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I started “studying” sexuality, in the formal, academic sense of the word, about a year ago now. One of the first books I read was Carol Queen’s wonderful Exhibitionism For the Shy. In this wonderful book which I really should read again, I was introduced to the name Wilhelm Reich. Seven crazy coincidences and lots of googling later, I realized that this Reich fellow was probably the most interesting person I had ever had the pleasure of reading about.

A student of Sigmun Freud, the original cokehead himself, Reich eventually split with his teacher and began extensive study of the orgasm. This led him in two directions–the first, into the discovery of an energy permeating the universe that he called “orgone”. The second was the theory of body armor as a defense mechanism. Reich started conducting psychotherapy sessions with clients in their underwear so that he could more easily notice what postures they held or how they squirmed as certain feelings were uncovered (or blocked).

Now, me, I am a dancer. All I ever wanted was just to be more flexible. It was really as simple as that. “Why are my hamstrings so tight?” I wondered. “Why can’t I do the splits?” As we all know (or are soon to know), there is no tendon connecting the legs to one another. If you can lift your leg to 90 degrees (which most of you reading this can), then theoretically you can do the splits. So why can’t you?? Fear.

So this Reich stuff was revelatory for me. Body armor. That sounds like the kind of thing that would keep one inflexible. And in my lighter and more focused moments of stretching, I did feel a certain block that seemed to be literally locked into place, as though releasing it would leave me, on a deeper level, naked.

So fast forward a year. I put healing as the number one priority in my personal life and Barbara Brennan’s Hands of Light magically appears. This book not only brings Reich back up but expands on his information in ways quite astonishing to me.

Basically, Brennan uncovers not only that there is in fact body armor, but more specifically uncovers the specific types of armor as well as their location.

Now, at this point, if you don’t believe in energy or auras or chakras, just point your browser to some of my dance clips and eat that blue pill sitting on the table. Otherwise, let’s devle further.

So Brennan explains the seven basic chakras and the seven basic layers of the aura. The body armor we wear is literally real, in the same way that your shirt is real on the physical plane, on one of these auric levels and moreover, the body armor affects the functioning of the chakras in highly predictable ways. For instance, if you wear body armor on your pelvis (which many of you do by the way), you are covering up your sexuality and your connection to the Earth and sense of being grounded. This in turn shuts off energy to the second chakra

which can really be seen as nothing more than an energy gate.

In a fully functioning human being, the orgone postulated by Reich and renamed the Universal Energy Field by Brennan passes into your own energy field through the chakras. If for some reason you block this energy, whether it be out of fear or due to trauma in this life or another, the energy literally begins to clog like so many arteries. This leads to a far lower level of functioning than is natural and ultimately can lead to physical disease.

The reason is that this physical plane is nothing more than a holographic projection of another plane made of nothing but energy (if you think I’m crazy, read some string theory or even just quantum physics). If there is blocking or gripping or disfiguration on this energetic plane, this will be projected and show up on the physical plane that we are more familiar with.

So now to jump back to me. A couple nights ago, I was lying in bed, trying to feel more and more clearly my chakras and to see their level of functioning. In addition, I was trying to feel each of the auric fields and determine where my body armor was held. As I went deeper and deeper into this scanning, I felt the layers of my auric field separate and clearly saw the body armor on one of the layers. My abilities are not refined enough yet to see which layer or to fully release the armor once and for all, but this experience was enough for me to realize that this “inflexibility” is not a PART of me. It is an energy field that, if released/dispersed, will lead to large and immediate gains in my physical flexibility.

Basically I am trying to show that ultimately, physical inflexibility is not “normal” or “natural” but is the direct result of energetic constrictions which appear on the physical plane as “tightness.” We can thus use the functioning of the physical plane as a means to determine the state of the energetic plane and thus aid in our process of healing. This revelation is a big step in that direction and I will keep you updated as it progresses.

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Over the past two days, I have gone from wondering if maybe relaxation was a key to flexibility (and to life) to knowing that without a doubt it is. This is especially true for someone like myself who has suffered from a general sense of high-tension throughout the body, specifically in the joints.

I have just been exposed to what is perhaps the best book I have ever read, Hands of Light by Barbara Brennan. This book explains health and wellness through the energy system and is a course in healing through this energy system.

I have spent so much time in yoga classes, dance classes, pilates classes, and everything else trying to achieve relaxation and looseness through extreme bracing and tension. Feeling that hamstring stretch so intensely that my breath ceases, my chest tightens and my shoulders round. I always had a hunch that perhaps all that this was doing was moving the tension from my hamstrings into these constrctions, but was always assured in some form or another to just persevere.

Maybe this was the best advice, I’ll never know. But I do think that an analogy applies here from Keith Johnstone in his book Impro (another incredible book). Johnstone explains that while a good teacher imparts a great deal of wisdom, knowledge and understanding to a student, a bad teacher not only does not do this, but may even put the student on a dead-end or harmful track.

I have begun to think the same thing about people with extreme physical inflexibility. Pushing too far (i.e. trying to do the splits when you cant touch your toes) may actually increase the sense of tension which is causing the inflexibility in the first place. So the way to become more flexible is to relax into, i.e. ACCEPT, the inflexibility, the present state, in the first place. Because spiritually and psychologically, this pushing is a direct signal that you will not accept where you are at–that rather than accepting, you will use your will-power and change where you are at by any means necessary.

