Mind/Body/Spirit

Spring. It’s been a delicious one here in this corner of south-west England I call home. We’ve had a lot of blue-sky days, stunning blossoms and fabulously noisy bird songs. As a lover of winter, I have sometimes found spring a little intimidating. I’ve been given funny looks and seen heads shaking when I’ve confessed that to the odd friend, met by: “How can you not love spring?” No, it’s not that I haven’t loved spring, I have just loved winter’s stark bareness more. But not this year – maybe I’m coming out of my shell. My body is unfurling as the days lengthen, and we live more in the light. I’ve loved the upsurging energy of the past fortnight. The sap rising and the energy of leaves and blossom springing into life feels tangible. I’ve noticed the upsurging in and through my being of a body as well as seeing it all around me. I’ve found myself reflecting anew on the nature of the upsurging movement of energy in the human body. I’ve been reminded of diagrams I poured over during the evenings of my body psychotherapy training, having spent the day doing the experiential bit. How energy moves, different energy models, character armouring – I drank it all in happily!

Can you remember a time when someone said, “Can I tell you a secret?” Were you intrigued? Did you feel a slight stirring inside? What sort of revelation did you prepare yourself to receive? Isn’t it funny how images and connotations, interpretations and expectations can make the body respond in certain ways? What do you experience in your own nervous system when you expect a client is about to reveal some secret traumatic event? How does your body physically react? With impulses, shivers, goose bumps? Perhaps a sense of dread and queasiness in the belly, a catch of your breath . . .? While such disclosures are often necessary and vital to treatment, there are also other secrets that can bring healing to soma and soul. Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, simply and profoundly captures the point when he writes, “The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.” This wise truth was delightfully demonstrated recently in a session with Neko, a twenty-two-year-old client with mild developmental delays, whose strength and soul wisdom had been hidden in the unlikely location of a traumatic past.

“I’m so exhausted!” Emily sighed as she slumped into the rocking chair. “The store is driving me crazy!” Congenial and generally upbeat, Emily juggles complex roles as manager of a profitable men’s clothing franchise: engaging saleswoman, savvy boss and compassionate housemother for her “kids” as she calls her staff. Emily handles the pressures with genuine warmth and contagious wit. Despite changing business requirements and the kids’ idiosyncratic quirks, Emily remains surprisingly happy in her job, often affirming, “My job is fun. It makes me feel really good.” Yet, on this vibrantly sunny summer day, something was different. The energy with which Emily entered the room was visibly and palpably low, as if a cloud had blocked the light that had been beaming through the window. With a wan twinkle at the edges of her usually lively eyes, Emily recounted the latest list of stressors involving inventory, customers and the kids.

When we set a purpose, i.e., a resolution, it’s absorbed in our inner mind and anchored in our body thus creating the most potential for follow through. People who visualize healthy lungs, imagine what it feels like to breathe fully and somatically anchors their intention for health are more apt to succeed in say smoking cessation or weight loss than those who simply make a statement.

“When I was a child, Christmas happened on Christmas Eve. Mom, dad, sister, and I piled into the car and drove around the empty streets looking for Rudolf’s nose. I remember the silence illuminated by twinkling Christmas trees in windows and the slow, steady headlamps of whatever Chrysler dad was driving that year. But we were looking for the special light. The red one. Since we lived beneath the flightpath of the San Jose airport, it was not hard to find red blinking lights in the sky. Every year the question remained, “Which one is Rudolf’s nose?” It didn’t matter. My sister, Jenny, and I usually pointed one out and exclaimed, "There it is!" Mom and dad always answered with, “Let’s drive around a bit more, look at the neighborhood Christmas lights to give Santa time to bring your presents.” We did not complain because we knew that gifts were waiting under the tree when we returned home. It was like magic.

It’s already starting. Holiday decorations are showing up at the stores, music is playing at the mall, pumpkin lattes abound. The cultural and familial buildup to this season is magnified every year and, for many people, becomes totally overwhelming. The experience of “too much” can replicate traumatic overwhelm in our nervous system, creating a whole season of nervous system dysregulation. This dysregulation then creates heightened emotions and reactivity (“What!? They didn’t make a vegan pumpkin pie??!”), depression and anxiety (“They don’t like my gift or I have to get the perfect gift”) and often a desire to literally escape the season’s events (fleeing by not going to the party) or a desire to dissociate (fleeing by leaving your body - I’ll just be on my phone for the whole dinner). How can we assist our clients and ourselves in navigating this extended stressful season?

Bette J. Freedson, L.I.S.W., L.C.S.W., C.G.P, read from her new book, Soul Mothers' Wisdom: Seven Insights for the Single Mother, and discussed her writing process at the South Berwick Public Library last night (South Berwick, Maine).

In this article, I will introduce a set of grammar clarifying body psychoanalysis, which extends not only to psychopathology, itself primarily interpreted as being bottom-up in terms of evolutive time, but also, to clinical psychotherapy, that follows. Perhaps I am outlining a new position, certainly it takes the Reichian paradigm deeper, or is, rather, a "change in the visual gestalt" as Kuhn might put it. It represents a change in the mental architecture of observation which emerges from a different way of feeling, I might add. It is a paradigm which reads the unconscious in its entirety, because the unconscious is undoubtedly a "mirror" for what has been deposited in the body.

Is mind/body/spirit unity scientific or is it just a fairy tale? In a therapeutic setting, somatically embodied intention, deeply sensed, can feel like conjuring clinical magic.

There is a special place inside the body—a deep and peaceful place—that is accessible through any one of a number of modalities, including relaxation, mindfulness or hypnosis. Years ago I immersed myself in experiential techniques incorporating mindfulness, mind-body work, and meditation. I wanted to add a layer to my psychotherapy practice in order to reach my clients in new ways. It seemed to me that experience, more than talk, could be key to actually shifting self-deprecating perspectives and negative life patterns. I was amazed to see how bringing these techniques into therapy transformed the experience for many of my clients rather quickly: they moved from anxiety and depression into a space of calm and confidence. Happiness and comfort now came easily and readily to clients who could not previously access them. The experience inside the body and mind became unified, giving rise to a new, fresh sense of aliveness.