Feldenkrais (2002, p. 11) offers the following observations regarding this important source of anxiety. He notes the physical and psychological impact of a frozen state (inaction) in the face of an attack. We find no protection against the attack leading to a broad-based disruption in our functioning:
At the root of all anxiety, where education has failed lies inner compulsion to act or to check action. And compulsion is sensed when motivation for action is conflicting; that is, when the habitual pattern that the person can enact is sensed as compromising the persons security. The feeling of security is linked with the image of self that has been cultivated in the dependence period. Thus, for some people, their good looks–for others, absolute unselfishness, absolute virility, superman ideas, absolute goodness and all kinds of imaginary, untestable notions, habits of though; and patterns of behavior–have served as a means of obtaining affection, approval, protection, and care. Compulsion is sensed when there is a threat of any of these means becoming ineffective; the person feels endangered and left without any means of protection. When there is objective danger, with no means of defense, the result may be real destruction. In cases of internal compulsion, the only possible result is inner collapse, as there is no objective danger. The anxiety experienced in the face of real danger would normally be experienced by most of us. But the anxiety which is due to inner compulsion has no apparent reason; it is essentially linked with the means of getting security that the person has formed during her personal history.
Thus, for Feldenkrais, there is an important distinction to be made between “everyday” anxiety associated with some impending threat and the type of anxiety that is based in a compulsive sense that we are unprotected and vulnerable in life. We look for security and can’t readily find it. The Tin Man experiences the “real” existential anxiety that leaves him frozen in place.
Combination of Falling and Failure to Act: There is an important point when Feldenkrais (2002, p. 121]) combines a fear of falling with the fear that we can’t protect our self. He points to the physical conditions that tend to be precipitated by these fears:
All incorrect acture can be traced back to premature or too violent demands made on the person. The contractions that are maintained in all action as a personal manner of doing, irrespective of the act, always express an emotional attitude. The attitude found most frequently is that of insecurity or the masquerade of ignoring it. Physiologically stiffening the body, lowering the head, sinking the chest, contracting and flattening the abdomen-when per formed not in the course of a purposeful action, but as acts in themselves are protective acts. The reactions to falling (protection of the head from overhead threats; protection of the throat, the pit of the stomach, the soft “underbelly,” the genitals) are all produced by flexor contraction and are all effective measures that give a sense of relative security in face of sudden or great danger. They either offer a hard, bony obstacle to the threat, or they withdraw the vulnerable soft organ as far as possible. The flexor contraction is inhibitory to extensors, and insufficient tone in the antigravity extensors is the resultant rule in bad posture.
At this point, Feldenkrais (2002, p. 121) expands his perspective by identifying multiple sources of anxiety (emotional attitudes) that arise from a lost sense of security and that impact profoundly on the human conditions:
Bad acture may be due to doubt, fear, hesitation, guilt, shame, or impotence. Or to other emotional attitudes formed in one’s personal experience of the world, all depending on the kind of security the environment has brought the individual to consider as essential for her safety.
With this statement, we can return to the Tin Man’s heart. There are many feelings that he might not wish to confront or even acknowledge. This blocking of the heart contributes to and is aided by the armor (physical rigidity) that the Tin Man has placed on himself.
We thank Moshe Feldenkrais for his insights about anxiety and are ready to move on. What about sources of anxiety identified by Wilhelm Reich, our second diagnostician. Do they tend to align with those identified by Feldenkrais?
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