At this point, pardon me, but one more short patient story. This fellow is, without doubt, the most extreme case I have ever seen of the translation of a conscious decision into a body state.

The patient was an engineer. He spent all his time — he usually worked seven days a week — inside a building without sunlight. Yet his face — but only down to his neck — did not feel like skin, it felt exactly like tanned leather. It was as though his facial skin had been so exposed to sunlight that it had changed from skin to leather. Not surprisingly, his face was the main area of my Reichian work. I never did fully soften his face, but it became soft enough that he recovered the memory of when it started.

He was about 10 years old. His father's method of discipline was to beat him with a long round piece of wood (called, in the

US, a dowel rod). On one occasion his father came after him and he hid under the dinning room table so that he would not receive the beating. As he cowered under that table, he made a decision that he would never smile again in his life. That decision, in time, converted his face from mobile skin to hardened leather; it was now impossible for him to smile, his thick facial skin, actually his facial leather, did not allow that kind of movement.

That's a single example, but, you see, there is a much broader principle involved. That principle is that we can, in fact, control our emotions by willful choices. Sometimes that willful choice involves imposing other emotions and/or body actions; but that is only the technique, it is not the principle as such.

The principle is that in the last analysis our emotions are under our volitional control. One of the changes in yourself that you should have noticed by now is that your emotions, when they occur, are (1) stronger, (2) purer and (3) more able to be controlled.

If you have not noticed that last point, that emotions are now more subject to your will, then take a few weeks and pay attention to that fact. I don't mean that your emotions are now arbitrary or that you don't sometimes have a mood that you can not seem to shake off; what I do mean is that when something happens to which you normally react with a given emotion or set of emotions (you will find below that feelings are seldom if ever singular, even though it may seem that you are feeling only a single one) that now you are much more able to set aside that emotion when it is not appropriate.

Footnote 35. Repeating a footnote from Chapter one: Technically we use three different words: affect, emotion, and feeling. Affect is what occurs in the brain. It may or may not have any body expression. Emotion is what occurs when affect has a body effect. Feeling is the conscious recognition of an emotion or an affect. There can be affect with emotion; there can also be feeling without emotion. That is, it is not always necessary for there to be a body response to affect for there to be feeling. This latter condition is the norm when the spine is cut (as in quadriplegia) such that the person is unable to get any sensory data from the body.

There is a simple way to illustrate this phenomenon. You have just been stopped by a policemen who is going to issue a traffic citation. Now there are two very common ways that people react to that impending traffic citation. One is anger and the other is self-pity. Obviously anger is inappropriate at least while the policeman is by your car in the traffic stop. That policeman has a gun, a night stick and mace. No matter what you may be feeling in the way of anger, it is not very clever to express it to the policeman. Likewise with self-pity. The policeman is not going to be influenced by your sad story and if your long-winded explanation annoys him you are only inviting him to give you a second citation.

So wisdom directs that you intentionally keep your emotions in check until the policeman is gone. If emotions were not subject to ones willful decisions you could not do that.

One of the great benefits of recognizing that you are able to control, to set aside, an emotion is that you now no longer have to fear them. Long ago in this book I mentioned that most people are terrified by their own anger. They don't get angry as much as they get afraid (of their own anger reaction). But now, if you have come far enough in the work, you have seen that your anger or any other emotion (and the consequent feeling) is, on the whole, subject to your conscious decision. You can let the emotions be manifest in action or body state or you can suppress them. You no longer have to fear emotions because you have experienced that they are subject to your conscious decisions, you can let them have free rein and then stop them completely whenever you wish.

Now, for this most advanced exercise, I am going to introduce another fact. That fact is that feelings are seldom singular, it is seldom the case that our body is manifesting only a single feeling. Feelings differ in intensity and the student, before doing the work or early in the work, is almost always incapable of recognizing (that is, naming) any more than the most intense feelings. But as you free body area after body area you become more and more able to sense and name ever more subtle feelings. Use half a dozen feelings as a rough guide. That is, at any one moment search for half a dozen ongoing feelings (body states).

Above I spoke about fear as a reaction to anger. That is many people fear their own anger. That means that the fear and anger are both present at the same time.

But, after all, the anger is not there for no reason. Maybe it is annoyance or frustration. That is a third feeling. But you are annoyed or frustrated about something. You are annoyed because someone interrupted what you were doing or you are frustrated because you were prevented from doing something you wanted to do. So that annoyance or frustration is mingled with feeling sorry for yourself. You have a fourth feeling.

But being interrupted or prevented from doing something means that the person who imposed on you does not understand you. You are feeling misunderstood and almost invisible; as though you do not matter. Now we have feelings five and six.

