SKAN-bodywork takes
its inspiration from the vegeto- and orgone-therapy of
Wilhelm Reich. The pioneer and founder of SKAN was the
American psychologist and bodyworker Michael Smith,
who was born in 1937 and came to Western Europe in
1979. In ten restless years he helped many people to
get back in touch with their living core and
instructed some of them in this way of healing. Smith
earned a reputation as a brilliant bodyworker; his
amazingly loving radicalism was legendary. After his
death in 1989, he remained an inextinguishable memory
in many people's hearts. His teacher Al Bauman
(1918-1998) was in therapy with Wilhelm Reich himself
and was a close friend of Simeon Tropp, one of the
first bodyworkers trained by Reich. Bauman took care,
like few others, to preserve the straight, effective
nature of "classical" vegeto-therapeutical bodywork.
In the 1990s SKAN became known in Germany, Austria,
and Switzerland, especially through the work of Petra
Mathes and Loil Neidhöfer. The basis of
SKAN-bodywork is the ability to be in relationship; it
works against manifold patterns of
relationship-avoidance, of physical, mental or
emotional origin. As opposed to, for example, the
gestalt-therapeutical contact or the
hypno-therapeutical rapport, bodywork defines
"relationship" energetically: as the ability of
vegetative identification, as the ability to connect
oneself energetically with other human beings and with
living nature; as the ability to meet the world with
the authenticity of one's own living core, whether in
rage or in affection. Thus, we find our starting point
in relationship, not in method or technique. The
numerous effective methods of intervention at our
disposal are useful only within the context of
relationship. From a technical
perspective it's largely a matter of the "classical"
instruments of vegeto-therapy. We guide our clients
once again to experience their breath as a healing,
purifying and vitalizing power, to arrive at a
permanently deepened, rhythmic breathing.
Simultaneously, different interventions can be
applied, such as massage or touch; work with voice,
expression, and movement; work with the energy fields;
and so forth. This technical repertoire is
inexhaustible; it is not mechanically applied but
arises anew based on each particular situation.
In this practice we
follow principally the Reichian teaching of
successively disarming the seven segments of the body,
from head to pelvis. Here the organism in a healthy
state is seen as an indivisible, pulsating whole ---
its characteristic pulsating movement accompanies its
breathing (orgasm-reflex).When this movement is
hindered, disconnected or blocked in one or several
regions of the body, our job is, first of all, to
discover the specific physical and psychological
nature of the blockage; to help the client become
aware that this blockage is his or her own ongoing
activity; to dissolve the restrictions and, thus, to
restore the holistic cooperative functioning of the
different body segments. In the course of this
process of segmentary disarmament, two essential
tracks of energy are reopened. The natural body
energies of the "frontal personality" flow down the
front from the head to the pelvis, gradually
re-energizing the whole body --- in the case of a
satisfactory therapeutic progress, the head becomes
free from compulsive thinking, chest and heart open up
again, the midriff is freed from its chronic "watch
out!"- position, the pelvis becomes more elastic, and,
in the ideal case, the sexual-genital function is
restored to full orgastic potency. The second, important
track of energy, we pay special attention to in
SKAN-bodywork, is the "radiating" --- the permanent,
pulsating expansion of energy from the core to the
periphery and to the borders of one's own field of
energy, the "aura". Work with radiating energy aims
directly at the whole organism's ability to express
itself and to make contact, while work with the
frontal energies creates the required biological basis
for this ability, namely regained mobility of the body
and the feeling of streaming
(body-consciousness). Again and again we
learn the same thing: many people have no structure of
experience for using the enormous amounts of energy
that are set free during the horizontal work. It's not
at all the case that disarmament leads automatically
and spontaneously to a more creative life. It requires
practice and discipline to apply this released energy
in a way which leads to a more satisfactory way of
living and experiencing. SKAN offers an effective
instrument for this bridging from the therapeutic
situation to everyday life: Streaming Theater, a form
of theater-work Al Bauman developed in the tradition
of great acting teachers like Konstantin Stanislawski
and Michael Tschechov. Streaming Theater is a
vertical form of bodywork; a synthesis of Reichian
bodywork and acting training; everyone can benefit
from it in the theatre of his or her own life.
