Exercise 3: Clear

With Exercise 1 : Heavy — Letting Go
We induce physical relaxation in the muscles of the limbs, a sense of stillness and fullness of sensation in the body. We notice the weight and solidity of the body — its physical mass.

With Exercise 2: Warm — Letting It Glow
We move from the experience of solid mass to a glow of energy. The body outline, our sense of its shape, becomes blurred, fuzzy and expands outward. We experience the physical body as an aura of glowing energy. We might imagine that glowing aura as a reddish or orange-yellow colour.

With Exercise 3: Clear — Letting It Flow
We clear that aura — washing away all tension, letting all disturbance drain away — so that it becomes empty and transparent.

Exercises 1 & 2 have put you more in touch with the felt-sense of your limbs. There is an experience of greater fullness of sensation in the limbs. Interoceptive sensation, signals from a limb’s interior, have become amplified by daily practice of Exercises 1 & 2.

As well as heaviness and warmth there may be many other sensations in the limbs. For example there may be slight aching in the joints, or minor pains and discomforts, faint skin itchiness, subtle feelings of movement and vibration. These might include the autogenic discharges (stress release phenomena of small muscle twitches and tingling sensations) discussed in Exercise 1.

Countless sensory and motor phenomena may emerge alongside the heaviness and warmth. The aim of Exercise 3 is to clear these phenomena away until the limb feels transparent, empty and clear
— so empty and clear
that the limb seems almost to disappear.

We are not trying to actively suppress these other sensations or dampen them down. We invite them to play themselves out until they fade spontaneously, to discharge themselves, to drain away. You may sometimes find that you need to recite the mantras of Exercise 3 more than three times before the limb feels clear.

Through regular practice, we are building an autogenic state of augmented self-regulation and self-healing in successive stages:
(1) first, we induce the heaviness of muscle relaxation
(2) then, we bring on the glowing aura of warmth
(3) and now we focus on allowing that aura to become clear of tension and disturbance — as though washed away by flowing water — so that it becomes quite empty and transparent.

Beyond enhancing relaxation and self-healing, the Clear mantra helps initiate the process of visioning. The longer-term purpose of REM Autogenics is to access dream-like visual imagery from the unconscious and so aid integration of the personality. Repeated use of the word Clear, followed by Light in Exercise 4, helps the visions emerge.

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