Allow the body to move freely and with vigour, like the birds in the wild.
Spiritual Practice part F
Discharge of Distress
Table of Contents.
F 1. Introduction
F 2. Discharge of Distress
F 3. Inhibitions of Discharge
F 4. Inhibitions of Yawning
F 5. Inhibition of Convulsive Sobbing
F 6. Overcoming the Inhibitions : Co Counselling.
F 7. Overcoming Inhibitions when Alone
F 8. Laughter.
F 9. Yawning.
F 10. Shaking to Discharge Disgust.
F 11. Shaking Without Disgust
F 12. Convulsive Sobbing with Tears.
F 13. Discharge and Meditation.
F 14. Discharge and Kirtan Lyrics.
F 1. Introduction
Harvey Jackins wrote a manual for Co-Counselling, in the 1970’s and ’80’s. I found the introduction to this manual most helpful, for Harvey emphasises an important dynamic of the healing process which he called “discharge of distress patterns”. These are rigid, unhelpful patterns of behaviour that are driven by pain, which he called “distress”. Discharge of distress is an excellent complement to meditation training. Meditation that trains the mind to let go of pain driven and pain filled thoughts, attitudes, judgments and other mental noise, and so release all that pain and suffering.
The first thing that Harvey explains is how the hurts of old traumatic experiences are stored in mind and body, because they were not released at the time. Instead, many things that went on in that old trauma was locked away – who was there, where they stood, what they said and did, even smells and tastes were retained. More importantly, the emotional distress, loss, rejection, injustice, cruelty, feeling misjudged, was recorded in with the rest, along with a shutdown of one’s ability to think clearly and rationally. “Human beings do not think in a sensible and rational way when they are hurting.”
When this old stored pain is restimulated, usually by unsafe social setting, we get upset. In some way, the present social setting reminds us of the old traumatic situation, the feelings we have now somehow resonate with the old stored pain. They come out of the closet, gradually or suddenly.
Since the pain is stored partly in the body, the body “knows” how to release it with its own somatic intelligence. This somatic intelligence is often over ridden by the intelligence of the thinking mind, the intelligence of analysis, comparisons, opinion and judgement, especially in the University educated. The somatic intelligence knows what is best for the body, and for health of body. It is what makes you get up, move and stretch if you sit and study for too long. It also knows the benefit of nourishing food, cardiovascular exercise, dance, singing, massage, Reiki and Tai Chi. And it also requires no scholarly studies to know this.
F 2. Discharge of Distress.
The body releases the old stored pain with spontaneous movement, strong and vigorous enough to throw out or “discharge” the pain. This discharge of the distress is similar to vomiting, the expulsion might be “impolite”, but it’s definitely necessary. And it needs to be permitted and encouraged to continue until all the toxins are expelled.
These spontaneous movements include –
1) Laughter, yawning, stretching and hot sweat discharge light fears
2) Cold sweat with trembling discharges life threatening fear
3) Stomping and thumping discharge a frustrated sense of injustice
4) Shaking with disgusted grimace discharges revulsion
5) Convulsive sobbing with tears discharges grief.
These important discharges are needed to release a wide range of distress, so they don’t get locked away inside, to cause trouble for many years afterwards.
Light fears include not feeling entirely at ease in the social setting. This is quite common, people can’t fully relax with each other. It often manifests by incessant talk, the person goes on and on and cannot really listen. Or it can manifest in uncomfortable silence, the person clams up and restricts their contribution, if any, to a very narrow range of topics. People get bent into stiff and uncomfortable posture, or they might hold themselves in with crossed arms and legs.
Laughter is often quite successful at dispelling these light fears, at least for a while. So some people develop the skill of cracking jokes to try to get other people to laugh, to try to put them at their ease. When this succeeds, the joke and the joker are well received.
If we were to suddenly realise a murderer is stalking us and about to attack, and we somehow manage to escape to safety, then trembling with cold sweat will discharge this deep pain of life threatening fear. It is the antidote to freezing in terror, that snakes use to immobilise their prey, just before striking.
But the attack is more likely to have nothing to do with trying to kill us. Instead, our assailant wants to get rid of us, and weaken us and push us down. Or they feel the need to push us out of their territory. After we have got away from them, the feeling that assails us might be a strong sense of injustice. Anger will flare up in us. Then, stomping and thumping will discharge this deep pain that is not life threatening at all.
Or we might feel disgusted with their attitude and behaviour towards us. Then shaking with disgusted grimace will be needed to discharge such deep pain from being attacked.
All these discharges are governed by the somatic intelligence of the body, and not the intelligence of the thinking mind. For discharge to succeed, we need let go of all our opinions about discharge, and help the body do what it needs to do for our healing. Indeed, any opinion that discharge “does not work” will be self fulfilling; it will prevent the discharge from succeeding. Thru inhibitions ….
