What Grabs You?

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."
Marcus Aurelius AD 121-180 - Meditations Book Ten

You stand erect and balanced with right foot forward right hand extended. Your partner is the teacher. She stands directly in front of you. Her left foot forward, she extends her left hand to take your wrist firmly in palm. She tightens her grip. You feel her hold emanate from her center of gravity, what the Japanese call hara. Looking you in the eye she asks a simple question, "What grabs you?"

Your first thought, and hence your response, "Your hand, of course."

"Yes," she replies. Then she adds, "That's true, but really, what grabs you?" You look at her intently yet somewhat dumbfounded because it's obvious she's squeezing your wrist. You blink, look at your hand turning a bit off color, and offer again with a kind of maybe-you-didn't-hear-me-or-is-this-some-kind-of-trick-question-thing, "Your hand!"

She smiles, blinks, shakes her head and repeats, "What grabs you?" It's then that you understand. It's a game that really isn't a game. You go beyond the obvious, the external and reply, "My daughter, especially when she's in a foul mood."

"Ah. OK. Thanks."

Then the roles reverse. You take her extended left wrist in your right hand and it's your turn to ask, "What grabs you?"

She offers, "Last month's bills, some still unpaid.”

Sure it's a workshop exercise. The two of you repeatedly reverse rolls. You've done things like this before, and so has she, but in that case there was no physical connection; it was simply a matter of ask-and-answer. What's different now is that the communication between you is enhanced by actually contact. And it's the physical contact with intent that anchors both question and response. Laurence Gonzalez (Deep Survival) might offer, for the future effectiveness or lack thereof.

The point of the experience is to acknowledge, reflect on and personalize the grabs of life. Textbook answers are not sought. Rather - sincerity, authenticity and honesty.

Your teacher points out that your grabs are those things to which you attach your attention (mental and emotional) and action. And with that, you also attach your memory and your power. If the grab is negative (a fight or the memory of a violation or a debt or a worrisome thought, etc.) your experience is negative and generally evokes tension and a push (fight) or a drop (flight) response. If the grab is positive (memory of a lover's kiss or beautiful music or a special place in nature) your experience is a positive, almost surrealistic physical response and generally evokes relaxed, expansive and joyful action.

Your teacher then tells you that she is going to demonstrate a simple martial arts move called tenkan, and asks for your participation and attention. You take hold of her left wrist, while her hand is flexibly extended. You feel her weight mysteriously drop, but her body gives no visual cues of moving down. She slowly and slightly rows her body forward from her abdomen, all the while keeping her body erect and her focus, unbroken, remains on you - in fact you could swear that she's actually looking through you to something behind your back. As she does, she begins to turn outward on her left foot all the while maintaining a relaxed and equal extension in both her hands and arms. Her right foot sweeps an arc across the floor, never lifting. A sense of weight and energy transfers from her through your arm and begins to move the area in your abdomen, and then transfers to your feet. Your body bends and you drop. As you look at her out of the corner of your eye, she remains standing tall, now reversed one hundred eighty degrees and looking in the same direction as you have been looking all along.

Tenkan. A turning movement that clearly sees and acknowledges an on-coming force, feels it before it arrives, blends with it, then reverses direction to look where that energy is focused. Tenkan; it neither fights nor runs from the force. Rather, when properly exercised, allows the one who performs it to remain fully present, ready to act in any direction, to effectively deal with the force. Dealing with the force from tenkan can mean any number of things - enjoy it, release it, walk away from it, walk with it, throw it on its way, turn it back on itself. Tenkan presents an almost countless number of other options as well, provided your understand and practice. Tenkan is not limited to physical action. But, through physical practice it enhances effectiveness in other realms and domains: emotional, familial, relational, financial, intellectual, political, sales, marketing, legal - and still more.

What grabs you these days? What grabs do you s eek? What are your habitual responses to the grabs that come your direction? Do they bother you? Do you fight them? Do you run? Do you hang on? Do you allow them to hang on to you? Could you attending to positive grabs more frequently than negative ones? Could you start seeking constructive grabs even in the midst of negative ones?

What practices have you established when it comes to being grabbed? Could you create some that are more effective and healthier than the ones you've been using? Do you surround yourself with people who assist a constructive practice with your grabs? Do you surround yourself with people who assist destructive practices with your grabs? Do you isolate and insulate hoping not to be grabbed?

