The radical, subversive shift occurs in this aspect of Ortho-Bionomy. Here is where Ortho-Bionomy breaks with most models of therapy. It is a shift (a subversion) of control. And it creates a different version of the body/person, one that is defined by relationship,with a radically different topology.
And it was there before there was a Phase Five. A person cannot perform what is called Phase Four without there being already an element of Five in it, it precedes itself just as the body precedes itself. It is always already there when you get there.
Phase Four appears to be identical to the positional release technique. There was a misunderstanding at the start; the work was taught in the order it developed. Physicians don't have to learn blood-letting as part of their medical training. If you look at the illustration titled "Boundaries" on the Home page you can get a hint of how the Phases interact and interpenetrate.
The shift was a seemingly trivial matter. Rather than wait the prescribed (procrustean) 90 seconds, Pauls found that by adding a gentle compression spiraling into the joint (compression with a twist, a glance at yet-to-be Phase Seven), the body of the other would inform the practitioner of the best timing. The "compression with a twist" enables a feedback loop to be formed. We usually refer to this as rebound, a subtle pushing back, pushing out, a desire to move on.
The important training for the student is to learn how to closely attend to the other, to be deeply responsive.
There are two things that Pauls most frequently stressed: Timing and Presence. They are one thing.
When Pauls realized that not only would the other's body tell him the time, but they would also give directions to guide him into the correct position. No need for thinking, planning, or analyzing but following. No longer shoulder the heavy responsibility to be the expert. Thus the hierarchy -- the traditional doctor/healer lording it over the cowering patient -- (as depicted by the James Thurber cartoon below) is disrupted.
I offer one candidate to add to the Unicorn we call the Laws of Life: The Law of Reciprocity.
The "Phases" of Ortho-Bionomy have caused great confusion. The founder, Arthur Pauls, kept changing what he meant to convey.
Originally, and for many years, Pauls taught three classes: Basic, Advanced, and Phase 7.
Basic was mostly the positional release techniques of Lawrence Jones that he had improved upon to bring down the time spent holding the position. 90 seconds is the specified time. This is what Pauls called Phase Four. In this class, Pauls also taught some isometrics, perhaps some exploration of movement patterns, posture, post techniques, plus whatever was on his mind at the moment.
The Advanced Class took the students on to Phases Five and Six as well as some Chapman's Points and, again, whatever was his interest in the moment.
The Phase Seven class was a half-day affair, given for free and by invitation only. Only those who Pauls deemed as "ready" would be invited. Pauls claimed to use Phase Seven itself to determine readiness (suggesting that it was not he who was making this determination but some intelligence outside of himself).
For the most part, one needed to take the Basic (Phase Four) class before the Advanced. This continues to be a point of confusion for new students. It is expected that if there are courses in numerical order one would begin with Phase One. Potential students would wait for the Phase One class, not realizing that the first class was the fourth Phase.
Some of the reason for this confusion is that the Phases initially referred to stages in the development of Ortho-Bionomy. Phase One would have been his discovery of Jones's work, two and three were like miscarriages, ideas that didn't work out. He added compression (with a twist) and there he had Phase Four.
Pauls claims to have been shown Phase Seven in a dream vision and this is when he felt he had some things to teach. One might say that Ortho-Bionomy begins with Phase Seven. This is also when Pauls reflected back on his path of discovery and made note of the different stages of his development. Because of all the mystical associations of the number 7 Pauls wanted this last application to be designated as a 7 something. It may be of some relevance that Pauls was raised as a Canadian Mennonite. Mennonites are a Christian Protestant sect of Anabaptists, a sacramental religion with seven sacraments.
This is some of why Ortho-Bionomy seems so idiosyncratic and even confusing. Eventually, the Society of Ortho-Bionomy International (SOBI) was formed and took over the organization and regulation of the training program. There has been some pressure to shed the language of Phases but no one willing to do the work. Once an organization has been set up in a particular way redesign is very difficult.
All that being said (and a lot more could be said) there is wisdom hiding in here. I suspect Pauls may have had some intuition about the body but lacked the language to express it. He often said that "Ortho-Bionomy can't be taught, it can only caught."
Perhaps there is another message tucked away here. Perhaps, wittingly or not, Pauls was intuiting something about the body itself, something just beyond his grasp? Looking at the phases not literally but more symbolically (that is one purpose of 7, it plants a flag, we are in symbolic realms.
Each different Phase is a different perspective or aspect of a body, focusing on different sets of relationships.
And relationship takes us right into
Relationship--I'll be as brief as I can--is all that "is". Nothing exists but in relationship. This solid-seeming world is nothing but the space between the notes. Every quantum particle owes its "existence" to there being other particles.