More on our remembering selves.

More on our remembering selves.

When the WHOLE body, everything included, is involved in the memory, we feel complete / together. With other words, we are our remembering selves. Often our experiencing selves are like strangers. I got this from Daniel Kahneman, and, he also described that, for most people, the value of a vacation trip is not the experience but the anticipation beforehand and the memory afterward. From a Primal point, he says something interesting; many people would be willing to experience a tremendous amount of pain if they were guaranteed that their brains were wiped clean of any trace of memory. (He didn’t go that far that he included the whole body. His wife, Anne Treisman is a cognitive psychologist at Princeton...)

During my whole life I have a few memories which stand out; each of which were complete (with as much of my body included as I was capable of). For example, they include how I was dethroned as a kid by my 3 year younger sister, how I refused - was unable - to accept my mothers religious drivel, when I got my first kiss at 15 and when I smoked my first Pall Mall cigarette. Later comes my memory when I was recommended The Primal Scream in the beginning of the 1970is, my first Rolfing session in Boulder, Colorado, my first experience of how a grand mal seizure turned into a primal feeling / birth experience, my mother giving me her version of my birth 1980 and how Art put me into a sensational primal experience in Bergen, Norway 1984.

All these are important examples of memories I trust because my whole body was / is involved, contrary to many of my countless memories which are merely mental events.

Jan Johnsson