Practice and All Is Coming by Matthew Remski

Author:Matthew Remski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ashtanga yoga, Community Health, Community Safety, Cult dynamics, Institutional Abuse, Institutional Courage, Modern Postural Yoga, Mysore yoga, Pattabhi Jois, Sexual Abuse,
Publisher: Embodied Wisdom Publishing
Published: 2019-05-24T16:00:00+00:00

Films of children presenting disorganized attachment responses are almost unbearable to watch. “He or she makes movements to approach the frightening or frightened parent,” observes Stein, “at the same time as trying to avoid the fearful stimuli coming from the parent.”194 The child looks lost and glassy-eyed. Their movements and gestures might be repetitive, as though caught between wanting to communicate something they cannot, and wanting to rock or soothe themselves with something predictable. They look isolated, cut off.

A POTENTIAL CONFUSION OF DISSOCIATION AND MYSTICISM

At a certain pitch of “confusion, fear, freezing, and strange movements”, the child either is dissociating, or on their way there—although the dissociative state is literally nowhere. That is, they surrender the attempt to cognitively understand an unintelligible situation. Their mind goes quiet and numb. If there is emotional or physical pain, they may absent themselves from the feeling-body. This can feel like depersonalization: floating above the scene, or standing beside themselves, watching something happen to someone who vaguely resembles them. It can also feel like euphoria, simply because an unmanageable identification with an assaulted body has been momentarily relieved.

How these sensations might emerge in relation to abuse in a yoga or spiritual setting are crucial to understand, because every one of them can be reframed by the priest, teacher, or even the indoctrinated person themselves as a sign of spiritual attainment. The person’s thoughts have stopped, and they may have disidentified from their body and emotions. This can feel euphoric. According to a manipulative reading of several yoga philosophies, it could be said that they’ve attained a kind of liberation.

Stein suggests that understanding dissociation as the end-limit of disorganized attachment behavior provides a master key for understanding group trance and manipulation in high-demand settings. A basic deference of the follower to the organization can be reinforced through dissociation. Followers can be brought repeatedly into a state of cognitive and emotional collapse through the stress of disorganized attachment. The empty, isolated feeling of having lost all capacity for resistance can be framed by the group as surrender, devotion, or love.

“Along with giving up the struggle to fight against the group and the fear it has generated,” Stein writes,

the dissociated follower comes to accept the group as the safe haven and thus forms a trauma bond. This moment of submission, of giving up the struggle, can be experienced as a moment of great relief, and even happiness, or a spiritual awakening.195

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