Cl: Well I volunteer to be first on, to work.

Dick: OK take a chair.

Cl: What I'd like to kind of follow is that thing I was talking about earlier about the whole idea of holding back. And as I've said, that seems real clear that I've done a lot of that. One of the things that makes sense, one of the things I think of when I've been in therapy before, I often bring up, is one of the things I did as a kid that really is one of those images. I was six or seven, my brother was about four. We were out weeding the garden, using hoes and stuff. I don't know what he did that pissed me off so much, but I whacked him on top of the head with the hoe. Put a pretty good gash up there. I remember running him up to the house saying, "Look at him he's got a fountain." And I took off...headed for the hills. I tried to stay away for at least the rest of the day. I remember coming back, but I don't quite remember the punishment I got then, but it seemed like from that point on I made the choice to hold back. I remember that same brother again pissed me off and I threw a rock at him and caught him right in the top of the head.

Dick: So you didn't hold off there either.

Cl: No, 1 didn't.

Dick: You were lucky.

Cl: I have been. But I think, you know, I've noticed that whenever I throw things, if I'm pissed off, and I know what I'm throwing at, I can hit almost 90% of the time. I don't know why that seems significant, but it does, to talk about it.

Dick: That experience with the hoe seems significant to me.

Cl: Yeah, yeah. Well it's something I'll always remember. It's one of those things that seemed to instill in me a fear of anger. A fear of power, really, and of my anger and my ability to be real.

Dick: Well let's see what happens if you close your eyes and go back to that, how old were you in that hoe incident? Were you five or six?

Cl: I think I was maybe seven.

Dick: Your brother was what?

Cl: About four.

Dick: And your parents had set you to work hoeing the garden?

Cl: Yes.

Dick: You started out young, didn't you.

Cl: Yeah, yeah.

Dick: You started out very young earning every good thing you got. Yeah. If you don't hoe the garden you won't have radishes, all that stuff. OK. Let yourself drift back a little bit. At first just let yourself get in touch with your breathing, and make it your decision, make it your intention that you are going to turn this over, pretty much to your unconscious, that you're not going to try to figure anything out, you're just going to turn it over to your unconscious and let it be. So let that happen and take your time. You can make an image if you want to in which you see yourself taking the whole problem of your holding back, the whole issue you've got and maybe putting it in a box or basket and handing it over to your unconscious. You can say, here, I turn this over to you for clarification, for understanding, and for rectification, whatever needs to be rectified or changed. And just let go of it with your conscious mind so that you not longer experience that your conscious mind wants to do anything and is responsible. And simply let yourself relax. Notice your breathing. Let the relaxation move through your body. Let your hands and legs relax. Let your jaw relax. Let your face relax, your shoulders relax. Just let yourself breathe the way you breathe in. Just notice the breathing. Just breathing very naturally.

And what I'd like you to do now, N is to allow yourself to drift back to being around seven years old, whatever you were and be in that garden hoeing, but not at the point where you struck your brother. Earlier than that. See if you can in your images see yourself even before you went in and picked up the hoe. Did an adult take you down there and set you to the task? Or did they just send you there? How did you get into the garden. See what kind of day it is. I presume it's not raining or you wouldn't be there. So let yourself see the sky and things are green, things are growing, the weeds are growing for one thing. See that happening. And see that you're working in the garden and you can be working for quite a while without any thought of annoyance by anything your brother is doing. You're simply working. Feel the sun. Let yourself be aware of what part of the garden you are in and where your brother is. Can you remember how it felt to feel the hoe in your hands? Must have been little hands then, not as big as they are now. I don't know if you wore gloves or not. Possibly not. Feel the hard handle of the hoe. It's round and it's made out of hardwood, maybe hickory. Often made out of hickory wood, but they could be something else. And feel the rhythm of the work. You go chop, chop. Have to be careful not to go too far to the side or you'll chop up what was planted and you won't have any radishes or peas either. So you have to be careful where you're hoeing, you can't just do it blindly. You want to chop up the weeds and you want to chop up the surface of the ground so that you're cultivating it and let the air in, water can get, the moisture can get in more freely. It's not just chopping anything. Tell me what you're seeing, what you're experiencing.

