Wounds
into
Blessings
How Healing Touch
Evokes The Spirit
Fred Mitouer, Ph.D.


Copyright©2008
Dragon Breath Press
44800 Fish Rock Road
Gualala, CA 95445


Wounds into Blessings
Come, Come,
Whoever you are
Wanderer, worshipper,
lover of leaving,
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.
- Rumi's epitaph
It feels as though I make my way
through massive rock
like a vein of ore
alone, encased.
I am so deep inside it
I can't see the path or any distance:
everything is close
and everything closing in on me
has turned to stone.
Since I still don't know enough about pain,
this terrible darkness makes me small.
If it's you, though---
press down hard on me, break in
that I may know the weight of your hand,
and you, the fullness of my cry.

Book of Hours 3,1
--Rainer Maria Rilke



Dedicated to two great spirits
Cheryl and Seth
my teachers and best friends
my wife and son
&
To all the brave warriors
and the wounded healers
who may be
so moved to be
a bridge
to the far shore
for themselves,
for another human being,
and for the world.

I am grateful for the love and support of many clients, students, colleagues, and friends who have generously assisted me during the journey of assembling this material into its present form. Without their help none of this would have been made manifest. I am honored to say “thank you” to: Agaja Enahoro, Rosamond Gumpert, Dan Beam, Rhonda Marin, Paula Sinclair, Marjorie Thomure, Tom Rawlins, Marti Spiegelman, Carolyn Ingram, Cecile Cutler, Richard Kilday, Hallie, Mimi Buckley, JoAnna DeVrais, Robert E. Taylor, Ellen Rafkin, Kay Thompson, Brenda Kleinkopf, Connie Gerken, Gail Horvath, Mickey McGinnis, Teresa Glover, Helen Barrington, and Phoenix Hocking. Special thanks to Victoria Fahey, Meredith Beam, Linda Ward, Dan Beam, and Cheryl Mitouer for their generous input on some very rough drafts. I am indebted to Dan Beam and Meredith Beam for their help in creating the graphic model of “The Transformational Journey,” to Catherine Ingram for her professional editing assistance at a crucial time, and to David L. Schwartz, (and his good offices of Summit University of Louisiana) for his deep faith in me and my work, and for his assistance in translating my work into a doctoral dissertation. I also wish to acknowledge Carolyn Ingram?s psychological review and editing assistance, and Bill Foote for his psychiatric review of the manuscript and his personal support.  In an earlier version of this writing I had the expert skill of Stephen Yafa who collaborated with me, taking a tome of pages and holding them up as a mirror in which to see myself. I am eternally grateful for his expert skill. My editor, Bonnie Dahan, saw the promise and sculpted away the excess in this work to reveal its essence. I am most fortunate to have had her knowledgeable input. I wish to acknowledge my parents Regina Mitouer and Ralph Mitouer for their crucial roles in my existence and for the love I received in its many forms.

I also wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the following people for their personal contributions: Abe and Dorothy Gerstein, Johanna Atman, Mark Wachter, Rebecca and Sam Keliihoomalu, Jessica Hirsch, Jasmine Hirsch, Tom Green, Deborah LeCover and family, Heather Myers, Anna Hawken, Rick & Karen Buckley and Family, Charles DeFay, Peter & Mimi Buckley and Family, Claire Edelstein, Matt Myers, Margaret Israel and family, Patty-Lynn Thorndike, Susan Shippey Borski and Scott Borski, Cherie Arnold, Randy Morris, Michael Horn, Tracey Coddington, Mel and Patricia Ziegler, Judith Fisher, Walt Thompson, Michael Doyle, Hal & Sidra Stone, Ilene Myers, Debbie Gunther, Valerie
Bonfigli, Jan Greene, France Baeza, Aurora Hayes, Del Potter, Hana Wolfe and Gordon Smith.


Contents
Cocoon....................................................................................................................................8
Preface..................................................................................................................................10
Come to the Edge ...............................................................................................................15
The Fertile Wound
Figure A. Leveraging the Fertile Wound
My Story
Battle's Over
The Only Way Out Is In
Awareness Exercise # 1
The Body Speaks Its Mind
Awareness Exercise # 2
Dragon's Brew
Zen Gardens
Awareness Exercise No.3
This Very Edge
Epilogue

Appendix I
Preface
The Transformational Journey
Figure B. Entrance to the Transformational Journey
Figure 1. Transformational Map
Figure 2. Separate-Self Existence in Duality as The Wound
Figure 3. Expansion
Figure 4. Amoeba in four states
Figure 5. Dynamic Tension
Figure 6. The Armament Ring
Figure 7. Unconscious Reaction to the Unhealed Wound
Figure 8. Splitting time into past and Future
Figure 9. Behavioral Effects of the Reactivity States
Figure 10. The Reactivity State of the Unhealed Wound
Figure 11. The Healing Pathway is through the Wound
Figure 12. Skillful Means
Figure 13. Mindfulness
Figure 14. The Healing Process
Figure 15. Disarmament
Figure 16. The Flow State

Appendix II
1. THE WORK
2. For the Client of Transformational Bodywork
3. Transformational Bodywork for the Healing Artist
4. Biography


Cocoon
Along a dusty road in India there sat a beggar who sold cocoons. A young boy watched him day after day, and the beggar finally beckoned to him.

