Therapy using body techniques takes so numerous forms that we shall have to advise the reader to refer to each to get the full idea of what it produces and what are their goals. A non-exhaustive list would have more than 300 entries, and there are in every country specialised books describing each of these techniques.
Figure Therapy_1
Also, we must refer to Figure Therapy_1 to stress again that a technique, however powerful it may be, is but a technique and never a therapy, whatever the advocates of the technique claim. Titles like "Abranovitch Therapy" in this respect are misleading. What therapises is never the technique in itself, but its participation in the transference phenomenon, the transference signification it has, and the pertinence of its acts with respect to the stage the person is living in her transference setting. A technical act or a therapeutical event has no benefit in itself, it may be beneficial at a certain point during a certain phase of the transferential journey. Or the same act and the same event may be detrimental or even destructive at another moment in another phase of the transferential scene. Therefore, techniques are better left where they belong, i.e. in the toolbox, and one must be aware that only what the person lives in her transferential stage may tell what tool is needed and what for. I must stress again that all techniques are valuable tools, but that only one single technically correct feat may produce dramatic effects such as decompensation, and crush down to nil any well installed transferential therapy. We have an number of cases of this sort who have taken more than ten years after to come back to therapy and a few that never recovered from the act. Therefore the best guidelines are:
We have seen that cycles of all nature and range (reactions cycles, emotions cycles, and even learning and growth cycles) are stuck at some point owing to past parents and educators repression and self-limitations. In the present, they are checked by:
Therefore, 'pushing' the cycles to unroll will not work until some level of acceptance of the feeling/idea/anxiety/interdiction that holds it from under has not been thoroughly worked through. However, there will be hardly any progress unless cycles begin to unroll, and they will not unroll under ordinary circumstances. There are two keys for freeing frozen cycles, safety and vitality:
· bring absolute safety to live whatever outcome will appear
· learn the charge-discharge body scheme and repeat as often as possible without absolute safety from the transference stage, and without a complete rebuilding of the charging ability of the body, there will be no therapy since the cycles will remained frozen and the truth they cover will stay out of consciousness.
Charging and subsequent release will bring with it a new 'truth', that is a hereto hidden fact, a event of our archaic past that could not show up until now. Talking and thinking, introspection and analysis do not have the capacity of getting to this truth since without charging the body, there is no possible release of tensions, advancing the cycles, and therefore no release of archaic information. Furthermore, inhibiting the vitality source and the ability of charging our body is the precise mechanism which we use to prevent the emergence of these patterns and our ignorance of the past. There will be no progress without rebuilding vitality and acceptance of the powerful archaic manifestations it will bring. That archaic truth is usually unconsciously felt too horrible to confront, and a lot of work will be needed to restore the welcoming of archaic life as it was.
Each time we get a new truth, the puzzle of the events in our conscious realm gets a new piece. and each time we reconstruct completely the portrait of our whole life, a process we may call concatenation, i.e. clustering up all bits in a more coherent way. Each time the overall vision of our life become somewhat more solid. Each time we increase the idea that all this has not come by chance, and that we are not handicapped without reason, and that it is not just a genetic hazard, a 'bad character trait'. It is this process which gives progressively a meaning to our history.
One of the by-products of bodywork is that we soon learn that there is a way out of the compulsive and terrible repetition of our too well known patterns, and the guilt and shame it brings every time we are caught in it. This brings a little light in the darkness of this tentative growth journey. And little by little, some trust that there is an Ariadne thread to get out of that maze of emotions and compulsions we are cloistered in. And that Ariadne thread out of impotency is
vitalise and let go, whatever comes
Of course, on this journey of transformation of the still present past sufferings into appeasement and knowing, we are going to encounter terrible frights, which are no more than the fear of ourselves, what we have inside, and what we may produce. And later of what the world contains and what it has done to us and why. As we have said, safety of the transference stage will eventually bring acceptance of self, confidence to go through fears, and the subsequent release of patterns and past truth. In that process, we are learning that we can confront unknown situations and get out of it unscathed and even lighter than before. This diminishes the anxiety, the fear of the unknown.
