DMAS 1 (1) pp. 43–55 Intellect Limited 2014
Dance, Movement & Spiritualities Volume 1 Number 1 © 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/dmas.1.1.43_1
Bradford Keeney and Hillary Keeney University of Louisiana
Seiki jutsu: Transformation and healing through spontaneous movement Abstract
Keywords
Seiki jutsu is a unique self-healing and revitalization practice based on spontaneous expression. The transformative art of handling seiki, the presumed vital life force, consists of transmitting enhanced seiki, a daily practice for its development, and healing modalities that address body movement and therapeutic conversation. Seiki jutsu differs from other movement-based practices in that it emphasizes spontaneity over choreographed form, and has little concern with explanation. This article introduces a brief history of seiki jutsu, and its relevance and application as a member of the somatic and conversational healing arts.
seiki jutsu Japanese healing spontaneous movement energy healing life force somatic therapy
In 1928, Jozo Ishii of the Seiki Ryoho Kenkyu Jo (Seiki Treatment Institute and Research Establishment) in Japan published a book entitled, Essentials of Seiki-Healing Therapy, arguably the first written account of seiki jutsu. This self-help practice involves spontaneous body movements typically performed while sitting on a wooden stool or bench. Unlike most body work and energyoriented therapeutic methods, seiki jutsu has no prescribed movements, preferred choreographies or elaborate explanatory systems. It proposes that the spontaneous, natural movements of the body deliver and infuse its basic teaching and that, over time, the performance of these movements results in
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1. Don Wright, former teacher of Ericksonian hypnotherapy at the Esalen Institute, describes his first experience of seiki that was administered by Bradford Keeney: ‘I felt like I was floating and wanted to move my body with speed and precision. All of my senses were intensified. I recognized this condition as being similar to the ki activation that I had learned to utilize in aikido training. The difference was that the intensity of this energy was magnitudes beyond what I had previously experienced; it was beyond what I’d ever imagined’ (in Keeney 2007: ii). 2. In 1996, Osumi Sensei passed her lineage to Bradford Keeney and legally authorized him to oversee its teaching. 3. The organization of a living system is sometimes specified with either reductionisms that describe how parts contribute to making a whole, or with more holistic accounts that attempt to indicate properties of the whole that are missed by the former. Arguably any attempt to specify holism is itself vulnerable to being an approximation, i.e. a holistic reductionism. Words like seiki and the ‘vital life force’ do not have to be reduced to signifying physical energetics that belong to the laws of physics. Instead, they can be regarded as poetic metaphors that hint at the wholeness of life and how it can be experienced. Avoiding detailed analyses of such a holistic metaphor helps prevent its being deconstructed into a reductionism. Accordingly, we do
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positive outcomes for the practitioner. Ishii reported research on how seiki jutsu could resolve bodily disorders, ward off illness, revitalize well-being and promote longevity. It was also claimed to awaken and nurture creative talent and spiritual gifts. Seiki jutsu, defined as the art of working with the vital life force (seiki is an old Japanese word for vital life force), was well-established centuries before reiki was developed, and was used by the samurai (Osumi 15 May 1994 interview). It is thought to have existed in the early times of Shintoism, perhaps as far back as the eighth century, and holds ancient Japanese shamanic ways of handling life force. As opposed to subtle energy work, seiki jutsu may be regarded as a ‘non-subtle’ orientation. In addition to being a self-help practice, seiki jutsu is a healing modality that emphasizes hands-on interaction – skin to skin contact – and its experience leaves no doubt as to its presence. Seiki jutsu practitioners feel a wide range of electrical-like sensations, from a vibratory buzz to strong convulsing waves.1 The foremost practitioner and master of seiki jutsu in the twentieth century was Ikuko Osumi Sensei. She received seiki from her aunt in 1935, and was spiritually inspired by stories about their ancestor from the 1600s, Eizon Hoin, who revived a shrine on Mount Maki and was reportedly responsible for numerous miracles. Today he is honoured as a kami (spirit) who protects the weak, maintains justice and guards against fire. Hoin’s grandfather was the famous samurai, Katsumoto Katagiri (1556–1615), one of the Seven Spears of Shizugatake. While Osumi’s gifts as a healer and spiritual teacher were respected in Japan, and her clients included many renowned artists, national treasures, scientists and leaders, she refused to accept offers to turn her work into a religion. Two books on Osumi’s life have been written (Keeney 1999; Osumi and Ritchie 1988), and she is referred to as a Shinto shaman in Religions of the World: Shinto (Williams 2004). This article is the first academic presentation of this natural movement way of healing and revitalization.2 We shall examine the basic principles and practices of seiki jutsu, and note its implications for the practice of therapeutics and transformational movement.
