Mind/Body/Spirit

“You can’t pour from an empty cup.” “Put on your oxygen mask first.” Phrases like these suggest an overly simplistic and logical approach to navigating what might be a stressful holiday season in our lives, but as the readers of this publication are well aware, there is a difference between the cognitive understanding of something and the embodied experience of it.

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.

In my office I have stuffed animals - a rabbit, a dog, and a bear that sit together on one of my sofas. They represent an alternative somatic psychotherapy. Treatment with them involves talk, but it also involves touch and somatic awareness. Clients usually don’t notice them. However, often in therapy, themes emerge that arise from my clients' repressed bodies. These themes deal with both present and past events and how these clients were treated by their parents. This information is presented to me both quickly and as an affectionless series of stories. I stop my clients. I encourage them to take full slow breaths, to place their feet hips' width apart on the floor. Then I ask them if there is a feeling beneath the story that they are telling me. Often, after the breaths, they come back to the story slower but void of feelings. At this point I change the focus and ask them if they are drawn to one of my co-therapists — the bear, the dog, or the rabbit—and let them make their choice. After choosing, their fingers may start to caress or grip the co-therapist of their choice.

Because many of our readers do not follow our website or Facebook page, SPT Magazine is offering the first three of Serge Prengel’s Active Pause articles in one PDF so the flow from one to the next is maintained for our offline readers. We invite you to follow us online as Serge will continue to offer articles in the Active Pause series.

The Traumatic Stress Research Consortium, founded by Dr. Stephen W. Porges, is seeking therapists to join in their research projects.

During this time of “shelter in place” and complete global uncertainty, I’m thankful for our virtual community. Thank you all for reaching out to write, to vlog, to connect and share your knowledge, your thoughts, and your feelings. We are embodied beings with an instinctual need for closeness, touch, presence. Despite the physical distance, I feel grounded and touched by all who have reached out.

Social distancing and separation are a big part of what is needed to deal with the pandemic. In this short conversation, Serge Prengel and Stephen W. Porges talk about how to counter their effects because we still need to be sensitive to our nervous system’s need to socially engage and connect. While we need to isolate to slow down the progress of the virus, we still need to connect, to co-regulate. Steve and Serge discuss ways to mitigate our need to connect. Noting our evolutionary need for facial expression and vocal intonation, they said that using the telephone and video conferencing tools are far better than texting and email (which strip the human factors from the words).

Researchers from Indiana University in collaboration with Dr Stephen Porges are interested in your perfections of and reactions to the COVID-19 virus.

Spirit into Form led me through a profound and lengthy journey I can only equate to the birth process. I admit that after seventeen years’ gestation, I felt an unavoidable urgency to see it take shape as my clients and students eagerly, albeit patiently, awaited its arrival, too. During the final moments, I felt like a small-bodied woman giving birth to a 10-pound baby. When I began organizing my notes and bits of writing, I discovered I had initiated the writing process in 2005 in preparation to meet Emilie Conrad, the founder of a mindful- movement inquiry process called Continuum. Her writings were so inspirational I struggled to record thoughts speeding through me. Spirit into Form was conceived during those moments. My inspiration intensified as I met and then spent years in close contact with Emilie, who became an important mentor for me. Her visionary ideas and words are infused throughout the book.

This article is part 3 of a continuing series about Active Pause. In part 2, I showed how the pause is part and parcel of the process of integrating our experience. Here, I will be describing it as a redefining moment. It is a perspective I like to share with clients, to put our work in context.