Can a person think with the body? Can the body become our assistant in solving everyday problems? Is it possible to change how you feel, to become more calm and organized, to relieve stress quickly, to understand yourself and others better, to work more efficiently, to cope with the daily routine — all with the help of the body? Pavel Shneiderman, a body-oriented coach, tells.
Where do our desires live?
Someone dreams of getting a new car, an apartment in the city center, building a successful career, someone is attracted by the idea of living in Goa and writing books, for someone else it is important to engage in self-improvement, practice yoga at dawn in a retreat or meditate in a mountain monastery. It doesn’t matter what your goals are, what matters is whether you chose them yourself or adopted them from others. A sign that your goals are not really yours and are chosen by you «from the mind» is just the lack of pleasure from the result and dissatisfaction in the process of achieving the goal. «Foreign» goals live only in your mind, but are not rooted in the body, on the contrary, the body usually resists in every possible way and sabotages the achievement of these alien tasks (this sabotage is usually called «psychosomatic disorders»). And vice versa, you live a full life only if you are included in the process completely, with your whole body. You can fool the mind, but you can’t fool the body, because our true desires live not in the mind, but in the body.
- When the body is silent
Truth feels
In the same place, in the body, our feelings live. Joy, sadness, fears and resentment are experienced by us at the level of the body. If, for some reason, in deep childhood, our basic needs were not met or not met in the best way, if we were not able to fully live and let go of our negative feelings, they take root in the body as certain patterns and continue to affect us to this day. The prohibitions and restrictions imposed on us also live in the body. Each parental “can’t” and “won’t work” leaves an imprint on our postures and the nature of the movement of our body. Moreover, it turns out that our habitual motor stereotypes are directly connected by feedback to our psyche. You cannot express anger by lowering your shoulders, hunching over and looking at the floor — this feeling requires a different bodily expression. If we walk hunched over and stare at our feet all the time, we block our ability to make contact with our own anger. The same is true with more complex behavioral patterns: a sense of stability, the ability to move towards a given goal, interacting with what we perceive as obstacles, partner contact, and so on.
The body knows the answers
Body coaching is one of the names of a new type of psycho-body practice that is being born right before our eyes. More and more body practitioners and psychologists of different directions are beginning to look for points of contact between the body and the psyche and find them in the analysis of the connection between body sensations, its position and movements with emotions, thoughts and behavioral patterns.
The first result of body coaching is a better awareness of signals from your own body. Practice allows you to feel and understand yourself deeper. At the body level, this means that you always know what is happening in every corner of your body, your movements become more natural and graceful, your posture improves, and plasticity increases. The body feels more alive and energized. Through a deeper sense of self, you naturally access and deeper emotional connection with others (modern science claims that this happens due to the activation of mirror neurons, leading to an increase in the level of empathy), and due to an increase in internal vitality, the your degree of influence on others. It is no coincidence that the practices of body coaching in recent years are being purposefully used in the West to develop leadership qualities.
How are the sessions
A coaching session lasts from 45 minutes to 2 hours, sometimes a little longer. Since the work is carried out only on a personal request, a body coaching session cannot be presented as a certificate for visiting a massage parlor. There are really no clear rules for conducting sessions. At the beginning of the meeting, after the coach’s basic explanations, the client formulates his request or describes the problem area. The coach can ask questions, ask to direct attention to some areas of the body, describe the sensations that arise in the body, take a certain posture, breathe in a certain way, and also show emerging emotions, pay attention to emerging images. The task of the coach is to make the person fully feel what is happening to him, to be in the present moment, to turn off conceptualization for a while. As a result of the session, homework is usually given, associated with the performance of certain movements that reprogram bodily, cognitive and behavioral processes. In a few weeks of practice, it is usually possible to reduce the negative manifestations that one wanted to cope with and acquire new qualities necessary for the client.