F 3. Inhibition of Discharge.
Harvey explains that these discharges have been “interfered with and shut off so repeatedly since infancy that to shut it off becomes an automatic pattern accompanying the hurt.”
Apart from laughter, these releases are not acceptable in the normal social environment. Others will think you are “weird” or “rude” or “weak”.
This means that the response of other people to discharge is usually to hinder and rarely to help it. So much so that we expect discharge to be blocked when others are around. This is a major reason why we often deny and cover up our pain when others are around.
For the inhibitions to discharge are contagious. The inhibitions of others build on our own inhibitions and it seems safer to “not go there” outside a proper therapy session.
Moreover, laughter is the only socially acceptable discharge, and it’s a potent inhibitor of all the other discharges.
F 4. Inhibition of Yawning.
The yawn and the laugh are closely related to each other. Both use the muscles and body structures of breathing to release light fears. The movements are quite different to normal breathing.
The true laugh is a rapid and rhythmic movement of our breathing muscles. The air is pushed in and out several times a second, much faster than the normal breath cycle. And the rib cage is kept oscillating at the same position. We do not move towards full inhalation nor full exhalation, in the true laugh.
The true laugh shakes the whole breathing apparatus, the muscles, the bones, the ligaments and above all the vital energy that drives all this. It is this vigorous shaking that discharges the pain of light fear. And the laugh needs to be sustained for long enough to achieve true discharge. Sustained much longer than what is normally considered “polite” to laugh at a joke.
Thus comedians who can sustain the audience’s laughter for many many minutes are highly valued. People know, thru their own somatic intelligence, about the need to sustain laughter to its full potential.
By contrast, the yawn expands the chest to the max. It’s a deep sustained stretch of the entire breathing structures. So deep that if we are not careful, it can easily get disjointed, and the release is sabotaged. It is this deep prolonged stretch that discharges the pain of light fears. It goes well with the stretch of the arms upward and outwards. Then we allow the stretch to be released, and the rib cage collapses naturally. I cover the mouth, for this helps protect the discharge from inhibitions.
Thus the yawn naturally follows the true laugh, when the body’s somatic intelligence is allowed to do what it needs to do. This combo, the belly laugh followed by the yawn, is most healing. It releases a lot of light fear.
Laughter, at the right time in the right way, is almost universally approved of, and welcomed. This is why many people use humour, and some develop the skill of making other people laugh, for it can release the tension. Such people can become the joker of the social circle, and they can feel a compelling need to make jokes. To the extent that their humour can become gross, or excessively persistent, or unwelcome in some other way.
By contrast, yawning is universally branded the opposite, as being “rude”. It’s always inhibited. So much so that people have quite forgotten what its true role is. Yawning has been robbed its power to release light fears in the social setting.
So it is quite natural for the body’s somatic intelligence to briefly over-ride the inhibitions. Someone will forget their “manners” and start yawning, and very soon every-one else joins in. For a little while, we all can share the healing release of deep, uninhibited yawning.
But very quickly, the social inhibitions kick in, and fear will return. Someone will instinctively laugh to release this fear. As soon as the socially acceptable release is available, all will feel compelled to abandon the stigmatised yawning and go for the laughter instead. For laughter and yawning are antagonistic, they cannot occur together at the same time.
And so the therapeutic yawning is blocked by its antagonist. More importantly, we cannot use yawning in the social situation to release light fears. The inhibitions will create fear instead, if we proceed.
F 5. Inhibition of Convulsive Sobbing with Tears.
Grief due to the loss of close relationship or the death of a loved one is a very deep pain, and often compounded with other hurts.
This makes convulsive sobbing with hot tears a particularly vital and important release.
But this discharge is quite different to laughter to release light fears. For convulsive sobbing with tears to succeed, one has to break down and cry. One has to relinquish all control of the social setting. This is the inner child taking over, and the alienated adult must withdraw entirely. If others expect one to stay in control, this release will not be available.
If this release is able to commence and get under way but then is blocked in mid flow, then the pain of it being blocked is far greater than if the discharge never commenced in the first place. The intense pain, long packed away into a corner and out of the way, has suddenly been brought to the entrance, and looms large.
Knowing this, the somatic intelligence will not allow discharge to commence if the discharge is likely to be blocked.
For this reason, we are more likely to steer ourselves away from the approaches to convulsive sobbing than head towards it, unless we are quite certain that we will be helped not hindered in the healing.
Of course, this just adds to the existing inhibitions to discharge, making the walls surrounding this valuable healing even more impenetrable.
