To Perceive the Potential - per le Operatrici USA

Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen, the fathers of Bioenergetics, opened to the world the possibility of understanding the character (i.e. personality / behavioral problems) of the person not only through traditional psychotherapy but also through analyzing the body posture…

In these nearly 100 years that have passed since the Reichian intuitions, many body disciplines 'brought' the body to psychotherapy (paraphrasing the title of a book by Willy Pasini). Fritz Perls, one of the pioneers of Gestalt, states “There are bodies that we see screaming (and his screamed), others that speak strongly or simply speak, others that murmur, and still others simply whisper. If you will learn to perceive those that whisper, you will truly begin to help an innumerable number of people to overcome that subtle poison that every day undermines the quality of their life.”

In these last 40 years, I have taught you, and continue to teach you, with Shen Training® and Shen Touch, which I created, to try to speak to these bodies: at times it is an easy work, at times it is more difficult with the bodies that are content with 'life as it is', and need a lot of attention to perceive their underlying lament.

With one of the American therapists, to read her story in her eyes was quite simple, with the others, more obscured. But the most important step taken with them (and that we do with every person that comes to us) was for them to try to perceive the potential that was hidden within them.

This unfortunately cannot be technically taught but only transmitted - and this is the understanding that is the most subtle, fundamental, and defining.

I want to tell you a story:

“In the autumn of 1988, Jack Canfield was invited to hold a conference of self-love and maximum efficiency, at a gathering in Hong Kong.

What greatly struck him of the things he saw during this trip was the Buddha Temple in Bangkok, a very small temple that held and protected a Buddha statue made of gold, more than 9 feet high, weighing more than 2 tons, and valued at 196 million dollars!

“It was a vision that transmitted fear,” said Canfield. “A massive golden Buddha with a gentle appearance, but imposing as he smiled from above.”

Next to the statue there was a display case explaining the story: in 1957, some monks from a nearby monastery had to move a clay Buddha from their temple to a new site. The monastery itself had to be moved to make space for the construction of a new highway that would cross Bangkok. When the crane began to lift the gigantic idol, the weight was so great that the statue started to bend! On top of this, it started to rain. The head monk, preoccupied with not damaging the sacred Buddha, decided to place the statue on the ground and to cover it with a large tarp, to protect it from the rain.

Later that evening, the head monk went to check on the Buddha statue. He turned on a flashlight under the tarp to be sure that the Buddha was dry. When the light reached the crack of the bent area, the monk noticed a strange reflection. Looking more closely, he wondered if there was something under the clay. Slowly, slowly, the pieces of clay fell away, and the glow became more vivid and extensive. Many hours went by until at last the monk found himself face to face with the extraordinary pure golden Buddha.

Historians think that several hundred years before the monk's discovery, the Burmese army was about to invade Thailand (at that time called Siam).  The Siamese monks, understanding that their country would soon be invaded and controlled, covered the precious golden Buddha with a layer of clay, to ensure that their treasure would not be stolen by the invaders. Sadly, apparently the Burmese massacred all the inhabitants of the village, and all the Siamese monks, and their secret of the golden Buddha remained well-preserved and untouched until that fatal day in 1957.

“Returning home”, writes Canfield, “in the airplane I started to think to myself: we are all like the clay Buddha; covered in a hard crust made of fear, and yet, under each one of us there is a golden Buddha, or golden Christ, or golden Essence, which is our true self.”

At a certain point of our life, between the ages of 2 and 9 years of age, we start to cover our golden Essence, our natural self. More or less like the monk, not with a hammer or a scalpel, but with the 'Shen Touch', our homework now is to help the people that come to us to uncover their true essence, their true potential.

Our work is this and only this: after we have eliminated the primary cages that imprison us, we must begin to remove the armor that limits our emotions and our life, to discover that we are marvelously golden. Even better: made of jade!

This was the work that I did, essentially through the Shen lessons before the touch, with our American guests that continue to write to us, telling us how much indescribable value they are discovering in themselves every day.

Remember this splendid Indian quote and make it your own:

“The powder of rose petals belongs only to the maker of the essences”

La polvere di petali di rosa 

appartiene soltanto 

al fabbricante di essenze”