About Totality Therapy

This attempt to describe Totality Therapy in a linear and rational way is inspired by my experience with my students, most of whom are professionals whose work environment requires them to think in a linear, directed fashion. In practice, however, you will experience that Totality Therapy feels more like poetry than like science. So, ponder these words as you would the articulation of a scientific experiment – an attempt to express what really exists beyond the realm of the cognitive.

Objective 1: Lifting taboos and suppressions

 

The first step is to face your deepest fears. For most people, taboos fall in this category – doing what the culture you grew up in forbids you to contemplate. In Jungian terms, this step is about individuation – daring to find yourself beyond what your environment, your culture and your family have raised you to believe in and subscribe to. Without facing the fear of rejection by the culture, an individual stays trapped in the collective illusions that his/her culture treasures.

In this category also belong all experiences that a person has ever had that have been suppressed, denied or not fully allowed. When the body experiences something traumatic but is not willing to feel the full ripples of the experience, the memory of the experience goes into the body’s cellular structure. From there it forms the person’s unconscious. Fears that have been suppressed will govern a person’s life and actions in every aspect of their expression. Mostly we are not aware of these. They may be as apparently insignificant as the fear that arose for an infant the first time he was denied his mother’s milk.

Methods

Transgressing sexual boundaries

The sexual is an area that is richly laden with taboos for most people. What the taboos are, vary from person to person. Often there are elements involved in the format of a session that are in themselves a breaking of a person’s taboos. Here are examples:

• For a couple, having a third person present while engaging their sexual relationship in any way, even if just through discussion.
  
  
• Taking the liberty to do something as individuals and not as a couple.
  
  
• Being naked in front of a stranger.
  
  
• Being touched by a stranger.
  

The principle that we work with here is that boundaries maintain ossified thought structures. The facilitator always guides the clients across their own boundaries with extreme awareness. Awareness is what we have instead of boundaries. Inflexible resistant boundaries are replaced by live, responsive awareness.

 

Touching cellular memories

As has been explained, experiences that have been suppressed stay in the body as cellular memories. What that means is that your cells remember what you are holding on to. When the facilitator touches with awareness places where memory is held, she can start to bring movement into what has become stagnant – open an inner conversation in the body. This can result in a radical or a slow release of energy and presence. As a result a person who has always found himself trapped in certain patterns of response may find that those patterns no longer feature in his life.

This objective of the work is facing your fears. This includes feeling emotions that have been suppressed and stepping through familiar control mechanisms into the unknown.

 

Objective 2: Embracing fantasies and desires

 

This is the other side of the coin: Face your fears, but also face your desires. As fears that are held in the unconscious can govern a person’s life, so can unacknowledged, repressed desires and fantasies. Here we work with the dictum that Eros leads to Gnosis. By paying attention to what you desires and fantasies are, you can integrate unconscious or hidden aspects of your being.

Here is an example from my life. For many years, my eroticism led me to men who were Dionysian in their expression – gregariously sharing their sexuality with many nymphs, and indulging in the pleasures of life. In contrast, I saw myself as Apollonian – stern, disciplined and structured in the way I lived my life. It was only when I came to fully accept – and live – my own Dionysian nature – that the possibility of working with sexuality as a tool for consciousness started to open up to me.

Methods

Articulating fantasies and desires

Most people harbour desires and fantasies that they hide from the world. Expressing and exploring these desires with a facilitator that has no judgement can be a very powerful act in itself. It requires the owning of what you desire. It takes having the courage to say what you fantasise about. The articulating of fantasies and desires can happen through:

• Dialoguing about sexual histories and erotic memories.
  
  
• Writing down dreams and fantasies.
  
  
• Looking at websites, DVDs etc that a person finds arousing.
  
  

Experiencing what has been desired.

Experiencing what has been secretly desired can paradoxically require of a person to face their biggest fears. By accepting your desires and letting yourself feel how they touch you in your body, you make it possible for yourself not be ruled by them unconsciously any more. No matter how much mind control you have, your desires will influence your destiny, especially if they are unconscious. The embodiment of desires can happen through:

• Enactment, in the session or in a scenario suggested to you in the session.
  
  
• Saying yes to your fantasies. Sometimes it is enough to just let yourself have a fantasy, and to stop judging it.
  
  
• Catalytic touch. The experiencing of what has been desired can sometimes happen with full effect through a symbolic gesture or a carefully placed touch.