Basic ideas of seiki jutsu The tradition of seiki jutsu proposes that seiki is the vital life force in nature, and that it underlies all life and creation, from daily health to creative expression, actualization of human potential and mastery of any form of performance. Practitioners propose there is no need for any elaborated understanding of seiki, whether scientific or metaphysical, for its complexity will always assure that any intellectual encapsulation will be limited. More importantly, any presumed understanding of seiki may inhibit its evocation or felt presence.3 This relationship to the unspeakable vitality of living has also been found in various spiritual and healing traditions, from the Quakers and Shakers of England and North America, to the ecstatic practices of the African diaspora (Keeney 2007). For over 30 years, Brad has conducted fieldwork with the Bushman healers of southern Africa (see Keeney 2003, 2010). The Bushman word n/om is similar to seiki.4 In this article we reference the Bushman relationship to n/om, in particular the way it parallels the Japanese handling of seiki in the context of healing. This includes similarities in the way both traditions conceive of sharing or transmitting the vital life force from person to person, as well as preparing another for its reception.
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Bushmen regard the quality of their life as inseparable from their relationship to n/om – the unexplainable dynamic underlying creation, change and transformation. They will not utter the word whenever they are experiencing it, nor do they regard any exposition over its ontological status as relevant to having access to it (Keeney 2010). Similarly, the tradition of seiki jutsu only postulates the name of seiki to be a pointer to the vital life force, while explaining little about it. Seiki is believed to be in all of nature, from the atmosphere to redwood forests, English gardens, architectural spaces and human beings. Wherever there is creation and life, seiki is present. Anyone alive has seiki; or to articulate it tautologically, life is made alive by seiki, the dynamic of life. When seiki is depleted or not renewed, a person becomes vulnerable to fatigue, apathy, symptomatic experience, even illness. The key to well-being and revitalization lies in replenishing oneself with seiki. The same is true for effective action such as therapeutic intervention. Without seiki, all therapeutic approaches are severely limited. With it, practically any method can be effective. Unfortunately, this kind of description gives the impression that having seiki is analogous to filling a vehicle with fuel. Though this is how it may experientially feel, there is more to seiki than the amount of life circulating inside a system. Seiki is also a way of talking about the tuning of the whole organism, akin to tuning a musical instrument. If a stringed instrument is out of tune, no profound music can be created on it, no matter how much skill the musician may bring. The instrument must be tuned in order for a performance to reach and deliver its utmost expression. The same is true for human beings, and ‘having seiki’ is another way of discussing how the human instrument can be in natural synch with the regulated action it wishes to bring forth. The primary idea of seiki jutsu is that spontaneous, automatic movement of the body is a natural means of holistic tuning, which in turn enables seiki to flow unimpeded. The result is that one feels full of seiki. Spontaneous movements are known in various therapeutic professions. For instance, hypnotherapy utilizes ideomotor body responses, referring to automatic movements believed to be associated with unconscious communication. Here it is understood that a trembling finger or body twitch can signal a different order of response than consciously mediated speech (Cheek 1994; Le Baron 1962). Among somatic therapists, spontaneous movement is also used as a means of healing trauma by calibrating so-called symptomatic release (Johnson and Grand, 1998; Levine and Frederick 1997). What makes seiki jutsu unique is that it does not frame spontaneous movement as a technique serving a larger model or strategy of healing and transformation. Here the movement is the whole process of change in itself. Automatic expression becomes the teacher, teaching, tuning, therapy, healing and goal, and does so all at once. This is not to say that all automatisms, trembling, twitching, shaking and wild motor activity are a sign of seiki or performance mastery; on the contrary, the latter motions can become entrapped inside a vicious circle that impedes further creative expression. Clichés, habits, ticks, symptoms and predictable answers all belong to the same class of action: routinized performance that lacks spontaneity and creativity. Seiki jutsu emphasizes spontaneous performance that serves change rather than imprisoned repetition. In this regard, it is improvisational; that is, interacting with its own conduct in addition to that of others, and bringing forth significant differences that inspire subsequent differences inside its own performance.
not reify seiki as a materialistic substance or physical energy. Although it may be felt as if it were an electrical force surging through the body, any reference to this experience as an ‘energy’ or ‘force’ is metaphorical. In the same way that a person can metaphorically say that they have ‘fallen in love’, been ‘struck by God’ or ‘slain in the spirit’, seiki is a way of indicating heightened ways of feeling alive. Here we find that feeling alive contributes to being more alive. Hence the therapeutic and transformational value of experiencing seiki or the whole quality of life’s fullest presence. 4. Osumi Sensei proposes that ‘seiki has benefited people in every corner of the world, although it is called by many different names and is exercised in many different ways’ (Osumi 15 May 1994 interview).
