I am looking out of my own eyes. I have rescued something within me, that was stuck or imprisoned. My unconscious sense of what I needed led me. I trusted it, and followed it, step by step, without any idea of where it was going. Kate held the space, in love, without commenting.
To contact the unconscious, Bonnie suggests drawing or nondominant handwriting. I did not want to do these things. The leader wanted me to explore through movement, and I assented. I stood up, in order to move through the space of my living room. I was led to lie down.
I moved my arm. It was me, and not me, moving it. It was the process, whole-me, all that is within my skin. My conscious self assented to it. Something unconscious moved it. My left arm moved at random, and I knew it was a baby’s movements, when the baby is learning what connections in the brain will allow it to co-ordinate movement. We make, prune and myelinate connections, learning what connections control limbs to do as we wish. I am myself as a baby, on the floor, unable to roll over. Yet the baby’s cry does not bring my parents. They have an idea that babies must be taught to sleep and eat on schedule. Possibly there was something more than just that between me and my mother.
In this moment, my upper back which holds my habitual tension does not feel tense. The baby’s was not so tense. The baby was in touch and aware of vagus nerve stimuli: I was in touch with my “gut feelings”.
My gut resented my parents’ actions.
That resentment was too much for me, as a baby. I was dependant. I had to propitiate my mother. Having felt the gut feeling, and suppressed it, the tension in my back returned.
My inner critic is now challenging such perceptions, but not denying them with the full force of terror it held before. I am sure enough that this is what is going on.
Again I was led to move by my unconscious, and again I assented. I voiced what I was doing. I am now an adult, and can show that stuck baby within me that I am an adult. I can sit up, and stay sat up unsupported. I vocalised that. Then, I can crawl around the floor. Something in me is giving an amused (not derisive) challenge. “Mmmm. Really?” But it is true enough for me. I crawl around the room. Then, I stand up. I can stand, unsupported. I take a step. I can walk, all by myself.
And now, I am looking out through my own eyes. The baby, who was not heard and responded to- something froze in me at that time, and it is unfrozen. I have been getting more and more in touch with bodily sensations for some time, but my body now feels more alive than before. When I say, “I am looking out through my own eyes” I feel joyful and energised.
There is an exercise at the end of the Hoffman process designed to let the “inner child” experience growing up. I may be using ideas and concepts which I have taken in. I have a sense that my mother’s fear lives inside me: it is hers, and not mine. I may approach that, later. I have a sense that it is a fear inculcated when she was a baby. I want to heal my mother, and so heal myself.
Walking back from the park, Kate and I watched a cloud. In the time it took to walk the length of the street, it had vanished into thin air.
Clare Flourish 