Polarity - A Family Constellation
By Phil Young PTP
Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about Polarity Therapy, unlike say Traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurveda, is that it is a very family oriented system in as much as at this point in time (2011) it is still true that most of the polarity trainers know each other, having met at trainings, conferences or similar gatherings around the World.
This particular document represents my own very personal viewpoint on the family constellation of Polarity and many may well take exception to some of the views I express herein, but it is nonetheless my view born of my own personal experience.
The Law of Polarity and Splits in the Polarity Energy Field
Dr. Stone often talked of how when energy arises from a source it splits into positive and negative flows giving rise to positive and negative poles and the manifestation of attraction and repulsion. Never has this process been more evident than in the family dynamic of all of the people who trained in the art of Polarity Therapy and who then moved on to share their understanding of the Art of Polarity with others. It is also a force that has been profoundly active in all of the Polarity associations that have been created since the late 1970s.
When I first trained in Polarity Therapy with Alan Siegel ND, he was very much what was referred to in the mid-1980s as a 'Pierre person' meaning someone who trained in Polarity with Pierre Pannetier rather than directly with Dr. Randolph Stone. The criticism I heard about 'Pierre people' at the time was that they just did "relaxing body work;" that they didn't understand Polarity; and that they just used a "cookbook" approach to the work and moreover that you had to have studied with Dr. Stone to really understand Polarity.
The criticism around 'Pierre People' just using relaxing body work never seemed to be based on any deep appreciation of Polarity Theory nor any great understanding of nervous system technique. It seemed to largely revolve around the concept espoused by the 'Dr Stone People' that you need to get an emotional release to properly resolve any particular problem and, as far as I could tell, the technique for getting that emotional release was to use tamasic bodywork, (often of very poor quality) and most definitely not "relaxing bodywork." What I mean by poor quality is, that most of the people that I personally experienced in sessions, just pressed as hard as they possibly could on a painful, tight or armoured area. This is definitely not what Dr. Stone intended by the idea of tamasic bodywork. As I have said in other writings elsewhere, the very human reaction of tears etc. to having pain inflicted upon you by a therapist is not the same thing as accessing the specific emotional substrate of a particular issue or problem in life. I could develop this into a whole article in itself but that would detract from the thrust of this story.
The criticism around using the cookbook metaphor is profoundly spurious. As a trained chef myself, there is no chef on the planet who has not read and experimented with endless cookbooks, published by other chefs, to find out their secrets and to see if could replicate their recipes by following them exactly. Only later on would you begin experimenting by modifying the ingredients according to your own understanding of the flavours and textures and how they can be combined to make a hopeful attempt at a great meal. You often fail in these experiments and most good chefs fall frequently back on the tried and tested recipes of the past and their own "signature dish." I personally wish there were more Polarity cookbooks out there.
So, in my early Polarity experiences of meeting with other members of the Polarity family I experienced first-hand varying energetic splits between the 'Pierre people' and the 'Dr. Stone people.' It also always struck me as odd that people refer to Pierre Pannetier by his first name and Randolph Stone by his title Dr. Stone. There was clearly some fundamental difference between the way people perceived these two seminal figures in the development of Polarity Therapy.
When I began teaching Polarity Therapy in 1986 in the United Kingdom I taught very much Pierre's approach to Polarity Therapy but supplemented it with a great deal of theory from Randolph's writings. However, this stood in opposition to the training that had already been offered in the UK since 1982. This training group had already created a UKPTA which I could not join because I had not trained with them. They were largely a closed group and were all followers of the same spiritual path as Randolph Stone. I was not and if you'd asked me what beliefs I followed at that time I would have probably described myself as being a Taoist. Part of their myth/story about me and my work was that I had "spurned" their training by going to the USA and training with Alan in a clearly, in their terms, inferior approach to Polarity Therapy.
When I started attending Polarity conferences in the USA beginning in 1988 I saw similar dynamics playing themselves out. One instance being an obvious split between East Coast USA Polarity and the West Coast USA Polarity. There are other people who could, I am sure, recount many other splits in their own Polarity experience.
My own Polarity experience both personally and professionally in the UK began to take on a very curious quality as if some greater force was at play, and indeed, in about 1989 my good friend Carol Rudd, who had trained with the other group and who knew Dr Stone in India and was herself a satsangi, told me that I should go my own way because if she ever mentioned my name in a meeting of the UKPTA it was as if she had mentioned the devil incarnate (perhaps even an Polarity antichrist!) She told me she felt it was a deeply karmic issue and that I should basically go my own way. This was perhaps some of the best advice I have ever had and I did indeed follow it, continuing to deepen my Polarity knowledge and creating my own association for my students. I later made the mistake of allowing that association to amalgamate with the older/original UKPTA to create a new Polarity organisation and for various reasons I'm no longer even a part of it.
So all this is quite personal but it illustrates how the energy dynamics so clearly outlined in Randolph's writings play themselves out in the Polarity family.
