Bioharmonic Self-Massage

How to Harmonize Your Mental, Emotional, and Physical Energies

Yves Bligny

• Publisher: Healing Arts
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781594773877
• eBook ISBN: 9781594777127
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

Self-massage techniques to heal the body, mind, and spirit • Includes self-massage techniques to clear the body’s blocked energy circuits, relieve physical tensions and chronic pain, release trapped emotions, and reduce stress and anxiety • Contains full-color illustrations throughout demonstrating bioharmonic massage, movement, and stretching exercises • Demonstrates how to use common objects to work on hard-to-reach problem areas, including the neck, shoulders, and back, to relieve pain and increase fluidity of movement Drawing upon biological decoding, reflexology, lymph massage, and yoga as well as recent neuroscience and quantum physics research, therapist and kinesiologist Yves Bligny shows how to awaken the body’s natural potential to harmonize energy through the release of tensions and emotional memories trapped within our muscles. He explains how the synergy between the physical body, emotions, thoughts, energy, and consciousness creates a delicate balance, or “bioharmony, ” that can be tuned and adjusted through self-massage. Using the power of intention--directed thought aided by expanded awareness of the body--as well as tubes, wands, tennis balls, and other common objects to reach hard-to-massage problem areas, Bligny shows how to take inventory of your body, mind, and memories and use the conscious touch of self-massage to remove energy blockages, release trapped emotions, and relieve anxieties, stress, and muscle tensions as well as gain stability and strength. Effective for chronic back, neck, and shoulder problems, the movements and stretching exercises of bioharmonic self-massage can also be used to increase fluidity of motion, ward off illness, and attain a state of bioharmonic--physical, emotional, mental, and energetic--well-being.

PART ONE

• • • • • • • •

Theory

Knowledge and Understanding of Bioharmonics

1 • THE PSYCHOSOMATIC HUMAN

How the mind works upon the Body

Psyche: From the Greek psukhe, soul (psukhikos, the mind). That which is related to mind and consciousness; to a certain extent, that part of the being that engenders and governs our feelings and emotions.

Soma: From the Greek soma, the body. In biology this term refers to all the cells making up the body.

A Brief History of Psychosomatics

The term psychosomatic was first used by the German psychiatrist J. C. Henroth in his description of the origins of insomnia. The English psychiatrist Daniel Hack wrote the first manual of psychological medicine attesting to the mind’s effect upon the body in 1872. His observations did not provide a systematic theoretical framework that could be used to mount a practical and effective treatment, and ignorance about the psychophysiological nature of emotions made it difficult to integrate Hack’s observations into the new scientific medicine being developed in the nineteenth century. Rudolf Virchow’s doctrine of cellular pathology, Louis Pasteur’s and Robert Koch’s doctrine of disease-causing germs, and the major discoveries then being made in the fundamental medical sciences (microbiology and biochemistry) combined to give the impression that disease was a product of faulty biomechanisms and primarily focused attention on the failings of the defective organ system.

Nevertheless, in the background, overshadowed by this dominant trend, events were transpiring that would eventually give birth to a new approach consisting of mind-body therapies. The phenomenon of conversion hysteria was made famous by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), describing how a mental state transforms itself into a symbolic physical symptom, in this case a form of hysterical paralysis. Georg Groddeck (1836–1934) extrapolated the hypothesis of conversion with his suggestion that a disease’s symptoms had an unconscious and symbolic meaning whose nature only the patient could unearth. Groddeck confirmed that once the patient became aware of this meaning, the symptoms inevitably disappeared, as they were no longer necessary.

For a twenty-year period beginning in 1940, Franz Alexander and his colleagues at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis oversaw a vast study on the seven most common disorders whose physical causes were poorly understood. This research, followed by increasingly numerous studies on the psychophysiology of emotions, gave birth to the field of psychosomatic medicine.

According to Alexander, the primary cause of these seven disorders resided within an intrapsychic conflict whose origin could be located in earliest childhood. Such psychogenic influences are the frontiers of psychosomatic medicine.