You get the idea. The more you become sensitive to yourself, the more you are able to identify all your mix of feelings. That ability will, in turn, effect your dreams which will change your nature.

Now we are going to make use of all these facts and abilities in this exercise. There are two different techniques (ways) presented here.

Sense, Feel, Report — Variation 2 Way 1

This exercise is designed to identify feelings. Use the tape recorder to monitor everything you say so that you do not have to be distracted from your main task in order to remember what you say.

You already have learned to sense you body, including all the subtle experiences like tension or lightness or distance or various other sensations. Now the next step, putting an emotive-like name to each body experience.

I say "emotive like" because it is not necessarily an emotion. It might be an action-like phrase or a state-like phrase. Here are some examples. You feel tension in your calfs. Now you try to put a name to that tension. It could be the calf wants to run or it wants to play a game or it just wants to pull tight against your thigh (legs bent). For each and every one of those actions your calf seems to want to do you give it an emotive like name or description.

This issue is discussed at greater length in Chapter 23. There I will discuss in greater length this technique and the theory behind it. Here you are not doing it for just one obvious area of tension, you are looking everywhere in your body for any subtle sensation.

Now the above example of the thigh is just one made-up example. You find your own areas of tension or lack of feeling around the body and come up with the best descriptions and/or names you can.

Now, as always, don't rush the above. Don't think that you are a super pupil because you are already at a more advanced level (because, in fact, you have slighted the prior level). The better you become at spotting and naming areas of activity or the complete absence of activity in a body area, the more you can make use of the next step.

OK, you have gotten fairly good at naming. Now add the next step. You identify the area of sensation, you name it, then you manipulate it. Recall that this variation two of the sense, feel, report exercise involves being able to manipulate your body sensations.

So now I add this ability to this variation 2, way 1. The major goal is still the same, naming. But now you are going to name the initial sensation and then modify it. You can modify it by increasing, decreasing, or moving it to another area of the body. Once you have changed the intensity or the location you are going to name it all over again.

Here is another made-up example. You notice that your chest feels constricted, tight. You take that tightness and move it to your abdomen. Now it feels like disgust. You take that disgust and move it to your face. Now it feels like disdain. Now you go back to your chest to find that the tightness has become longing.

Don't forget the point I made above. At any given moment there are about a half dozen ongoing emotions or desires in your body. Do one, name, manipulate and rename, then go on to a second one. If you can't spot a second one immediately, simply rescan the whole body; but as always don't for even a moment allow yourself to stop talking aloud.

Sense, Feel, Report — Variation 2 Way 2

Get really good, really accomplished, at variation 2 — way 1 before you undertake this next even more difficult technique.

Here I draw on all the abilities you have developed so far and using those abilities we move to another step. Here you are going to employ, really allow, associations which you will report out loud and let the tape recorder save them for you.

What do I mean here by "associations?" I mean that any thought that happens to enter your mind while you are doing this exercise is followed and reported out loud. Caution: these thought are not, on the whole, practical issues (like how can I handle that task at work or what am I going to do about the kids), rather they are random thoughts started from sensing and/or manipulating your body and they seem to have no immediate relevance to your life.

For illustration purposes, I will provide an example here. All of this would have been said out loud to be recorded so that you can play back and analyze the material later.

"My right hand wants to ball up into a fist. What does it want to do. I don't know. What does it want to do. It doesn't so much want to make a fist as it just want to close the fingers against the top of the hand so that my hand is not open. Maybe I don't want to shake hands. Let's see what comes to mind. Yes, I recall when my father introduced me to some famous man and I just said 'hi' and my father later balled me out for not being more respectful. But I didn't know. It was just another adult. How often have I been criticized for not acting some way when I did not even know I was supposed to act that way? Yes, it used to happen all the time. I was always wrong for doing things that I thought were proper and then I would get criticized for not doing it someone else's way. I just though of my third grade teacher. She used to do that to me all the time and I felt so inadequate and so embarrassed that I tried not to do anything. Is that why my grades in school were not good? Maybe I started using that "hold back" way in all of school? I don't know. It may be. But then I think of Justin. Justin always liked me. He didn't tell me that I was doing things wrong. You know, it occurs to me in one way or another that all my life I have been trying to find other Justins. I have always sought approval and praise only because I assumed I was doing things wrong like daddy and the teacher said and I have always expected the criticism unless I got praise. Now I understand why I didn't take that job, I thought I was too likely to make mistakes there and again it would be just like daddy baling me out for an error I didn't even know I was making. ........."

That is free association. You allow your mind to go from one idea to another with no control or censorship. Whatever comes into your mind gets reported with your mouth and it is all recorded.

Then, after the session, you listen to the tape and now you have the time to reflect on what you have learned about yourself and your nature.