Many people, especially men, can go thru much of their adult life with no access at all to tearful convulsive sobbing and the profound healing of grief that it provides. The inhibitions are too strong. Other people are too likely to block the release. Men aren’t supposed to cry.
Men will simply not take the risk. Better to hang onto a manageable pain than risk the agony from having the release blocked in mid stream.
F 6. Overcoming the Inhibitions : Co Counselling.
How to get around these inhibitions, that block our access to these important discharges?
Harvey Jackins, in the 1970’s and ‘80’s in Seattle, set up his co-counselling movement, also called Re-Evaluation Counselling (or RC for short), with its own training programs, meetings, literature, publishing house, organisational structure and hierarchy. It trained people to be both counsellor and client. In the usual co-counselling session of two co-counsellors, half the session you would be client, and the other half you would be client, swapping roles half way thru. These sessions were quite formal, with their own rules to govern conduct. It was counselling by the people, for the people, and quite independent of the “experts”, especially of mainstream psychology.
This RC movement did not advertise its activities; you got in because someone invited you. Thus it was quite difficult to get involved if you knew no current co-counsellors.
Nor does it seem advisable to invite a friend to try a session with you, if both people have not been trained thru Harvey’s system.
How else can we get around these potent inhibitions and access this important healing discharge?
F 7. Overcoming Inhibitions when Alone
We can learn ways to access the discharge when we are alone. It is like meditation; we need seclusion. The seclusion which will enable us to make some sound that is necessary for discharge that will not be heard by others. This will give us the privacy needed to help us get over our own inhibitions to discharge.
Yelling, screaming, foul language and breaking things in anger are actually rehearsal of distress; they are not discharge. When we rehearse the distress pattern, we are actually operating under the influence of the distress or defilement, and therefore strengthening and entrenching it.
I find that the volume of sound in discharge is not much louder than ordinary conversation. So we needs no great seclusion – ordinary privacy should be sufficient for our needs.
F 8. Laughter.
The lightest and minimal level of laughter is no more than a smile and usually one or two “huffs” from the diaphragm. Usually because we have heard something humorous. This is an essential part of friendly conversation that we use to connect with eachother in friendship. At the right time in social interaction, it will be universally accepted and supported. Inhibitions simply do not apply to this minimal level of laughter.
The strongest level of laughter that can discharge the most pain is full belly laughter that is sustained until the body has done its work. All the breathing apparatus is engaged, belly, diaphragm, chest and shoulders all are involved in one co-ordinated movement. This is not normal in conversation, and is more likely to be hindered not helped by social convention. Nor is it from anything hugely amusing; it needs only some lightening of the spirit to trigger the discharge. Some small bit of humour, often from memory.
I remember meeting a friend of mine who had come to my meditation session, and he had just completed a long Vipassana retreat in India. He repeatedly and continually went into this kind of discharge while we talked, and I could see how clear, unburdened and healed he was. Nevertheless, it was most usual for conversation, and I could feel the lurking inhibitions in myself, trying to disrupt the discharge. However, I felt quite elated that he trusted me not to interfere. I just laughed when he did.
This discharge is very healing for depression of both body and mind. To overcome the inhibitions, we can just watch a good comedy movie, preferably on our home system, and I keep an old Peter Sellers film for this purpose. There is no need to watch the entire thing; the important thing is to get laughter started in our Being. Then we can stop the movie, and laugh according to what our body needs, rather than laugh in reaction to the actors antics, according to the dictates of the film. For the important thing about discharge is to allow the body to do what it needs to do, according to its schedule. More importantly, to assist and encourage our body to make the vigorous movements that it needs to make.
F 9. Yawning.
Laughter and yawning both discharge light distress, but in different ways. In a sense, they are complementary to each other. I find that this strong belly laugh is usually followed by deep yawning. In this, we stretch the whole upper breathing apparatus to the full maximum, the mouth fully wide, stretching lips and face, right thru to the upper trachea and vocal chords. It is like any full stretch of the body; we use our full strength. For this deep, prolonged stretching is quite different to the rhythmic and rapid movement of full belly laughter. They naturally go with eachother.
Like any discharge, we allow the body to continue until it has achieved what it needs to do.
F 10. Shaking to Discharge Disgust.
This is the natural discharge to the hurt of abuse from others. When they deliberately cause much pain and harm to us, usually with some self righteous justification.
So shaking with disgusted grimace is the discharge for heavier distress, heavier than that released thru laughter.
To access this important discharge, we need more than just seclusion. We need to let go of all the hurt filled and hurt driven thinking that we can expect in our own minds. No justification, no explanations, no plans for revenge, no criticisms of the other party. We need the raw painful feelings of being wrongfully attacked.
When it was a personal encounter with a hostile person that we are quite likely to (try to) avoid in future, then the discharge is much easier to access. Fortunately I now have a car, and this is the ideal vehicle for such discharge when we are away from home.
