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Sexuality, self & survival.. PDF

124 Pages·1971·11.037 MB·English
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DATE DUE Sexuality, self & survival / BF692 .IC45 10975 Keleman, Stanley. NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA (SF) LSRAJRY HEW COLUCOe or CALflFORW* 77T VALENCIA 8T1t£CT SAN FRANCISCO. CA MH* Stanley ^eletnan, ^ self ^ B7 SeX^alT-^y » 692 survival K45 & elf survival #6871 3F >92 Kelemany Slanley* C45 Sexuality, self S survival / Stanley Keleman introductory essay by Peter Marin« Sa;n Francisco Lodestar Press* : cl971. 120 p» 21 cm« ; #6871 Gift $2.50. 1. Sex (Psychology) I. Titl« 06 JUN 85 222332 NEWCxc 78-176200 i»:.;,>* A. Also by Stanley Keleman BlOENERGETIC CONCEPTS OF GROUNDING TODTMOOS sexuality, self & survival STANLEY KELEMAN Introductory Essay by Peter Marin LODESTAR PRESS Many friends helped edit, correct andtype the original transcript;to all of them, my affection and thanks. And were it not for the love of George Calmenson,my editor, there wouldbenobook. -S.K. Sexuality, SelfandSurvival © 1971 by Stanley Keleman Introductory Essay © 1971 by PeterMarin All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Library ofCongresscatalognumber: 78-176200 Firstprinting, October1971 Secondprinting, September1972 Coverdesign:AnneKentRush Book design: GeorgeCalmenson Distributed by RandomHouseandin Canadaby RandomHouse ofCanda, Ltd. Published by Lodestar Press. P.O. Box 31003, San Francisco, Calif 94131 Contents A Note to the Reader 6 Introduction 7 INITIATION I. Life Builds Structure 23 Unity 28 Gracefulness and Streaming 32 Evolving Sexuality 35 Foreplay, Excitation and Sexual Feeling 40 APPLICATIONS II. Sexual Responsibility 49 Hunger and Fulfillment 56 Guilt and Trust 60 Nudity and Groups 68 Fathers, Mothers, Daughters, Sons 74 Work Sessions 80 PERSPECTIVE III. Culture and Disease 97 Death and Survival 103 Evolution 112 €> A Note to the Reader This book is compiledfrom transcripts of tapes recorded at workshops and seminars. It is a written record of spoken events, and we have attempted to keep the vitaHty of the original setting. Therefore, a brief description will be helpful to those readers who have not had experience with the workshop format. Twenty or so people met with Stanley for a typical week- end workshop. They spent about fifteen hours together. During that time there were two general kinds of activity: Stanley talking with the group, responding and reacting to questions and concerns; and Stanley working with individuals while the others provided the ground by their presence. Any- one who wanted to work individually would put on abathing suit. Based on his understanding of the person'sbody andwhat the person said, Stanley would recommend an appropriate physical activity designed to mobilize that person's energy, from lying on the bed andbreathingdeeply, to strenuous pos- tures, to kickingorbeating on the bed. These sessions of individual work are described in more detailinboth the Introduction and the text. Since the point of this book is not to demonstrate or showcase bioenergetic tech- niques, but to convey the sense and understanding behind them, specific references to the techniques have been omitted, except where they help clarify the process. Introduction I. Stanley Keleman's work. It is indeed a work: a craft and labor. But it is also a work in the sense of art. It has an art's relation to its time and place;it grows out of them and is responsive to them; but it is also a way of moving paist them. One finds in this book what is happening to Stanley as a man: not a technique, not a thera- peutic model, but the search for a way ofstanding in America and history. You cannot understand what is here without understanding the confusions and illuminations besetting us now, and so for a moment I want to ride the loops and rapids of our shared predicament before talking about Stanley's work. We know these are curious, uneven, even desperate days. Beneath a surface of repression and rebellion we drift in a thick electric sea of sensation and events. We are moved by sudden eddies and weathers of change. They come so quickly and so often that one cannot remember their progression: a succession of squalls and calms without clear meaning. There is a continuous, exhausting and involuntary learning, a stripping away, the devolution of old meanings, balances and modes, and what takes their place is a gravid bewilderment, a driving need for hope and release and, even in the best of us, a sense INTRODUCTION of childish ignorance or deep humiliation. Binding myth and meaning dissolve. In the absence ofan agreed upon reality, we float in immense and lonely inner distances. Our experience grows more incoherent and threatening, slides closer to mad- ness; but it also grows more raw, more pregnant—as if the turning which reduces us to children also offers us the grace of significance again, the chance to be heroes and adventurers. There are strange stroboscopic openings in the darkness around us: sudden visions and flashes of light. The world deepens and moves. In our privacies we stumble into mysteries which humble but enliven us. Most amazing of all is how far we have come in so short a time; or, rather, that our own lives, so crippled by the emptiness of the fifties and the hysteria of the sixties, have taken on in these days a new dimension of meaning. Our lives are all more fearful, more exposed, andyet unarguably more real, as if we have crossed a threshold, made an involuntary jump from mild lies to vivid and unstable truths. We have entered another element altogether: a warrior's landscape. Some men and women struggle with it and succumb, and others succumb without a struggle, and at times one would swear we have already come to 1984: most faces gone numb and troubled andblank, as iftrying to forget some- thing they cannot quite remember. In too many places we have already come to amindlessness so familiar we have ceased to recognize it. We pay lip service to things like freedom, passion, independence and choice, but those are too often merely words and hollow shells. In their place and on too many faces one finds the seeping sleepy presence of political resignation, or apackaged salvation, or empty rhetoric and the thickening thinness of "screened" realities. In response, we hurriedly manufacture self-delusive cure-alls. We invent new diversionary roles, costumes and games. We counterfeit the shadow of a shadow of a counter to culture and vainly claim to have remade a world. All the while, beneath our un-

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