The Savage Shaman

I had a dream in which I was practicing Chod with one of my Tibetan teachers. He looked at me sideways, as though I was doing something wrong. Then he said, “Do you know gestalt?” Without hesitation, I nodded, and we both stood up and began to….well, gestalt with each other.

What do I mean by “gestalt”? In my dream, my Chod teacher and I began hurling invisible energy waves at each other with wild, spontaneous gestures and sounds. Our back-and-forth dance escalated in intensity until I was exhausted – and yet he beckoned me to keep going, to break through my perceived limitations. The dream dance dissolved into light, and I awoke mystified.

My introduction to the “gestalt” process was in high school drama class, where we used exaggerated gestures to create an energetic imprint for a character, so all our mannerisms would reflect the inner resonance of that specific character. In a therapeutic setting, these same gestures are used to uncover the layers of “self” – the created “self” that is in fact a character of our own sub/conscious imagination. We repeat and exaggerate these gestures to reveal the unspoken truth of who we really are, to bring our being to the surface – or as Martha Graham said: “the body never lies.”

Gestalt therapy has an existentialist and egalitarian framework and gives attention to what happens in the therapeutic encounter as an important part of the process of integration of the self.  As the encounter in each session can be successful or with disturbance at the contact boundary, the illumination of the process creates a focal point or figure for work.  Contact being the road for growth and change.  Developmentally, the holes of the past can be repaired through the process of finding support and connection in the present, while reaching, pushing, pulling, twisting and grasping in the therapeutic encounter.

– Gizelle Ruzani, PhD https://gestaltdance.com/index.php/gestalt-therapy/

And yet the gestalt process is not unique in the world of somatic self-discovery and transcendence. It’s methodology resembles butoh, chod, and rushen.

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