Cl: Um, I'm in the garden by the potatoes and I'm hoeing. It's one of those spring days that's slightly cloudy but then the sun is coming through.

Dick: The sun is penetrating the cloud cover.

Cl: Umhum. It has this humid feeling like it could rain at any time. It's quite warm. I'm barefoot, I believe, the ground is very warm. I feel the warm ground. It's just...seems stuff has been planted already and it's just some potatoes that are up. Spinach or peas which is planted and my brother is off to the side of me. I feel like I'm looking at myself and he's to the left of me.

Dick: He is to the left of you. OK

Cl: I see myself. I feel angry. I feel like things have not been going my way.

Dick: So you're just angry and sort of in general.

Cl: It seems like it. It seems like, I don't think the word is forced into the garden, but I was --

Dick: Ordered, pushed.

Cl: It feels just like it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do. It feels like what I wanted to do was, I wanted to be in the sandbox playing and that I was supposed to come down there and do this and my brother was just down there, kind of wanting to tag along and be where I was and it just didn't sit, it pissed me off. I wanted to kind of do this on my own.

Dick: Your brother was not ordered to hoe the garden?

Cl: Ah, it doesn't seem like it.

Dick: You were, and he wanted to tag along.

Cl: Yeah, Yeah. He wanted to be in there also.

Dick: So you're feeling out of sorts and used the only real target around.

Cl: Yeah. And it also feels like to be angry is just not OK, in my family situation. It just feels like your know, to be pissed off was wrong. I feel real guilty too, about being angry. It just doesn't feel that's full of all kinds of .... it's kind of emotionally, the way I look is not kind of hoeing easily, I'm like I'm just chopping them, whack, whack, whack, whack. You know, and efficiently working. You know for a seven year old, that's like, well that's crazy. Seven year olds aren't supposed to be efficiently working.

Dick: Take your time. I don't want you to hit your brother with the hoe. I want you to go up to the point where you're ready to do it, but don't do it. Take your time. You're hoeing, and you're feeling irritable. Feel your body as you experience this angry emotion. Allow yourself to feel it very completely. And not only have a mental awareness that you are angry about something. Feel it as it is happening, as the anger is in you.

Cl: Um, I can really feel the anger in my head. It's hard to you know what I can do is, I can really look tense, I can hoe really hard, and I can really feel the.... it's "I don't know what the hell he's doing over there, but he's not doing it right." You know that's what I feel, like it's just, he's just not doing it. He seems to be planting something. He's kind of diddling in the dirt. It's almost like he's digging up what I've planted. That's kind of what it feels like. Like he just dug that up and he's not supposed to be doing that. Why should...I should....I don't know what to do. It pisses me off. I don't know if I told him to stop it. "Stop that! Don't do that anymore!" You know. And he kept on doing it. And it just...oh God, I just wanted to just....

Dick: But you're not going to do it.

Cl: Right, but that's what I felt like doing.

Dick: Yeah, right.

Cl: I just felt like whacking him on the head.

Dick: Stay with that.

Cl: And it...it just scared me so much that I just....

Dick: Get in touch with your body and what is the image of the way your body feels right now. I feel like a....I feel as if..

Cl: I feel as if....you know...what it feels like is I want to spear him and I just want to be able to ram it through.

Dick: Yeah, what are you feeling in your body without reference to it.

Cl: My body is like a....

My body is like a....my body is bound up...

Dick: Take your time. . . stay with your body.

Cl: Tight, tight, my body is tight, like a steel band. It just feels like it just wants to break.

Dick: Can you see the steel band?

Cl: I can feel it press my back.

Dick: Can you see it too. Look at it and feel it and stay with it.

Cl: It's just, it's just round and cruel. . .

Dick: Keep looking at and feeling that image until it turns into the opposite and whatever that may be. Don't try to figure it out. Don't think what is it. If you continue to stay with this image, it will change into it's opposite. Take your time.

Cl: It's a burning band now. Yeah.

