ROBERT MASTERS PSYCHOPHYSICAL METHOD EXERCISES V O L U ME III A DRAGON BOOK Published by KONTRAKUNDABUFFER CORP, P.O. Box 3300 Pomona, N.Y. 10970 Copyright 1983 by Robert Masters A DRAGON BOOK All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. The commercial use of this book in workshops, training programs, etc., except by teachers certified or otherwise formally authorized by Robert Masters, Ph.D., is absolutely prohibited. Manufactured in the United States of America Second printing CONTENTS Foreword 1 1) Head and Neck Movements (extended version) 2 2) The Great Pelvic Liberation Movement 10 3) Upper Back: Body Image and Differentiating Movements 17 k) Rib Cage: Movement and Awareness 27 5) Shoulder Rotations and Body Image 31 6) Lower Spine and Back—Flexibility and Lengthening kO 7) Repositioning the Shoulders k5 8) On Stomach—Repositioning Shoulders kS 9) Differentiating Thoracic Vertebrae 56 10) Widening the Back 62 11) Lengthening Spine, Differentiating Vertebrae 66 12) Heightening 75 13) Differentiating One Arm 79 14) Lips 83 -1- FOREWORD These volumes of Psychophysical Method exercises are being published as teaching and training manuals to be used by teachers and researchers experienced in that area of the author's work. The exercises are tran- scripts of sessions taught by him to his students and their use presupposes some knowledge of the work—timing, repetitions of movements, quality of awareness, etc. Without such a background of knowledge the exercises cannot be effectively done, much less taught. Nevertheless it is just realistic to acknowledge that these exercises are going to be used by persons who have not had what should be the requisite amount of first-hand training. An absolutely minimal background, however, would need to include careful study of the book, LISTENING TO THE BODY, co-authored by Robert Masters and Jean Houston, and further careful study and practice of audiotaped Psychophysical Method exercises. Thus anyone wishing to acquire these volumes must acquire also, at the same time, a copy of LISTENING TO THE BODY and at least half a dozen of the exercise tapes selected to cover various aspects of the work. The decision to make the volumes more generally available was made reluctantly and for two main reasons: first, as mentioned, there is no adequate way to limit their acquisition to trained teachers exclusively; second, it is of great importance that the work reach a wide audience. The risk that the work will sometimes be diluted and otherwise distorted is fully recognized and has been weighed carefully. It should also be said that it _i_s possible for largely self-directed students to achieve mastery of the work. Much self-discipline, rigorous and lengthy practice and various personal qualities and perhaps gifts are required for such achievement, but it has been done by some and will be done by others. The author will always be most pleased to certify as a teacher any individual who, by her or his own efforts, achieves a proficiency equal to that demanded of those who participate in teacher training programs. Finally, acknowledgement is made to those who have been of particular importance in shaping the philosophy, psychology, and other knowledge and techniques of Psychophysical Method. These range from disciplines stressing "mindfulness" and "awareness"—Egyptian, Buddhist, Taoist--on to such modern and contemporary teachers as G. I. Gurdjieff, F. Matthias Alexander, Milton Erickson and Moshe Feldenkrais. Those sources should be explored by any serious student. There is also a Psychophysical Method one-on-one "table work" that can only be learned directly from a teacher. That work, however, must always be preceded by re-educational "work on oneself," including mastery of the exercises. Robert Masters, Ph.D. Pomona, N.Y., 1983 -2- 1) HEAD AND NECK MOVEMENTS * (EXTENDED VERSION) Walk around, and try to walk as normally as possible and as you or- dinarily do. Observe how you walk, particularly with reference to how you carry your head and what your visual field is. Where do you look mainly? Do you see both the floor and the ceiling? Do you see the sides of the room? Now lie down with your palms resting on the floor at your sides. Scan your body. Notice whether, if you close your eyes and then open them, you are looking straight up or looking to one side. If you are looking to one side, or down, or back, or in some way other than straight ahead, is that because of the way you are using your eyes or because of the way that the head is lying? Let your consciousness roam over the whole surface of your body. See if it feels to you that the feet go out symmetrically or if one goes out more than the other. If one goes out more than the other, do you feel that there is a different rotation in the hip joint? If one foot goes out further to the side, then the hip joint is rotated out more and you should be able to feel it. See if the hands are able to rest flat on the floor. If not, push them down a minute so that the palms make contact with the floor. If the shoulders come up, then lower the shoulders. Push down al- ternately with the hands and then with the