The second extract from Paul Linden’s new book. I love this piece on anger kindness and strength.
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Chapter 22 – VIOLENCE
In my practice as a somatic educator, I often have clients who are working on issues around anger and violence. In working with these people, I usually start with Being In Movement® body awareness training and end with Aikido practice. About ten years ago, I taught a course in a lockup facility for violent adolescents. Many of them were bigger and stronger than I. I’ll always remember one particularly big, tough kid. After doing some Aikido, he looked at me with great puzzlement and asked, “How come you can move us and we can’t move you?” And my reply was very simple: “That’s because you are big and young and strong and I’m little and old and weak!” What I was doing with the Aikido was undermining his and our culture’s understanding of what strength is.
Underlying anger and violence is usually a belief that safety depends on being strong, and part of that is the idea that strength is tough and hard. Rather than preach at people, I use physical experiments to test this “philosophical” belief system.
KINDNESS AND STRENGTH:
Stand in a deep, strong stance, and resist when your partner pushes on your shoulders. People generally don’t find this difficult, though sometimes they have to be coached on how to focus their posture to deliver efficient resistance. Then say something angry, mean or insulting to your partner. What happens? Then try a second experiment. Stand in the same stance and say something kind while you resist your partner’s push. What happens? When they say something unkind, most people immediately lose stability. When I ask people why that happened, they
often guess that when they started talking they lost focus. To test this hypothesis, I have them stand in the same stance and talk about pizza, and, much to their surprise, they do not lose stability. I then explain to them that the body does not function well in states of unkindness or hatred. The same experiment can be carried out with manipulative or jealous or arrogant statements. Basically, any psychological or spiritual negativity results in weakening of the body.
People generally experience that kind or generous statements increase their stability and their ability to resist strongly. These movement experiments undermine people’s notions that anger and opposition are the sources of strength, and they experience that in fact, kindness promotes physical strength. In talking about these two experiments, I usually say that you can be angry or you can be strong, but you can’t be both.
often guess that when they started talking they lost focus. To test this hypothesis, I have them stand in the same stance and talk about pizza, and, much to their surprise, they do not lose stability. I then explain to them that the body does not function well in states of unkindness or hatred. The same experiment can be carried out with manipulative or jealous or arrogant statements. Basically, any psychological or spiritual negativity results in weakening of the body.
People generally experience that kind or generous statements increase their stability and their ability to resist strongly. These movement experiments undermine people’s notions that anger and opposition are the sources of strength, and they experience that in fact, kindness promotes physical strength. In talking about these two experiments, I usually say that you can be angry or you can be strong, but you can’t be both.
EYEBROW POWER:
There is another experiment that I often use alongside this anger/kindness exercise. Stand in the same deep, strong stance as before, and have your partner push on your shoulders as before. Then lift your eyebrows. What happens? Most people fall back immediately. I explain that the reason is that the fear/startle response is a movement pattern which includes lifting the eye brows and also retreating—and firing off any piece of the pattern evokes the whole pattern. I
make the point that they aren’t afraid of anything at the moment, but fear is a “mechanical”
process that they can switch on physically. And by going back to kindness, they can switch fear off.
make the point that they aren’t afraid of anything at the moment, but fear is a “mechanical”
process that they can switch on physically. And by going back to kindness, they can switch fear off.
The point of these experiments is that fear and anger are physiological actions— and they can be replaced by the physiologically incompatible action of compassionate power. In body work sessions, I can lead clients step-by-step into this awareness. What will anchor the awareness in their daily life functioning is an experience of the effectiveness of dealing with violence through kindness and nonviolence. And that is Aikido.
The movements of Aikido are soft, circular, gentle, and powerful. Giving people an experience of that anchors the new awareness in their bodies, which enables them to use gentle power in place of violence in their daily lives. Not long ago, I did one class for a group of incarcerated juvenile sex offenders, and I used these and other similar body awareness exercises. The participants were especially struck by the experience of gentle power in Aikido. I was told by their therapist that for weeks afterwards in therapy, when one of them started to get tough and hard, the others would say “Remember that Paul showed you that power was soft.” In this violence-filled world, Aikido’s greatest contribution may be outside the martial art studio, in changing people’s beliefs about what power is and about how to live non-violently.