“Do you know what beauty lies within this chrysalis? I will give you one so you might see for yourself. But you must be careful not to handle the cocoon until the butterfly comes out.”

The boy was enchanted with the gift and hurried home to await the butterfly. He laid the cocoon on the floor and became aware of a curious thing. The butterfly was beating its fragile wings against the hard wall of the chrysalis until it appeared it would surely perish, before it could break the unyielding prison. Wanting only to help, the boy swiftly pried the cocoon open.

Out flopped a wet, brown, ugly thing which quickly died. When the beggar discovered
what had happened, he explained to the boy “In order for the butterfly wings to grow strong enough to support him, it is necessary that he beat them against the walls of his cocoon. Only by this struggle can his wings become beautiful and durable. When you denied him that struggle, you took away from him his only chance of survival.”

—Preface—

“What the Caterpillar calls the end of the world,
the rest of the world calls butterfly.”
a verse by Richard Bach

Ten thousand flowers in spring,
the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter...
if your mind isn?t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life
Wu - Men
Matisse. Le Bonheur de Vivre. 1905-06

The human instinct of love is first expressed through the sense of touch beginning with the mother-child relationship—our primary bonding experience. When this love is present, health and a sense of wholeness characterize our lives. When there is a lack of bonding and nurturance, however, feelings of well being are, at best, infrequent. And if abuse, in its many forms, occurs, fragmentation will result and further diminish our sense of security in this world.

The absence of bonding, or the presence of abuse, creates a need for healing in a person. Through massage, and other forms of conscious touch, we are able to re-create a physical context in which love and trust can bond our fragments back into wholeness, which is both our birthright and, ultimately, our destiny. Conscious loving touch, in its many forms, is one of humanity?s best hopes for transforming human suffering into the foundation of a more humane society.

In spite of all the bells and whistles of our technological society, the need for healing has never been greater. With all the talk of family values, people have never felt more fragmented and in need of real emotional security. Traditional religion, which has never been a great friend to the human body has been replaced by a devotion to materialism that has neither improved the quality of medical care nor made the workplace more enlightened, nor helped educate us to raise children in non-authroitarian ways.

After all the so called progress, we have really very little to show as far as advancement in levels of human happiness. Each of us who cares deeply about a more conscious experience for human life in this society, and on this earth, must turn to the subject of healing and ask, “How can I bring about a positive change in my life? How can I find the compassion and courage to confront my personal demons, befriend their energies and re-awaken my aliveness?”

Healing work is about re-awakening; it is about self-remembeing; and it is about listening to the body?s dream of a better world. This book, Wounds into Blessings, is an invitation to you, the reader, to heal, to dance in the flow of life, and come into harmony with your body, your life path and contribute to this better world. As a longtime bodyworker, I have found that the keys to transformation lie within body awareness. This book is for both non-bodyworkers and for those who touch others; it is about the demystification of the healing process.

My perspective on healing has developed, over the past quarter century, through my direct contact with thousands of people, in all walks of life and of all ages, throughout the United States and in Europe and Asia. In my teaching and in my private practice I have continuously witnessed the common ground of all healing: our human need to bond into life, to give and receive affection and to make peace with our mortality.

Today, the new field of somatics refers to all the experimental approaches to bodymind healing and personal growth. These new body-based approaches are finding their way into the cultural mainstream alongside more traditional healing arts such as chiropractic, acupuncture, psycho-therapy and prayer. It is an exciting time for the healing arts because spirituality, ancient traditions and modern science are all converging into a new paradigm of the human adventure.

I call the work I do Transformational Bodywork (see Appendices) because it describes a process that can occur when several factors arise together within a healing context that manifests into a permanent and positive change of personal identity within a person. The work utilizes physcial touch, breathing and focused intent and intuition to effect, in an individual, long-term change (transformation) as opposed to the short-term alleviation of symptoms—though such relief may be a significant aspect of each bodywork session.

It is understood that the major factor in transformation is expanded consciousness that grows within the client?s direct experience. Complimentary to this basic understanding is the principle that transformation involves learning about the factors that have contributed to the circumstances that are present; and that, through this awareness, it is possible to develop more positive approaches to life challenges, create more and better choices about what goals are more worthy of our attention, and cultivate support to realize these goals in their fullest expression.

Healing is an organic process, like the ripening of fruit; and though it is simple work, it is not necessarily easy. What makes healing work difficult and challenging is that most of us do not know how to embrace our simplicity. The body reminds us. The body reminds us, by holding the pain of oppressive tension, that we need to make this healing journey.
Our minds, in contrast, have become conditioned by our cultures to be fearful, armed and reactive. This causes us to lose contact with our essential natures, which are naturally responsive.