Streaming Theater, with its manifold improvisations of
movement, expression, and voice, gives one the ability
to distinguish mechanical, "false" patterns of armored
movement from the "true" impulses of expression and
movement which originate from one's core, to build
spaces out of these "true" impulses and, eventually,
to bring the whole body permanently into action as an
instrument of one's own streaming: devoting oneself to
pulsatory movements of one's body and being with this
inside the world. Bodywork and Streaming
Theatre complete each other and can be done in
parallel. Often, however, extended work on dissolving
the body's armor is required before the vertical work
can be most effective. It remains to be said,
that as our experience in this work progresses, a
paradox develops: In the final analysis we don't
actually know what we are doing. We can make detailed
statements on the structures of the armor, the paths
of energy, possibilities of intervention, and so on.
But the change, the transformation, the revolutionary
effect remains a mystery; we don't know concretely
what ultimately causes it. Every work, every session,
is in an exiting way always new and challenging. It's
part of the nature of this wonderful work, that it
forces us again and again to remain innocent and - in
the best sense - naïve. Though we don't know
what we are doing, over time we can develop a skill to
let ourselves into the mystery: not needing to know,
not needing to understand --- yet resonating,
sympathizing, staying sensately in motion; and out of
this motion, letting our own will occur. Then many
things are possible. In the beginning of
this text it was mentioned that SKAN was inspired by
the body-therapy of Wilhelm Reich; in the end it must
be made clear that, in the meantime, some differences
from Reich's conception have emerged. These are
outlined briefly as follows: The defined therapeutic
goal in Reich's model is the concept of the grown-up,
sociable, orgastically potent individual. This is
represented by the term "genitality" or "genital
character". "Genitality" is defined by Reich not only
as the goal of therapy but also as the individual
being's highest evolutionary potential. The basic energetic
concept of this implicit theory of personality
describes the energy-economy and the energetic
movement of the "frontal personality": the model of
natural frontal body-energies which flow downward into
the world. The theoretical framework for this is
Reich's formula of tension and charge, with the
criterion of orgastic potency: the ability to reach a
homeostatic compensation of tension through full
orgastic genital discharge. Not mentioned in
Reich's concept are the ascending natural
body-energies at the back. If these natural
body-energies are not endlessly discharged downward,
but rather concentrated upward, they nourish and
vitalize the whole organism, create the energetic
basis for spiritual growth, and enable an intensity of
sexual experience which transcends the restrictions of
the conventional sexuality described in Reich's model
of orgasm. Such questions have
hardly any practical meaning in the beginning of a
therapy. But in the end, the premises a therapeutic
treatment follows are decisive for the therapy.
Depending on the answers to the following questions,
the body-therapist will act in a specific way: Is
Reich's formula of tension and charge universally
valid? Is there, in fact, something like "surplus
energy" in the organism? Do we need a discharge-model
or a transformation-model of the natural
body-energies? Can Reich's formula of tension and
charge be widened in the sense of an inner-organismic,
"entropical" discharge of the ascending natural
body-energies? Again, like in Reich's
model, the crucial point is the way of dealing with
sexual energy. The attainment of genitality remains
the necessary criterion of a successfully finished
body-therapy. But this is not the end of the road for
individual human development. The thrust of sexual
energy can - also in the context of therapy - be led
to the inside and, thus, influence the individual's
health, vitality, zest for living, and ability to make
contact in a positive way inside the world. Genital
discharge is just one of several possibilities (and
only under certain conditions) for regenerative
dealing with sexual energy. This has been known for
millenia and has found its systematisation and
methodology, for instance, in Taoist and Tantric
teachings. If the liberating of
genital sexuality is to remain the predominant
framework in bodywork, then we will have to work out
in the future a way to bring together Reich's
outstanding contemporary contribution - the segmentary
process of disarmament and the restoring of orgastic
potency - with these historically available, mature
legacies of human sexuality. [Translation: Kai
Lorentzen] copyright © 1998 by endless
sky publications, HAMBURG
[SKAN -"That which
moves" in the language of the
Lakota people, a tribe of Native
Americans]