shoulders. Then stop. See if you can sense if there are any spaces beneath your knees. Is there any space between the small of your back and the floor? Try to sense the spine at its very beginnings. Follow it on up so that, not only do you notice that there is space under the spine in the lumbar, or lower, region, but you also notice the contact of the palms with the floor, or lack of it, as you come on up all the way to the neck. Sense how much space there is under the back of your neck. After you have sensed it, use your fingers to measure and see if it is what you thought it was, and also if it is the same on the two sides. Is one side higher than the other? Go up and down your spine a few times and really try to sense it. Try to feel where it begins and where it ends, and if there is any kind of movement you can do that will help you to clarify and isolate any of the vertebrae. Try to sense the vertebrae individually. Then just roll your head from side to side. Try to sense whether the head moves as well to one side as to the other. Does it make any differ- ence to the movement if your eyes are open or closed? As you move the head from left to right, look at the ceiling, the sides of the room and whatever else you see, depending on the position your head is in. Continuously look at something. Then, leaving your eyes open, let them go out of focus so that you are not looking at anything. Try, with the eyes open, to see as little detail as possible. Notice whether it makes a difference to the movement if your eyes seize on all of the details or just pass them by. * Teaching time: about 90 minutes -3- Also try blinking as you turn the head. Rapidly blink the eyes. Then just turn it with the eyes closed again. Rest with you.r head in the mid- dle. Lower your chin towards your chest a few times, and then take it away again without lifting the head off the floor. Do not strain. If you can, make contact with the breastbone with the chin. Just keep doing it. If you have difficulty, see if by opening your mouth wide you can touch the chin to the chest. The movement in the cervical spine should allow you to easily make that contact. Sit up a moment. Lower the chin to your chest a number of times and take it away again. You should get a clear sensation of the point of the chin making contact with the breastbone. Now lie back down and continue to lower the chin to the chest several times. Lower your jaw, if necessary, to make the contact. Open your mouth and lower your jaw if you need to, but leave the back of the head on the floor. See if it is any easier if you bend your legs, leaving the feet standing. Be especially careful not to overdo so that you will not get a sore neck. Do not force the movements. Let them occur when you are ready for them. Feel free to rest and image movements whenever you feel like doing that. Leave the feet standing. When you do the imaged move- ments, do them from the position you would do the actual movements. The arms should be down at the sides with the palms on the floor, unless other- wise specified. As you continue to bring the chin to the breastbone, or at least to- wards it, and take it away, also push and pull a little with your feet. Rock your body along the floor to assist the head movement. Just push and pull with your heels so that when you push the chin goes away, and when you pull it comes down. You feel the movement in the neck, in the shoul- ders, the arms, the knees and along the length of the spine. Then stop and rest. Put your legs down. Take your head from side to side. This time, as you take it left, let the left shoulder go down out of the head's way. As you go right, let the right shoulder go down. It means that the right hand and arm will slide down along the floor when the head goes right and the left hand and arm will slide down as the head goes left. Now put your arms out at the sides at shoulder height with your palms down. If you are in a group, arrange yourself so that you will not collide with anyone. Now when the head goes left, let the arm and the hand slide out to the left. When the head goes right, let the arm and the hand slide out to the right. See how far you are able to slide the hand and the arm out to the side as you turn the head. Make the movement as extensive as possible without impairing its quality. Do not just turn the head. Let the hand reach out as far as it will go in the direction that the head is turn i ng. -4- Now do it with the backs of the hands on the floor. See whether you reach further with the hands on their backs or with the palms down. When you go as far out to the side as you can with the hands, pay atten- tion to where your head goes. How does it rest on its side and what parts of the head make contact? It should be smoothly coordinated so that the hand is sliding out as the head is turning. Observe to what extent, as one hand slides out in the direction the head is turning, the other hand slides back towards your body, towards the back of your head. Then do it quickly and lightly but without any kind of compulsiveness or jerkiness or hurriedness. It should be a light, quick, agile movement. Once again, rest