Because of this separation from our natural responsive state, defense and armament
are erected to create the illusion of security in this world of duality. And in this pursuit of security, in an ever changing world, we hunker down into isolated realms dictated by old brain survival.

Healing is the return journey back, from duality, to the re-membered state of unity. In this book, the return journey is supported by a map, some awareness exercises and a few good stories. We don't want to get lost, on our journeys, in mental obsessions about our destinations or the rate at which we traverse our real or imagined paths. Nor do we want to identify with the significance of each rest stop on these journeys. The real question is are we taking this journey?

Many spiritual paths and religious traditions have characterized the journey of awakening as being long and arduous. By defining the journey in a hierarchical, cloistered and laborious manner, many potentially enlightened people have been discouraged from opening to the life of spirit. It is my experience that a precious gift awaits each of us in the heart of our difficulties and that by running from them we miss an incredible opportunity to grow spiritually. Healing is a new spirituality because soul does not get thrown aside nor does the body get left behind. Healing, naturally, begins when we put our attention on a wound.

What is a wound? A wound is an energetic constriction of life-force energy. Wounds can be temporary or long term. When healing energy makes contact with a wound, a cleansing and rebuilding experience naturally occurs. This happens on biological, psychological, emotional and spiritual levels which mutually re-enforce one another. When healing energy cannot make contact with the wound, for whatever reason, the wound is isolated from a cleansing and no re-building can take place. The unhealed wound must then be managed.

Managing unhealed wounds becomes, over time, a life style characterized by coping behaviors and unconscious reactions. This state of woundedness is crippling to the spirit, depleting to the physical body and, sadly, is the source of humanity's spiritual malaise and social decay. But there is another kind of wound, or perception of our wound, that need not be crippling and that, ironically, is the source of great healing.

The difference between the crippling kind of wound and the wound that holds our passport for the healing journey is that, in the former, we identify with our pain and feel victimized; in the latter, feeling our pain tempers us, makes us stronger for life and shows us what we need to heal. In this way wounds, and the healing of wounds, assist the evolution of soul. I call these wounds fertile wounds.

Here's the choice. We can become fixated upon our wounds and be limited and run by them, or we can use our wounds as fertile soil for personal transformation. The intent of this book is to celebrate choice and free will and to encourage you to engage yourself in a fresh way with the aspects of your life that hunger and thirst for healing so that real healing occurs.

NOTE TO THE READER:

The organization of this book is designed to share with you, the reader, a non-analytic sense of the raw and amazing nature of bodywork that is transformational.

• In the client stories I share, there is a reflection of what I see happening along side what my clients self-describe as their own direct experience.
• In the chapter, "My Own Story", I share some of my personal path as a way of offering
• some ground and texture to my role as a healing arts practitioner.
• In the appendix, "The Transformational Journey", I share a more analytic overview which

I have developed and use to help me understand the human condition with which I constantly am "in touch". I place this chapter at the end to spare you from engaging in the stories with an analytic filter that might buffer you from a more intimate engagement with the material, at first reading.

All the client stories have been freely shared by their authors with the express purpose of offering you a mirror within which to reflect upon your own journey into wholeness. These stories may evoke in you some unresolved emotions, repressed memories or, perhaps, your untapped faith. They are woven together as a psycho-physiological teaching that is intended to take you--not in a linear fashion to a specific conclusion but rather to a multi-dimensional awareness that can alter your perception of pain, grace, and creative personal growth. As you read about these different people, use their challenges as touchstones of self-perception. Look for the underlying patterns, themes and issues that strike a personal chord for you. Consider, as these chords resonate within your heart, the questions: "Am I ready to heal?" and "Do I want to heal?" and "What is stopping me from healing?" Sense your own edge as you appreciate that these people, like you and me, are learning to fly, land and take off again into whatever each moment delivers. I trust the insights gained will be useful to you as you embark or continue upon your healing journey.

Fred Mitouer, Ph.D.
Anchor Bay, California
Summer, 1998

Come to the Edge

"Come to the edge," he said.

They said "We are afraid."

"Come to the edge," he said.

They came.

He pushed them.

And they flew.

~Guillame Apollinair

Though everyone is at some point called to their own edge, relatively few people "seize the day" and begin the journey, from that edge that takes us full circle into the mystery that holds us all. The gift of our painful difficulties is that, through them, we are humbled into surrendering

our synthetic notions about our lives. For whatever reason you picked up this book, or it found you, we have now begun a journey that will remind you just how close you are to your own edge, your desire to fly, your fear of being free and your undeniable knowing that your very existence itself is, in one instant, awesome beyond belief and, in the next, utterly overwhelming.

What brings us to our edge?