 

Objective 3: Integrating polarities

 

Personal identity – also known as ego – develops around polarities. Polarities split experience into opposites – what is desired and what is feared, what attracts us and what we are repulsed by, what we see as good and what as evil. These polarities are mostly unconscious in us, and as with fears and desires, they govern and direct our lives. Totality Therapy aims to integrate polarities – so that we can live in all the colours of the rainbow, and not just in black and white. This dimension of Totality Therapy focuses strongly on bringing awareness to mind patterns that get lodged in the body and emotions.

Methods

Processing polarities

To get total with life, it is essential that you find methods to notice your unconscious beliefs and to integrate the polarities that keep you split. Traditional mind training gets us to focus our mind’s intent on what we want. The limitation of this technique is that it can ultimately only work half the time, since everything in time turns into its opposite. This is a universal law. Check it out for yourself. Focus all your intention on being happy, and notice what percentage of the time in the next month you end up feeling happy, and what percentage unhappy. A Totality Therapist teaches you ways to identify the polarities that structure your life, to unpack them and to integrate the split parts. The result is an astonishing increase in clarity and effectiveness in the world.

Developing a witness

The Witness is a name that has been given to a quality that we can develop to observe a scenario rather than to get identified with it. Many people have a witness that takes them out of the situation, cuts them off the actual experience. So for instance, some people can distance themselves from the act of lovemaking if it has been traumatic for them at any stage. Totality therapy is about being fully present, in your body, in the experience, while observing what is happening to you. The therapist facilitates experiences for you that cause a deep immersion in the moment. While you are in the moment, she then helps you to become aware of what you are experiencing – to become a true witness to the totality of the experience.

 

Objective 4: Expanding heart capacity

 

The capacity of our hearts to sense and to experience has a fundamental impact on our effectiveness in the world, and on our ability to live with totality. A heart that has not been consciously practiced will close down its receptivity and responsiveness whenever it experiences something that is interpreted as negative. That means that our hearts are closed at least half the time. We want to get to a place where we live with hearts open all the time.

Methods

Experiencing and venting emotions

The most powerful way to develop the heart’s capacity is to feel. Life brings us opportunities to feel those emotions that usually close the heart. These include anger, jealousy, irritation, fear and sadness. They are triggered by the fear of rejection, abandonment, betrayal and shame, to name but a few. Our instinct is to suppress any such feelings. Totality Therapy will encourage you to feel whatever is there to be felt. The sessions or workshops themselves are likely to evoke feelings, or to solicit situations in your life that may evoke feelings. To practise Totality Therapy, you need to be tough and courageous enough to say yes to the feelings, and feel them. There is a range of techniques that we use to help you get through the feelings. Every time you let yourself feel, you start to clear the backlog of old emotions that have not been felt. Eventually, their patterning dissipates from your life, and they no longer influence your direction. The result is of course a marked expansion of your heart’s capacity.

Opening the heart

Feedback from many clients tells me that one of the most powerful techniques we use is that of unconditional love, embodied. When your body gets touched by love that is just in pure presence, without judgement or expectations, it recognises a possibility, and starts to respond in unison with what it receives.

 

Objective 5: Developing presence in the body

 

Most people are not really present in their bodies. We tend to think of our bodies as functional tools that need to get us through life, and that cause delays if they don’t work well. We are hardly aware of our breathing, let alone the subtle movements and messages inside the body. If we are to occupy our lives fully, it is essential that we become aware of our bodies. The body is a source of power and presence that will always keep surprising you.

Methods

Breath awareness

From the first encounter, I will help you to become aware of your breathing. The first step is awareness of your breathing, the next is deepening your breathing through the torso. From here, it becomes possible to intensify and relax breathing to speed up or slow down your experiencing. This control is essential in conscious lovemaking, and adds significantly to your energy levels in life.

Sensory awareness

If the body has been handled roughly or without awareness, it will need to re-learn sensation. Our ability to perceive with the senses is a primary mode through which we process our experience. Sexuality is an area where it becomes obvious that the refining of our ability to feel, smell, see, hear, deepens our enjoyment of the moment, and makes us wonderful lovers of life.

Nervous system repatterning

The fast pace at which many professionals live cause us to be in the fight and flight mode of being most of the time. Constant alertness activates the sympathetic nervous system. If the sympathetic nervous system becomes over active, we start to feel that we have to control everything, make everything happen, and focus our will all the time. This of course means that you can never relax. Apart from resulting in exhaustion, this pattern also severely inhibits the flow of our sexuality. Totality Therapy reactivates the functioning of your parasympathetic nervous system – the response system that gets you to relax, respond, open and enjoy. This happens mostly through touch and movement in which the client plays a relatively passive, receptive role.

