Contents
We know that it captures our personal history. It testifies to our way of living in this world, to our unconscious. And can it become a support for psychological changes?
The world of body-oriented therapy is amazingly diverse. Reich’s therapy, Lowen’s bioenergetics, Rolfing, Bodynamics, thanatotherapy, holotropic breathing, rebirthing, Rosen method, dance movement therapy… the list goes on and on.
All these methods have one thing in common: a view of a person as a whole being.
It is not just the sum of somatic and psychological components, but the unity of feelings, mind and bodily sensations. Therefore, through the body, we can access the deep levels of the unconscious.
What is “body reading”
The body, in the words of the thanatotherapist Vladimir Baskakov, “never lies.” All psychological problems have their bodily manifestations: in muscles, posture, gaze, breathing, posture, and so on. The psychotherapist can offer to simulate some situation, for example, parting or meeting with a parental figure, and we immediately encounter our psychological limitations recorded in the body in the form of patterns, muscle blocks.
Does this mean that the body therapist can “read” us like an open book when they meet? That it is enough for him to look closely to unravel our psychological problems?
“What you are asking about is called ‘body reading’,” explains Bodynamic psychotherapist Victoria Berezkina-Orlova. – That is, can I make some conclusion about the client by how he moves, breathes, how I read his gait, posture. But we are not talking about clear, unambiguous conclusions.”
The first impression allows you to put forward a hypothesis, which later, working with the client, the therapist will confirm or recognize as erroneous.
Take, for example, such a feature as shallow breathing. It can form in someone who grew up in an environment of fear, when, for example, one of the parents was drinking or raised his hand to the child. And then the child has a tendency to sometimes hold his breath. However, even those who grew up in a completely prosperous environment can hold their breath in a situation of sudden fear …
And here is the opposite example. In bodynamics, it is believed that if, when viewed from the side, the spine resembles the letter S, then a person may have problems understanding and satisfying his needs.
“Often, such people unconsciously choose an activity that helps them compensate for this bodily feature, for example, they are fond of sports or dancing,” says Victoria Berezkina-Orlova. – Then the back straightens, and the therapist may not see his problems. And in the course of work, if the conversation goes about some painful topic, the back can again take an S-shape.
So, the first impression allows you to put forward a hypothesis, which later, working with the client, the psychotherapist will confirm or recognize as erroneous.
Body as evidence
Wilhelm Reich, the first psychoanalyst who, back in the 1920s, placed the body at the center of psychotherapeutic research, argued that we all wear a muscular “shell” that impedes the development of personality.
This means that there are muscle clamps in the body, which initially work as psychic defenses, holding back “forbidden” emotions. If you remove the clamp, relax this part of the body, Reich argued, then emotions are released, and this leads to getting rid of mental disorders.
Since then, body-oriented therapy has come a long way. Reich singled out seven segments of the body associated with different psychological content, and in bodynamics, attention is already paid to specific muscles (more than 130 muscles are described). It is believed that they imprint our childhood experience gained at different stages of development.
At each stage, the child performs a particular task. At the same time, he is sensitive to how significant adults react to him. If they approve of it, the child acts joyfully and a positive response is imprinted in the muscle (the so-called resource).
Early choices are imprinted in the muscles and lead to problems in the future.
But adults may not support him for a variety of reasons, and then the child has to choose one of two strategies: either refuse to act, or continue, overcoming the resistance of adults. These early choices are also imprinted in the muscles and lead to problems in the future. The therapist may examine the client’s muscles through specific testing or by having the client perform tasks that involve the body and, on that basis, make a more accurate diagnosis.
What is the first thing a psychotherapist will pay attention to? It depends on the approach. In the bioenergetics of Alexander Lowen – on the type of body structure, in the approach of Andreas Wychowski – on breathing, in the method of Moshe Feldenkrais we can be asked to draw a person and diagnose based on the drawing.
And Vladimir Baskakov believes that all our psychological problems can be divided into four main types that correspond to bodily zones:
- excess control (head),
- contact difficulties (arms and chest),
- sexual relations (groin area),
- support (legs).
Understand yourself through movement
“I came to a psychotherapist not knowing that she also uses bodily methods,” says 50-year-old Anna. – And her questions about my body seemed completely superfluous to me: I wanted to discuss the relationship with my husband! This was until the session when the therapist suggested that I squeeze her hand, not the arm of the chair. I started to feel dizzy and nauseous. My childhood fears returned. And I realized how difficult it is for me to accept support.”
In the 1970s, certain hippie-influenced group therapies revealed the importance of movement in relaxation and even in achieving altered states of consciousness, such as through hyperventilation or trance dancing. You can work through emotions violently, for example, through screaming, growling, stamping your feet.
One of our main problems is that we live at high speeds and therefore are in constant tension.
Other practices make you listen to the subtlest, barely noticeable sensations. For example, thanatotherapy is based on the principle of “bodily homeopathy”: minimal exposure, performed at an extremely slow pace, creates conditions under which the client’s body relaxes as much as possible.
The healing of this state, explains Vladimir Baskakov, is to restore the natural balance between the processes of tension and relaxation. After all, one of our main problems is that we live at high speeds and therefore are in constant tension. Deep relaxation sessions help to restore the lost sense of wholeness.
Make peace with yourself
In a safe environment, in a therapist’s office or in a group, we can try to act differently, to go beyond the usual. And then allow yourself more flexibility in everyday life.
How big will these changes be? It depends on the request, Victoria Berezkina-Orlova answers. “For example, a client may say: I have a diploma defense in two weeks, and I am afraid of public speaking. Even if we assume that his problems are rooted in childhood, we do not have time to deal with this. Here we act as an “ambulance”: you need to quickly prepare the client, work with breathing, with legs, so that he feels that he is firmly on the ground, with his back, because one of the psychological contents of the superficial muscles of the back is support and self-support. But then, if he has a desire and a need, he can come to us to work out the already deep problems.”
Psychology is sometimes called word therapy. And although in body therapy the emphasis is on working with the body, it is still combined with verbal therapy in one way or another. “We definitely work with emotions, with awareness, we discuss what happens,” Victoria Berezkina-Orlova emphasizes.
Physical change without psychological change is short-lived. Deep transformation is possible only if we consolidate a new self-perception, coordinating our physical sensations with the way we understand and describe them, with our feelings and ideas about ourselves and our place in the world.