All the inherited influences and all the environmental forces that shape our lives cannot compare with the karmic itch that takes us into our soul's calling. This itch in our lives serves a purpose, just as the irritating grain of sand caught in the stomach of an oyster eventually becomes a pearl. In every life there's an irritating itch that serves to motivate, to catalyze movement to some placement wherein our entire viewpoint transforms and a significant experience transpires. For me, my feelings of intense loneliness drew me into a life style in the healing arts. What began as a selfish need to be met myself eventually took me to a place of selflessness. In serving as a boatman for other people's crossings, I have come to see I was never outside the circle.

One of my best friends responded to an e-mail I sent her, describing a profound and painful opening I was going through, with this reflection:

"We humans are at once entirely fallible and yet it is our very failings that open the door to transcendence. I understand, and relate to your tears. Nothing comes without its cost, but the cost is also beautiful, fuel for our fires."

After reading this I walked out of my office into my garden, listened to the waterfall and felt such gratitude for my journey. What began as a lonely itch had evolved into a spark and then a fire, a fire that burned me to the ground and taught me that "What is to give light must endure the burning."

In the water garden I finally felt there was nothing left in me to burn and I just sat there, a bunch of ashes, looking into the koi pond, seeing the reflection of Kwan Yin, the goddess of mercy and compassion. I shook with the appreciation of the knowledge that our imperfections are perfect just the way they are. And with this total acceptance I came home. In this garden I had built from the grist of my struggle with loneliness, I arrived at my destination, which is precisely where I began my journey, a transcendent place that was at my very core--a place beyond all of my pain where faith never sleeps. And I sat there by the waters in my garden, in the home I built from these hands that are typing these words, and I recalled from my college days the words of the poet T. S. Elliot: "We shall not cease from exploring, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time."

I could not write this book until I had died into the mystery at my own edge and truly accepted my imperfections as perfect; for what they taught me I could not have learned in any way other than the way it played. The poet Wendell Berry says, "The impeded stream is the one that sings." In building my water garden, I placed rocks as obstructions in the waterfalls to create that "singing." I am convinced that God has done this with us.

I have had many opportunities to meet my obstructions--my wounds and my shadow sides--and learn from them about fear and the alternatives to being afraid. My cravings and depressions and my rages have all haunted me at times and, until I learned to befriend these demons, they sapped my strength and made me crazy. But as fate would have it, healing work found me and had its way with me like no demon had. The work taught me to stop resisting what arises in me or with anyone I work with; it taught me to be still, with care, and allow what is so to unfold.

Once at the end of a meditation retreat I encountered some students of Buddhism seriously discussing the subject of suffering. I laughed very hard, I think, because we Jews have a rich heritage of jokes about suffering. (How many ways can you say "oy?") When my clients take their suffering too seriously, I give them the choice of either moving rocks on my property or telling me jokes at each bodywork session. Consequently, I have, over the years, heard lots of fabulous, dirty and stupid jokes and have landscaped a coastal mountaintop.

Through my experiences of wrestling with the issues that these clients bring to me, I have come to see that lightening up with humor and doing heavy labor or at least engaging in a physical work-out regularly, organizes the bodymind into a presence that is both light and strong. I remind myself and others that enlightenment means Lightening Up. Because this is easier said than done, I practice being silly and intentionally make time for play. When I erected a thirty-five foot totem pole on our land it was a soul statement, and everyone thought it was wonderful, but when the fire-breathing dragons demanded to be born, some of my friends were concerned about the affect mid-life was having on me. In truth I was experimenting with the esoteric meditation called "puttering."

There's an expression in the countryside: "If your chain saw isn't broken, don't fix it." It's actually good advice because fussing around usually creates a mess anyway and takes time away from the art of puttering. Fussing adds worry to things whereas puttering diminishes worry. So until something happens that merits our alert problem-solving abilities, we would do well to practice the ways of fun and play. Sooner or later, in one way or another, we will all encounter the mess of a very real situation; and then we will be challenged to shine our lightness upon these difficulties. At those times, we will be thankful to have within us the personal resource of memories when things were sweet.

Rubbing up against thousands of embodied lives from my box seat perspective, I have been fortunate to watch this dance of light upon darkness. Under my hands and before my eyes, I have witnessed many men and women who have met themselves at their edges and have moved their rocks with courage and dignity. This book is an expression of my gratitude for what I have learned through my practice in the healing arts with them, namely that human beings can realize "amazing grace," and that, through surrendering to the body's wisdom, we can all release our profound compassion, realize our faith in humanity and smell the flowers. I convey this "good news" not as some starry eyed, new-age optimist, but as a practical realist who has gone the distance, in the mess, with thousands of brave souls who have wrestled with the mystery and have shattered their illusions of what is real and what matters.

Everyone needs to know they are not alone and that someone else has experienced a crisis, perhaps worse than their own, and has come out the other side stronger and more loving. This book is written in that spirit for us all. I invite you to take a journey into the messy world of real healing. I ask you not to take the easy road for your healing needs but to take the practical road, the road that will take your soul to where it truly wants to go.