Dick: Stay with it. Let it turn into it's opposite. What is it's opposite?

Cl: It's melting away now. Now it's like a...I get an image of melting off of me. Sweat.

Dick: Watch the melting. Watch the melting. Just watch it. As you watch the progress of this image, what are you experiencing in your body?

Cl: I feel more withdrawn.

Dick: Just continue to watch it. Experience this image. Look at the image. Watch it, watch. You don't have to tell me what the image is, just so you can see it. Do you see it? Can you feel it? Stay with it. And experience this image.

Cl: I get a sense of stroking.

Dick: You what?

Cl: I get a sense of stroking, somebody is stroking me.

Dick: Somebody is stroking you.

Cl: I'm giving it a feeling of OK.

Dick: You're what?

Cl: Giving it a feeling of OK.

Dick: Giving you a feeling of OK, of being OK. Yes. Experience that. all right. The other one was a feeling that you were not OK. Let yourself feel this.

Cl: I'm finding some fear too.

Dick: Experience that. Is it fear or is it excitement?

Cl: It's fear. It feels spiritually wanting to run away.

Dick: Just feel that and try to say I'm excited.

Cl: I'm excited. It feels fearful. As I say I'm excited, I feel fearful.

Dick: OK Just experience this fearfulness. And what is the image of this fearfulness that you're experiencing?

Cl: I feel hands around my neck.

Dick: You see hands around your neck. Experience them. Just let them get more and more and more. Don't hold back. Just let them be there. And as you continue to feel your body with that, what is the opposite image of that? Again don't try to figure it out. Don't try to answer my question. Just look at the hands around your neck and feel that until it stops. Until it changes into something else. Let that happen. Take your time. Take your time. What's the opposite? The opposite is latently there. Just stay with this hands at your throat until the opposite starts to come. You may before you see the image start to feel the change in which you're feeling.

Cl: I start to feel, instead of hands around my neck, I feel something like a space here.

Dick: See that. See that. Experience that. Track your body with it. Notice how you feel differently when you look at this.

Cl: It's like a white space. It has a sense of almost snow, but it's not cold.

Dick: Look at that white space. How do you feel when you look at that?

Cl: It feels more open.

Dick: What about your fearfulness? It's gone? Just stay with it. Just feel this. Just experience this as your experiencing it. Tell me what you're experiencing right now.

Cl: I'm experiencing the space first of all. I'm not feeling so bound.

Dick: You don't feel bounded. Don't feel restrained.

Cl: Don't feel constrained. Don't feel holding.

Dick: Yeah, don't feel the holding back.

Cl: I feel more of the. . .more able to breath.

Dick: So your discovery of holding back is not lashing out, but that the opposite of holding back is flowing.

Cl: Umhum. Real clarity. The breath going in and out.

Dick: So the opposite of holding back is flowing. The opposite of flowing is holding back and lashing out really has nothing to do with it.

Cl: Yeah.

Dick: It's a reaction response to holding back. How do you feel in your body right now N? Just check your body out. Just take your time and tell me, different parts of your body. Take your time.

Cl: I've a real clear sense right here. Just a nice open sense. I still have tightness in the shoulders.

There are two ways that you can use this. One, you find yourself in a situation where you feel those things coming up. Let yourself feel them fully. Don't immediately try to switch them off, but go into them deliberately. Go into them deliberately and let yourself feel that and or the band and let yourself deliberately feel that and then look at the image of open space: but don't just use the open space at the drop of a hat. Always let yourself get into the negative feelings. You get into them. You don't have to be afraid of them. You don't have to be fearful of them. Because you know that you can convert them, transform them. So that is one thing.

And the second thing is use this image of the open space in any way that you want to. If you are driving back and you get to a point where conversation is falling off, because in a three hour trip, that happens, and you may just let yourself go into that. Or anything at any time. If you have nothing to occupy yourself with, if you think of it, just go into it. So there are two ways to use it now.

Cl: Experiencing the negative has always been hard for me.