Though most often ignored by twentieth-century medicine, today psychosomatic science is again recognized for what it is: “the study of the interactions of physical and psychosocial factors in the maintenance of health and the causation of disease.” It so happens that the researchers of the last few years who have extensively studied the origins of physical pathological states have discovered that all degenerative, infectious, allergic, and autoimmune disorders can have their origin in the mind. This extremely hopeful development has taken the name of psychoneuroimmunology. One of these researchers, Professor Bernard Herzog, has published a book in which he makes a point of underscoring what is now for him and many others an incontestable scientific fact: the disorders of the soul induce physical diseases. What psychosomatics expresses, therefore, is that there is a reciprocal connection between the body (soma) and the psyche.

“It’s psychosomatic!” When someone says this, he is saying everything and nothing. What’s the next step? What do I mean when I speak of a connection? It is important to clearly and concretely grasp what forms this connection and to identify how and at what levels it expresses itself. It should be studied deeply enough so that it does not remain a simple piece of information (which I take into account only when it suits me) but is recognized as a realization that transforms something inside me, in my way of understanding things, and in my way of doing things and behaving.

I would like to try, using a number of simple examples based on recent research in the neurosciences and physics, to convince your rational Cartesian mind of this and to make you actually feel this connection and how complex it is at all its various levels.

We will start with the more obvious examples, obvious because they are based on experience and feeling, and go toward the less obvious, which are less evident only because they are unconscious or because their existence is not perceived as a possibility.

The Deliberate Decision

I count to three, and at the number three I raise one of my arms.

In this case my action is thought out; I’ve made up my mind to perform something and then acted upon it. My body is the performer of my will here. My movement in this case is the result of a conscious and considered decision.

Chronologically speaking, the mind intervenes before the soma.

Thought Inscribed within the Body

When you are buried in your thoughts, your body assumes a certain position: your face tends to freeze in place to a certain extent, and your eyes are either tightly focused in concentration or seem to be staring into space and drifting in the clouds.

On seeing you an outside observer will say, “She is deep in thought!” If this observer is quite attentive, he will see that your expression and posture subtly change in accordance with the flow of your thoughts (for example, the position of your eyes is constantly shifting).

The thought process is not a self-contained phenomenon that is amputated from your body; you are not able to think without a body. The mechanism of thought exists concretely only because it is inscribed within a cerebro-muscular process.

Note: Being constantly lost in thought, or “too much in your head,” as they say, is evidence of an imbalance on the physiological, muscular, circulatory level. From an energetic perspective, it “overloads” the top and empties the bottom.

Emotion Inscribed in the Body

This connection between the emotions and the body is felt clearly only under certain circumstances. When I am in the grip of an emotion, generally speaking, I can feel it inside and I can name it. If my awareness of the moment is broader (as would be the case for thought), I might be able to feel its external inscription in my muscle tone, through an attitude or an expression that could indicate to some outside observer that I am feeling sad, angry, beaten down, or whatever. But this inscription that is visible to others is one I do not often feel in my body.

If we were to analyze these different parameters, we would see changes (specific to the emotion) at the level of blood circulation, energy flow, and the function of the organs, and in sensations: heat, tingling, and so on.

Let’s now observe an individual at these different levels. This state of being^*1 manifests itself through:

• The feeling of the emotion (the self-contained emotion)
• Its muscular inscription (attitude, posture, facial expression)
• The state of the circulatory system, only at this moment, as well as the way the organs are functioning and so forth (autonomic nervous system and so on)
• Sensations (tensions, pains, lightheadedness, and so on)

A specific emotional state displays a unique coloration at these different levels, and from the moment the emotion is no longer the same, the corporeal parameters are no longer the same. It is a case of which comes first, the chicken or the egg? We will answer this question later.

Note: Here I am speaking about situations in which the psycho-emotional state is expressing and revising itself at center stage. But there are plenty of times when psycho-emotional states cannot fully express themselves and work themselves out. These are cases in which they have been interrupted at the beginning of their manifestation or even nipped in the bud. There can be multiple reasons for this interruption—social, educative, psychological, emotional, and so forth in nature.

These expressions are then shoved into the background: you can no longer feel them, see them, hear them; you are no longer aware of them and they are severed from you. But they are still there (as they have not completed expressing themselves). They have become inscribed within a cerebro-autonomic-muscular pattern and leave traces on different levels (biological, physiological, mechanical, muscular, energetic, and so on), thereby creating an imbalance.