This is not a How To book. There are no twelve steps or ten commandments to follow but there is a clear message: You Can Heal! Many of my clients and students have asked me to share my perspective on healing. Because the nature of healing work is organic and messy, I have chosen to grow this story in an organic and earthy way that blends my personal reflections along with vignettes, from my private practice and school, to create an archetypal collage of the healing journey. I trust that the organization of these perspectives, teaching stories and awareness exercises will be, for you, a mirror in which to see your beauty, your opportunities, and your amazing grace.

In my twenty-five years of sculpting human flesh I have frequently seen this archetypal sight at the edge: At the very instant before a person leaps, either to his ego-death or instantaneously grows wings with which to fly, all that is unresolved in his heart surfaces to be met. Interestingly, those who have worked with the dying describe a similar phenomena. Healing moments are, like death, turning points in our existence. Awareness and time become compressed and surreal. Caught between the desire to fly into, and with the mystery, and the fear of being swallowed up by the void, we seek answers to all that is unresolved in our hearts. Through my work with the human body, I have learned that we can only live into, and die into, the answers by loving the questions. In the following pages I will share a perspective that celebrates these questions and our relationship with them. But first things first.

What is in front of us all right now, if we can stand to look at it, is the transformation of our very perceptions about our existence and the difficulties and opportunities of being human. The way we see our world is quite conditioned by our beliefs about the way things are. The phrase, "I'll believe it when I see it," is actually a less accurate description of the way things are than this phrase: "I'll see it when I believe it." In truth, we do not really "see" anything that does not fit into our belief structures. With this subconscious mental selectivity we judge anyone, including parts of ourselves, who do not agree with our assessments about the world and our experience of it. Religious fundamentalists, for example, take drastic measures to condemn anyone who sees Christ, Mohammed, Moses or Buddha as different from what they think of their heroes. The violence in our world arises from this basic reaction of being against those who don't agree with our beliefs. It is evidenced in the way we treat other human beings and in the way we treat the rivers and the forests. The incredible wounds that have littered our personal and collective histories cannot heal until we humans are prepared to remove our conditioned belief filters, and see what is in front of us with fresh eyes. My experience has taught me that the body holds the keys to unlock this fresh perception, as this ancient healing story portrays.

There was a time, before history, when the wise elders of the original human race gathered together to discuss the fate of the human race...All of the wise ones knew of the human capacities for mischief and were wary of offering them easy access to the keys of knowledge, for fear that they would exploit this knowledge and use it for ends that would be against the divine natural order of things. All but one of the wise elders argued against giving human beings another chance to have divine knowledge again. This wise one passionately told the assembled elders that he understood their concerns given the divisive racial history of human beings, but that it was in the interest of the divine order that each human being be given a chance to return home, to the world of oneness, by virtue of his own sincere effort.

The elders then remembered that this was one of the divine laws governing the world of duality. So one chosen elder spoke and said: "All right, we'll offer divine knowledge to humanity but we shall hide the wisdom where the mean and greedy humans will not find it...let's put it at the bottom of the ocean." Another elder, remembering the clever excesses of Atlantis, said "These humans will surely find a way to get at it there, let's project it out to space beyond the gravity field of Earth." After this was also dismissed for the same reason as before--namely that humans would create the means to travel anywhere to aggrandize their dominion over the natural world, the lone wise elder stood up to speak for the gentler side of humanity and said:   "We should place divine wisdom where no human being with less than divine intent will look. We will hide divine wisdom in the last place any exploitive human being will look. Because the exploitive humans are always looking outward for more to conquer, they will never look within. We shall hide the keys to spirit within the inner spaces of their own human   bodies. In that way they will be brought to wisdom through their simple investigations of the mysteries of their own hearts, from where only good could flow." All the elders agreed that this was the most practical solution to their dilemma. And so the human body became the map for the journey home.

In general, it can be said that modern society has come between the human psyche and the mystery, and regards the mystery and the human body with suspicion and cynicism. Consequently, the keys to unlock the mystery are hidden and we live with little faith. In faith's absence, we do not perceive our uncomfortable edge places as transformational opportunities. Instead, we anxiously manipulate our perceptions into convenient dogmas and culturally correct behaviors, all to secure some buffer from the mystery.

In contrast, indigenous cultures are secure with the mystery. The ancient myths throughout the world describe dragons turning into princesses at the last moment. "Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave," the poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes. "Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest being, something helpless that wants help from us." Perhaps we humans can awaken from the consensus trance that tells us that the best way to live is to get comfortable and avoid pain at all costs. Perhaps our terrible dragons and our deepest sufferings are present in our lives so that we will investigate the mystery and, out of necessity, find for ourselves a passionate and exciting life at the center, well worth the pain we encounter at the edge. Our dragons are both leading us to our greatest treasures and challenging us to be brave enough to meet our fears and, in so doing, reveal the faith we never lost but just forgot.

