Chapter 1 – Letting Flow

Many crises, one root

Anyone who follows the news today can easily lose heart. Wars and civil wars, droughts and floods, growing debts of states and families, people who work and still cannot live on it, depression as a widespread disease, a technology that promises to set us free and yet binds us ever more tightly to itself. Each of these crises has its own experts, its own ministries, its own talk shows. And each seems to have nothing to do with the others.

Bernd Senf, a professor of economics in Berlin, asked a different question all his life: what if these crises have a common root? His answer was so simple that it is easy to miss:

"This root lies in the rigidification of the living that has become chronic."¹

Rigidification – that is the opposite of flowing. A river forced into a concrete bed. A person who learned as a child to hold back their tears and their joy until they no longer feel them. Money that piles up with a few while the many lack it. Wherever something living is prevented from flowing, it builds up – and whatever builds up will sooner or later look for a way out. Often a destructive one.

And that is why the reverse is also true:

"By dissolving blockages, a wealth of problems that only arose from the blockage dissolves by itself."¹

Senf summed this up in a sentence that stood at the top of his website, above his lectures and in the end above his entire work: "The solution to the blockage is the solution – gentle, not forceful." This book is about that sentence.

I first met Bernd Senf in Berlin at an action by Ralph Boes on the bank of the river opposite the Reichstag. Later I asked him whether he would like to talk with me, because I saw parallels between the knowledge of Wilhelm Reich and tantra. He invited me to his home. There was coffee and cake and many valuable insights. We talked not only about bodywork, which was my actual reason for wanting to speak with Bernd, but also about free energy, the fact that the Earth is an organism, and many other topics.

One sentence, three researchers

Senf did not come up with his core sentence alone in a quiet room. He found it in the work of three men who never met and knew nothing of one another – and who nevertheless, each in his own field, discovered the same thing.

"I condensed the insights of these three researchers – and of many others – into one sentence: the solution to the blockage is the solution."²

The three are an Austrian forester, a Viennese doctor and psychoanalyst, and a German merchant. Their fields could hardly be more different: water, the human body and money.

Water: Viktor Schauberger

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) was a forester in the Austrian Alps. He spent years observing streams and rivers – how they meander, how they swirl, how they clean themselves. And he saw what happens when humans "put them in order": straighten them, dyke them in, force them into canals.

A straightened river loses its liveliness. It can no longer clean itself, deposits gravel, becomes torrential in floods and destroys its banks. Senf sums it up like this:

"In short: blocking the natural flow disturbs natural self-regulation and drives out destructiveness."³

And then comes the decisive step. What do people do when the straightened river bursts its banks? They build higher dams. And the higher the dams, the less the river can regulate itself, the worse the next flood. A vicious circle.

Schauberger's solution was the opposite: give the water back its space, its loops and eddies, and where necessary bring it back into its own movement with simple means – until it carries itself.

Fact check: The principle is recognised today – it is called renaturation. On the Isar, the Emscher and many other rivers, straightening is being reversed, and flood protection increasingly relies on floodplains and space instead of ever higher dykes. Some of Schauberger's more far-reaching ideas (for example about energy from vortices), on the other hand, are not proven; this book is not about them.

The body: Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) was a student of Sigmund Freud. He treated people suffering from mental illness and noticed something that psychoanalysis overlooked at the time: what is repressed does not only sit in our thoughts, it sits in the body. In a stiff neck, a shallow breath, a pelvis that is not allowed to move, a smile that looks frozen.

A child comes into the world open, full of life, looking for contact and warmth. If it meets coldness, punishment or violence again and again, it protects itself: it holds its breath, tenses its muscles, withdraws. What begins as protection becomes a habit over the years, and finally an armour that the adult no longer notices. Reich called it character armour and body armour.

The life energy that is no longer allowed to flow does not disappear. It builds up – and turns around:

"Through it, the same energy that is the foundation of life and of deeply felt love turns into its opposite: into neurotic or psychotic anxiety, into blind hatred and destructiveness."⁴

And again the vicious circle. How does a society react to people whose pent-up energy breaks out in rage and violence? With more strictness, more control, more pressure:

"The prevailing way of dealing with these problems is an even stronger damming-up of emotional expression, for example through authoritarian upbringing, in order to bring the destructive outbursts under control – a vicious circle that drives out more and more destructiveness."⁵

Reich's solution was the same as Schauberger's – only in human beings:

"Reich saw the solution to these many problems in dissolving the blockage of life energy – not all at once and certainly not by force, but gently …"⁴

I myself have already helped many people dissolve blockages through tantric massage and also through Sexological Bodywork. I once had a lump in my belly myself, and the masseuse asked me whether she could dissolve it. Of course I agreed, and a moment later I was able to cough up something that she had moved from my belly up to the throat chakra. I also once experienced, at an anal massage workshop, my kundalini rushing strongly after my colleague had probably dissolved the last blockages in the place where no masseur would ever touch me: the anus.

