(Section 10)
We have discussed how chero, aroused through eroplay and other physical trances, attracts people and opportunities to the person. We have discussed how eroplay lowers the stress level while raising the state of well-being. This is healing.
We are now turning to how to use cherotic rituals in healing. The principles are the same whether we apply them to apprenticeship, performances, or bodyplay as a healing method.
Healing is not necessarily the same thing as curing. Modern western medicine is focused on curing illness, solving health problems, restoring normalcy. It is a very logical, goal-oriented process.
When we talk about healing, we mean becoming better able to cope with and adapt to the life situations we find ourselves in. This may or may not mean curing. When we are healed, we are in the position of actively accepting the situation. This puts us into the realm of all possibilities in which we are more open to cures, if the accepting itself has not become the “cure”, or we find happiness within the situation.
We will get technical in this. But we should always remember that at the root, the student comes to the teacher, the audience comes to the performance, the person comes to the bodyplay to be deeply and intimately with a flesh-and-blood person or a group of flesh-and-blood people in a way that is usually denied to her in normal polite social life. She comes for touching, holding, rocking, playing, having fun, and healing. This has usually been forgotten under rigid serious rituals, techniques and theories. Again, western medicine is a prime example of this forgetting. But even spiritual methods of healing in our culture have put the rituals and techniques over the playing and fun.
This is why, before we get into the techniques of chero bodyplay, we have to be clear about what we are doing. By doing the apprenticeship, by doing performances, by doing bodyplay, we are calling forth the liminal state of controlled folly. Controlled folly is liminal because it is a combination of the awake reality and dream reality. Rituals make this combination possible.
In the state of controlled folly, the activities of playing and creating fun are intensified and expanded, because rituals take the place of the normal rules, taboos, fears, and inhibitions. This makes it possible to go into the unknown where anything is possible. Ritual is what makes this magical playing safe by giving the playing a living, breathing structure. Playing is only possible within a structure. But when ritual becomes important in itself, rigid and serious, it starts limiting and killing the play and fun. So it is important to remember that the ritual is just the channel of the play and fun.
Playing is a primal state in which things are drained temporarily of their normal meanings. Life goals for a time fade in importance in this state. Tensions and stresses of normal life are safely transmuted into creativity. In play, newness appears. This newness is translated into inspiration, into new ideas, new ways of doing things. The young, both in the higher animals and humans, learn the most through the state of play. Both man and the higher animals use play to transform violent energy into safe acting out. The human mind and civilization were evolved by playing.
In bodyplay, chero is aroused by playing with the body. Fun is created and released by this play into the world directly. Fun is energy focused upon itself, rather than upon some goal. The fun we are talking about in this work is a deep, intense fun that corrects imbalances and induces newness. This kind of fun comes from risk-taking and work. This deep fun feels very different from the surface, light, fast fun of the world of politeness, glamour, romance, and social rules. This difference confuses students.
In bodyplay, this deep fun, which is focused chero, brings about a balance where there was an imbalance; it slowly moves things into balance. People usually think the healer heals the sick, the teacher teaches the student, the performer entertains the audience. This mistaken concept has the chero that heals flowing from a source (the healer) to a passive container (the sick) for the benefit of the receiving party. The truth is the two, by touching and playing, create a complete chero circuit, allowing the chero to flow freely, finding the needed balance in both. When this balance is reached in the two people, the special fun of controlled folly is released into the world, inching the outer world into balance. This world balance is the ultimate purpose of these healing rituals of magical play. This ultimate purpose is usually hidden from awareness by focusing on healing the person.
To understand the nature of balancing, we must understand the true qualities of Yin and Yang. The popular notion about Yin and Yang is they are feminine and masculine with tints of negative and positive. Yin and Yang really are parts of a continuum, called the Tao. Everything has a Tao. When we were talking about the chero breath, inhaling is Yin and the exhaling is Yang. Contractions are Yin; expansions, Yang. The backbrain is Yin with its deep, intuitive, long-range vision; the frontbrain is Yang with its practical knowledge of how to live day by day. Within each person there is the Tao of Yin and Yang. There is a certain point in each personal Tao where there is a balance between Yin and Yang. This point is different in each person. It is rarely at the middle of the Tao. When a person can find and maintain this balance, he has erour, the vulnerable strength. The vulnerability in erour is Yin; the strength is Yang. As a rule of thumb, in our modern western culture, imbalance is usually caused by too much Yang.
Through bodyplay, erour is slowly reached by calling forth chero in all parts of the body by eroplaying. This is true not only in the “receiver”, but also in the “healer”. Moreover, through the energy released through these magical sessions, a collective social erour is gradually created for the general world. This is the ultimate reason for this work. The chero released as focused fun “writes” upon the place in which this magical play is performed. It transforms the place into a magical site. The more play is done in a place, the more chero is stored in the physical site. The more chero that is contained in a physical site, the easier it is to perform more intense play.
Many different primitive tribes over many hundreds of years were attracted to do their magical rituals and drawings in the same hidden, isolated caves. The tribes were attracted by the chero within the caves, chero released through previous magical rituals. The walls of these caves are covered by layers upon layers of magical drawings. This is one of the sources of the power of the Cave of Lila where the teacher and the student meet. This is also why bodyplay needs a special site in which to be performed. This site will grow into a magical place.
Each touch and gesture and movement in bodyplay has its own Tao of Yin and Yang, the qualities of calming and arousal. Each touch has both calming and arousal within it. One of the secrets of bodyplay is finely using these two qualities in the right balance within each firm touch of playing.
For example, if someone has a fever, the touch needs to calm him, soothe him. But under this calming influence, the touch has to arouse his deep breathing and blood. On the other hand, if the person is listless, the touch has to arouse him, to motivate him; but under this arousal, there has to be a calming influence to bring a deep peace.
Such secrets cannot be conveyed through writing. They cannot be learned. They cannot be used in a cause/effect method. Only by bodyplaying, can one absorb these secrets. Thus only by this playing for playing, can these principles be absorbed on an intuitive level.
This is true even on the level of Yin and Yang. In truth, there are seven Taos. These are:
1. Animal-reflex-taboo.
2. Sexual.
3. Emotional.
4. Intellectual-mental.
5. Love.
6. Wisdom.
7. Spiritual connection.
These Taos have usually been connected to different parts of the body.
In some ways, this is useful. But in reality, each has all the others in it. Each touch has all of these qualities in it. What we are working with is the relationship of these seven Taos with their Yin and Yang. To do this work, the student should let go of trying to understand. He should let go into the play of apprenticeship and trust it.
Of course, this is only the introduction to this chapter on bodyplay.
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