We have had a lot of help forgetting who we really are. With rare exception, spiritual traditions and religion have viewed the human body with disdain and have socialized our relationship to it in adversarial terms. To the extent we perceive the physical world as a dimension that should be transcended or rejected, we exploit and pollute the earth, we abandon the wisdom of our bodies and we exist with "unresolved heart," continuously encountering the messiness of our human condition.

And just what is that condition?

Simply put, it has been about separation, scarcity and survival. A better world is possible. It could be about unity and inclusion, and abundance and joyous living. Standing at millennium's edge, we humans, as a species, can choose to embrace co-creation with the laws of nature, and find harmony within this physical world, or we can continue to manipulate our realities so that some people can survive well while violence, poverty, oppression and environmental degradation characterize the majority of human experience.

If we are to evolve into the harmonious former view, we will have to transform our perceptions and look at the life in front of us with fresh eyes and see the incredible opportunity that awaits us. To do this we will need a new kind of spirituality--one that does not leave the body behind. With the body's wisdom aligned with our true heart's desire, we can heal our wounds and experience the real lives we came to live--the ones we remember when we come to the edge.

I was young when this healing work found me. I had to grow into it; but even in the beginning, the massages I gave often became transformational healing experiences that taught me much about how belief structures imprison all of our hearts and minds. The more I did bodywork, the more my hands took over my brain cells, and in one simple, quantum moment the mystery that holds the heart's resolution found me.

In one instant, I was overwhelmed by the profound pain that I was seeing in a client and in the next instant I saw how perfect the pain was in causing a transformation of perception to occur. So simple; the mess was the message. There was no problem anymore, only a project.

With this shift in perception--from overwhelm to awe--everything became interesting. I didn't need to have the special skill or know the right answer. I could just hang out in the question and massage my client's body with love and tell the person "I don't know." And in that don't know space something opened. I watched the painful difficulty transform into tears and then laughter and then quiet breathing. Without overwhelm there was nothing to fix; with awe everything was perfect just the way it was.

After this revelation everyone who drove up my driveway was the perfect person for each moment. Each client brought the issue I had just worked with or was about to open up to. Every student asked the question I had been contemplating, and every worker on my land became a philosopher. One of my local clients on the coast where I live asked me what I did with all the shit people brought me and I said, "Your shit's my compost."

The premise of this book is that most of us have similar areas of emotional vulnerability locked or stored in the body, what I call wounds, and that by revisiting the source of these wounds in a safe and non-threatening context in bodywork, they can be healed. In these revisitations, if we are allied with compassion, the "shit" does become "compost", the imperfect becomes perfect. For me, personally, though it took a long time, I became grateful to my father for his neglect, for in the vacuum of his abandonment, I learned how to show up for myself.

Imperfection leads us through what doesn't work into awareness of what needs to happen. We suffer, but for an important reason: our soul's education. So, if our souls? learning is inevitable, and our lessons arrive often through bumping into what doesn't work, we may as well learn to enjoy our suffering, get the message from the mess and refine our lives accordingly by putting into practice what we've learned. Because the body is the library of all this learning, it leads us to our insights through its callings. Our angers call us to our learning about our forgiveness, our fears call us to the places where we lost our faith, and so on and so forth. Ultimately these callings take each of us to whatever place there was, in our past, where we split from our wholeness. We find there, in that split, both our innocence that preceded it and the survival mechanisms that followed. Because so many of these "breaks from wholeness" originated in our formative years, we find in our revisitations, a sometimes shocking reunion with our scared and tender parts. And this meeting is sacred and it is inevitable.

Culture and traditions aside, too many parents--usually because of their own childhood pain--are not mature enough to guide children into socially appropriate roles and behaviors with gentle hands and kind hearts. Instead, they rely upon shaming, withdrawing love, intimidation and outright violence as methods of coercion. The long-term consequences are often disastrous in that feelings of betrayal, repressed rage, nervous fear, and grief color our life experiences in deep and painful ways. Children grow up defending their emotional vulnerability by doing what all animals instinctually do to protect themselves from hostile influences in their environment: they become hostile in return, run away, or pretend that they are invisible.

Defense, just like in the rest of nature, comes in the forms of Fight, Flight and Freeze. Each of these forms of self-defense may provide temporary solace, but carries with it heavy baggage that is ultimately self-destructive. For example, children who freeze--lose touch with their own emotions--tend to grow up not knowing what they really want or need and instead feel obligated to become caretakers for others. That dynamic in a relationship frequently fosters lingering resentment. Running away or fighting whenever tensions arise doesn't work either; they're both inevitably non-productive approaches to personal conflict because the underlying problems remain fixed in place.

Included in this writing are some stories from men and women who have tried variations of these tactics for managing the pain of human wounds. We'll also learn from their personal accounts how they finally became alert to the messages of their bodies and began to explore an alternative approach that actually uses emotional pain to transform the energy of wounds into a positive, creative life force.