Dick: Well, that is what you try to hold yourself back from. You are not holding yourself back from the positive feelings, but you never get to the positive feelings when you try to hold back the negative. So your strategy is entirely different, instead of doing what seems natural, you know, here comes this negative so I hold back from it. Say "Welcome." Take it in and convert it and transform it.

Are any of you Buddhist? This is the essence of Mahayana Buddhism. There is a Tibetan practice called Tonguin, which is breathing in and breathing out. And as you breathe in, you breathe in all pain, corruption and shit in your life, not in their life but in yours, and as you breathe out you breathe out joy. And it is sometimes breathing in black, tarry, sticky stuff, and breathing out joyous clear air, like that clear space. So if you look at that Tonguin practice, you see that it is not an avoidance of what is bad, is negative. You take it in without holding back.

And that is what the Bodisottva does. The Bodisottva comes back and takes on all this corruption and everything else and works to transform it. You don't hold back from the negative. And I think that is very important and I think some and many religious practices make a mistake. I think the nuns, the Catholic nuns, were any of you brought up that way? You've got to be kidding. Four of you (out of six). Their thing is that you should not let yourself by angry. The anger is a sin and you must not let yourself (be angry), every time you are angry, you hurt the little Lord Jesus. Have you ever heard that one? I know that is what they say because that is what I would say if I were a nun. I would infuse a lot of guilt. The idea of keeping them from ever allowing themselves to be angry.

Cl: "See how these Christians love one another."

Dick: And of course you always do what sister says. Cheerfully.

Cl: You want to know what would happen if you said, how it works? If you want to know what eternal hell fires are like, every thousand years a bird would fly over a ball of steel the size of the earth, and the crow would brush its wings every thousand years, and rubbed away just a little bit, after that wing had taken away the whole earth, only then, could eternity begin. So you want to go to hell?

Dick: They actually borrowed that from the East. The Hindus talk about a cowpa(sp?), which is I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of years, there is a huge bird that brushes Mount Everest with it's wing, and when Mount Everest is flat on the plain, that is when it will begin.

I think that is a terrible mistake. It does two things, it substitutes repression for compassion. They say you should be compassionate, but it is not. It is not teaching compassion, it is teaching repression. So what I am saying is, DON'T REPRESS. When you feel the negativity, exaggerate it. This is the gestalt principle, exaggerate what is: exaggerate it and then, as you get into it and you are vibrating like this, then switch. Fritz Perls used exaggerate what is, he took an image from World War II carriers planes taking off. And the way they take off is that they are held back with a hook, and the pilot revs up the engine and puts it up at 500 miles an hour and then they suddenly let go of the hook and the plane goes ssssssst. Otherwise it would run off and fall into the ocean because the runway wouldn't be long enough. And Fritz talks about that image of letting the plane almost vibrate to pieces and then letting go. I don't know how far you have to go, not to the point of vibrating to pieces. But to the point where you are encouraged and are allowing yourself to feel that negative stuff. And then call up the image. And you weren't the one who was holding back but it is the same principle. Do you feel finished for now?

Cl: Yes.

Dick: You are not finished forever, but for this moment. And that is all there is, you can't get finished forever.

New Cl: (Sharing what came up as he worked in empathy) I don't know how it relates to his because it was not an opposite image in that sense, but it just changed around from the tight bands on my forehead to an erect penis.

Dick: Oh yes, it was an opposite image. Logically it is not, but this is what we are talking about. In the nonverbal realm in is very much the opposite image, but in the logical world of semantic meaning and so on, it doesn't make sense. That is one of the things when you use this technique of eidetic use of opposite images, one of the things you want to guard against is, and the thing that will really wreck it, is when the client figures out what is the opposite image, and it is a total waste of time. It is worse than not having done it at all really. Because you have taken something that might have worked and it is a failure. It is the requirement that this be logically opposite that leads to failure.

Cl: Because I was thinking that it couldn't be an opposite image.

Dick: That is right. That is the point of failure. I am glad you went with it and didn't talk yourself into discarding it. So that you have learned something very important about this. That the opposite is NOT the logical opposite.

Cl: Instead the opposite is just what emerges.