In the case of flexibility, which in my case has become analogous to healing, to me this is a bad teaching, a dead-end path. So from now on, I am going to focus first on my state of relaxation rather than where my body happens to be. Because the other way has NOT been working and I have realized is putting the cart before the horse.

Now, a word of caution. This path has a steeper “learning curve” so to speak. You may feel like you are not making an ounce of progress for what seems an eternity. PERSEVERE! You are making progress on other levels–on spiritual, etheric levels. You are allowing tension on those levels to dissolve, and this tension must dissolve on these other levels before it can appear as “increased flexibility” on the physical level.

FOCUS ON RELAXATION and everything else will be delivered unto thee. You think it’s a coincidence that the quickest way to die from lack is not food, not water, but BREATH. Furthermore, breath is the same thing as relaxation. You show me your breathing pattern and I’ll show you how relaxed you are. Science is a little slow, but they’re getting there! Give them some time! Until then, have faith, take a deep breath, and relax

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I am so determined to achieve the splits and overall flexibility throughout my body that I can feel my body beginning to respond. It feels as though my cells can tell that I am not giving up–that I am going to keep stretching, keep releasing, keep focusing, until the body has no choice but to agree with me. Coming from where I have come from, it feels almost as though there are cobwebs in my body–particularly my upper legs and hips–that just don’t want to let go. But I am determined! I am not giving up and I think that this is a key. Everyday I picture myself as more and more flexible, closer and closer, and I don’t take setbacks as anything other than an anomaly. In the past, I sort of stretched half-heartedly, all the while focusing on “Wow, I’m SOOOOOO inflexible” and I think my body knew that I wasn’t really serious about making the effort.

I’m not going to lie. It’s NOT easy. There is a steep curve where the hips and hamstrings and ankles just do NOT want to let go, but you breathe through it and you begin more and more to command your body instead of being commanded BY it.

Also, I have begun taking kung fu and I think the discipline that I am already learning from this art is spreading into my stretching and my life in general.

I’ll post up pictures tonight so you can see where I’m starting from. That way, when I am in the full splits, you will see that it *CAN* be done!

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So I was picturing someone doing a really high kick. This is likely because I have just started studying kung fu at the Taoist Institute here in North Hollywood, CA (www.taoistinstitute.com). While picturing this, in my mind’s eye, I felt something like a ligament or a pelvic floor muscle feel a great straing while I imagined myself doing such a kick.

This leads me into the subject of flexibility and visualization. Coming from a background of rather limited hip flexibility, I have begun to notice that when I picture myself doing things requiring what most would call “great” flexibility, it is difficult for me to even IMAGINE.

I could NOT picture myself in these positions. I was able only to picture myself at my current level of flexibility. So one of the major things that I have begun to do in addition to stretching is to try to picture myself in the splits, with my head touching my ankle in a seated hamstring stretch, with my heels touching the ground in a wide downward dog, doing a high kick where my foot reaches over my head.

I have found this to be a slow, but effective process. Especially if I focus on my breath and staying relaxed, it’s as though I am almost retraining my mind to include these movement possibilities, whereas before, I was almost fighting myself–I would try to stretch but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be anymore flexible.

For instance, at this point in time, my hips do not “roll forward” in a seated groin stretch, like the one below:

As I have started to notice this more and more, and rather than trying to FORCE my hips forward, have begun to go deeper into my own anatomy, I have begun to discover that the ligaments which connect the femur to my hips are quite tight and they are PREVENTING the femur and hips to rotate around each other

As I have begun to get in touch with these ligaments, I focus on them intently while breathing deeply and I use visualization to imagine them melting (either butter melting on them or warm coconut oil being massaged into them). On top of this, I look at a picture of someone comfortably in a stretch like that (like the one above) and picture MYSELF in that position and focus on what would need to relax in order for me to comfortably hold such a position.

Here are several other images which you can use as a guide for visualization. What would need to relax or strengthen in order for YOU to be able to do these various stretches and kicks??

I will leave you with that for now, but I suggest you consider trying to re-map the brain, for if the brain can’t picture it, the body most certainly can’t do it. And I think once you loosen the brain and include greater movement possibilities in its horizon, you will find the body (slowly but surely) beginning to loosen on its own accord. Good luck!

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I am documenting my transition from a man of extremely limited hip flexibility (I was described not once, but twice as having the flexibility of an 80-year old man–by a chiropractor and physical therapist no less) into a man fully comfortable in both the full front and side splits.

And I am going to show you how. And I am going to prove once and for all that life is what we make it and that with positive thinking, incredible determination, and hard work, we can transform any situation, including the very body that we occupy.

Wish me luck!

Some things I will cover (for my reference as much as for you):
-My daily stretching routine
-The psoas
-The hamstring and the concept of anteversion
-The concept of negative thrust
-The Sun Salutations and the long road to freedom
-The hip flexor-hamstrings-calf connection
-The 2 squat variations
-Stretching and becoming aware of the ligaments
-The IT band
-Pain
-Posture
-Importance of a straight back
-My personal breakthroughs
-My favorite stretches
-My favorite books
-My favorite web links
-The connection between physical tension and emotional trauma or spiritual tension

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