Money: Silvio Gesell

Silvio Gesell (1862–1930) was not a professor but a merchant, for many years in Argentina. He saw economic crises come and go and wondered why. His answer, published in 1916 in The Natural Economic Order, concerned money itself.

Money is supposed to flow. It is the blood of an economy in which everyone buys from and sells to everyone else. As long as it flows, goods reach people and income reaches those who produce them. But money has a property that no commodity has: it does not spoil. Bread goes stale, potatoes rot, clothes go out of fashion. Money can be left lying around without becoming less. Whoever has more than they need can hold it back – and only give it out again when something is offered in return: interest.

So interest seems to dissolve the blockage. But it does so in a way that, in the long run, makes everything worse. For interest turns into new wealth that in turn demands interest, and every growing fortune on one side is a growing debt on the other:

"Debts are the mirror image of monetary wealth, which in turn can only grow if debts grow too."⁶

Senf puts it in an old image:

"But driving out hoarding with interest is like driving out the devil with Beelzebub: in the long run everything only gets worse."⁷

And again the damming-up: austerity programmes, bailouts, arming inwards and outwards – Senf calls this, entirely in Reich's sense, armouring:

"… in the increasing armouring of the social organism."⁷

Gesell's solution: it is not interest that should make money flow, but a small fee on money that is held back – a "circulation incentive". Then money flows even without high interest, and interest falls by itself. In the Austrian town of Wörgl this was tried in 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression, with astonishing success – until the national bank banned it. Chapter 18 tells that story.

The common pattern

Put the three stories side by side, and you see the same pattern three times:

	Water	Body	Money
The living flows	The stream meanders and cleans itself	Life energy seeks contact, pleasure, love	Money connects buyers and producers
Blockage	Straightening, dam	Punishment, coldness, violence in childhood	Hoarding, because money does not spoil
Build-up and breakout	Floods, destroyed banks	Anxiety, hatred, violence, illness	Debts, crises, collapses
False solution: more damming-up	Higher dykes	More strictness, more control	Interest, austerity packages, armament
Real solution	Give space, encourage eddies	Gently dissolve the armour	Circulation incentive instead of interest

As early as 1981, Senf described this pattern much more generally: it applies not only to rivers, people and economies, but to every living system – a partnership, a family, an association, a company, a state. If a conflict is not resolved but pushed away, the system becomes rigid, and the rigidity produces destruction.⁸ That is what chapter 2 is about.

And the three have one more thing in common: all three were ridiculed or fought by the science of their time. Schauberger's work disappeared, Wörgl was banned, and Reich's books were still being burned in the United States in the 1950s.⁹ That, too, is a pattern, and we will come back to it (chapter 9).

Letting go, letting flow, moving along

If this idea is right, then we do not need a thousand solutions for a thousand problems. We need an attitude. Senf describes it in three phrases:

"The whole secret of deeper, holistic healing lies in letting go, in letting flow, in moving along with the natural flow of life energy."¹⁰

That sounds gentle. But it is radical. Because our culture is built on the opposite: on control, on holding on, on pressure. We hold on to money, to security, to our opinions. We hold our breath when things get tight. And we believe that nothing works without pressure – not at school, not at work, not in politics.

Senf observed that the two belong together, the holding on inside us and the holding on around us:

"Domination of nature and self-control are only two aspects of one principle that is directed against spontaneous, living movement and unfolding that arises from within …"¹¹

Only recently I donated my sailing yacht to the Ubuntu Pirates trust foundation. I confess that I had not paid for it myself, but I put a lot of time and work into it. Now my friend Natalino lives on her, repairs her and is bringing her to the Mediterranean at his own expense.

About ten years ago I let my soulmate partner go. If I had wanted to hold on to her, for example through marriage, I would have restricted her. Osho once said that you should not pick a flower, so that others can also admire its beauty. If you pick it, it dies … the flower, I mean. But this applies to people too.

