Richard Strozzi-Heckler - Holding the Center: Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion

Also by Richard Strozzi-Heckler

The Anatomy of Change:
A Way to Move Through Lifes Transitions

In Search of the Warrior Spirit:
Teaching Awareness Disciplines to the Military

The Leadership Dojo:
Build Your Foundation as an Exemplary Leader

Aikido and the New Warrior (ed.)

Being Human at Work:
Bringing Somatic Intelligence
into Your Professional Life (ed.)

Copyright 1997 by Richard Strozzi-Heckler. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic Books
Berkeley, CA 94712

Cover art and illustrations by Ariana Strozzi-Heckler
Cover design by Paula Morrison

Holding the Center: Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

eISBN: 978-1-58394-412-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Heckler, Richard Strozzi.
Holding the center : sanctuary in a time of confusion / Richard Heckler.
p. cm.
I. Title.
AC8.h44 1997
081dc20

96-20838

v3.1

To Jack and Dodie

T his book would not be what it is without the support, advice, and thinking of my wife, Ariana. I also wish to thank my younger daughters, Wesley and Paloma, for their patience as I disappeared into my office to work on this text. While those who have influenced me are too numerous to mention here I would like to acknowledge my partners Robert Hall at Lomi School, George Leonard and Wendy Palmer at Tamalpais Aikido; Mitsugi Saotome Sensei and Frank Doran Sensei for their aikido teaching; Dr. Fernando Flores and Toby Hecht have recently added to my reflection and thinking; and Kathy Glass for her editorial skills. Finally, I would like to thank my students at Two Rock Aikido, Tamalpais Aikido, Lomi School, and Rancho Strozzi Institute for their commitment to learning while I have explored the material that makes up the bulk of this book.

Parts of this book first appeared in various magazines and periodicals in slightly different forms. The Bear and Reaching were first published in the Lomi School Bulletin; Commanded by Love and Landing were first published in The Whole Earth Review; Holy Curiosity in Somatics; and Given to Love in Full Contact. The Introduction will be published under the title The Body We Are in the anthology Getting in Touch: A Guide to New Body-Centered Therapies published by The Theosophical Publishing House in the Fall, 1997.

W hen I first began working on this book six years ago I didnt know it was a book. I had just moved from my home of ten years into an entirely new landscape and I set out a new direction for my life. I was elated and I was terrified. I wrote as a way of making sense of what I was doing. Soon, my writing, work, family, and community became inseparable. One informed the other. It all seemed plausible, exceedingly ordinary, and something I did for the pure satisfaction of discovery. Quietly, and over time, a faint but visible shape began to emerge from these seemingly different pieces. I saw that my curiosity became a reconnaissance, so to speak, into the inquiry for leading a life of creativity and sanity in a time of accelerated change. This question was sharpened into focus as I began to work intensely with the business and military communities. These environments became a magnifying glass through which I could more rigorously examine the principles of living a somatic life. I learned what I didnt know, and I became more resolute about what was fundamental to human beings, regardless of their station or situation. After another year of projects, blind alleys, and successes, the theme of this book became simplicity itself: practices that embody generative interpretations of the world enhance our capacity to learn and grow. Moreover, these practices occur in our bodies, in language, with others, and in a place of learning. This book is an offer to soak in the mood of what it means to be human in times of confusion.

All virtues are physiological conditions;
Our most sacred convictions
Are judgments of our muscles
Perhaps the entire evolution of the spirit
Is the question of the body;
It is the history of the development of the higher body
That emerges into our sensibility.

Nietzsche

I come from the tradition of the martial arts, meditation, competitive athletics, and body-oriented psychology. In these disciplines I learned fundamental principles that profoundly influence my work today. In martial arts dojos, meditation halls, and track stadiums I experienced that I am my body and that I am more than my body. In my somatic work with individuals and groups I learned that we are a living process shaped by experience, and this, in turn, shapes our experience. Slowly I began to understand that the body lives only in the distinctions of language. At the same time the directness and simplicity of these disciplines revealed to me an energetic field that exists before language, out of which emotions, action, and perception are organized into the form we call body. We are an energetic process that is awakening, becoming, containing, undoing, and reawakening. Energy, body, and language are intimately linked, and as a unity they become the cause of our life. The body we are is the life we live.

We are connected to others and the world through this energetic process. Pulsations, vibrations, streamings, expansions, and contractions of our bodily life build boundaries, express emotions, shape attitudes, forward new relationships, and end others. Living from this field of energy generates community and social responsibility. Life is formed from life, and there are cycles of beginnings, endings, and in-betweens. We can learn to organize this energy to build an identity, form communities, and make alliances to take care of what matters to us. Theres also a time to surrender to this vast, resonating field of excitation and let it organize us. This teaches us to trust the territory beyond the self and to dissolve into the intelligence that reaches beyond the dominion of the personal I. This is transcendent membership in the universal community of space, wisdom, and being. This energy simultaneously seeks balance and disruption, homeostasis and growth, becoming and dying. To live in the center of this contradiction is how we continually form, contain, release, and re-form the body we are.

Through these disciplines I also discovered that the body we are goes beyond the physical form. While we are in a living process of becoming different selves and different bodies, there is a parallel process in an entirely different domain. The first time I became aware of this phenomenon was when I was running for the United States team in the pre-Olympic meet in Mexico City in 1967. In one particular race I suddenly found myself above the track watching myself and the other competitors in the 200-meter dash. I was both running and watching myself run. A mantle of calm had settled over me, and my concerns about competing and winning had completely vanished. While I was seemingly powerless to affect anything, I was powerfully joined to everything by a pulsating, unified field. A few steps past the finish line I re-entered my track body. I was both perplexed and refreshed. I could see by the way the judges and other competitors treated me they were oblivious to my experience. This event initiated me into an inquiry about expanded states of awareness that continues to this day.