“For me it’s like being a child again,” says Flo Böck and laughs. He hangs upside down on a tree and lets his body and soul dangle at the same time. The whole thing is called a hangab.
When going downhill, you take the reverse position very slowly and in stages, the upside-down position. That means, your own body is pulled upside down, the spine is relieved. Flo Böck hangs out from a tree two to three times a month, “depending on your needs, you have to take this time and afterwards to be able to track things down,” says the 34-year-old. The last time he staggered, he was hanging upside down on a tree for about two hours. The Native Americans had already practiced downhill, says Böck: It is known in many cultures that the reverse posture brings about vitalization, opening of consciousness and centering.
In this way, space can be created in the lower back and for the intervertebral discs, old waste products and accumulated emotions can be released, and the body falls into a state of deep relaxation. The energy system is reset to its natural original state, whereby the body activates its full self-healing powers, says Böck. The old should disappear, the new is invited, he describes a hangab session. This is not only intended for people with back problems, but for “very different people who want to get rid of issues,” he says. “For me, Hangab is a tool to get up and down myself. The mind gives rest, the thoughts stop circling”.
Flo Böck has chosen a large pasture right on the lakeshore in Utting for today’s session. There is a clear view over the Ammersee up to the mountains, which are already covered with snow high up. “I like it best when I can do the hangab sessions outside. For me it’s the greatest gift”. It’s a completely different feeling than in a closed room.
Böck takes a very close look at the willow. “I connect to the tree, establish contact – like an inner check-in: is it okay with you that I use you today?” Hartmut Bez gave this to him on the way. He is the founder of Hangab and runs his own teaching center in Deggenhausertal near Lake Constance, Böck learned from him. “I didn’t know what to expect. You need this training because it’s very sensitive work.” After his first session, he knew that Hangab also had a lot to do with medicine. He knows a little bit about the field: He trained as an Ayuvedic yoga massage therapist. “I have a background in body structures, muscle groups and anatomy.”
Böck climbs up the tree trunk and attaches a wide orange rope to it. “I make sure that I touch the young branches as little as possible. And I have an extra wide rope so that I don’t damage the bark.” He jumps down again and attaches a yellow fully static rope to the wide belt, so that he can then unhook it with a pulley. “It has a very low elongation, of a maximum of one to two percent. When I hang out on it, it doesn’t stretch, it’s bombproof.” And that is important, because the goal is “to get very fine movements that do not compress the spine”.
Flo Böck comes from the Lower Allgäu. “I grew up there in beautiful nature, I’ve always liked the mountains,” he says with a view of the Ammersee. After graduating from high school, he started to study business administration with a focus on finance. “I wasn’t happy at all,” he admits. After a while he began to question things: “Why is our world the way it is? Why are we overexploiting our planet?”
These questions concern him to this day. He then discovered social work for himself and helped young refugees. “After that, I was drawn outside more and more, also professionally, sitting in the office was less fun”. After a while, her thirst for freedom and love for nature spreads through her. “I took a break from studying social work, was on La Gomera for half a year and met a wilderness educator there.” He carried out the coyote teaching with him.
Coyote teaching is an extremely effective form of traditional teaching that indigenous peoples have successfully practiced for thousands of years. The aim is “to keep the learner’s curiosity going”, explains Böck. He had strolled across the island with the wilderness teacher and, as it were, returned to the origins.
“I suddenly knew how to move around in the wild, with as few tools as possible, just a sleeping bag, a water bottle, maybe a couple of matches”. He learned a lot of new things along the way, including fire drilling. “This old knowledge fascinated me, every day was like paradise, nature was so full of abundance. During this time I blossomed like never before. And then it was clear to me that I wanted to integrate that into my life,” he says 34-year-old enthusiastic.
Absolute calm is now required. Turn off your cell phone, come to yourself. “Usually I’m hardly responsive when I do that. It’s about going into silence, relaxing”. He has to be able to focus entirely on himself. Böck spreads several lambskins under the willow and lies down on them. He attached padded cuffs to his feet and attached the yellow rope. Then he stretches his legs up in the air. As a support he takes a Blackroll Duoball and places it under his back. “The role provides the impetus for self-hanging”. The three pulley blocks divide his weight into thirds, he does not pull his entire body into the air with one pull. “It’s really easy,” and he can stay as passive as possible, which is very important for the Hangab.
