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We need to think differently about the body -
Eugene Gendlin

Translated by Dana Ganihar


I want to talk about the next step, which is now slowly developing. The next step has to do with the body. We already have a great, new respect for the body. We pay attention to it when we diet, run, drink water from a bottle and in other ways. These ways touch the body as we know it from the outside. When we pay attention to our feelings, we do feel our body from the inside as well. But we can experience the body from the inside on a much deeper level.
We need to think differently about the body. It is not a machine. I mean, it is certainly a machine if you deal with its cells, blood vessels, chemicals and genes, but it is not just a machine. Even a tree is more than a machine. A plant has no ability to see or hear. It does not need to see the sun because it interacts with the sun. The plant is the interaction with the sun. It does not have a sense of touch to touch the soil with; it eats the soil and grows from the soil. If I say that the plant knows the soil, knows the light, knows the water, something strange happens to the word "knows." Words take on new meanings when we use them. A living plant knows and is the interaction with the environment. And so is a person.

The body is the one that creates the next step.
Machines always do the same thing, and they never suddenly do something creative. But on the physical level that I'm referring to, new steps do arise. Suppose you find yourself in a problematic situation that has never happened before, to anyone, in the entire history of the world, and you don't know what to do. Usually you do what you can, and then another day comes... But if you allow your body to give you the physical feeling of that situation - of all the historical complexity of that situation - then it will also create, very quickly, small steps of change in the whole thing. At first it may just be a physical feeling of what you want to do. It may not yet have a form, or the right words, but now you know what you're looking for, how it feels, really, physically. And then the form and the words will come too.
(From: When you feel the body from the inside, there is a door)

How do you choose the words every time you speak, if you don't read or recite? It's your body that speaks. Even though I've prepared these things, when I open my mouth I hope the right words come out. That's all I can do. If they don't come, I keep talking, hoping that eventually they will. What's speaking is my body. I want to expand the concept of "body" beyond the physiological aspect. When I'm sick, I'm grateful that there is physiology. I'm glad they have this knowledge. But the body is a much broader concept than that, much broader. We live (experience) every situation through the body. If you try to do this through explicit instructions, you'll probably stumble. Your body has to sense many things at the same time: the floor, the chair, the people, the situation, what happened to you years ago, and what you're trying to do now. You live with and through "your body." It's the body that creates the next step and also takes it, it wants a solution, a healing, something better than it had, now. Most of the time there are no words to describe it, because it hasn't happened yet. The body can produce steps that have not yet occurred in the history of the world. Isn't that wonderful?


(From: ( The small steps of the therapy process how they come and how to help them come

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