Authors: David Jay Brown,Rebecca McClen Novick
DJB: So you are saying that you see the conflict between men and women as being an externalized drama of the conflict going on inside each of us?
LAURA I feel that it is educational and cultural, rather than basic. It seems to me that the wonderful work done by women for a more just recognition of women's talents and capacities is sometimes a bit flawed by a tendency to imitate man. A small instance: a woman can hardly buy a pair of jeans or pants without a zipper in front. Why a zipper? We don't need a zipper in front. Refusing to wear pants with a zipper in front would be a clear statement--and probably better pants.
RMN: Do you think men are beginning to get more in touch with their feminine side and vice versa?
LAURA Oh yes, because much has been accomplished. Men can feel fairly free now to cry, dress more freely, take care of the household, and take care of their baby. It is the best thing for baby, father, and mother.
RMN: We touched earlier on the idea that the mind affects the body. This is taken for granted in a lot of places--like in Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. But still, despite the monumental evidence to the contrary, purely physical explanations are still invoked, more often than not in the West, to explain, not only physical, but mental illness. Why do you think this is, after so much evidence has shown that the mind and body are parts of the same whole?
LAURA Because of the great division of body and mind that has been with us for two thousand years. Two thousand years are difficult to overcome. The power of words, if coming from High Places and repeated enough times, is so powerful so as to obscure such tangible present inescapable facts as the body-mind interaction. Doctors go to school for thirty years and they are told that the body is a mechanism that you fix or you don't, and that belief has been programmed so deeply in their minds.
RMN: Why do you think it even began in the first place?
LAURA Well Aldous said it began with Aristotle and Plato and many others.
RMN: Really, the Greeks. Blame it on the Greeks.
LAURA Then the Catholics.
RMN: Because they wanted to control the spiritual mind.
LAURA The belief that the body is something dirty is overwhelming.
DJB: So you think it began long before Descartes divided the mind from the divine?
LAURA Oh yes. Before that St. Augustine condemned the body.
RMN: Have you found any one psychotherapeutic technique to be especially valuable, or does the success of a particular method vary from person to person?
LAURA There are many psychotherapeutic techniques which are effective in the hands of a capable therapist. However, the most important factor is the relationship between the guide and the client. My strong feeling is that any psychetherapy who does not include the body from the beginning is incomplete. The medical evidence is pointing more and more to the body-mind connection. For instance, our relationship to food and cancer; how body movement, breathing, running, etc., changes one's body consciousness; how emotion and personality are connected to degenerative disease.
In sum, it is increasingly clear and accepted that the way we treat our bodymind is the way our body-mind will treat us. The Golden Rule applies here too. It is amazing to me that the two main branches of therapies, psychotherapy and somatic therapy, are kept separate, when in fact, every state of being is either psychosomatic or somato-psychic. What else is there? I see the human being as a circle and all the points on the circle must be considered important. If you take even the smallest point out of the circle, the circle is no more a circle. The optimum is, in my view, that kind of education or therapy that contacts as many points of the circle of the human being as possible. To contact only the intellectual, emotional, or social points of the human being without involving the body through which the intellect and emotion are expressed is inadequate and the outcome is slower and not on the high level of excellence it might be.
RMN: Nowadays there is a lot of body focus and people exercising for health and vanity reasons.
LAURA Yes, and it does them a lot of good even though it's often mindless exercise. What I mean is synchronizing the psyche and somatic therapy. One must be aware of how the emotions play on the body and how one can use the body to transform emotion. It is exorcism through exercise. Exorcism means casting out the devil. So consciously exercising to squeeze out, push out, move out the devils of rage, fear, sadness, and boredom from the muscle. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the eminent biochemist, twice Nobel Prize winner, said that the muscles are the greatest transformers of energy in the body. It is one of the ways of transformation that is clear and available--always with us---at no cost!
RMN: Is this the principle you applied in
You Are Not the Target
?
LAURA Yes, and in
Between Heaven and Earth
as well. And I add the dimension of service because service is what gives significance to the self by confirming its importance to the world. The relationship of body-mind and service should be addressed at the same time. In my mind,
body-mind-service
is the ideal education. I would not call it therapy- that would be an implicit agreement that a person interested and active in improving him/herself is sick. What I'm saying has been admirably and fully presented in the monumental book by Michael Murphy which has just been published
, The Future of the Body
. Michael Murphy who, with Dick Price, founded Esalen, being acquainted with all the greatest world teachers and their methods, realized that every teacher promotes a certain set of values while others are either neglected or suppressed. Murphy coins the phrase "Integral Practices," which I quote, "are practices that address somatic, affective, cognitive, volitional and transpersonal dimensions of human nature in a comprehensive way." A very important book.
RMN: Do you think there is too much attention given to the individual in our society?