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5. A ‘master’ of seiki jutsu is a term of respect for someone who has mastered this art, in the same way one would speak of a master artist, musician or dancer. In seiki jutsu, however, a master is a source of seiki, in addition to being someone who can talk about it. Although many have been practitioners of seiki jutsu, there have been only a few masters per generation in the tradition’s history. 6. Rhythmic entrainment refers to the experience of being ‘caught’ by a rhythm, such as tapping one’s foot to music. It also refers to the way two or more people can experience being rhythmically in-synch one another’s movements: ‘the sharing in time and space of embodied rhythm’ (PhillipsSilver, Aktipis and Bryant 2010: 3). This kind of ‘rhythmic synchronization’ between two or more people has been said to contribute to a ‘shared mood’, amplified emotions and increased focus of attention on the other with whom the experience is shared (Collins in Turner and Stets 2005: 78).
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Seiki jutsu begins with any spontaneous, automatic motion, including the experience of sitting on a rocking chair when the rocking feels like it is happening on its own. What actually takes place in this scenario is a body motion that is imperceptible to conscious mind; it takes place outside any purposeful intention and discrimination. If one gets caught in a rocking trance and does not generate improvisation or activation of other spontaneous movements, then a vicious circle feeds the repetition of a non-changing action sequence. But if the rocking leads to other automatisms and spontaneous experiences, a flow experience may commence. Here, any action can take place (including repetition), but it uniquely comes forth for each moment that inspires it. As a seiki jutsu practitioner learns to allow the performance of spontaneous, improvised movement to take place, one finds that the body awakens new repertoires of expression. What at first may be limited to rocking and other simple motions may later move into trembling hands, bouncing, a pumping abdomen, swinging arms, and further continue into dance-like choreographies. This development and broadening of the possibilities of spontaneous performance is how a practitioner’s relationship to seiki grows. As the performance becomes more complex and unpredictable, so does the practitioner. In other words, as possibilities of movement grow, the person’s life grows as well, awakening more possibilities for bringing seiki-filled improvisational action into their daily life, relationship and profession. The teaching absorbed from performing spontaneous movement influences all aspects of the practitioner’s life. What is taught through seiki jutsu is one’s capacity to access flow experience and be inside the moving stream of life itself. There is no necessary mind-body dualism in this practice, as the production of ideas, thoughts and speech require the body to produce and express them. Seiki jutsu brings forth more possibilities for voicing one’s discourse, as well as relating to it in ways that are not attached to any hermeneutic method, narrative or preferred interpretation of lived experience. Here, free movement includes free speech, and the latter is regarded as another spontaneous performance of the whole body.
Preparing the client for seiki Though seiki jutsu as a self-healing and revitalizing practice can be done without any professional help, it is initially helpful to have a master performer of spontaneous movement help get one on track and in synch with these effortless motions. In this regard, the seiki jutsu teacher, therapist, healer or master is like a performing arts teacher whose job is to help others find their own voice, movement and way of participating inside creative expression. When a master of seiki jutsu5 spontaneously moves, a client can be inspired to start his own motion. Or a client can hold onto the hand or body of a master whose natural movements can be felt in the client’s body. Here, rhythmic entrainment can take place.6 For example, the vibrating hand of a master can help activate the same frequency of vibration in the client if the latter is ready and responsive to this transference of movement. Both seiki jutsu senseis (master teachers) and Kalahari n/om-kxaosi (Bushman traditional healers) use their hands, arms, feet, legs, chests and whole bodies to send vibrations into the bodies of others. At first this is a means of helping jumpstart an automatism in the client, while later it enables rhythmic entrainment to take place. The latter interaction is experienced as ‘going on a ride’ with another more experienced practitioner
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of spontaneous movement. When the client’s body allows the vibrations to precipitate her own movements, both bodies can become organized by one combinatory or interactional vibration that orchestrates collaborative movement. Here the movement, rather than the person embodying it, is regarded as primary. The master practitioner simply has more experience ‘catching’ the rhythm and movement, and encourages the client to be carried into it through their interaction. The practice of seiki jutsu usually commences when a master of seiki jutsu helps a client awaken spontaneous movement in her body. These teaching sessions bring the student into the domain of a wide variety of natural movements and expression, including vocalizations and seiki-inspired conversation. When a master of seiki jutsu is full of seiki and in tune with natural vibratory expression, they are able to speak in an ecstatically charged manner. The same is true for the Bushman n/om-kxaosi (Keeney 2003). In this case, the voice becomes more vibratory and easily breaks into chant and song. Speech content shifts to more rhapsodic, metaphorical and poetic forms. It is not uncommon for rhyming to appear and for sudden shifts in verbal expression to take place, including enthusiastic sound-making (called ‘shouting’ in the African diaspora, e.g. the anointed preaching found in the sanctified black church). More entries into spontaneous movement of word and body, and their intertwined connections, enable a new stage of relationship with seiki to take place.