Fundamental change is never easy, no matter how rewarding. It takes determination and faith to explore the unknown--and also a little help. The people who come to receive my help and work on themselves venture with me into uncharted areas where emotional pain has constricted and sometimes even physically crippled them. They trust that they'll find their way out, stronger, more capable and more vital than before. And when they do, their sense of liberation is exhilarating, like a breath freely drawn for the first time in memory. It's the essence of the pure joy I am lucky enough to share with my clients.

The process goes something like this. We get hurt--wounded--early in life by a rejectingparent, or by any number of genuinely painful relationships and events. To survive, we develop ways of reacting to these wounds that will at least allow us to function adequately as we go about our daily business. We learn to get by, but our reaction-based behavior paradoxically contributes to a deepening sense of discomfort and unhappiness in us that no amount of worldly success can rectify. Many of us react to early wounds by wrapping ourselves in a "survivor identity". We ultimately come to know ourselves through our pain rather than through our joy. Others of us react by identifying ourselves primarily as victims, going through life unconsciously waiting for the next aggressor to do us harm.

In our culture it is often thought that if we don't have pain, we lack depth. Compounding this is the intimacy dance wherein people demonstrate their comfort with one another by bonding through the ritual of sharing their stories of woe. We have all, at one time, mistaken intimacy by sharing our unhealed wounds with others and thinking this to be our place of depth. Though there is truth to the adage misery loves company, it does not mean that in sharing our loneliness with others we are being truly intimate, for intimacy is really about meeting in unity, not the sharing of our pain in duality.

By knowing ourselves primarily through our pain we build an identity around remaining unhealed. Our mental bumper sticker reads: "I hurt therefore I am." And our physical dashboard is filled with the warning lights of sore throats, chronic fatigue, stiff joints, digestive problems, and any number of stress symptoms. Subconsciously, we become intimate with these physical and mental realities in a way that gives us a sense of relationship through the dualistic split in consciousness. By fragmenting into at least two parts, we are able to both feel our hurt and give solace to that part which hurts. In this ironic way we bond to our existence in an addictive way through an intimate clinging to our pain and become afraid that if we heal we might die.

The fear of death felt by our wounded part generates a self-protective instinct called defensive armament; it's based upon withdrawing from the real world. The armored wardrobe we don may be as cumbersome and unwieldy as a knight's creaky battle garb, but we trust it to keep us safe from further injury. We go on like this, day after day, until one day our bodies get tired and whisper to us with quiet dignity or shout with burning resentment, "I can't do this anymore" or "Is the war over?" In truth, healing is the death of our wounded identity, but in the wake of our wounded identity's absence, our essential self, and its connection to Grace, enters. These moments are turning points, times when self-destructive emotional and spiritual constrictions begin a transformation from unhealed wounds to fertile wounds.

We have all made adjustments in our lives when we bump and re-bump a cut, bruise or blister. Inner wounds are no different. They prevent us from freely going about our business but are more pernicious in that they hide from plain view behind our well-constructed armor. Sometimes they unexpectedly reveal themselves when we over-react to an innocuous comment that penetrates through a tiny chink in our defensive armament directly into the raw vulnerability of our unhealed wound. This usually drives us into upgrading our armament and its maintenance. This can become a full time job but should not be confused with loving ourselves "warts and all". This kind of wound management is really about loving the warts at the expense of loving ourselves.

In contrast, the fertile wound does not freeze us with inhibitions nor make us react in addictive ways; rather, it opens a door in our hearts, turns on a light in our minds, and invites us into the juiciness of the life we are here to live. My approach in helping a person drop his addiction to his unhealed wound is first to help him recognize where it has taken up residence in his body. Working with a client, my hands make contact with the constricted area and probe to find out why the clenched muscles are working so hard and what might happen if they weren't. It's an intensely non-verbal exchange, skin-to-skin and soul-to-soul. I cultivate this intensity through focused breathing, subtle energy work and by manipulating the muscular armament of the client. It's my job to create a safe space for the man or woman to let go--literally to unclench. Once that difference is felt at the deepest levels in the neuro-musculature, a new awareness and/or emotional release almost always accompanies it, for the physical sensation, emotional state and mental awareness are all facets of the same psychic crystal.

Clients of transformational bodywork have an opportunity, at long last, to perceive their struggles for what they are: sometimes the ongoing relationship with a genuine trauma, but often they are a means of both gathering solace for their vulnerable part and generating the adrenaline necessary to get up for work on Monday. That's the source of the addiction. Unhealed wounds can often be perversely energizing in the short term; if we separate from them we fear we might run out of fuel. Over time, however, like any artificial stimulant, they ultimately exhaust us. When people are ready to heal, their bodies send out clear signals that the game is up; pretenses drop away, bodies soften into relaxation as muscles that have been held in a constricted state for much of a lifetime begin to yield.

