What Is Skan?

[SKAN -"That which moves" in the language of the Lakota people, a tribe of Native Americans]

SKAN-bodywork takes its inspiration from the vegeto- and orgone-therapy of Wilhelm Reich. The pioneer and founder of SKAN was the American psychologist and bodyworker Michael Smith, who was born in 1937 and came to Western Europe in 1979. In ten restless years he helped many people to get back in touch with their living core and instructed some of them in this way of healing. Smith earned a reputation as a brilliant bodyworker; his amazingly loving radicalism was legendary. After his death in 1989, he remained an inextinguishable memory in many people's hearts. His teacher Al Bauman (1918-1998) was in therapy with Wilhelm Reich himself and was a close friend of Simeon Tropp, one of the first bodyworkers trained by Reich. Bauman took care, like few others, to preserve the straight, effective nature of "classical" vegeto-therapeutical bodywork. In the 1990s SKAN became known in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, especially through the work of Petra Mathes and Loil Neidhöfer.

The basis of SKAN-bodywork is the ability to be in relationship; it works against manifold patterns of relationship-avoidance, of physical, mental or emotional origin. As opposed to, for example, the gestalt-therapeutical contact or the hypno-therapeutical rapport, bodywork defines "relationship" energetically: as the ability of vegetative identification, as the ability to connect oneself energetically with other human beings and with living nature; as the ability to meet the world with the authenticity of one's own living core, whether in rage or in affection. Thus, we find our starting point in relationship, not in method or technique. The numerous effective methods of intervention at our disposal are useful only within the context of relationship.

From a technical perspective it's largely a matter of the "classical" instruments of vegeto-therapy. We guide our clients once again to experience their breath as a healing, purifying and vitalizing power, to arrive at a permanently deepened, rhythmic breathing. Simultaneously, different interventions can be applied, such as massage or touch; work with voice, expression, and movement; work with the energy fields; and so forth. This technical repertoire is inexhaustible; it is not mechanically applied but arises anew based on each particular situation.

In this practice we follow principally the Reichian teaching of successively disarming the seven segments of the body, from head to pelvis. Here the organism in a healthy state is seen as an indivisible, pulsating whole --- its characteristic pulsating movement accompanies its breathing (orgasm-reflex).When this movement is hindered, disconnected or blocked in one or several regions of the body, our job is, first of all, to discover the specific physical and psychological nature of the blockage; to help the client become aware that this blockage is his or her own ongoing activity; to dissolve the restrictions and, thus, to restore the holistic cooperative functioning of the different body segments.

In the course of this process of segmentary disarmament, two essential tracks of energy are reopened. The natural body energies of the "frontal personality" flow down the front from the head to the pelvis, gradually re-energizing the whole body --- in the case of a satisfactory therapeutic progress, the head becomes free from compulsive thinking, chest and heart open up again, the midriff is freed from its chronic "watch out!"- position, the pelvis becomes more elastic, and, in the ideal case, the sexual-genital function is restored to full orgastic potency.

The second, important track of energy, we pay special attention to in SKAN-bodywork, is the "radiating" --- the permanent, pulsating expansion of energy from the core to the periphery and to the borders of one's own field of energy, the "aura". Work with radiating energy aims directly at the whole organism's ability to express itself and to make contact, while work with the frontal energies creates the required biological basis for this ability, namely regained mobility of the body and the feeling of streaming (body-consciousness).

Again and again we learn the same thing: many people have no structure of experience for using the enormous amounts of energy that are set free during the horizontal work. It's not at all the case that disarmament leads automatically and spontaneously to a more creative life. It requires practice and discipline to apply this released energy in a way which leads to a more satisfactory way of living and experiencing. SKAN offers an effective instrument for this bridging from the therapeutic situation to everyday life: Streaming Theater, a form of theater-work Al Bauman developed in the tradition of great acting teachers like Konstantin Stanislawski and Michael Tschechov.