Seiki jutsu: Transmission of seiki As the client becomes more familiar with spontaneous expression, there is less need for body contact to take place, while paradoxically, more of this kind of interaction may naturally take place. A shift takes place where vibratory words, chants and songs alone are sufficient to awaken automatisms and movement. Seiki jutsu refers to this stage of interaction as preparing someone to receive seiki. Both the experience of automatic body movements and a master practitioner’s transformational talk inspired by seiki-altered expression take place. The Bushmen refer to this as helping make someone soft enough to receive an arrow on n/om (Keeney 2003, 2010). Each practitioner has his or her own ways of emphasizing how to soften and make others ready for the reception of seiki. Keep in mind that the client already has seiki – anyone alive does by definition – but the transmission of seiki (or the receiving of an arrow of n/om) refers to a readiness for a more intimate encounter with the vital life force, and a greater capacity to express spontaneous movement. This can be called the reception of ‘enhanced seiki’. At this time of development, the client becomes prepared to receive and hold seiki. The inspired delivery of seiki takes place in a ceremonial-like situation, where it is clear that something different is about to take place. A room is prepared for the transmission event. Furniture may be moved out or rearranged so a certain spot in the room is marked as most appropriate for the student to receive an enhanced, amplified deliverance of concentrated seiki. Here a similarity of seiki with feng shui appears, for the room is assessed as to where the ‘hot spot’ is located – the location of a meridian line where seiki is flowing strongly from the atmosphere. The master’s task is to amplify, heat and thicken that flowing current, and direct it into the student’s body. In the transmission of seiki, also called ‘giving seiki’, the client sits on a wooden seiki stool or bench while the master of seiki jutsu begins to awaken
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and amplify the seiki in the room. This is classically done by beating on the walls or making percussive drumming sounds, shouting and whirling one’s arms over the client’s head. To the practitioner, the air above the client can feel like thick honey ready to be spread on the client’s head. Other people are not permitted to be in the room because it is believed that the strong currents of enhanced seiki can pull the life force out of their body, depleting and putting them at risk for illness. As this frenzy of ecstatic expression hits a peak, the practitioner places his hands on the crown of the client’s head. At this moment, enhanced seiki travels down the spine of the client. When it reaches the base of the spine – where it is believed to be stored – it typically triggers a swaying motion. The client is then congratulated and told that she has received seiki. There are times when seiki is so amplified that a client’s reception results in a startling, almost superhuman performance of spontaneous movement. A professor in Japan, Dr Burton Foreman, received seiki from Osumi Sensei and found himself propelled off the bench with his head touching the floor in front of him, only to be bounced all the way backwards to touching the floor with his head in the other direction. Back and forth this went as if he were a gymnast performing what appeared to be prodigious movements. Here we see a similarity to complex kriyas known to some practitioners of kundalini yoga and familiar to Bushman n/om-kxaosi, among other ecstatic traditions. The master of seiki jutsu eventually calms down the enhanced seiki, and taps the base of the client’s spine to still the motion, or at least to slow it down. At this moment, the client is given instruction in the use of their seiki stool or bench, and the daily practice of seiki jutsu as a self-healing, self-revitalization and self-teaching method. This marks the next stage of one’s involvement with seiki.
Seiki taisou: Daily seiki jutsu practice The daily exercise of seiki in one’s body is called seiki taisou. It helps maintain well-being and health, and contributes to opening access to the creative unconscious mind. When a practice session begins, the practitioner sits on the seiki bench or stool and gently presses the inner corner of each eyeball with the middle finger of each hand. This sends a message to the autonomic nervous system that a session is starting. The rocking motion should then start spontaneously. The movements will differ from person to person. They may be forwards and backwards, left and right, a circular pattern, or restricted to the shoulders, arms or other body parts, while some people will appear not to move at all, although they feel movement within. Some will be more active than others, and there are many kinds of patterned motions. All that matters is that the movements are natural, spontaneous and effortless. As one gains competency in hosting spontaneous body movement, the exercise will be experienced as a time for releasing tiredness and for bringing seiki into the body. As Osumi Sensei described it, ‘seiki taisou gives rhythm to your body similar to the way music conveys inspiration through vibration’ (in Keeney 1999: 67). As the practice develops over the years, new kinds of movements will spontaneously arise. What is most important is not being attached to any particular form of movement other than spontaneity, i.e. that which happens effortlessly and naturally. Movements cannot be forced or consciously intended. At the end of a session, the movements will slow down
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and come to a halt. At this time, the fingertips are again placed against the eyeballs to communicate that the exercise period has finished. During the beginning of the Showa era in Japan, which occurred during the second half of the 1920s, there was a popular hygiene method called ‘SelfImprovement Life Force Therapy’ (Ishii in Keeney 1999: 33–34). Jozo Ishii proposed that ‘seiki stimulates the exhausted nerves of the body and causes a reflex movement in the muscular system’ (in Keeney 1999: 33–34), referring to the automatic rocking motion which seiki inspires. Through this movement, and the other spontaneous motions it triggers, seiki is a therapeutic regime for recovery from sickness and tiredness; an instiller of health and an awakener of a person’s inborn talents. In the hands of Japanese culture, it was believed that the quieting of the ego and a detachment from the emotions served a wholehearted devotion to any worthwhile pursuit.7 This attitude allows