In the first example, where there is a conscious and deliberate decision, the psyche seems to be the first step in how the operation unfolds. The physical reactions are a consequence of the thought, like the pins struck by a bowling ball. “When I think of my angry boss, I feel scared and my stomach contracts.”

In the other examples (thought, emotions), this chronology is not so obvious. There are popular expressions that perfectly express this connection between the mind and the body, between the inner state and what it manifests, such as “It took over my head!” or “It caught in my throat!”

Let’s take another example to illustrate this relationship. This time we will consider a book.

First Level of Contact

It is an object that occupies a volume in space. I am able to describe it: it is made with paper pages and a cardboard cover. If I open it, I will see letters printed on its pages. My body, if I observe it externally, with my eyes or hands, similarly occupies a volume in space: it is limited by its skin and what it has beneath this skin—muscles, bones, and organs, which I can more or less feel.

Second Level of Contact

If I hold this book, I will feel its texture, its thickness, the elasticity of its cover, its pages, its aroma, and so on. This body, if I take the time to tune into it and open up to it, will display the appearance of sensations: the heat in my hands, my cold feet, a small sensation of tension in my back, and so on.

Third Level of Contact

Let’s now turn the pages of our book and enter the story that has been recorded in it. We find ourselves embarking into an inner space, made up of sentiments, actions, emotions, landscapes, and suspense. This story, whose plot unfurls inside places that I can imagine and even feel, is one that I capture and contact through a space defined three-dimensionally (the inner space), made of cardboard, paper, and letters that carry a meaning. If I can make myself receptive to the latter, I can then grasp the story.

It is the same thing for a computer disk (equivalent to the body, or soma). I can break it into tiny pieces and still never find its inner space, and yet once I insert this disk inside a computer, this inner space (equivalent to the mind, or psyche) will manifest and become tangible through the screen.

To Recap

Your emotion (joy, fear, sorrow, or some other) is not just an inner state, a self-contained emotion. It is both the container (the corporeal dimension) and the content (inner space). It exists and lives because it is inscribed in your flesh. Touch the buttocks of someone in the street with your hand and you shall definitely see that the gluteal muscle (which is made up of tendons and fibers) is not just an anatomical element! For now it is important to grasp that the soma (body) and the psyche (mind) are two dimensions that cannot be separated and are always together.

In this first psychosomatic component, I have tried to show by means of concrete examples that when the psyche (the emotional state, the affective mind) changes, the soma also changes, and there are no thoughts or emotions that are not accompanied by physical phenomena.

2 • THE SOMATOPSYCHIC HUMAN

How the Body works upon the mind

The body in the broad sense of the word influences the psycho-emotional state. To be more specific, a change on the level of the body, which is chronologically first, is accompanied by a change in the mind. In this case, it is the action upon the body by means of the body that comes first. Next, and sometimes almost instantaneously, thought and emotion appear.

As in the first chapter, we shall start by looking at the most obvious cases, where the functioning involved is easy to grasp, and then proceed to examine the more subtle connections.

Everyone has had the experience of drinking a small glass of wine or beer and feeling good, a little less inhibited and more euphoric, feeling more free to act, as well as the experience of feeling the sorrow that alcohol sometimes induces.

Drugs have very powerful effects on the psycho-emotional plane. Laboratory experiments have shown that injecting certain chemical substances creates emotional states (fear, for example), without any external causes to trigger them.

These examples are obvious, but the ones that follow should raise questions about the mechanics of this connection between psyche and soma, between mind and body: egg or chicken?

Several Small Experiments

Stand up, then allow your head to fall forward, curve your back, slump your shoulders, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Image
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part One • Theory: Knowledge and Understanding of Bioharmonics
• Part Two • Practical Work
• Conclusion
• Appendix I • Matter versus Mind
• Appendix II • Johann Soulas’s Evolution of Matter
• Appendix III • The Seven Rings of Body Armor
• Appendix IV • The Nature of Generalization
• Footnotes
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• About Inner Traditions • Bear & Company
• Copyright & Permissions