Therapy based on Wilhelm Reich
Skan body-psycho-therapy has its origin in the Orgone-Therapy of Wilhelm Reich and has been further developed by Al Bauman and Michael Smith, Loil Neidhöfer , Petra Mathes and others.
Skan is a word from the Lakota people and means "That which moves", also known as Prana or Chi. Wilhelm Reich was the first in the West to scientifically prove the existence of a cosmic energy that infuses all living organisms. He named this energy “orgone”.
Reich defined bodily, mental and emotional health as the ability to feel and surrender to the free flow of the body’s own life energy. He named this sensation "streaming" which can be felt whole bodily as a pleasurable feeling of being alive and emotionally as love, enjoyment and happiness.
It is this state of unobstructed energetic pulsation in the body’s every cell that the Skan process reestablishes as your natural everyday state of feeling. It promotes security and ease in relating to others. Skan promotes naturally enhanced awareness and being in touch with yourself and your true feelings.
In other words, the orientation of Skan is to reconnect you with your own living core and all the natural and loving impulses that move you from within. You learn to trust ‘that which moves’ you and live your life out of these ‘e-motions’ and be creative.
The foundation of Skan is the ability to be in relationship based on the energetic identification or superimposition of two or more energetic systems. As a Skan ‘therapist’ I have learned to be impressed and moved by each ‘client’ primarily in a human way, to be touched at the heart and respond spontaneously by ‘that which moves’ or wants to move specifically in you.
“In simple terms, Skan methods focus on awakening the heart. This is not the heart of ‘nostalgia’ and sentimentality; rather it is the heart of sensitive clarity and warm, natural aliveness, the heart of hearing, the heart of vision, the heart, which is the center of the self, that which reaches out to the ‘other’ and comes into intimate contact with the fundamental pulsation of all living things.”
- Michael Smith, founder of Skan
“Bodywork is an art, not science. The poetry of longing is its language, not the prose of the clinical report. It takes place in relationship, not in treatment, in the ‘human’, not in the 'therapeutic' relationship.”
-Loil Neidhoefer,
Skan Instructor and author of “Intuitive Bodywork”