Don’t Push the River
It Flows by Itself
by Barry Stevens ARJ2 Chapter: Evolution of Consciousness Published by Real People Press/UT
A Book Review by Bobby Matherne ©2012 "Don't push the river" was the catchphrase of the 1960s and 70s — it was an epithet thrown at anyone who acted tense, anxious, and uptight in those hippie and post-hippie decades filled with pop therapies like Transactional Analysis, Gestalt Therapy, and many others.
A Book Review by Bobby Matherne ©2012 "Don't push the river" was the catchphrase of the 1960s and 70s — it was an epithet thrown at anyone who acted tense, anxious, and uptight in those hippie and post-hippie decades filled with pop therapies like Transactional Analysis, Gestalt Therapy, and many others.
It was certainly the guiding principle of Fritz Perls's Gestalt work: if someone in a group were working on a dream in which he was afraid of a river, he might be told, "Become the river" and encouraged to stand up and move around the room like the river, to feel how the river flows by itself. "There are no rules in Gestalt, only awareness," Fritz might tell him.
Anything you fear or resist out in the world is part of you and inside you, and becoming aware of its presence and vitality will free you from pushing and move you into flowing.