 

Objective 6: Male-female integration

 

In our collective psyches the dream of finding the soulmate moves strongly - that 'other' who will meet and fulfil me completely. And, as my teacher Rahasya says: there is a real soulmate for each one of us. But that person is inside. Inside ourselves we are both masculine and feminine. The lovers and loved ones that cross our paths are our mirrors for where we are in the inner relationship between male and female. They can also be a rich fulfillment - and embodiment - of our inner soulmate.

Getting to know the 'other' - the opposite gender - in yourself is not always so easy because it is your unconscious aspect. At the same time, many of us are living in our opposite gender much of the time. An example is professional women who live in a male dominated world, and have adopted a male way of being as their dominant persona. Understanding the relationship between your inner masculine and feminine - getting to hear their voices, see the positions they take, and how the relationship between them happens - can be invaluable for understanding your external relationships. In any relationship with another person, there are really four people present - your masculine and feminine, and the masculine and feminine of your partner. If you know what to look for, you may at times spot your masculine arm wrestling in an argument with the masculine of your partner. Or a man may notice how his feminine is crumbling under the power exerted by his lover's masculine. These principles apply equally, whether you are in a same sex or opposite sex relationship.

Methods

Identifying the inner relationship

Through Gestalt role play and reflection on happenings in your life, you learn to identify your masculine and feminine aspects – their voices, positions, and their relationship with each other. Once you are aware of these two aspects of yourself, you can start to work with them consciously in your daily life. This brings smoother functioning and more enjoyment in many areas of life.

Clearing external relationships

Our partnerships and significant relationships serve as mirrors of our inner dynamics. What is unconscious in us, we tend to project on to our partners. That is, we will see in our partners what we do not want to see in ourselves. Clearing relationships in Totality Therapy requires pulling back your projections, owning the fullness of who you are, and learning not to compromise.

 

Objective 7: Presence in every moment

 

Ultimately, Totality means being fully present in every moment. This is a rare experience for most people. When you get immersed in the moment, time comes to a standstill. Everything becomes luminous. Your heart opens. You feel everything intensely. Your identity becomes infinitely pliable and responsive. You can live without limits.

Methods

Meditation

Meditation is conscious practise which develops your ability to stay present. In Totality Therapy, you will be taught active and passive meditations. Active meditation involves movement, breath work and sound. Examples are Chi Kung, an ancient oriental art that strengthens the organs, and Osho's dynamic meditations. Passive meditations are done sitting, standing or lying, and are guided with a specific focus such as the opening of the heart, or the centring of awareness.

Sexual presence

Tantric masters have realised a long time ago that our sexuality can be a powerful vehicle for getting us totally present in the moment. As you develop mastery over Tantric sexual techniques, sexual energy starts to run up the spine, filling the whole body with a state of bliss. Ordinary sexual engagement mostly takes the form of contraction and tensing with the aim of reaching ejaculatory orgasm. Tantric sex is an opening, a relaxation, and at the same time a conscious directing of the flow of sexual energy. This blissful immersion in the moment has a profound effect on the rest of your life.

Measuring your success

 

The following are measurements that you can use to test your progress with Totality Therapy. You are measuring your own progress here, there is no external authority. Determine for yourself the scale and where you are currently positioned on it. As you go along, you may find that the scale changes. The indicators I suggest are the following:

• An ability to stay present in any sexual encounter, totally open and willing for any level of sensation that passes through – without throwing off your sexual energy and depleting it.
  
  
• An ability to stay present in every moment of the day without using self-imposed strategies to hide from yourself or your own experience in any way
  
  
• A growing capacity to love
  
  
• Integration between your masculine and feminine aspects
  
  
• Significantly increased effectiveness in all areas of your life
  
  
• A creative, responsive rather than a rigid, defended relationship to your sense of who you are.

 

In conclusion

This writing has been an attempt to articulate for you the aims and objectives of Totality Therapy. In reading through them, it will have become evident to you that these objectives cannot be reached in a linear programme or plan of action. There is a dynamic interaction in Totality Therapy between what happens in a contact session and what happens in your life. I work with who you are at the time you meet me. Life therefore determines the day’s curriculum. You may come for one session, and you may come every week for a year. In my experience, some people find a way of life in this approach to Totality, and therefore choose to keep connected to this field on the longer term, attending maybe a workshop or retreat here and there, and keeping in contact always. Our approach is more of a friendliness than a formalised client-teacher relationship.