Brian, Josiah, and Wilson, I appreciate your feedback. It’s comforting to get validations like yours, especially given the kind of skepticism I usually encounter when I present my ideas.
A typical response is the one that greeted me at UC Davis, in the late 1970s, when I was giving a guest lecture to a health class taught by the remarkable professor, Will Lotter, who recognized that I was on to something, and was happy to give me a forum once every semester. His was a very large class, with several hundred students packed into an amphitheatre-style lecture hall. At that time, I was only a few years into the process of exploring and systematizing the BreathPlay skill set; in fact, I was still using my original name for the system, the Pelvic Pump.
Professor Lotter introduced me, and I launched into my standard practice of setting up a freewheeling question and answer session by bringing forward some provocative and challenging ideas on breathing. I gave a brief overview, focusing on my belief that our understanding of breathing is fundamentally wrong because it’s based on the unexamined assumption that the active phase of the breath cycle is the inbreath; that is, that breathing is a matter of sucking air in. I concluded by pointing out that those that I’ve taught to replace air-sucking with air-pushing by learning the Pelvic Pump enter a whole new realm of physical performance, as if tapping into an alternate physiology that dramatically boosts capabilities. As I ended the set-up phase of my presentation, finishing with an invitation for questions, I was excited by the idealistic thought that we were fulfilling the time-honored role of academic studies by joining in dialog in search of the truth.
Those idealistic reflections were brought crashing down to earth by the first question, from a young man in the back row, way up by the ceiling. In a loud voice, and in a tone more appropriate for a gang confrontation than an academic discussion, he said, “Hey man, what planet are you from, anyway?”
It was like a kick in the gut, and it set off an explosion of painful emotions which I instinctively and protectively held in check. The speaker facing all those students was plunged into a crisis of vulnerability and the fearful child within the speaker had no place to hide. Memories of angry rejection and harsh judgment condensed to critical mass and set off a secondary explosion, this one a release of uproarious laughter from deep inside that fear. The whole auditorium joined in the laughter, transforming a wound into a wonderful opening.
By the conclusion of my presentation, it was clear that many minds had been opened to formerly unseen possibilities.
And that memory brings me back to the beginning. Thanks again, Brian, Josiah, and Wilson, for your validating feedback: I have a feeling it will help open more minds to those formerly unseen possibilities.