seiki to be its own teacher and master, as the seiki exercise takes place in its own natural way. You simply sit down and begin, allowing automatic motion to be in charge of its own performance. Osumi Sensei believed it was not possible to master self-healing seiki therapy without the assistance of a seiki master. As she stated: ‘As priming water is necessary for pumping a well, so is the guidance and practice necessary for seiki jutsu’ (in Keeney 1999: 51–52). Technically speaking, seiki jutsu refers to the transmission of seiki into another human being. Once transmitted, it is believed to stay with the human being for his or her entire lifetime. The daily practice of the seiki exercise (seiki taisou) optimizes and nurtures the instilled seiki, making it available for self-healing and revitalization. As the seiki matures within a person, she may be naturally led to heal others. This typically starts with one’s family members, but may conceivably lead to becoming a member of the healing professions. Since the human body hosts a complex weave of many rhythms, balancing them should contribute to the maintenance of good health. The natural movements that seiki evokes could then be seen as helping bring the body’s rhythms into a tuned alignment. Osumi Sensei proposed that the exhaustion accumulated in each day needs to be dissipated, and that this is facilitated when one is rhythmically in tune (Keeney 1999). In the beginning stages of seiki practice, the rocking motions will induce a natural kinetic trance, and this will relax, refresh and stimulate. Later, the practitioner will find that her hands start to touch and pat her own body as if they are administering self-treatment; this is when natural healing takes place. The practitioner will do this spontaneously, as if her hands have a mind of their own. It is not uncommon for seasoned practitioners to begin to voice energetic sounds, chants or songs as this work takes place. All of this expression is regarded as a consequence of the unfolding of seiki teaching. Since it is traditionally believed that there are specific locations on the earth where the flow of seiki is optimized at a certain time of day, the practitioner will learn where the best place to locate their seiki stool or bench is, as well as the best time to schedule their practice. As seiki grows within a person, there arises an intuitive feeling as to these technical matters regarding time and place. Again, the daily practice of seiki taisou should take place after one has experienced seiki jutsu (the direct transmission of seiki from a master practitioner). The instillation of seiki occurs in a place and time when the purest and most concentrated seiki is available. Furthermore, the previous interactions
7. For the Bushmen, the ego is made less dominant by giving its productions no necessary importance, often doing so through teasing one another through absurd humour. Emotions, on the other hand, are channelled into music and dance as a means of helping to awaken and enhance the experiencing of the life force.
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of client and practitioner will have helped the client become readily open to the experience. The mutual trust between receiver and the person giving seiki helps foster a trust that later develops with seiki alone. As seiki is nurtured and deeply trusted in the daily practice, it will direct one’s life in unexpected ways. Through intuition and better access to the unconscious process, the practitioner will develop know-how without any necessity for the primacy of textual knowing.
Using seiki with others If a practitioner is to become a master of seiki jutsu, this will also naturally unfold in the seiki practice. The spontaneous movements will appropriately attune the body and soul of the transmitter to be able to give it to others. Since the mind is easily distracted by its own ambitions and ego productions, it is important for this transition to be held in a context where a senior master practitioner is able to provide checks and balances on the initiate’s progress. The master of seiki jutsu typically finds that they will naturally start work with another person by saying a simple prayer, in which they ask that the seiki transmission will make the client happy and pleased. There is no manual or set of instructions for how to work with others. As Osumi Sensei put it, ‘I simply respond to the callings of the receiver’s body’ (in Keeney 1999: 72). The way in which one previously found automatic movements acting on one’s own body becomes transferred to another person. Whenever it is time to use seiki for helping others, the master practitioner will feel a heavy and abundant flow of seiki coming from every direction. This takes place by drawing upon the accumulated seiki within one’s own body, as well as attracting it from the surroundings. It is believed that this is dangerous to accomplish before mastery, for one can easily deplete one’s own resources. With mastery, there is no such concern, because drawing upon one’s own seiki happens simultaneously with bringing more seiki into one’s body. When seiki is given to others, there is no ego consciousness, and no separation of mind and body. As Osumi describes this, ‘I feel that I have become absorbed into the body of the client’ (in Keeney 1999: 47). When this takes place, there is an immediate and natural flow of seiki from one to the other. The client will receive the exact right amount, and as Osumi has described it, ‘the whole operation will be done in the same manner as a perfectly orchestrated dance’ (in Keeney 1999: 47). Osumi Sensei not only transmitted seiki and helped her clients with their daily exercises, she also developed seiki therapy – a treatment approach in which seiki is used to help cure a sick patient, whether they suffer from physical, mental, emotional or spiritual difficulties. The aim of this therapy is to help clients regain their self-healing power. Seiki therapy brings back the seiki they lost and helps them move it inside their body. Once seiki and its spontaneous movement are restored, it triggers the client’s own healing responses. Again, the client unconsciously directs the practitioner’s unconscious in how to orchestrate treatment. In this regard, the client is equally essential and active in the healing process. The client leads with the help of the practitioner, who treats him while being directed by the interaction between them. The practitioner spontaneously responds to the ‘calling of the patient’ (Keeney 1997: 72). There is no fixed model or formula for seiki healing; the practitioner can create an infinite variety of techniques to meet each unique client’s needs.
