Cesar Millan, Dog Whispering Heilkunstler?
I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to watch Cesar Millan in action, but it is well worth the ticket of admission. He is touted as America’s Dog Whisperer and canine psychologist by National Geographic. You can see his approach to dog rehabilitation by clicking the frame below. The most important aspect is that he is not a dog trainer … actually you may be surprised to find out who actually gets the training!
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=kNA8JbnKU94]
I’ve been guided to watch season 1 and 2 of Cesar Millan’s television series for my postgraduate work with Steven Decker at the Novalis Institute. At first, I couldn’t understand why I was being asked to watch hours and hours of a dude working with dogs and their owners, however, that has all changed now as my kids and I hungrily eek out time to participate the episodes and then discuss what Mr. Millan is actually doing with his dynamic approach. What I’m realizing is that it is not that different to Willhelm Reich’s Character Analysis which enables the practitioner to get at the root of the subconscious and discharge the deadly orgone energy trapped there so that the person can obtain freedom from constriction (armoring) and disease and find a brand new place of naturalness hooked into their instincts and reason.
The dogs that I’ve been watching Cesar work with have generally developed physical and emotional symptoms due to the fact that their owners are attempting to humanize them out their own needs to fill a void of some sort. If you watch, you’ll see dogs that chase their tails for hours until blood is drawn, unprovoked pit-bulls that attack other dogs unmercilessly, and even dogs who hump the children of the household in an effort to dominate them. These neurotic tendencies are actually the owners’ issues being displayed for them through the mirror of their domesticated pet.
If you aren’t able to wholly get the premise, ask yourself this, “Do lions, giraffes and bears display such neurotic tendencies in the wild?” If not, why not? Why do animals in captivity suffer neurotic behaviors and participate our diseases for us? The answers to these questions can be obtained by watching the way that Cesar Millan works with the owners. You’ll see a spoiled teen let her pit bull get away with repeated bad behavior and then praise her, you’ll watch a needy business owner allow her terrier to bite the ankles (to the point of broken skin) as her clients leave her shop, and many others. So what does this have to do with Heilkunst medicine?
Well, under the jurisdiction of spiritual beliefs or Ideogenic diseases (Ideo = ideas and genesis = cause, origin), Heilkunstlers trained in the origins and development of Steiner, Reich and Hahnemann’s dynamic system in the evolution of human consciousness are able to access this realm with humans the same way that Cesar Millan goes about it with animals. What is amazing is that you don’t need to spew content for hours, months or even years at your psychotherapist to get there. The whole meal deal is that we can quickly hook into the body’s subconscious language, make the person conscious of it, discharge it through a variety of simple exercises and get more lability, flexibility, natural thinking and movement quickly and easily. Bye bye neurosis, hello sovereignty and freedom.
I’ve seen patients stop flaring their eyes in undischarged fear, stop over-eating because they were able to resolve nursing conflicts they didn’t know they had, release the anal-rention from too early imposed toilet training, release the mother-guilt held in the thoracic segment causing heart palpitations, finally emit the rage stored in the solar plexus toward their father causing asthma, and finally obtain true, healthy, natural orgastic potency with another human being. Oh yeah, and our patients stop chasing their tails too!
Hi Allyson and Jeff,
Thanks for the fascinating article! I’m putting this on top of my DVD rental list! Can you say more about the exercises for humans? And are there any exercises that people could do on their own without working in person with a practitioner?
-Karen
In Wilhelm Reich’s opinion, it is absolutely necessary to have a trained, objective Practitioner point out the individual’s resistances through Character Analysis. The healthy transference for human or animal onto the “pack leader” needs to be established through trust and respect in order for Character Analysis to follow the full orgastic discharge from charge/tension through to discharge/relaxation. If I am working to do this on my own, I will not wholly recognize where I’m clinging to the edge of the precipice, afraid to let go of my beliefs and upper astral diseases. What I love about Anthroposophic Orgonomy is that it can happen as quickly and succinctly as it does with Cesar Millan’s dogs. He doesn’t need all the content, he works in the moment with the dog’s armoring, and facilitates the release by pushing through the behavior to the other side, often by making it worse in the short term. Basically we are doing something very similar and we find that the process has to be guided. The behavior and nuances are typically very subtle. The patient is generally a master at hiding their neurotic behavior and fears, especially where the intellect is highly developed.
Allyson and Jeff,
Maybe you should contact Cezar to see if he would be interested in working with you at Whispering Heilkunstler. I am almost certain that he would be interested in working with you together on a joint venture.
regards from a holly pop