Emotive reversibility

Moshe Feldenkrais came up with this term “reversability” to denote a well structured neurological adaptation to gravity, our constant enemy and friend.  It connotes a lack of fixity and groundedness such that whatever stimulus happens to come down the path, the system–you–can react in an optimized way.  It implies a lack of nervous attention on any one given point of focus, a lack of spasmocity (I think I invented that word just now: a lack of spasms, lack of contractions and releases in unchosen ways, which I think most of us do regularly without seeing it), and the ability to react as a wholistic Gestalt. 

Emotionally, there are many things to be upset about right now.  Depending on your politics, you are upset at Obama, or upset at the Republicans.  You can worry about cosmetic testing on animals, the euthanization of animals at animal shelters, the meat industry, Islamists or peaceniks, our war in Iraq, or the plight of our veterans.  You can worry about global warming, pollution, dolpins, baby seals, or the economy.  You get the idea.

I have long played a game with my kids, the idea for which I got from the movie “What about Bob?”.  When they start worrying about things, we play a substitution game.  Say they are worried about giving a speech in class.  I say “that’s nothing: what if an angry bear comes into the school and chases you”.  Their response is supposed to be something like: “What if it was space aliens with stinky feet”.  Then: what about a meteor strike?  What about a tree falling on the school?  What if a tree falls and the bear is ON it?  What about an attack of midgets?  Maybe there is a bee’s nest in the ceiling.  What if the Russians are hiding in the closet?  Etc.

What I have found is that worry is more or less an emotional spasm, a knot that should come untied with motion, but that motion is lacking.  You don’t set it down and move on.  You nurture it (that is in  part what my hell comment was about, but it was deeper than that).

By creating a whole list of things to worry about, you gradually overload it, and like a spring it seems to reset itself.  That doesn’t make the worry go away fully–and I teach them that a bit of worry is a good thing, because I think it is–but it takes away the spasmodic element of it.

I would like to suggest here that this could be combined with perceptual reversibility.  Pick something you are worried about, say the upcoming election.  Pick the OPPOSING side and worry from their perspective.  Say you are sane and worried about Obama being reelected.  Put yourself imaginatively in the position of an Obama supporter, and worry about Romney getting elected, and oh my god he wants to put all women back in the kitchen, pregnant, and take our coffee away.  He wants the poor to starve, and wars to be waged, and teachers to go unpaid, highways not to be built, the old to live on dogfood, and WHITE MEN to rule the world.  He’s mean, mean, mean, and Ryan is no better.  Oh my god, I better donate to the DNC and his campaign.

Then do it from the perspective of a Gary Johnson supporter, who hates both candidates.  Then do it from the perspective of an illegal alien, who is only worried about staying here and staying working.

Then if you like, you can place yourself in Mexico, worried to death about being decapitated in some drug war.  You can place yourself in Africa, cover yourself with flies and dust, and calloused, bare feet, and make yourself hungry and sick.

I think 20 minutes of this should be enough to liberate most anyone from most worries.