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Osumi Sensei notes that seiki as a therapeutic modality was originally meant to be used as preparation for the transmission of seiki. But it also stands as a therapeutic approach in itself, something she historically contributed to the tradition of seiki jutsu. Here the practitioner is one in mind and body with the client. Seiki as a therapeutic orientation has been called a ‘one-being therapy’ (Keeney 1999: 76) because it transcends the dichotomy between client and practitioner. Both receiver and transmitter of seiki are found inside their moving interaction. Seiki jutsu is applicable to both body work and therapeutic conversation. While Osumi Sensei brought seiki into body work, Keeney and Keeney (2013) have introduced seiki to therapeutic conversation. The talking cures of psychotherapy, counselling and coaching have been largely absent of any awareness of whether they hold or promote the vital life force. While therapists argue over theoretical understandings and clinical methods, it is rare to hear anyone ask whether a clinical performance has any vital life force. A seiki-charged therapeutic conversation brings life to a session, and is directed by interaction with a client’s verbal and non-verbal communications. Like therapeutic body work, the therapist listens to the calling of the client in order to direct how to proceed. A seiki-filled therapist, counsellor or life coach brings talk that inspires and fosters transformation of both client and practitioner. Here one does not know what she will say in a session until the moment she is inspired to talk. Free of attachment to therapeutic models, this practitioner is improvisational and ready to be moved by seiki. In addition to spontaneous talk, the manner of voicing words is also shaped by how the life force brings it forth. As previously mentioned, with seiki there are more possibilities for a wide range of performance, including energetic sound-making, poetics, rhyming, chanting and singing. The presence of the latter moves practitioners and clients into territory that extends beyond the typical context of talk therapy, counselling or coaching. In seiki jutsu, neither practitioner nor client has to sit still. A seiki-filled practitioner can be moving in his chair through rocking or swaying movements, or with trembling of part or the whole of his body. He may hold the client’s hand or arm and move her while engaged in conversation. Whatever is moved and how it is moved is again spontaneous, not orchestrated by therapeutic strategy or premeditated plans of action. Seiki itself is the therapy regardless of whether its movements are mediated by sound or touch.
8. We can hypothesize that the emergence of interactivity between client and practitioner is a circular process, whose ever-changing movement brings forth the experience of vitality, i.e. seiki. In this respect, life is found in the interaction that connects and organizes two distinct people into becoming a singular relationship system (Keeney and Keeney 2012).
Implications for conversational and movement-oriented therapies The seiki practitioner follows a practitioner-focused orientation to healing, therapy, counselling, coaching and body work. This means that the practitioner first concerns herself with being filled with seiki. After that, all else follows spontaneously. When the practitioner is full of the vital life force, his or her senses are more highly responsive to the communications of the client. Arguably the most important communications are unconscious, and bring forth automatic responses of the practitioner. Similarly, when the client is brought more deeply inside of seiki, she or he will also perform spontaneous action. As both client and practitioner interact spontaneously, both of their habituated narrating minds take a time out, enabling the rest of their whole being to more fully participate.8
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9. A virtuous circle refers to the way in which any source of well-being, vitality or creativity in a client’s life can be tapped into, amplified and set in motion such that it further grows and sustains itself. ‘Setting in motion’ or ‘feeding’ a virtuous circle is another way of saying that a seiki practitioner is always nurturing seiki in the client, practitioner and the interaction that constitutes the session. We have referred to this elsewhere in therapy discourse as feeding resourceful discourse and expression (Keeney and Keeney 2013). Here we can simply say that a resource is anything that arises from or feeds our relationship to seiki, and when amplified and grown, serves to bring us back into the stream of vital and creative living.