Dick: That is right. That is a good way of putting it. What emerges. Ask your unconscious mind what is the opposite and keep looking at this and what emerges is the opposite. That is what you ask for. And then just look at that. You might have, instead of a penis, had a glass of water, how is this opposite to a rubber band, sure, you could probably say, "you could stretch water out" , It is not what is logically opposite. This is the first recognition that you have to do. That is why I took such pains with N. to get him out of his left brain and into his right brain. The first thing you have to recognize is that this is not an operation in the left brain.

Cl: What I found myself doing is when I worked with that was to push the image to have a penis after ejaculating, being limp, but I didn't feel the power of the two images, but if I take the tight burning rubber band and the erect penis as the two images, both of those have a lot of power, going that way.

Dick: Well they both have a lot of power, but it is a different kind of power. One is a band, which, if you don't let up on it is going to break. And the other is an organ which if you don't let up on it is going to explode into a wonderful orgasm, and relax. So when you finally figure it out, they are opposite. You can see that now as you look at it that way. But be on guard with your clients that they don't say that the image can't be the opposite. I tell them, "Whatever, if it flashes in your mind, even if it doesn't fit. Don't edit it. Don't evaluate it. Raise your finger as soon as you get a flash of an image," and that is what you go with.

Q: In that image you really went into a lot of detail, with the hoe and everything.....leading up to the image...that went on......go back before....look what was happening before.

Dick: That is done to expand the image. In traumatic images, they are usually compressed. All he remembers is, "I swung the hoe" and then I saw the gash and then I was terrified!" When you expand the imagery, you go back before it happened, and you try to get them to experience themselves as being really present, as you do in any image where you try to make the image more powerful by going into detail. Imagine you are lying on sand on a tropical island, You see the blue sea and the blue sky with little white clouds, you can feel the hot sun beating down on you, you can feel the heat of the sun on your hands in the sand, you feel the sand between your toes, you hear the screech of the seagulls, you hear the sound of the surf, now you feel the breeze cooling your cheek.

In other words, you are trying to build an image as opposed to mentioning an idea of some kind. That is done in hypnosis. That is done in any kind of guided imagery work. And of course it is done in Eidetic work when you are trying to expand the image.

Q: Yes I remember you talking about expanding the image once before.

A. Expanding the image is what you do with eidetic work, when you are dealing with trauma. You go to the trauma, and you expand the image backwards in time and you might expand that one or two days, but usually not, Usually 15 to 20 minutes or a half hour. And you just cover that much, and you can also expand the image the other way, afterward. But the point is that the traumatic image is compressed and you want to expand it. So it is not something that is just like that (Dick slaps his hands) that it is something like this (Dick waves his hand around in the air), and this impact is just part of the much bigger image.

And instead of lying there on the cement with your head throbbing, you are now walking away, and you walk down the street and buy a newspaper, open it up and read the good news that you won the lottery, or whatever.

.... What happens when you are working with a trauma, you expand the image, and lead up to it slowly, I'm sure I did it recently. You build up to it, maybe that was in Salt Lake City. The car pulls out and this deals with the auto accident that he had when he was messed up. We start out with the morning, three hours before he gets hit. You see your father is impatient. He is in the car revving the motor. Your mother comes in, and then you climb in on the outside and then your father backs down the drive and then off to get to the highway and you are enjoying this and your mother and father are fighting and you go into a doze because the sun is coming in the window, you feel how warm your mother's body is on this side and you feel how cold the car door is where you are leaning on it on the outside and that goes on and on, and your mother is complaining to your father that he is driving too fast and he says she should mind her own business. He is driving the car and you are dozing off and shutting them off and feeling very comfortable and your father pulls out to pass a car on the hill. And suddenly another car comes along over the hill and the two cars are now coming together, 50 yards apart. Now in slow motion, 45, 40, 35, 30, 25, 20 yards apart, 15 yards apart, 10, and then 5 yards apart, that is only 15 feet, now 10 feet apart, they are traveling 65 miles per hour, ten feet apart, five feet apart, four feet, three feet, two feet apart, one foot apart, and they hit and you hear a very loud noise and you fly forward because of the force because you are stopped and you fly through the air , through the space where there had been a windshield, but it is not there and you fly right over the other car and you make a flip in midair and come down like a gymnast. When I asked him, "What are you experiencing now, he started to cry and said, "Oh, what a relief, Oh. it is incredible."

