mirror and how you feel inside.
As we hope you will agree, the wide open eyes show an
expression of
fear
; and if you keptbreathing in this position, you may even have
felt some of this fear. People who habituallykeep their eyes
like this are generally unaware of it, getting them to
exaggerate, or converselyto screw their eyes up tight can make
them suddenly aware of the extreme tension there, andof the
underlying fear and sadness. It's a position which helps one
cope with being seen, andis common in politicians, but also in
people who have had very frightening visual experiencesin
childhood.Screwed-up eyes may convey several different emotions:
anger. desperation to see, anxiety.Notice whether your cheek
muscles also screw up tight, turning your face into a mask.
Whenpeople habitually use their faces in this way. it's as if
their eyes have retreated into their head -'I can see out, but
you can't see in'. Flat, stiff, heavy cheeks, on the other hand,
are oftenholding tremendous grief and unshed tears.Another
emotion often held in the eye segment is
worry
: the wrinkled brow and fixed gaze of compulsive thinking. It
doesn't matter what the person is thinking about
now
- it could beabsolutely anything; but originally they will have
taken refuge in thinking as an escape routefrom intolerable
childhood pressures - for example. trying to work out how to
satisfycontradictory demands from mother and father.The 'ivory
tower intellectual' is demonstrating a similar, perhaps more
successful, form of escape: the skull is a literal ivory tower,
high and dry above the scary and confusing world of
23the body. Intellectuals who try to ignore body and emotions
have concentrated on the genuineerotic pleasure of thought to
the exclusion of most other things.Thinking is a real, healthy
pleasure, but surely only in harmony with other functions, not
inisolation from them. Often there is considerable panic bound
up in this stance - about sexualfeelings, and also about bodily
assertiveness and rage. The opposite form of defence is foundin
people who fog up their own thinking processes as a protection
against painful realities,
making
themselves stupid and incompetent, and giving their eyes either
a dull smug look, or apeering vagueness.These are some examples
to stimulate your own observation of what people do with
theireyes. The eye segment will be involved in suppressing any
and all feelings; but thefundamental blockings here are of very
young
emotions and experiences, our primalinteractions with the world,
starting at birth or earlier. Through the crown of our heads and
thespace between our eyes, we are linked to sky and cosmos, to
webs of subtle energy, tosomething much bigger than our
individual self. Pain and danger may make us close thesechannels
down, or may make us retreat into a 'spirituality' which is
ungrounded in the realityof our bodily life.Apart from defects
of vision and hearing, the most obvious physical symptom
connected witheye segment armouring is chronic headaches -
stemming from tense muscles at the base of theskull and around
the eyes. We believe as well that specific ailments like styes,
conjunctivitis,sinusitis and so on can be linked with eye
segment armouring; often they all occur when aspecific feeling
is being held back about some life situation, and in particular
when someoneis not allowing themselves to cry
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