Straight after I was able to get away from the hostile person, I immediately drove to some quiet place, removed shoes, got into the front passenger seat (it has the best leg room), and let rip.
In this shaking, the whole body is engaged. There are three main zones : legs and feet; torso; and arms and hands. All three need to a good strong shake, and it’s best to do them separately and sequentially. First the legs then feet, then chest then belly, then arms then hands then fingers.
Because the weight is supported at the hips, it can help to take some weight off the hips using the hands on the seat. This will help free the legs fully, and access the full shaking movement for them. Then free the arms to shake the upper body.
Thus the shaking movement travels swiftly from one zone to the other, shaking the entire body. We really need a straight back or backless chair to achieve proper shaking.
Again, like any discharge, we use our full strength. We encourage and assist the discharge to continue until the body has achieved what it needs to achieve for now.
The facial expression is that of intense disgust. I find the best words are simply –
“What a revolting person !!” “How disgusting they are !!”
Remember, these are words for discharge. They are words to assist and achieve discharge in this moment. They are quite unlikely to be the words we would choose if (or when) we encounter that person again, or talk about them to others. And it is essential that we do not allow the hurt filled and hurt driven thought to return, for these will undo all the good healing we have achieved thru discharge by shaking.
F 11. Shaking Without Disgust.
This discharge is for distress that is lighter than the distress of revulsion and disgust, yet heavier than the ordinary light fears from normal social interaction. I use it far more often than shaking with disgust, for it is for more commonplace distress, such as working hard and long under stress to “get the job finished.” Or someone has upset us, yet they’ve expressed no real intention to cause us real harm. And we need more than the full laugh to discharge this heavier distress.
The shaking is exactly the same as shaking with disgust. The whole body needs a good shake, and a long sustained shake. Every part of it. Usually we need to go back and do some more shaking, and soon. This is to assist the body to achieve what it needs to achieve, in discharge of the distress.
The only difference is : there is no trace of disgust nor revulsion. The behaviour and attitude of the other person is in no way disgusting nor revolting, just upsetting.
F 12. Convulsive Sobbing with Tears.
This discharge is for the heaviest distress, the pain of loss of someone or something of great value, and the all the grief bound up in it.
For men, this is probably best achieved alone, because of the inhibitions.
For my self, convulsive sobbing with tears came into my life from a particularly moving scene of a favourite movie, watched alone on home system (DVD in this computer.) It came quite unexpectedly, as if the only way around the inhibitions was by stealth and surprise. Catch them off guard.
I immediately knew that this was a golden opportunity, not to be missed. More importantly, the opportunity to persist with discharge and persist with the strongest discharge I could achieve, until the body had fully achieved its purpose for the now.
The song for that scene won the Academy Award for the Best Film Song for the year. So others also recognised the skills of Fran Walsh, Howard Shore and Annie Lennox.
I have also achieved full convulsive sobbing with tears in a session with a professional counsellor, by appointment. In fact, I spent the whole session in discharge, completing with laughter. At no time did the counsellor try to interfere with questions that needed explanations or justifications.
F 13. Discharge and Meditation.
Discharge of distress and meditation are complementary. Both are important ways of releasing pain.
In meditation, the release is a peaceful and persistent letting go of unhelpful and unnecessary thought, and actively disallowing such thought to continue. Also a peaceful and patient process of allowing painful feelings just to be, uncomplicated by pain filled and pain driven thought, so they can naturally dissolve. Usually, the body is kept quite still for this process.
In discharge, the release is a vigorous and strong expulsion. We allow the body to move spontaneously, and vigorously to expel the pain. We do not keep still at all in discharge.
By using both methods, we are much more likely to succeed in releasing pain, and therefore move towards transcendence from suffering and Liberation from it.
I found nothing in Buddhism that was even remotely associated with discharge. Rather, I found the opposite instead.
I learned about discharge because co-counselling was active in my social circle at the time, and I was invited to attend a fundamentals course. I have since adapted Harvey Jackins’s ideas into a form I can use in my present life situation.
This shows the importance of not limiting one’s learning to only one thing, such as Buddhism.
F 14. Discharge and Kirtan Lyrics.
Discharge of distress is an important aspect of the healing process, and both can be applied to Kirtan lyrics with good effect . In this way, Kirtan becomes an expression of the healing process, and singing Kirtan songs can draw our attention to important aspects of our own healing. This can remind us of what we are trying to achieve, in our daily life, as spiritual practitioners.
The Kirtan word Hara can mean “discharge of distress”, or “vigorous expulsion of pain.” Details are provided in the write up entitled Shiva Shiva Shambho Shankara under “Mantras Translated.”