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The seiki practitioner gives no importance to stopping the ongoing flow of cognitive thoughts and images. If an idea arises spontaneously, it is expressed, but given no lasting importance to remain as a static fixture in the conversation should another idea follow it. This way of improvising body movement and talk enables all realms of experience to be spontaneous. Improvised performance, rather than informed repetition, drives the situational encounter. At the same time, the seiki practitioner’s spontaneous presence is organized by feeding a virtuous circle in the client’s life situation, and in the session.9 Thus a skilled practitioner works improvisationally to maintain interactional presence inside the vital life force, so that seiki may orchestrate how a session moves. The radical implications of seiki-inspired, improvised and free expression are made more obvious when we examine how it does not propagate hegemonic beliefs that therapists sometimes cling to in their practice. For example, body and movement-oriented therapists sometimes believe that traumatic experiences from the past are stored in the somatic system, and that either choreographed or improvised movement can offer a release from a historically stuck emotional burden. This idea – and any other idea for that matter – is not necessarily an operating premise in seiki jutsu. Whether or not it is true is dismissed as less relevant than allowing seiki to direct spontaneous interaction with the client. Should a client have a flashback to an early experience – whether it is assumed to be repressed memories of pain or bliss – it is not regarded as having any particular dominant meaning. Instead, the experience is simply nothing more or less than a part of the ongoing performance. Though it is likely that such experiences arise in part from the belief system of a client who may think she is repressing past traumas and needs them released, the practitioner of seiki jutsu is not distracted by proving or attending to any singular frame of meaning. Like a Bushman n/om-kxao, a seiki jutsu master is ready to hold and release any attribution of meaning, utilizing the semantic domain only when it arises spontaneously in real-time interaction. Seiki jutsu arguably enters the experiential territory of a liberated Zen roshi when it strictly attends to what spontaneously arises in the here-and-now, doing so free of attachment to any narrative or habit of interpretation. In its purest form, Zen loses the discourse of Zen, and the seiki practitioner loses any distinction or duality between what it is and isn’t. In the case of Osumi Sensei, although she was licensed as a body worker, she was never conscious of being primarily organized by such a role. She was simply full of seiki, and responsive to its calling in every situation that asked her to participate in a transformative way. The same is true of any practitioner who gives authority to the importance of the vital life force. As the Bushmen say, they become someone who lives and hunts for n/om (Keeney 2010). Practitioners filled with seiki search for it in every session with a client. When seiki or n/om circulates freely inside one, there is only seiki dancing with those who encounter it – whether this is oneself or an interaction with others. Therapists, counsellors, coaches, body workers, ministers, teachers, musicians, poets and artists (among others) who are filled with seiki become the same: practitioners of seiki jutsu – the art of dancing with life’s creative vitality. Even the idea that there are blockages of energy inside the body that need to be released with a blast of life force is not given importance in seiki jutsu. Though a belief in this idea may contribute to structuring a client’s experience, it holds no permanent importance to the practitioner. At the same time, this does not mean that such an idea will never arise in a session. Seiki practitioners may be moved to tell a client that her abdomen is blocking the
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flow of life force, but it is said with no attachment to the uttered meaning. Moments later, they are as free to say that there never was any blockage; they were only having a mental block regarding what to say at the time. In the same fashion, if a client’s body calls a practitioner to gently pinch the client’s left ear lobe, the practitioner does so without asking why. As always, it is seiki, rather than a psychological, narrating mind, that orchestrates action and communication. No matter how successful the outcome with a particular action or technique, even if it is found working with other clients, a seiki practitioner will never proceed to turn this into a general method. It will only be used if it is directed by seiki. No assumptions, generalizations, protocols, models, theories, schools of movement work, philosophies and the like are allowed to block the free flow of ideas, understandings and action as they are inspired by situational moments. Seiki jutsu requires a mind that is ready to be filled and emptied as seiki calls it to act. This improvisational readiness has important implications for the movement-based arts, whether they regard themselves as therapeutic or not. Learning no longer includes an attachment to theoretical assumptions, sequences of choreography and habits of performance. Instead, uninformed availability is taught; the readiness for a surprise that can inspire performance. The movement from informing to performing, though perhaps better appreciated in dance, is less familiar to practitioners of therapy and healing. The latter professions are often entrenched in the replication of modelled procedures rather than improvisational performance. The informed therapist achieves licensure by recalling generalized answers, with little appreciation of the wisdom that can ask information to leave in favour of empty-of-assumption availability, or a readiness to dance with any emergent and passing form. Some of the movement practices from Asia also suffer from pedagogies that first ask a student to memorize a form, practice it for years, and then hope that it will arise spontaneously in the future. The blind spot in this form of method is that it teaches non-spontaneity as a means to achieve spontaneity. The wisdom of seiki jutsu, Bushman healing and other similar orientations is that they start at the end. In the beginning, the student and client are taught to be spontaneous. Though such an invitation invites paradox (being spontaneous in response to an invitation to purposefully do so is a self-referential contradiction), the masterful teacher and practitioner can arrange situations where free improvisation arises naturally. This requires that a practitioner be spontaneous. And a client can, from time to time, allow herself to hold on to her teacher’s spontaneity and be inspired by it to awaken her own uninformed performance of natural presence. Seiki jutsu brings an old wisdom teaching to the performance of life. Rather than making life happen, life makes us happen, doing so with full immersion and circulation inside seiki. Words, interpretations and theories cannot explain this, for they always fall short of the complexity needed to hold the necessary contradictions and paradoxes that arise in the interaction of thought and experience. With seiki we are reminded to ask whether sessions, performances, teachers and lives are robustly alive. Are they sizzling with creative possibilities and inspiring action? Is transformation so obviously present that there is no need for a professional discourse that attempts to persuade that something is really happening? Seiki jutsu reminds us that if we have to ask, the question has already answered itself. Finally, seiki jutsu points to teaching, healing and performance that is always experimental. One enters the session or stage with no idea what will
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happen, even if there is a previously rehearsed choreography or action plan. A single step, word or action can become an entire dance. The client can become the healer, and the audience can dance the dancer. All possibilities are available on the empty stage. Becoming full of seiki enables emptiness – our most important resource – to move, change and transform as life calls it to participate in the ongoing creation of creation.
