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Every psychotherapist and practicing psychologist know about patients’ descriptions of their bodily sensations. There is no more or less noticeable experience that would not be accompanied by a burning of the chest, or a pain in the head, or compression in the abdomen.

Different attitude to the body sensations

In classical medicine, the body sensations are taken into account to clarify the diagnosis and monitor the dynamics.

Clinical psychotherapy calls them vegetative accompaniments of experiences.

In psychoanalysis, they serve as a material for the interpretation and construction of structures, where through somatic symptoms «the body reports the dominant idea of the «subconscious’. The subject of the searches is the idea underlying the formation of the symptom.

In the context of Jungian’s approach, there can also be situations in which patients indicate body sensations in the process of experiencing certain archetypal scenes, but these feelings rarely fall into the focus of attention. More importance is given to the semantic elaboration of the symbols.

Gestalt therapy pays more attention to body sensations to establish contact with them, to find out their «addressee’, if any, and to complete the unfinished deal associated with them.

Psychosynthesis does not exclude the use of body parts to establish mutually beneficial contact between them. In this case heart, brain, stomach, ears, personified as subpersonalities, can sort out their relationship, but this process does not have the nature of direct work with sensations.

Reichian body-oriented psychotherapy attaches great importance to the analysis of the «rings’ of tension at the level of the eyes, mouth, neck, chest, abdomen, pelvis, forming a «protective shell’ around the body, delaying the free flow of «bioenergy’, and considers its important task to work through the «muscle armor’. However, this approach works primarily with the surface of the body.

Erickson hypnotherapists use descriptions of body sensations to create a background of reliability in the process of «soft trance guidance’. Bodily sensations in this tradition are highly valued for their credibility. With their help, hypnotherapists often receive from their clients, a credit of trust, which a person is inclined to give to someone who has correctly described at least three components of his bodily experiences. An erickson hypnotist describes what a person feels with their body but… thinks about something else.

Here’s how body sensations are characterized from the point of view of neuro-linguistic programming: «Evaluative meta-feelings about other perceptions or representations, also called emotions, feelings, or visceral kinesthetic, which are presented in the chest and/or abdomen, or in the midline of the body. These feelings are not direct sensations/perceptions, but representations derived from other sensations/perceptions.2" «Other sensations/perceptions» – specifically visual, auditory and kinesthetic – are the main focus of attention in NLP.

The ontopsychology of Menegetti attaches great importance to the knowledge of the doctor’s own body sensations in the process of communication with the patient and the study of «semantic field’. However, in this case the appeal to the sensations is of an official nature.

The process-oriented psychotherapy of A. Mindell touches the sensations in the prosses of working with the «channels of perception’.

There are many reports of body sensations during sessions of holotropic breathing according to the methodology of S. Grof.

We can say that every serious school of psychotherapy somehow reacts to the fact of the presence of body sensations brought about from experiences, but almost none of the existing schools work directly with them, thus remaining within the indirect use of this phenomenon. I would like to name the way it is done as external.

Psychocatalysis of body sensations works with sensations directly, «internally’ using them.

Traditional Russian attitude to body sensations

As real force that significantly affects the health of our fellow citizens, this tradition does not exist. The interests of the social experiment, which our country went through, demanded special personal qualities from its participants. The inclination to introspection was not listed among them. Moreover, its manifestations were considered almost counter-revolutionary. “The battles for the harvest’ and other “battles’ for agriculture, industry and other fronts did not include any study of body sensations. That era put forward its heroes. However, their valor was not intended to be healthy for, but rather, to be useful to society.

One of my colleagues told me a story about a group of American feminists who arrived in Moscow during the perestroika period. Instead of giving a long explanation, I will just say that she invited them to a public bathhouse… When the feminists saw the women around them, they began to cry. They could vividly imagine how those Russian women must have mistreated themselves to end up with such deformed bodies. The Americans ladies were particularly shocked by the extent of their distorted joints.

I would like to mention something about the souls of the long-suffering Russian women! Indeed, no matter what, they are distinguished by their commitment to compassion and sacrifice. It would have been necessary to have a remarkable strength of character to withstand everything that our parents and grandparents had to endure. Though, it would have been prudent to add a culture of personal care and self-preservation to such character and experience of suffering; a culture of working through the consequences of the resentment experienced.

I hope that my scientific work will contribute to the formation of such culture.

Domestic “tradition’

This is an example of attitude to oneself, and to the signals of the body, at the household level. Fortunately, this does not mean that in “the domestic’ tradition there is no other attitude to the perceived.

The Orthodox Church, especially the Byzantine monastic tradition of Hesychasm (sacred silence), which was developed in the environment of Russian monasticism, offered to be very attentive to what was formed in the mind of a believer.

I was greatly impressed by the topographic structure of the descriptions of «mind preservation’ by the Christian ascetics. Long before the emergence of any psychotherapy, they described the phases of entering into a passionate state and their ways out of dead-end experiences. Those experiences often resembled plants and animals.

We know such expressions as «seeds’ or «roots’ of passion. In the V century the monk Neil of Sinai wrote about «the foxes that live in the soul of the vindictive, and the animals that hide in the indignant heart’ or «as the water is perturbed by a falling stone, so the heart of a man by a bad word.» «As the smoke from smoldering straw bothers the eyes, so the rancor bothers the mind during the prayer’3. These descriptions are more than just beautiful literary images, they are documentary evidence of the experience of internal work.