LAURA It seems to be so. Had we the kind of education just mentioned, we would realize that we are little cells in an immense, inextricably connected organism and would not pollute the very source of our life: the air we breathe, the water, the food. We would pay more attention to the way other human beings are and feel. Service gives us a chance to be aware of that. Karen, my seventeen year-old granddaughter, just returned from a white water expedition, programmed according to the principles of Outward Bound, the greatest educational institution in the U.S.A., in my opinion. Karen told me that one day of the trip was dedicated to serve another person, who did not know who the serving person was; finding out would be the subject of the evening discussion. Karen said that she never had experienced in a group of teenagers such a profound peace, such quiet contentment. It is encouraging that a simple, inexpensive recipe is so effective; that teenagers, whose personal drama is so intense, can forget it for a day, and experience peace and contentment by serving.
RMN: What foundation needs to be laid for the spiritual to emerge?
LAURA The spiritual dimension of the human being is ever present, but often dormant, and emerges of itself as a natural consequence when we are ready--not as a goal to be reached. Spirituality has to have space to emerge; a flower cannot grow if overcrowded by weeds. Give it space and the flower will bloom on its own. When the body-mind has been attended to, then, as a flower free of weeds, the Higher Self will naturally emerge and service is part of its expression.
DJB: So you don't draw much of a line then between the body, mind, and spirit?
LAURA Right. It is a continuum.
RMN: Have the techniques that you discuss in your books--movement techniques and ritual---been used by psychologists or psychiatrists that you are aware of?
LAURA In 1963, when Target was published, there was much demand to organize a national network for teachers. I resisted the temptation; I did not know how to organize, and above all, my life was full enough. The recipes are used by some therapists, sometimes classes are organized. Mostly people use them from the book--I had and have the most rewarding and touching reports of experiences from the letters I receive from friends I have never met who profit from the Recipes for Living and Loving.
RMN: Do you think that the methods you employ would be beneficial to a person with a serious imbalance like paranoid schizophrenia?
LAURA The Huxley Institute and the American Association of Orthomolecular Medicine have, since 1957, conducted studies on schizophrenia and have demonstrated that specific nutritional supplements, like Vitamin B3 and B6, Vitamin C, Zinc, and others are extremely helpful and, in certain types of schizophrenia, have brought recovery. I believe that a schizophrenic person would be greatly helped by being grounded through exercise, particularly if he would understand the principle I mentioned before: to exorcise, to cast off devils by exercise. Often a disturbed person thinks and feels that he or she is persecuted or invaded by dangerous vibrations, enemies or devils.
A method that he can use independently not only would ground him but also would give him that power he so desperately seeks so that he himself can get rid of his persecutors. He could not only feel, but even visualize the devils coming out of his muscles--move his muscles, and since he is the only one who can, he would achieve autonomy and self-authority. Of course this would not always happen, but why not give it a trial--particularly with the mesomorphic type; the person with a prevalence of musculature might feel a liberation by using himself in a self-beneficial way; of course, alert supervision is essential.
RMN: This is going into the next question. Many psychotherapeutic techniques are considered by orthodox practitioners to be in the realm of the paranormal, even though many have been shown to be successful. Why do you think there is so much nervousness on the part of scientists to investigate, not only the paranormal phenomena, but also alternative healing techniques?
LAURA An investment, whether intellectual or financial, gives us security. Scientists protect their investment of years of study and work. When something new and different emerges, this does not mean that the previous work loses its value. So in a way, the resistance you speak of is the fear of being wrong, is that way of thinking in separate camps, of "either/or" rather than considering what can be valuable in more than one view--normal and paranormal, orthodox, and alternative healing technique. We can use everything in this complex life we are living.
DJB: One of the things that brings the body-mind problem to attention is psychedelics. How have psychedelics affected your life?
LAURA It was an expansion. I wrote about it in a book about Aldous--
This Timeless Moment
. It was something that gave me a larger view. Psychedelics open our hearts and minds. Sometimes we open on the aesthetic level, sometimes on the level of compassion--the feeling of compassion, and the beauty of the world, as well as the gigantic suffering in the world. This is the way in which they affected me. Probably a psychedelic emphasizes what is in an individual and amplifies it. But we are a crowd, and which one of the crowd will be amplified? We don't know.
DJB: That leads to the mistake a lot of people made when they first started experimenting with psychedelics. Because they saw their own positive qualities get amplified, they assumed that anyone who did a psychedelic would become more creative, more compassionate, more loving, and it just doesn't work that way. It takes whatever is there and amplifies it.
LAURA Yes. I remember very well when we realized that. Aldous and I were very, very surprised when we heard from Boston that there were many negative experiences. We always prepared very carefully, which makes a great difference. In general, if you take a psychedelic without preparation, it's risky. I know many kids do it, and sometimes it's okay, but then comes a time when it's not okay any more, and it's difficult for many reasons, one being that what is ingested can be any chemical mix.
RMN: Of the people who know about the benefits of psychedelics, some believe that it should be made legal and everyone should have access to it. Other people think there should be some kind of restriction imposed. What do you think?
LAURA I think that if we had it all completely free again, abuse and damage would happen. That is why Oscar Janiger founded the Albert Hofmann Foundation, which I am a part of--so that there is some beginning, at least, in being able to use and guard from misuse. If there is a beginning, even with strict rules, then little by little, one can enlarge them. But I think that if everybody can get everything that would not be a just way of doing it.