Discharge position

Power – What Power???

During a yoga session with a buddy this morning we were talking about a man’s pelvis – I was thinking about why men are so afraid of the power in their pelvis. And it IS powerful. Often I find men hold their pelvis in a discharge position so that the pelvic bowl cannot hold all of their fierce, passionate and intense emotions – they merely leak out if expressed at all, or reified in the body.

Holding the pelvis in a charge position, creating a curve in the lower back, means that we are coming from a more grounded place and are much more able to lead with our hearts and not our heads. It is very difficult to do both leading with a charged pelvis and your head. I brought up the fact that since the 80’s or even before that, men are portrayed in the media as buffoons and incompetents – very powerless beings that need the women in their lives to set them straight. Try watching TV for an hour and really look at the commercials – I really detest the way men are represented AND it is not the type of man I want to become. In this culture we get our role models from the media (yes, it is sad!!!) and the message they are sending us is that men are weak. NO NO NO – I will have none of it. We are a growing movement of men that are creating change one body at a time, empowering men to take charge of their bodies to become self-referent and NOT extero-referent (in other words, not defined by the external world).

The Holder part Deux

If you’ve ever watched how a baby breathes, it is effortless. The energy in the pelvis informs the rest of the body and the movement is spontaneous, undulating on an organismic level. Reich’s theory of his Pulsation Model describes just this after observing all matter of beings from a single celled organism to animals to man. All creatures/systems undulate from the micro to the macro level. Each morning we brush and wash and shower and clean up ourselves, we fuck and eat and shit all in rhythms. We move in and out of contact, even out emotions fluctuate a thousand times per day. Reich looked at our life force exploding outward from us in our orgasm – as I write this I’m reminded of the Big Bang theory, the beginning of the universe as we know it. I’d like to think that our orgasm is a micro level Big Bang, a part of the Pulsation Model in harmony with the universe.

I’m not saying that one position is better than the rest – IT IS THE CHOICE THAT IS IMPORTANT!!! When we become locked in our pelvis, dropped down posteriorly like a dog hiding it’s tail between its legs, we are in the discharge position and are unable to hold an energetic charge in our bodies – consequently we lose our choice in the world as to how we move in it. A man cannot hold these sexual feelings when his pelvis is in this position so he either has to act on them or squelch them, cutting him off from his very essence, his aliveness.

Ah, and our bodies, that wonderfully ingenious collection of breath and bone accommodates because that is what it does most efficiently, it allows. It builds musculature to support our rigid posture (not good).

Conversely, if our belly is soft and our pelvis tucked into a forward rotation, we can hold our charge. Our sexual feelings (not genital stimulation) are held here in the belly along with our feelings of sadness and power in the world. Scary, huh? Nah, it’s all good.