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CHAPTER 1

TO THE BODY THERAPIST

One of my patients, whom I shall call C. D., is thirty years old. He’s been coming for treatment for several months now. He first sought my help because he had been having panic attacks and experiencing severe stress and also discomfort in crowded situations, particularly with people he did not know. He is convinced that if he finds himself in such a situation, he will feel the need to get up and leave, and if that is not easy or possible, he will panic. He once told me:

If I know them and I know that they like me or at least I feel that they accept me, there’s no problem. I always liked to know that they wanted to keep company with me.

This is one of the reasons why C. D. spends quite a lot of money when he gets together with friends. He often pays their share of the bill too. Would it be cruel to tell him that he is buying their friendship? And yet the truth is that, in a way, he is paying them to accept him as a friend.

This is part of the dialogue that took place between us in our first therapy session together:

V. Ch.: You don’t know me either. Ask yourself then: how do you feel at the moment, in this particular situation?

C. D.: I’m not sure… What I can say is that I don’t feel very comfortable. I feel anxious… I think.

V. Ch.: Any idea what makes you feel anxious?

C. D.: The fact that I’m here… I suppose that must be it. I don’t know you…

V. Ch.: How does that anxiety express itself in your body?

C. D.: I’m trying very hard not to make any mistakes.

V. Ch.: What kind of mistake do you think you’re so afraid of making here?

C. D.: I don’t know. I’m always like that, I’m always trying to control everything.

V. Ch.: Do you succeed? Do you manage to control everything?

C. D.: No, I know it’s impossible but there’s nothing I can do to change the way I think. I’ve even taken antidepressants but it was just the same.

V. Ch.: Now let’s turn to your body. How do you feel in your body at this moment?

C. D.: I feel a bit better. I’ve felt different since the beginning of the session, I think, because you told me to sit down as comfortably as possible and at a distance I felt comfortable with. I had a pain in my stomach and my breathing was high in my chest. At one point I felt dizzy. Now I don’t feel dizzy.

V. Ch.: Do you often feel this dizziness?

C. D.: With my father, especially when I have to face him to sort out a disagreement. We work together in the same family business, you know. When I’m with him I literally get short of breath. For years now my pulse rate has been constantly over 110 and my blood pressure 14/9 and even higher. And now I have tachycardia… My hands are cold and sweaty.

V. Ch.: How does your body feel now that you are less anxious?

C. D.: It’s better, although I feel sad.

V. Ch.: And how does your body feel when you are sad?

C. D.: I feel a weight on my chest and I can’t breathe deeply.

V. Ch.: At this moment what would help you feel better?

(For a short while he remained silent.)

V. Ch.: Okay, could we get a bit closer? If it’s okay with you, I’d like us to get up and stand next to each other, with your back resting against mine to see how you feel.

(This young man needed both support, on the one hand, and respect for his boundaries, on the other. This is why I suggested back-to-back contact as the first form of contact. Later we would try hand and eye contact.)

V. Ch.: How do you feel now that you can rest against my back? Is it a familiar feeling? Do you feel confident enough to let yourself go?

C.D.: I feel okay.

V. Ch.: Can you let yourself go? Is what you are feeling a familiar feeling?

C. D.: I can let myself go… It’s as if I were resting against my grandpa’s back. My grandpa is a tower of strength for me. When I was small, whenever I felt down I would turn to him…

V. Ch.: Good, now keep hold of that feeling and tell me what else might help you feel better.

(I moved a short distance away from him so that there was no longer any body contact.)

V. Ch.: How do you feel now?

C. D.: You’ll think it strange but now I feel as if you don’t want me. I feel rejected. I hardly know you and our relationship is… and yet I still feel as if you don’t want me.

V. Ch.: Tell me what you feel in your body.

C. D.: I feel like crying.

(Tears began to fall; he cried quietly and the crying would continue like this for months.)

V. Ch.: Is that how you feel – sad – when you lose your support?

C. D.: Whatever I feel, it’s not easy for me. My grandpa was the only support I had. And all this seems silly to me, but it’s what I feel.