And it is incredible what a sense of relief that can come up, provided you expand the image sufficiently and that means calling in all these tiny little details that make it real. And doing it in slow motion. Now we did a different kind of thing here. Because this wasn't a trauma where I was going to have him miss the trauma by having him have a narrow squeak of some kind. If he had been hit by the hoe, we might have had the hoe come down, and just knock his hat off without touching him, and go right by his face like that. But he was wielding the hoe so instead we built up to that point in order to get all the negative feeling that was in that situation just before he hits with the hoe. And then I asked him to stay with that and then we shifted to the polarity of images. You know you are looking to fill in the I-S-M in that order. He has a fear of his own anger and of holding back, he gets the feeling of that, and then I ask him, "What is that feeling like?" First he said it was like a hot pan, and then he had the hands holding him back like that. So that then you have worked back to the negative I. Now what is the opposite of that? The open space. From that I to what is the S for that, the somatic thing? You are feeling this flow, and this relief, and everything else, but we don't bother with the M, the meaning. The meaning is implicit. Is it clear?

Cl: With N, were you filling in the details for him, were you helping him, leading up to the impact?

Dick: What I did with N is I asked him to go back and expand the image so that I had the information. I said, "when did you start out in the morning?" He said about seven o'clock. "What do you remember about that?" He said I see my father sitting in the car warming up the motor, he is very impatient, he is revving it up, we went through all this stuff, now we are passing through this country that I really like, this field is beautiful,

I got the information from him, then I said "OK, now let's start, close your eyes. Go back and your father is revving the engine..." I simply then repeated back what I had got as information, But I fed it to him, in a kind of hypnotic way, leading up to the point where his father, now this whole thing where he swung out to pass the car and collided head first probably took three or four seconds, well I dragged it out. I dragged it out ten yards at a time and then the last couple yards, one or two feet at a time, very slowly to build the suspense and then pssssuhhh, this wild thing, but no crash. In fact, he hit the window with his head.

Cl: When you fed it back there was no windshield?

Dick: No, the crash comes finally. And because the cars are going 65 miles an hour, and it stopped, he kept going. What actually happened is that he went through the windshield, he is all cut up, his skull was fractured, everything. I change all that. I say, "You hear a loud crash and you are thrown forward with incredible force and you go right through the space where there is no windshield and you are flying through the air like superman, and you turn a flip, and come down, ta daaa."

Q: So you changed history.

Dick: Totally. It is not a matter of changing history. He knows what the history is. Hospital records are still there. But emotionally, when he thinks of that experience, he is going to have a sense of relief, instead of this shooo.

Q: Does he have to be in a hypnotic trance?

Dick: You don't have to be in a hypnotic state, if you are just concentrated, if you are in it, seeing the image. It is not a matter of hypnosis, the only value of hypnosis is to keep him concentrated. Otherwise you don't need hypnosis, there is no suggestion made. This works. A very similar thing, Colin Wilson, I met him in Esalen when I was teacher in residence two years ago. He did a workshop.

He said if you want a peak experience, to feel good: just imagine that something real terrible is happening as completely as you can, and then open your eyes and see that it is all just a bad dream. That is a sort of variation of this. Surely you have had the experience of having a bad dream and waking up and feeling a sense of relief to find it is a dream. This is essentially what is happening here. He went through the windshield smashing his head. That is the bad dream. We changed the dream.

Because he is not doing that now, he is remembering it. We tend to think that memory is equivalent to reality. Never mistake the two. What is happening right now is reality. What happened this morning is memory. you may think you have a very exact memory and maybe relative to other people, you do, but nevertheless, it is not real. It is still an image, a dream.