Allied Ronin Affiliate Richard Strozzi-Heckler Interviewed

The following is a description of a dialogue between Allied Ronin affilliate Richard Strozzi-Heckler and Bert Parlee on the Integral Naked website. The Integral Naked website is a pay service so the dialogue is not free, however, the site (a part of Ken Wilber's Integral Institute) has featured such luminaries as George Leonard, Michael Murphy, Deepak Chopra, Peter Senge, Jenny Wade, Marianne Williamson, Tony Robbins and many, many more. If you are looking for lively dialogues with some wonderful thinkers it is a great service, with weekly updates. It can be found at www.integralnaked.org

A Somatic Approach to Leadership. Part 1. The Importance of “Body” in Body, Mind, and Spirit, in Self, Culture, and Nature

Richard Strozzi-Heckler

Bert Parlee

Richard Strozzi-Heckler holds a Ph.D. in Psychology, is a 6th Degree black belt in Aikido, and has been teaching somatic coaching, aikido, and leadership over the last twenty-five years. He is co-founder of the Lomi School, Strozzi Institute, and the Two Rock Aikido dojo. He is a successful writer, having published four books including the classic The Anatomy of Change; In Search of the Warrior Spirit, which chronicles how his teaching helped an Army Special Forces unit dramatically increase its measurable performance; and most recently Holding the Center, Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion.

Richard and Bert begin the conversation by discussing some of the more recent activities Richard has been involved in, which have largely been about finding ways to bring a somatic orientation into international relations. He has been working with the Monterey Defense Language Institute, developing a conference called "Somatics and Counter-Terrorism." He also discusses his work in areas like Afghanistan, where he has created a somatic-based leadership program for the Afghani army.

Richard then gives a brief account of his involvement with the bodily arts, tracing it all back to a torn shirt and bloodied nose he received in a fight when he was 13 years old—and his parent’s fateful decision to put him in a Judo class. Later, in 1968, Richard began a meditation practice after spending time in India. He discusses his own definition of meditation as a way to control and exercise attention, a quality he recognizes as crucial in order to be an effective leader ("successful people should know how to concentrate.") As such, he teaches meditation in his workshops, under the guise of "Attention Training," a phrase which flies under the mainstream radar. An Integral Approach would completely agree with this use and definition of meditation, and go on to point out—in agreement with the great contemplative traditions—that not only can meditation train attention in extraordinary ways, but it can offer a radical freedom and release from all forms, functions, and movements of mind. From this Ultimate view, the quality of attention—whether untrained and roaming, or disciplined and pin-point—can be seen as simply another manifestation of the separate self-sense or self-contraction. However, this in no way makes attention training “bad;” rather, it’s one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. All of this simply goes to clarify the fact that meditation can function in several ways, one of which is to train attention, and another is to introduce us to the awareness that is beyond, or prior to, attention.

Richard goes on to offer a synopsis of his own interpretation of the body, which he describes in terms of five domains: the domain of action, the domain of moods and emotions, the domain of learning through recurrent practice, the domain of coordination and intersubjective harmony, and the domain of dignity.

An Integral Approach is often summarized as including “body, mind, and spirit, in self, culture, and nature,” and the somatic arts are an essential and indispensable part of that equation, naturally focusing primarily on “body” and how it affects the other fundamental dimensions of human experience. Likewise, an integral view posits that for every interior feeling, thought, or apprehension there is an exterior and correlative “body” that quite literally “supports” that experience, whether a gross body, subtle body, or causal body. Somatic or body-based approaches quite correctly notice that if you modify any one of these bodies you will produce a change in one’s interior experience, an important truth that must be included in any truly integral model.

Richard's career and practice is one wave on the evolving ocean towards a more comprehensive understanding of the human condition, and we invite you to enjoy this fascinating exploration into his work with one of Integral Institute’s most experienced founding members….

transmission time: 28 minutes

keywords: somatics, Albert Mehrabian, Silent Messages, martial arts, aikido, Monterey Defense Language Institute, terrorism, Afghanistan, Iraq, judo, Chogyam Trungpa, Naropa, Lomi, rolfing, Army Special Forces, George Leonard, Integral Life Practice, The Anatomy of Change, In Search of the Warrior Spirit, Holding the Center: Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion, "What is Integral?," A Theory of Everything.

most memorable moment: "We could say that one of the things that leaders do is that they make declarations about the future, sort of like Martin Luther King's speech. And our basic claim is that when exemplary leaders speak that way they aren't separate from their declaration, they are that declaration. So we have practices where people will make declarations inside of a physical practice, so we bring those two things together."