This yielding, this disarmament, can be thought of in organic terms as a soul ripening. Like underground bulbs, planted in the dark soil of late Fall and emerging in the early Spring, fertile wounds surface to remind us that this mysterious universe keeps offering us endless opportunities to learn humility and evolve, through healing, into more gracious creatures. Through these openings, we discover some new ways of being ourselves. We stop depending on our suffering for our energy, and we stop confusing the "depth" we previously attributed to our pain with the spiritual solace we deserve.

It's easy to understand how as children we defend and arm ourselves out of instinctual necessity to remain safe. As adults, however, safety often comes to be equated with protecting ourselves against intimacy. Once our wounds transform from unhealed to fertile, a remarkable physical and emotional receptivity seems to present itself. We open up to truly intimate relationships with others, and it is within these relationships that real healing takes place.

The kind of healing I practice, and that I share with you here, takes place where mind and spirit directly interact with the physical body. Historically, it is the place toward which Shamans direct their energies; it is also the place where individuals go either in crisis or in meditation to re-connect with their truest selves. In my view there exists a developed consciousness within each of us, a spiritual witness, that guides us toward wholeness and grace. For want of a better term, I call it our oversoul. I would describe this oversoul as a gardening teacher for the spirit, an ally that exists in each of us who understands our essential life paths and is connected to the deepest part of all humanity. Our oversoul can be the champion and guide we need, and the gardener that cultivates our lives into fruitful harvest. And since the oversoul is also connected to the deepest part of the collective human unconscious, it delivers to us the universal lessons of the human adventure that inspire compassion and empathy for others by serving as a bookmark to the source. Perhaps there is no more profound reflection about the Tao, or "the way"-this subtle and delicious realm where healing happens-than this excerpt from the Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tsu:

Empty your mind of all thoughts.

Let your heart be at peace.

Watch the turmoil of beings,

But contemplate their return.

Each separate being in the universe.

Returns to the common source.

Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don't realize the source,

You stumble in confusion and sorrow.

When you realize where you come from,

You naturally become tolerant,

disinterested, amused,

Kindhearted as a grandmother,

Dignified as a king.

Immersed in the Wonder of the Tao,

You can deal with whatever life brings you,

And when death comes, you are ready.

Recipients of transformational bodywork, experience a version of this subtle and delicious flow in their bodies and with it a deep acceptance of the tao. Within this flow state, perception shifts and they can clearly see the hidden costs of maintaining their unhealed wounds. This shift in perception begins the transformational process that elevates the unhealed wound into the fertile state where the soul's learning can occur.

The taste of the flow state's "ease with life" is strong motivation for embracing the healing process, but there is another kind of motivation that can evoke the process of transformation.

This secondary motivation is felt as fatigue or exhaustion; "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired." The carrot (of flow) or the stick (of fatigue) can catalyze the transformational process, but will ultimately fail unless a person is ready to see his wound as holding, within its core, a great gift, namely the long lost fragment he needs for his soul's journey home.

In transformational bodywork, dynamic tension, is not oppressive tension; it is natural and serves a practical purpose. It respects healing as an organic process, like the ripening of fruit on the tree. The work evokes from the body's wisdom a healing resolution to a person's wounded state of affairs. The body contains vital messages that, once understood help us to heal. Like breaking the code of the Rosetta Stone or Mayan glyphs, information that has always been unavailable suddenly surfaces and we see ourselves clearly. Before our shift in perception, our emotional states appeared, at the experiential level, laden with contradiction and complexity. With the code broken, biological and emotional language are conversations between soul and spirit. At this deeper level there exists a paradoxical simplicity. All light and all heat require friction. As the eighteenth century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, said: "You must carry your chaos, and fashion it into a dancing star."

It took me most of the twenty-five years I have practiced this work with others to finally give in to my own depth healing. It has been a painful and educational journey filled with profound insights and tumultuous periods of uncertainty and inner chaos.

In my work, I've learned to guide men and women to embrace their chaos and help themselves by taking advantage of their bodies? emotional intelligence at every stage of the process.

The body's awareness, once engaged, can be a most trusted ally, especially for those of us who have made an elegant game of getting our needs met either by manipulating other people or by not really "showing up". This engagement of the body's wisdom remains the simplest yet most profoundly effective way I know to repair the kind of deep emotional wounds most of us carry about through our daily lives. Our bodies often know more about us than our minds, but that knowledge will remain unavailable until we become adept at deciphering its content. Once understood, our body's "cellular language" holds the key to emotional and spiritual health. Learning to tune in to its messages and to become emotionally healthy as a consequence--truly at peace with ourselves and our world--is the essence of spiritual and soulful healing work.

The purpose of this book is to first share with you an overview of the transformational process in healing bodywork. Second, it is to share stories about people that will help you identify some of your own healing issues and third, it is to offer you some practical tools for releasing the hold that unhealed wounds may have upon your life. Reading about bodywork cannot be a substitute for receiving it. Nevertheless I trust that, through this exploration, you will find within the heart of your own personal healing challenges a gift that will nurture you through the difficulties of your edge times and will help you to celebrate your own life and path with a free and passionate spirit.

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