Lisa Marks
Lucia McKelvey
Lucia McKelvey
His
original ideas came not only from his study of physics and Jungian psychology
but also from his own symptoms which he felt had meaning and information, and
were not just pathological. He wrote: “Fate showed me that to unravel the
mystery of psycho-physical reality in a personal way, I had to begin with the
body… Little did I guess that the world of the body is as vast as the realm of
dream symbols and even less explored in modern psychology… I tended to
intellectualize severe body problems instead of experiencing their potent
reality.”
Mindell
not only researched and presented an overview of various experiences and systems
concerning the body (including, but not only, Chinese Medicine, Hindu Chakra
systems, Ayurvedic Medicine, as well as western approaches such as Alchemy, the
Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, Wilhem Reich) he developed very practical
methods of observing and interacting with the dreaming body that became tools
for therapy, as well as medicine for the ailing body.
“… Mindell
was not satisfied with interpreting or discussing the meaning of unconscious
material. He was more interested in living it, in exploring it and experimenting
with the living unconscious… Mindell wanted to put his hands on the unconscious;
he wanted to find out what it looked like, how it felt, how it appeared in
three-dimensional reality.” A Path Made
by Walking, Diamond & Jones.
Mindell
writes: “Since the 70’s Process Work… has been making the following point:
Within what we call problems are paths we haven’t yet explored. The momentary
awareness of signals and feelings, images and motions, shows us the way.”
Earth Based Psychology
Lately
Mindell has added the idea of Sentient Awareness to his toolbox. It is awareness
of the most subtle signals we perceive, flirts or flickers as he calls them.
They arise from the “…dreamlike reality that permeates everything. He called
this the ‘Dreaming’ or the Sentient Essence level of reality. He differentiated
this… from the two other levels he had addressed in his earlier work: ‘consensus
reality’ (the everyday world of time and space that is generally agreed upon as
real and is perceived through everyday awareness) and ‘Dreamland’ (the world of
the dreams, projections, emotions, fantasies and the like)… [there is] a
sentient reality beneath the threshold of awareness, an unbroken wholeness out
of which signals, dreams and all other experiential phenomena arise.” It is this
Sentient Awareness that tunes into the deep Sentient Body of extremely subtle,
surprising, irrational and touching sensations full of dreaming and meaningful
information.
I have
been thrilled by these ideas for all these years, and back when I encountered
them they fit right into the New Paradigm thinking of the 60’s and 70’s that I
had been experiencing and living. So discontented with the constrained,
mainstream world I had grown up in, I gravitated to intense social activism and
explored altered states of consciousness. Then I began living on the edge of the
culture in community in remote areas and in the mountains of
I felt
like I had come “home” upon discovering Mindell’s approach to the body, dreams,
relationships, inner work, and world problems. We had more or less been living
and experimenting with ideas like his, but did not have a coherent system of
thought about it all.
I studied
Process Work formally for 4 years, and was an Assistant Teacher at various
Intensives and at Worldwork in
I’m
thrilled about developing new classes to practice this work and bring it to
those familiar with it, and those brand new to it.