with your arms at your sides. Leave your eyes open. Fix your glance on some point on the ceiling. If you cannot see that far, you will have to imagine something. Fix your glance on some point. Then turn the head side to side, while keeping your glance fixed on that point. You cannot turn your head at all as far from side to side as you could if the glance were not fixed unless you have peri- pheral vision. Try to observe where in the movement you lose the point if you keep going. If the point is directly above you, as it should be, ob- serve whether you can turn your head further to the left or to the right without losing it. That will indicate to you whether the muscles of the eyes are equally mobile or whether one eye moves better than the other. If you can turn your head farther in one direction, while keeping fixed on the point, then of course that eye moves more freely, or rather the eyes move better in that direction. Then release the point and just turn the head from side to side. Take hold of your elbows with your hands so that your forearms are parallel to the floor, and let the elbows go from side to side with the head. See if, by doing that, you can turn the head further and can easily get it over onto the temples. You can also try holding the forearms, and then the wrists. See if that lets you turn the head even further. Do some movements holding the forearms, some movements holding the wrists. See what allows the head to make the greatest amount of movement. Then, once the movement is the largest you can get, put the hands and arms down. Let them rest on your body somewhere. See if you can continue to go as far to the side as you could a moment ago. If you cannot, release it once more by using the arms. Then, when you think that you have the optimal head movement, put the arms down and see if you retain it. It also depends on where on your body you put the arms. Then stop and rest, with the head in the middle. Sit up with your feet in front of you, either in a yoga type or a Japanese type of position with the bottoms of the feet together. Sit in some position that is easy for you to maintain, and put your hands behind you. Now, especially those who have a tendency to get dizzy easily should be careful to do only a very limited number of head rotations in one direc- tion. You should change after every three or four movements. You should test your own limitations. Try to extend them because, as you become able -5- to do more and more rotations without the dizziness building, you are probably correcting defects in the functioning of the vestibular system that caused the dizziness in the first place. That is a good and useful thing to do. Now make some circles with your nose. Go in one direction and then in the other. Do a few one way and a few the other way. Do the most you can do. Also, balance yourself so that the pressure on your hands is mi- nimal, while at the same time the position is easily maintained. Now stop that for a moment. Put the soles of your feet together at some distance from your body. Do not put them too close or you will not be able to move. Try circling with your pelvis on the floor. Try to make the best possible circles. During the course of the movement, you should have, clear feelings of coming onto the tail bone and onto the sitting bone. Just rock back and forth a few times. Make the movements as free as possible, coming from the coccyx onto the sitting bones and back again. Then do some more circling movements. Go around an imaginary clock, passing through all the numbers. Reverse that from time to time. At the same time, make some circles with your nose. Go around another dial and remember to reverse that one, but not necessarily reversing the pelvic ro- tations with anything like the frequency that you change the head rotations. As you do that, try to be aware of each buttock and each ear circling while you go around the two clocks, breathing easily. Then stop and rest in the most comfortable sitting position you have at your disposal. Just raise and lower the head and let the chin come down to the breast- bone. Then take it back up. Let it go as far back as it goes easily. Do it a few times. Inhale as the head goes up and exhale as the head comes down. Then exhale as the head goes up and inhale as the head comes down. See to what extent that type of breathing inhibits the movement. Then breathe in a less perverse way, exhaling as you raise the head and inhaling as you lower it. Then let yourself breathe however you breathe spontaneously, but as you raise the head, lower the eyes, and as you lower the head, look up. Oppose the eye movements to the head movements. Then inhale as the eyes go up and exhale as the eyes go down, so that the breathing and the eye movements are both opposed to the head movements. Then continue to oppose the eye movements to the head movements, but let the breathing go now with the head. You inhale as you raise the head and lower the eyes, and you exhale as you lower the head and raise the eyes. The head and the breathing go one way and the eyes go another. Then let yourself roll onto your back and continue that breathing.