References Cheek, D. B. ([1962] 1994), Hypnosis: The Application of Ideomotor Techniques, Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Ishii, J. (1928), The Essentials of Self-Healing Therapy, Tokyo: Seiki Treatment Institute and Research Establishment. Johnson, D. H. and Grand, J. I. (eds) (1998), The Body in Psychotherapy: Inquiries in Somatic Psychology, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. Keeney, B. (1999), Ikuko Osumi Sensei: Japanese Master of Seiki Jutsu, Philadelphia, PA: Ringing Rocks Press. —— (2003), Ropes to God: Experiencing the Bushman Spiritual Universe, Philadelphia, PA: Ringing Rocks Press. —— (2007), Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement, Rochester, VT: Destiny Books. —— (2010), The Bushman Way of Tracking God, New York, NY: Atria Books. Keeney, H. and Keeney, B. (2012), Circular Therapeutics: Giving Therapy a Healing Heart, Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker, & Theisen. —— (2013), Creative Therapeutic Technique: Skills for the Art of Bringing Forth Change, Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker, & Theisen. Le Baron, G. I. (1962), ‘Ideomotor signaling in brief psychotherapy’, American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 5: 2, pp. 81–91. Levine, P. and Frederick, A. (1997), Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. Osumi, I. and Ritchie, M. (1988), The Shamanic Healer: The Healing World of Ikuko Osumi and the Traditional Art of Seiki Jutsu, Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press. Osumi, I. (1994), Personal communication, 15 May. Phillips-Silver, J., Aktipis, C. A. and Bryant, G. A. (2010), ‘The ecology of entrainment: Foundations of coordinated rhythmic movement’, Music Precept, 28: 1, pp. 3–14. Turner, J. H. and Stets, J. E. (2005), The Sociology of Emotions, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Williams, G. (2004), Religions of the World: Shinto, New York, NY: Chelsea House.
Suggested citation Keeney, B. and Keeney, H. (2014), ‘Seiki jutsu: Transformation and healing through spontaneous movement’, Dance, Movement & Spiritualities 1: 1, pp. 43–55, doi: 10.1386/dmas.1.1.43_1
Contributor details Bradford Keeney, Ph.D., is an internationally renowned creative therapist, cybernetician, anthropologist of cultural healing traditions and improvisational performer. He is presently professor and Hanna Spyker Eminent Scholars
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Chair, and director of the online doctoral programme in creative systemic studies at the University of Louisiana, Monroe. Keeney was chosen as the authorized successor to Ikuko Osumi Sensei, the foremost practitioner of seiki jutsu in the twentieth century. Co-founder of The Keeney Institute for Healing, he is the author of over 40 books, including The Bushman Way of Tracking God, which won the prestigious Silver Nautilus National Book Award. E-mail:
[email protected] Hillary Keeney, Ph.D., is a distinguished scholar, author, and practitioner of creative transformation and improvisational performance. Co-founder of The Keeney Institute for Healing, she is presently senior research fellow at the University of Louisiana, Monroe. Hillary’s most recent books (co-authored with Bradford Keeney) include Circular Therapeutics: Giving Therapy a Healing Heart, Creative Therapeutic Technique: Skills in the Art of Bringing Forth Change, and the forthcoming Seiki Jutsu: The Practice of Non-Subtle Energy Medicine. E-mail:
[email protected] Bradford Keeney and Hillary Keeney have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.
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Choreographic Practices ISSN 2040-5669 | Online ISSN 2042-5677 1 issues per volume | Volume 4, 2013
Aims and Scope
Editors
Choreographic Practices operates from the principle that dance embodies ideas and can be productively enlivened when considered as a mode of critical and creative discourse. The journal provides a platform for sharing choreographic practices, inquiry and debate. Call for Papers
Vida L. Midgelow Middlesex University
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Choreographic Practices is an international, peer-reviewed, bi-annual journal. Contributions are invited that articulate choreography from a diverse range of perspectives. We are especially interested in receiving articles that address research-led movement practices that are interdisciplinary and experimental in nature. Selected issues will also be thematically arranged. Choreographic Practices publishes both conventional and alternative modes of writing, including performative and visual essays.
Jane M. Bacon University of Chichester
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