Phase Five     

Phase 5 becomes difficult, becaouse we have been taught to do - do - do!!! To be a pure observerI, is the hardest thing for a human to do. Tor this is where it all evolves from, doing No-thing!

     We touch the body, still hands on we watch and by doing nothing, everything can happen. Again, doing nothing cannot be an intention - we are a pure observer. 'Ortho-Bionomists do nothing better', as someone once quoted.

     In Phase 5, we observe, calmly and with no fear! Then and only then can we feel the REAL movement, not only within ourselves, but with the other self we are with.

     Doing! Doing! Doing! - leaves no space for listening. When all you are doing fails... allow Phase 5 to do you instead!

                     Arthur Lincoln Pauls D.O.

              The Philosophy and History of Ortho-Bionomy

                       (1st edition pp 48-49)

[These notes are in process of being written. You can track my progress.]

Outline (What is likely to be included)

I. Quick review of Phase Four

II. Introduction to the body schema and the neurobiology of how we can feel one another's intentions

III. Quick review of Phase Seven and the Principle of Reciprocity

Basic acts of an organism (non-vegetal)

• sensing/perceiving 
• computing
• evaluating
• moving
• holding
• letting go
• connecting
• nothing

IV. Move from self-regulation to co-regulation

V. Introducing the Body Schema and its role in Phase Five

Some classic P5 techniques

A Phase Five way of Isometrics

Here is the long version of what this class entails:

You might think of it as a marriage. Judo and "Spontaneous Release by Positioning" met in the person of Arthur Pauls. At the time of the meeting, Pauls was a black-belt judo teacher and English osteopathy student. Positional release therapy (PRT)  is a simple enough method of non-force structural realignment, easy to learn and safe to apply. An alternative to high-force thrust techniques. This is what is taught in Phase Four Ortho-Bionomy. Don't ask about Phases One, Two, and Three,they are mostly of historical importance.

Here is how it works: find a point in a person's flesh that is tender, hard, tight. Rearrange the person's position around the point so that it softens. It can be a simple bending of a toe or a twisting of the torso, depending on where the pain point is. (Phase Four classes take you through the whole body but once you have a sense of how it works it's easy to work it out for yourself. According to the standard protocol for PRT, once the position of comfort is found it is to be held for 90 seconds.

[The original discovery in osteopathy was made by Lawrence Jones,DO, and published in the Journal The DO, 1964.  "Spontaneous Release by Positioning." This hyperlink will take you to Jones's article if you care to go deeper. Jones taught the method as Srain-Counterstrain. SCS also insists on the 90-second rule.]

Here now is what Pauls brought to the game. It is not necessary to learn all the possible positions (which are infinite, really) but he realized that one could, as if by instinct, follow the tension patterns of the body into the position of comfort (preferred position it is sometimes called); and the clock does not determine the timing but emerges organically from the interaction. How long you hold is based on the response. Typically much less than 90 seconds.

You, who is so accustomed to being in control (it's what's expected of you, it is your role in this interaction), let go of being the expert and turn that over.

This "letting go" often goes unnoticed. It gets a lot of attention in Phase Seven, symbolically represented by a sigil resembling an inverted letter Y (don't ask why).

The Phases have several meanings. Originally Pauls used the word as a way to reflect on the stages of development of Ortho-Bionomy (he started calling it Phased Reflex Technique) and this  was an important turning point. It was at this stage that the nature of the therapeutic relationship radically changes. It is almost a role reversal.

Orhto-Bionomy, in my view, is consistent with the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. Not that that really matters and I can only pretend to understand Derrida.

[That bit that follows will likely be deleted when my editors (alter-me) go after this with their blue pencil because nobody is here for this. No such talk will be allowed when we are in the class, But here I can give myself free play.]

In Ortho-Bionomy we typically talk about "self-corrective reflexes." What we experience though is co-regulation. Autopoiesis becomes symbiogenesis. The idea of autopoiesis––self-creation––is very appealing to the orthobionomer who often speaks about "innate self-corrective reflexes." Related ideas: self-regulaion, homeostasis: are traced and lead to self-creation, life appearing auto-chthonically. The appeal can be traced back through Emersonian Self Reliance and the Enlightenment invention of Individualism (which has grown into a toxic ideology).

Free Play. That is what we hope to achieve. This is important. I will be inclined to bring in some philosophy. Derrida wrote about binary opposites and how we create hierarchies. One term of the binary opposite is centralized, the other is marginalized: This one is good, powerful; that one not so much. What Pauls stumbled on was a "phase of subversion." It is a reversal of the "doctor/patient hierarchy. "Doctor" here stands for therapist, healer, medicine man or woman, etc. The power dynamic in the classic healing relationship. Freeze the play of these binary opposites. But a reversal of the hierarchy is also unstable. Free play of the binary opposites is where we want to hang out and we will play with practices (techniques) that help us get there:

Yes. And...

This takes us into the land of sociobiology and looking at how the world seems actually to work (it works in many many different ways). Emerson understood that self-reliance happens in a social context, part of his thinking ignored by the ideologues of individualism, the same way that Adam Smith's moral philosophy, central to his Wealth of Nations, is ignored by neoliberal economists.

Social engagement is essential, in a deeply biological way, to human thriving.