The image of perception of the soul and passion is found in the following excerpt by the monk Hesychius: «Distinctive in the old Testament, the high priest decoration (a pure gold plate on the chest, with the inscription: «Holiness to the Lord’, – ex. 28, 36) has a conversion of heart purity which inspires us «to heed the plate of our heart, so that, if it is black from sin, (if we can find it) we should hurry to clean it with our tears, repentance and prayer.4»

«From incessant prayer the air in our minds is pure of dark clouds and winds of evil spirits.5" The concepts of purity or blackening of the soul, the quality of the «mental air’ in us are important for us and will be repeatedly mentioned in the book.

Sinful thoughts «come to the door of the heart and, finding it is not protected by mind, one after the other comes in, each in its own time. When one of these […] thoughts, rising to the heart, enters it, then brings with it a whole swarm of impure thoughts and, thus darkens the mind and heart, irritates the body and attracts it to the shameful deeds.6" The «Swarm of impure thoughts’ is not just a comparison, it is a documentary description of what is happening.

“Objectification’ of sensations in psychotherapy

To continue the conversation about schools, dealing with sensations, the method of bioenergotherapy (BEST), developed by E. I. Zuyev (St. Petersburg) should be mentioned first. BEST, as no other manner of work, enables a person to transfer to the practitioner (the operator) the nuances of body sensations. The peculiarity of BEST is that in the process of massage, which is more than just the mechanical interaction between the practitioner and the patients (which, rather, should be called work on the movement of sensations in the body) the latter are asked “strange’ questions: about the consistency of movement in the body “sensations’, the color of the inner space and other characteristics of the “body scheme’. The patient, for example, reports that their head is filled during the manipulation. “With what?” – the operator asks. The patient: “Air (water, milk, resin, lead, etc.)”. The practitioner holds the shoulder blade and asks again: “What am I holding?” The response is: “A chicken”.

Zuyev’s followers gently call the evocation of those felt images to be the product of «illusions’, the «suggestive effect’. They use this curious feedback to adjust their operational efforts, as well as to divert the patient’s attention towards the process of performing manual therapy procedures. Representatives of the BEST school also suggest: «The immersion in figurative reality is an integral part of deep diagnosis, since the patient «gives’ those images that are embedded in the structures of the subconscious. The creative application of the knowledge of psychoanalysis has limitless possibilities here.7»

We can say that the psychocatalysis of body sensations is the development of BEST ideas in the direction of the psychotherapeutic usage of the ability of man to recognize the «schemes’ of a body.

Spontaneous detection of sensations

“A stone in soul’ is one of those images most often experienced by patients, but it’s not the only one. “Jellyfish’ or “octopuses’ of fear, sitting in the stomach and launching their “tentacles’ in all parts of the body. “Clouds’ of anxiety in the chest, forcing the patients to wring their hands and run around the room. A “mass’ of anxiety, bursting in the forehead, preventing them from sleeping. “Lumps’ of grievances in the chest, preventing them from breathing. “Balls of despair in the throat, squeezing tears from the eyes (“globus hystericus” in Latin). “Brain-eating snakes’ of doubt in the head and “steel plates’ of situation control in the back of the head, raising blood pressure to pre-stroke levels. “Lead shoulder straps’ of responsibility hanging on the shoulders, flattening the spine. Patients often describe their sensations in these terms.

The objectification of feelings in artistic speech

In everyday and poetic language and in proverbs, one can meet such expressions as: “my problems swell my head’, or “cats scratch my heart’. Joy is usually described as big, and grief as heavy. Doctors speak about the “neurasthenic helmet’, though it is not known how to get rid of it.

It is possible to give a lot of quotes from popular songs, for example:

«Don’t go to him, don’t go, he’s got a granite stone in his chest.»

Here is an example from a novel: «A young woman is standing in a dark and cold hallway, near a tepid stove, warming her hands, waiting to be called for dinner- and, having pursed her dried up lips, thinking… about what? About Rodion? It is all nonsense, that she has poisoned him, nonsense! But what if she really has poisoned him… my God! What must she feel? What tombstone is lying on her secretive soul!8»

There is no need to add to the list of excerpts because the reader will be able to recall such collocations, used to describe sensations in the body during the experience of various emotional states.

Snakes in the head is not a sign of schizophrenia

Being a student of the clinical school, I used to perceive the evidence of patients about their feelings as a part of the information needed to help establish the diagnosis and verify the effectiveness of the treatment. If patients told me about the “daggers in their backs’, “the devil on their shoulders’, “worms in their heads’, I thought about senesthopathy, and schizophrenia.

Today, while working through «a given’ energy structure rather than an innate genetic one, I often met the descriptions of «strange’ feelings experienced by my patients. For me, the style of such descriptions is important. It can be epileptoid-photographic, cycloid-colorful, or schizoid-abstruse, or organically flattened. Knowledge of the patient’s character remains essential, but no less important is the fact that there is practically nobody who is unable to describe what is felt. The body experience, (or «experiences of the body’) is a phenomenon which is quite natural to people of any constitutional and genetic type and culture.

Bodily experience, conscious or unconscious, is constantly presented in the normal human sensory system. The only real «strangeness’ of descriptions of body sensations in the somatopsychotherapeutic process, is that they are made in the form of describing objects, which was not done before. It will be discussed below.

Sometimes patients can be surprised by the nature of their perception when referring to their feelings. They even ask in embarrassment: «Do you have a lot of crazy people like me?» The perception of what is felt in images is not a sign of mental illness. On the contrary, the ability to perceive indicates mental health. If we talk about diseases, it turns out that «snakes in the head’ are more a sign of pre-stroke than schizophrenia.

During the observation of the object descriptions of experiences it was found that the results of self-examination of the body sensations can serve, firstly, to activate the processes of natural self-regulation in the body (through the inclusion of the feedback mechanism) and, secondly, to organize accelerated changes in the mental status of the patient through focusing on this process.