The Mantle passes from Randolph to Pierre
It is certainly true that probably everybody in the Polarity family knows that Randolph Stone retired from teaching in 1973 and passed on the torch of Polarity Therapy to Pierre Pannetier to carry on teaching. It is usually said that Pierre was Randolph's oldest student, meaning that he had studied directly with Randolph the longest. However, simple phrases like this obscure the truth that Pierre and Randolph had actually taught seminars together and that Randolph spent the last two years of his time in the USA living at Pierre's house and working with him on clients. I have had the privilege of reading all of the archival letters exchanged between Pierre and Randolph, and there is no doubt in my mind that Randolph had truly prepared Pierre as well as he could to carry Polarity forward and continued to support Pierre in his teaching, even after he had retired to India. He also supported Pierre in taking his own unique discoveries about Polarity out into the world. The tragedy of all this is that Pierre never actually wrote any Polarity textbooks or manuals and I will explain why this was a tragedy in the next section. The reality was that Pierre was committed to, or one might even say devoted to, supporting Randolph in his retirement in India by continuing to sell Randolph's books. There are many letters in which Randolph and Pierre discuss re-publication and payment of royalties on the books that Randolph wrote. I believe that, from Pierre's perspective, he did not really feel the need to write a book on Polarity, though he did of course, write articles to promote the work.
Associations, Standards and Books
When any Polarity Association in any country is created there is nearly always a thrust from the practitioner members for the creation of a training standard that all the schools who become part of the association will use. This process has been repeated in many countries throughout the world since the late 1970's. What books do you referred to when you write standards - the writings of Dr. Randolph Stone of course! So gradually, and inexorably, Pierre's place in the continuance of Polarity Therapy as successor to Randolph gradually disappeared. It is true that Pierre died not many years after Randolph and that had he lived longer more respect for his role may well have been accorded to him. Had Pierre written some Polarity manuals then I have no doubt that Polarity associations would exist with training standards based upon his own written down perceptions of Polarity Therapy.
The whole standards issue gives rise to further splits in the energy e.g. between those in an association who seek recognition from a higher governmental level and those who want to the freedom to teach the work without restriction.
The Creation of Polarity
Chart 2 in the book Polarity and Its Triune Function (in Volume One) shows an energy diagram that displays three vital centers. The Heart, The Head and the Generative centers with associated energy flows.
If we look at the creation of Polarity energetically, what Randolph was basically doing was drawing on an etheric spiritual inspiration, a cosmic impulse if you will, around healing and energy and connecting it to his experience in the practice of Osteopathy, Chiropractic and Naturopathy. He was in a very real sense the head of Polarity and you could take that to mean head, as in chief or founder, but also in the sense that he was, as he put in his own seminars, "an ideas man." Indeed, in the audio recording of one of his later teaching seminars he said to the group "I'm an ideas man if you want to know how to do Polarity go and see Pierre." When I heard this I felt it was quite profound and a deep acknowledgement of Pierre's role. In 1982 Pierre said, "He (Randolph) has a big attachment for the only son that he had and that son was a big one, he was named Polarity Therapy."
So if Randolph was the head of Polarity who inhabited the other center - the heart - my answer is PIERRE
Pierre's Contribution - LOVE
I never met Pierre, he died a few months after I finished my training, but one of the consistent stories I've heard from so many people who trained directly with him was that he was an incredibly loving man. Some people have actually said that, before Pierre took on the torch of sharing the work with the world, Polarity Therapy was bodywork, nutrition, exercise and counselling, and that after Pierre took over it became bodywork, nutrition, exercise, counselling and love. Pierre always said Love is what heals. An interesting corroboration of this perception was given to me at a dinner after a formal meeting of the Federation of Massage, Bodywork and Somatic Practice Organisations that was held in New Orleans a few years ago. I was sitting beside Elinor Silverstein, a niece of Moshe Feldenkrais. She related the story that Pierre was invited to share something of Polarity Therapy at one of Moshe's trainings in late 1979 or early 1980's and she recounted how Moshe had been extremely hard on Pierre and criticised his use of the term energy. (Moshe, being a physicist, didn't have much time for our concept of life energy which does not obey and indeed even violates some of the three laws of thermodynamics). She actually confronted Moshe after Pierre had gone asking him why he had been so incredibly hard on Pierre because she said that Pierre had radiated an incredible gentle loving energy and everybody was quite captivated by his presence. Moshe's response was that his being hard on him was good for him! Whatever about Moshe's issues with Polarity it was a complete corroboration of many other stories about people's direct experience of Pierre.
It is my contention is that the heart center energy of the cosmic creative impulse that manifested Polarity Therapy in the world found its vehicle in Pierre and in his teaching of Polarity.