For the 34-year-old, three things are particularly important in life: “Voice, body, nature, these are my passion topics, especially with Amelie,” he says and grins. Flo Böck and Amelie Mehru met in summer 2018: “On a beautiful June day we met around a campfire in the foothills of the Alps. The next morning we stood naked on a cow meadow.” There Amelie Mehru taught the young man his first yodel.
Amelie Mehru is a psychologist and yoga teacher, she comes from Saarland. “Actually, she has nothing to do with yodelling, but she taught me everything she knew,” reports Böck. Yodelling connects them both. “If it’s a bad day, Amelie and I yodel together, and then the world looks different again”. A year later, in 2019, the freedom seekers gave up their apartment in Munich and got an old fire brigade bus. “We have radically minimized our lives, sorted things out, given away, sold. A few treasures are stored with my parents. Since then we have been traveling nomadically for more than two years, musically and by bus”.
Enjoy the Ammersee for a few weeks. Where it will go after that is still uncertain. “We usually don’t plan more than two to three weeks in advance.”
Böck’s legs have now been hanging in the air for a few minutes, his upper body is still on the lambskins. And then it is pulled, little by little. “We get the heart used to the fact that it doesn’t have to pump into the head, but into the feet.” In this passive inverted position, the organs would be recalibrated, as in natural birth with the head first. This way, there is no unpleasant pressure in the head. The buttocks are now in the air: a short pause. “Here are great stations to go on a journey of discovery”. The lower back is relieved after just a few pulls. Flo notices that something has built up again after two weeks. Tense muscles could now hang out and let go.
The young man exhales loudly. It is important to work with the voice, “let out all tones, softly and loudly”. One more pull and he hovers with his lower back about six inches above the ground. He stretches his left arm up and very slowly places it on the other side. “I’m just trying to use the muscles on my arm. Everything else is supposed to relax.” Then it stretches on that side. In this position he achieves his “feeling of well-being” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/starnberg/. “Sighs and moans automatically want to come out. It’s a bit like a cat that purrs. It calms its own Fellow human beings and shows that she is fine, but she also calms herself down. “
Amelie Mehru and Flo Böck discovered a lot on their wanderings. But have they both found their very own place of wellbeing, their home too? “It is definitely a new feeling of home. And it happens very quickly that I feel at home in new places and then put roots in the ground there. At the same time, it also hurts to tear them out again and move on. That is always a tightrope act, “says Böck a little wistfully.
For his next move he doesn’t need the rope, but the stirrup, which makes it easier to pull up. Breath in and exhale. Sometimes it cracks. But that’s a good thing, because then “the spine can let go”. His body is now almost completely suspended in the air, only his head is still on the ground. This position is ideal for a neck massage, as there is a lot of tension there. But not only there: There are also “many stored emotions that are not always let out” in the hips, at least according to Böck.
One last drag and then it hovers over the ground. “It’s a feeling of letting go. The world is now upside down,” he says in a slightly different voice, nasally.
A light wind blows over the pasture. That is nice: “Exposing myself to the wind, where am I dangling?”. He pulls himself a bit higher on the rope so that his arms float freely. Flo Böck looks satisfied, so upside down: “I love the change of perspective.”
A single purr still dangles from his body. This lets him come back to the ground. One last loud exhale, then it goes down again. Shortly before the floor he bends his legs to relieve the pressure on the lower back again. Then he got down again. The world is straight again. And how does it go on now?
“We don’t know when we will settle down again. But the longing to arrive is getting bigger and bigger.” Amelie Mehru and Flo Böck are still looking for a suitable place to settle down. There the two would like to realize what they want to bring into the world: “A musical and nature-loving ecovillage, inspired by permaculture,” explains Flo Böck. But that “everything is still in the stars”.
Amelie Mehru and Flo Böck offer yodelling hikes on a regular basis. “Yodelling together in a group always does something, it really touches the heart.” Info under www.voice-of-nature.de or by email to [email protected].