Gentle, not forceful

The second part of Senf's sentence is easy to skim over – and it may be the most important. For anyone who has understood how much destruction arises from blockages would love to break them open in one blow. Blow up the dams, topple the powerful, abolish the monetary system.

Senf warns against this:

"If one tries to break open hardened structures that are more or less hostile to life by force, the counter-reaction of a living system is all the greater hardening or defence. This applies to all three areas addressed here."¹²

A river whose dam suddenly bursts devastates the valley. A person whose armour is torn open by force panics and hardens even more. And revolutions that wanted to break domination with violence have mostly only replaced it. Chapter 3 tells of this – and chapter 17.

That is why this book is not a book against anyone either. It does not accuse bankers, politicians or the rich. Most people act the way they have learned – including those who profit from the blockages. Senf said this clearly: for him it is "not about assigning any blame", but about understanding the structures.¹³ Structures can be changed. People who are accused defend themselves.

Back then I still raised my children the way my parents had taught me. But I abolished corporal punishment, because it hurt me too. Today I would rather accompany my children and answer them when they have a question.

What this book wants – and what it doesn't

This book does not want to convince. It wants to invite. It will show you how Senf and Reich saw the world, where they were right, where time has confirmed them – and also where they were wrong. For whoever preaches the dissolving of blockages must not entrench themselves behind doctrines.

A Buddhist monk taught me this one important sentence, which I still use in workshops today: "Don't believe a word I say, please make your own experience."

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Exercise: Where is it blocked?

For this exercise you need ten minutes and a quiet place.

1. In the body. Sit comfortably, close your eyes and breathe a few times the way it comes by itself. Then slowly let your attention wander from top to bottom: eyes and forehead, mouth and jaw, throat and neck, chest and arms, diaphragm, belly, pelvis and legs. Where does the breath flow easily? Where does it get tight, hard, numb? Don't try to change anything – just notice.
2. In everyday life. Think of the last week. Where did you hold on to something that wanted to flow – a feeling, a word, a request, money, time?
3. Around you. Where in your family, your work, your town is something building up? And how has it been dealt with so far – with more pressure or with more space?

Write down what you noticed. You will come back to it in the next chapters.

Wim Hof says: if you breathe the way he teaches, you will manage more pull-ups, push-ups and so on. He is right … I breathe more deeply and consciously almost every day, and I live more healthily because of it and get more prana.

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Notes

1. Bernd Senf: Die Wiederentdeckung des Lebendigen (The Rediscovery of the Living), Omega Verlag, ch. 1.1 (book p. 12; PDF berndsenf.de p. 2).
2. Bernd Senf: "Die Lösung der Blockierung ist die Lösung", interview in the magazine Sein, April 2010, p. 1.
3. Bernd Senf: "Fließendes Geld und Heilung des sozialen Organismus. Die Lösung (der Blockierung) ist die Lösung" (Flowing Money and the Healing of the Social Organism), Der Dritte Weg, June 1996, p. 1.
4. Bernd Senf: "Fließendes Geld und Heilung des sozialen Organismus", 1996, p. 3.
5. Bernd Senf: "Fließendes Geld und Heilung des sozialen Organismus", 1996, p. 2.
6. Bernd Senf: interview Sein, April 2010, p. 3.
7. Bernd Senf: "Fließendes Geld und Heilung des sozialen Organismus", 1996, p. 4.
8. Bernd Senf: "Konfliktverdrängung und Systemerstarrung" (Repression of Conflict and the Rigidification of Systems), emotion 3, 1981.
9. Bernd Senf: "Fließendes Geld und Heilung des sozialen Organismus", 1996, p. 1 and p. 5. – Documented: in 1954 the US Food and Drug Administration obtained a ban on Reich's orgone accumulators; in 1956 and 1960 his books and journals were burned; Reich died in prison in 1957.
10. Bernd Senf: Die Wiederentdeckung des Lebendigen, ch. 1.1 (book p. 13; PDF p. 3; transition to 1.2).
11. Bernd Senf: Die Wiederentdeckung des Lebendigen, ch. 1.3 (book p. 23; PDF p. 13).
12. Bernd Senf: interview Sein, April 2010, p. 2.
13. Bernd Senf: "Denunzieren statt Argumentieren" (Denouncing instead of Arguing), 2008, p. 7.