A we have said, the first goal of all therapy is to retrieve the life we have lost when we were a child, at that time for reasons of safety and survival. The techniques for vitalising the body are therefore foremost in the building up of a body therapy method. Of course, they will not work if absolute safety is not there, and this is only a feature of the transference stage, that is of the therapist's inner structure and state. With vitality, we shall regain the breathing capacity which is essential for all life and all cycles to progress. And with it increase our potential for expression and our strength of self-affirmation.
The second point is to retrieve the ability to sense and feel, which may be dramatically damaged by the loss of vitality and the loss of a component called self validation of feelings. Vitality will bring reactions (inner subliminal reactions) and feelings, and feelings will bring information, confidence if validated, and subsequently reactional and emotional release.
Another important feature is to reconstruct the self-image. The self-image of our body is usually shattered, unwelcomed or unowned. In the severe forms of pathology, we have no self-image at all, a grossly distorted one, a monstrous or a fragmented one. There are many body techniques and massage techniques which are helpful reconstruct a whole and realistic self-image. The 'image of our body' comprises: the image of its contours the image of our face the integration of our body in space and its dimensions the integration of our body motion with respect to the physical laws of forces, action and reaction, inertia and gravity the image our our inner body and organs (psychic vision) the image of our inner structure (psychic vision)
It may be stressed that our 'physical body' or rather the physical vision of our psychic body, as many reichian workers have shown, is an exact replica of our psychic structure. All faults and distortion, lack of links etc. are visible and readable in our body. Working with the body may give direct access to the psychic structure and authorise direct repairs which could not be done by other means. This is why working on the body is a must when working with severe pathology. We have a sort of triple identity or correspondence:
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with its corollary for the therapy of severe pathology
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or Fragmented body |
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or monstrous self-image |
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Now the end of our ideal therapeutic journey is to be spontaneous, ourselves in all circumstances, easy going, self activated at all times, easily relaxing when times allow, and above all peaceful and without questions about the future and life.
But all these desirable features come from a single ability a capacity of letting go, that is of having total relaxation whatever the circumstance, in a normal state of activity and high charge, called sometimes dynamical relaxation, that is to act out of flowing instead of acting out of will. It is more like being acted by evidence, without thinking and without wanting, instead of acting out of what we want to get. That let go state can only be earned by patient bodywork, and innumerable release exercises and meaning giving sessions, until the cycles are almost dissolved and bifurcations begin to appear in our patterns of feeling and manifesting. Then, we shall have reached a more or less permanent state of let go, which is a different level of experiencing life very close to well-being.
[see Levels →]
Last, we come to the point of our genital experience. All inner structural problems will show in our sexual life. We may experience difficulties in relationships, in accepting the other sex and its unassimilable difference, in accepting another being close to us, or another body close to our own body, and being disappointed when our body seeks avoidance of the immense inner life which seeks to manifest when we start being aroused. The frustration of not living up to the life that is planned for us in sex is the root of a terrible despair that most of us try to hide in our deeps. With the reconstruction of our vitality, and the reconstruction of our body, and with the ability to let go, we may come to a satisfactory sexual life. Orgasm is not a act that can be produced, it is just a capacity of the body (psychic body), the capacity of letting go totally in a state of very high charge. So it takes: first the capacity to fully charge our body; second the capacity to accept a very high mobilisation of the body without the intrusion of emotions or associated patterns of avoidance; and third the ability of letting go in that very state. Usually, unconscious unwanted emotions produce patterns of refrain (tensions) or avoidance (redirection of the sexual pressure, annihilation of the sexual arousal, etc.) which are in the way of satisfying genital activity. Working on emotions is the only way to alleviate this and progressively get a more satisfying sexual life.
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