Cosmic Creation Continues
It's also my belief that the cosmic energy that created Polarity Therapy is actually a bigger energetic field that transcends both space and time and that continues to work through anyone who has the, should I say audacity, to stand up and teach the work. In terms of that diagram we, the rest of the Polarity family, are the generative center. We are spreading the seeds of Polarity across the globe and planting them where we hope they will grow and flower. Also, we each in our own way express either some of the energetic aspects of the head or heart of Polarity or some kind of synthesis of both if we can. In an earlier posting to the Polarity Council on yahoo I mentioned that the creation of the Polarity Network was karmic. My feeling is that it was a cosmic heart impulse that lay behind the creation of the Polarity Network, an impulse that profoundly influenced and found expression in Pierre's work. I do not think that I personally express the heart of Polarity in the way that Pierre did, as I am far too fiery and combative, nor do I feel that I just express the head. I juggle with some synthesis of both and sometimes I think I fail miserably to express it appropriately in the World.
Please do not take my energetic analysis so simply as to assume I mean that Randolph had no Heart center activity and Pierre no Head center. Clearly both Randolph and Pierre worked with both head and heart centers and, as teachers, with the generative center as well. This indeed is true of us all. However, what I am discussing is a dominant impulse which constellates around one center of activity.
My personal sense is that the cosmic impulse that manifested Polarity Therapy in the world has no desire for it to disappear or become unbalanced or lose integrity. I believe this cosmic impulse lies behind the creation of the Polarity Network, and more recently, the creation of the International Polarity Education Alliance. The Alliance represents both head, heart and generative centers and is truly a Polarity family alliance
Lest We Forget
We constantly honour the role of Randolph Stone and yet we have largely forgotten Pierre Pannetier.
Anecdotally, when my teaching partner Morag Campbell was running at training in Norway, one of the students who had quite highly developed intuitive/psychic skills came down one morning to say that she had been kept awake all night by footsteps above her room. Somebody was walking up and down talking to themselves. She felt a frustration and anger in this person and she was relating the story to Morag over breakfast. She mentioned that she 'saw' this person had on a military uniform and was talking about being "forgotten" and that she knew somehow he was related to Polarity Therapy but did not know who the figure was. Morag best guess was that it was Pierre Pannetier as he had served in the French military in the Second World War and had been decorated for bravery. The student immediately suggested the need for a family constellation healing session to be done to heal the rift that she experienced so personally that night.
In terms of family dynamics, the situation as it exists now in Polarity is a dysfunctional family constellation. It as if Pierre is the forgotten uncle. The dynamic of the forgotten family member emerges when certain situations arise such as when:
"Family members who have no contact with the extended family of their mother or father due to disharmony, disagreement, prejudice, feuding, etc. or going beyond mere disagreement, when an intense schism between family members regarding religion and/or ideology (for example: parents support their country being at war, while children do not)"
and consider this quote:
"Within a family everyone's emotional health, spiritual health, and physical health are equally important. There is a hidden family member that sometimes gets forgotten when we are juggling the needs of the individuals."
So, I personally, do believe that there is a profound imbalance in the Polarity family constellation that needs to be addressed, hence my proposal that this be the focus of the second gathering of the International Polarity Education Alliance. To bring balance back between the head and the heart of Polarity, as expressed in these two figures Randolph and Pierre, who stand at the doorway of the ancestral home of Polarity Therapy.
Randolph is remembered by us all, it's time now to remember and honour Pierre too. I think the ripples this would send out into the energy field will have profound implications for the future of Polarity Therapy.
Comments:
Posted by
David Timbs
on
Jun 28th, 2011
It comes down to personal experience or ego. I personally trained under Pierre in both CA and his 6 week full immersion retreat in Mexico during the late 1970's. I never met Dr Stone but have been an initiated Satsangi since the mid 1970's. Polarity Therapy has always been as Pierre taught it - that was my direct experience and Pierre NEVER professed to be doing anything other than imparting the knowledge taught to him by Dr Stone. There was a lineage in Polarity Therapy - Dr Stone appointed Pierre to carry the mantle of teaching Polarity Therapy to the world. Do we (or any subsequent association) have the right to question Dr Stones judgement in asking Pierre to be the principal teacher after Dr Stone retired? Dr Stone was still alive for some of the early years when Pierre was teaching and if Dr Stone didn't approve of Pierres teaching methodology he himself would have changed it - Dr Stone obviously did not ask Pierre to change.Whoever now wants to speak as an authority on what Dr Stone wanted is ignoring history, and is making themselves more important than Pierres relationship with Dr Stone - ego!
Posted by
Dr. Erica Goodstone
on
Jun 29th, 2011
My training in the 1980's was with John Beaulieu. His approach focused on Dr. Randolph Stone's theories but was fully including the love and bodywork and healing emphasis of Pierre Pannetier. Although I have not attended many Polarity conferences, I have been either been involved with or knowledgeable about many different organizations (U.S. Association for Body Psychotherapy, International Association of Rubenfeld Synergists, The Upledger Institute, International Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis, and many others). I can share with you that every organization seems to run into that same problem. Once the originator is no longer in charge, the descendants seem to have a need to own their own perspective. Each of us has such a strong need to be individualistic. Maybe another way to view this situation is not that the Polarity Therapy family is dysfunctional but perhaps that this is part of the inevitable separation-individualtion process. What is needed is for the next generation, the children perhaps, to bring the different factions together and to once again acknowledge the greater purpose that each of us has found in becoming involved with this wonderful and fulfilling work.
Erica