Because dreaming is one of the most realistic images that we can form. When you are in the dream, you really believe that you are there, and it requires a lot of practice or good luck or both to have a lucid dream in which you wake up in the dream and know that you are dreaming. People write books about that. It is quite unusual. It happens to a lot of people but a very tiny percentage of dreams are lucid. they are mostly taken while you are in them as reality. If you just look at your own dreams. And that feeling of relief when you wake up that is exactly what you have here, the same thing. So all you have to do is remember a dream that you had when you felt terrible and then realizing that it is nothing but a dream. That is what it is.

Q Say more about holding back from the negative.

Dick: We tend to hold back from the negative. That is how we empower them. Because anything that we hold back from, presses on. You know, I am sitting here and I am looking at the arm of this chair and the chair has no power at all. So I put my hand on it and I feel the chair pushing up. (Dick feigns panic) "God, You gotta come help me, this chair is going to push me right up to the ceiling." You see, my pressure on the chair creates an enormous pressure. The harder you hold back on the negative, the harder it pushes you, and you sweat. That is why if you go into it as deeply as you can. .... end of tape, some words were lost as tape is changed.

...and while you are looking at the opposite image you are both looking at the image of the hands on your throat, and you are also feeling it. Now it is kind of a moot point, what comes first? Does the feeling change or does the image change? I don't know. Let's say the image changes because that is the way we do it. It is a good way to work with it. But almost immediately when the image changes, you are aware of a change of feeling, right? They are simultaneous. In other words, the image of being pulled like this (choking), is the image of the hands. What are the hands doing? They are choking you and pulling you back out of the chair, that is what the image is.

Now an image is not just visual, it is also kinesthetic. That aspect is that you feel yourself being pulled and you feel yourself tightening. And your tightening has to do with your being pulled back. If you didn't pull back this way (arched), you would probably just go back easily. So you are in there in that bind. When the image comes, you let go. When you let go of the image, you also let go of all this stuff you are doing here. OK?

Q: Is this an image for the achieving structure?

Dick: These images would work with all the Bioenergetic structures, not just with the achieving structure. What I said was that the characteristic of the achiever is holding back. See, each one of the types have a holding pattern. Loving holds on, creative holds together, challenger holds up, endurer holds in, achiever holds back. They have different patterns. And they have different illusions about themselves that fit those patterns. That is what makes them different. A different illusion about yourself: a different way of holding.

Q: When you talked about the polymyalgia (Dick's illness), there seemed like a period of time between the images, a matter of weeks at least. The cable and the arrow, etc.

Dick: That's exactly right. I did that, and I did it because I am too sophisticated in this. I know to damn much about it. If you would have had that image, I could have worked that through with you. But if I was going to work on that with myself, I would have to come out of the right brain, and go into the left brain to work with myself and I would have blown the whole thing. So I got that image about the 25th of September, and I just looked at it, that is all I did. And around the 10th of October, I was up in Berkeley, and I told one of my students, N . And she said, "Have you worked with it?" and I said "No, I haven't" and she said, "You should, you should". And I said "No I shouldn't, because I am too sophisticated. I will start getting real clever with myself and put this all into my left brain." I said, "I am perfectly willing to work on it but I am not going to facilitate myself." And she said, "Do you want me to work on it?" And I said "Sure, glad to. Right then and there." And I immediately had that experience that looked like a past life experience with that arrow, you know. Gave me tremendous additional relief. Two weeks later I am in New York and I tell the story to my friend, B. She says, "Have you worked on it some more?" and I said "No". And she said, "Well, you should". And I said "I know I should, but I am too smart to work on it because I will pull it out of the realm of magic and I will just make it science and the whole thing will be dead. And she said, "You should work on it" and I said, "Do you want to work on it with me?", she said yes and I said, "Let's go". And I had a whole other experience which advanced it. And I still didn't work on it. And then I was in Mexico a month, five weeks later and all of a sudden, pssssssew, everything fell into place. But I didn't use my left brain on this thing at all. So it is not that this work was any different than the work we do here. If I had somebody else facilitating me, fine. But I wasn't about to split myself into two pieces and be the facilitator and the facilitatee.