Streaming Theater is a vertical form of bodywork; a synthesis of Reichian bodywork and acting training; everyone can benefit from it in the theatre of his or her own life. Streaming Theater, with its manifold improvisations of movement, expression, and voice, gives one the ability to distinguish mechanical, "false" patterns of armored movement from the "true" impulses of expression and movement which originate from one's core, to build spaces out of these "true" impulses and, eventually, to bring the whole body permanently into action as an instrument of one's own streaming: devoting oneself to pulsatory movements of one's body and being with this inside the world.

Bodywork and Streaming Theatre complete each other and can be done in parallel. Often, however, extended work on dissolving the body's armor is required before the vertical work can be most effective.

It remains to be said, that as our experience in this work progresses, a paradox develops: In the final analysis we don't actually know what we are doing. We can make detailed statements on the structures of the armor, the paths of energy, possibilities of intervention, and so on. But the change, the transformation, the revolutionary effect remains a mystery; we don't know concretely what ultimately causes it. Every work, every session, is in an exiting way always new and challenging. It's part of the nature of this wonderful work, that it forces us again and again to remain innocent and - in the best sense - naïve.

Though we don't know what we are doing, over time we can develop a skill to let ourselves into the mystery: not needing to know, not needing to understand --- yet resonating, sympathizing, staying sensately in motion; and out of this motion, letting our own will occur. Then many things are possible.

In the beginning of this text it was mentioned that SKAN was inspired by the body-therapy of Wilhelm Reich; in the end it must be made clear that, in the meantime, some differences from Reich's conception have emerged. These are outlined briefly as follows: The defined therapeutic goal in Reich's model is the concept of the grown-up, sociable, orgastically potent individual. This is represented by the term "genitality" or "genital character". "Genitality" is defined by Reich not only as the goal of therapy but also as the individual being's highest evolutionary potential.

The basic energetic concept of this implicit theory of personality describes the energy-economy and the energetic movement of the "frontal personality": the model of natural frontal body-energies which flow downward into the world. The theoretical framework for this is Reich's formula of tension and charge, with the criterion of orgastic potency: the ability to reach a homeostatic compensation of tension through full orgastic genital discharge.

Not mentioned in Reich's concept are the ascending natural body-energies at the back. If these natural body-energies are not endlessly discharged downward, but rather concentrated upward, they nourish and vitalize the whole organism, create the energetic basis for spiritual growth, and enable an intensity of sexual experience which transcends the restrictions of the conventional sexuality described in Reich's model of orgasm.

Such questions have hardly any practical meaning in the beginning of a therapy. But in the end, the premises a therapeutic treatment follows are decisive for the therapy. Depending on the answers to the following questions, the body-therapist will act in a specific way: Is Reich's formula of tension and charge universally valid? Is there, in fact, something like "surplus energy" in the organism? Do we need a discharge-model or a transformation-model of the natural body-energies? Can Reich's formula of tension and charge be widened in the sense of an inner-organismic, "entropical" discharge of the ascending natural body-energies?

Again, like in Reich's model, the crucial point is the way of dealing with sexual energy. The attainment of genitality remains the necessary criterion of a successfully finished body-therapy. But this is not the end of the road for individual human development. The thrust of sexual energy can - also in the context of therapy - be led to the inside and, thus, influence the individual's health, vitality, zest for living, and ability to make contact in a positive way inside the world. Genital discharge is just one of several possibilities (and only under certain conditions) for regenerative dealing with sexual energy. This has been known for millenia and has found its systematisation and methodology, for instance, in Taoist and Tantric teachings.

If the liberating of genital sexuality is to remain the predominant framework in bodywork, then we will have to work out in the future a way to bring together Reich's outstanding contemporary contribution - the segmentary process of disarmament and the restoring of orgastic potency - with these historically available, mature legacies of human sexuality.

Loil Neidhöfer [Translation: Kai Lorentzen]