From the Psychic to the Bodily
In practical work, I use the principle of descending from subtler forms of matter into coarser ones.
When things begin to trouble you in the physical world, you also need to bring the work closer to the physical plane.
Reich proposed a kind of “coarsening” of the psychic when he spoke of the “muscular armour”. This bodily idea is also used in Gestalt therapy.
But I am interested in Wilhelm Reich, who, in my view, was more of an occultist than a psychologist. He developed occult ideas, trying to explain them through the scientific knowledge of his time.
And these ideas travel from one technique to another. Though they were hardly his invention: I once watched a village healer at work who was unlikely to have heard such convoluted names and terms, yet she used a bodily method all the same.
The bodily aspect is necessarily present in Quimbanda too, where contact with the spiritual takes place through the body, dance and the bodily manifestation of a spirit.
Bodily expression is present even in the folk custom of blowing or spitting to express a mental intention through an action, through the body.
Bioenergetics is a purely bodily influence, although its foundation is said to lie in “subtle energies” (Reich’s orgone, perhaps?).
So I am not proposing anything new. I am merely offering my own way of looking at things.
NLP and Meaningful Practice
NLP also includes techniques for letting go of negative states, and people have asked how similar they are to my work. NLP has all sorts of things mixed into it. I have explained before how I see its essence: a clever disguise of induced trances and occult notions under a veneer of scientific language.
NLP works only for those who understand the meaning. Those who make the technique absolute will not get the results they need. NLP is living work, not a mechanical technique.
What am I getting at? NLP contains a whole assortment of things, including many techniques with occult roots. So yes, similarities are possible.
The funniest part is that I independently invented my own variant of Gestalt therapy, but with an occult foundation.
My foundation is the Soviet school of hypnosis and mental imagery. That is the support I consider scientifically grounded and as unshakeable as solid earth.
At the same time, I have an ideal: God in his various manifestations, and all manner of entities.
Here you cannot do without psychoanalysis and the symbolism of analytical psychology.
And alchemy too.
And Buddhism too.
And a conscious approach to ritual work, rather than stupid, meaningless repetition.
That is what I have gradually been trying to communicate.
Below me is the material; above me, the ideal. I am the cauldron that fuses these two worlds. That is how I see my work.