V. Ch.: Is there anything in my attitude that makes you feel the urge to apologise? Do you feel perhaps that I’m judging you?

C. D.: No…

V. Ch.: We’ll make a note of that. Do you feel “strange” here, with me, knowing that it’s not my behaviour that is making you feel like this. Do you mind if we get closer? Do you mind if we hold hands for a short while?

C. D.: No, that’s okay.

V. Ch.: Good. Now take your time and tell me: now that we have this kind of contact, how do you feel?

C. D.: Moved. I feel moved and my chest feels lighter and I can breathe more deeply. And my stomach has stopped hurting.

V. Ch.: It seems that you need this contact, it makes you feel better. Now look me in the eye, carry on holding my hands and tell me how you feel.

C. D.: I feel a lump in my throat and find it difficult to breathe. I’m afraid that you might criticise me for something…

V. Ch.: Go back to where you were, sit as far away as you need to and for as long as you like, and tell me how you feel. You can come back again when you feel that you need to.

A short while later:

C. D.: Now my shoulders feel more relaxed. As soon as I realise that you’re not putting pressure on me, I feel okay and can draw close to you again.

V. Ch.: Tell me, in what way do you feel I was putting pressure on you?

C. D.: I felt that you were expecting something of me. I always have doubts about what I should do when another person is expecting something of me.

This young man was trying to want what everybody else wants in order to be liked, despite what other people thought of him, which in many cases was that he was a selfish person bent on getting his own way. Recently, after the body work we have done together, he has been breathing better, there is a more grounded look in his eyes and his hands are not as cold and sweaty as they were before. When he has his own space and his boundaries are respected, he does not feel threatened and then he can connect with confidence. Any change in one’s mental state and emotions manifests itself in the body.

What we must do in our first therapy session with a new patient, apart from obtaining an initial idea of their history, is, in the ‘here and now’ of the session, to create the conditions in which the patient will be able to feel that their boundaries are being respected, that nobody is going to criticise them and that they will be able to get the support that they need.

The body therapist does not restrict himself to words, nor is he restricted by them. He uses words and listens carefully but does not stop there. He will garner important information by listening to what the patient says and how they say it. Yet he will obtain even more important information by observing the correspondence, or lack of it, between what the patient says and their body. Where is the patient looking when they are speaking? Do they say that they feel calm and comfortable while they are actually looking away from us and their body shows us that they are halfway out of the door? What is their breathing like? Are they breathing with their stomach or with their chest? Is the breathing deep, shallow or chaotic and irregular?

The body speaks to whoever will listen

In body psychotherapy we have learnt that the body really does speak to whoever is prepared and able to listen to it. We observe muscle tone and take note of the posture of the trunk and the spinal column, and the condition of the hands, feet, the back of the neck and the face. How does the patient respond to touching? Do they feel comfortable about getting physically close? How do they respond to exercises which are designed to help them feel possible blockages in their body?

In order to get to the emotions we have to go through the body. Somebody reeling off their emotions is like a piece of bad play-acting in which the lines are divorced from the plot. Instead of us feeling that our emotions are aroused by the plot, the actor tries to shows us what we should be feeling by telling us what he himself feels. He says things that even he himself feels only cerebrally; the body does not follow. There is no bridge between the mind and the body: they are separated by an abyss. And any communication between the head and the body is via… a rope bridge, like those that dangle over ravines and which, to cross, take the kind of courage displayed by those slick heroes in the old feature films. The way, therefore, to the emotions is always through our own body. Therefore, anything that affects the body is of importance in our work.

In our therapeutic approach to body psychotherapy, our role continues to be that of a therapist: of a person who has already made the journey, who has already made good ground in their quest for self-knowledge. And this is where the basic principle of therapy comes in: nobody can safely accompany someone else on their road to self-knowledge beyond the point which they themselves have reached. The journey to the underworld of the belly and the emotions is not an easy one. There is no doubt, however, that it will broaden one’s horizons and open up new paths… to ‘new adventures and new knowledge’ for anyone who truly accepts the challenge. The democratisation of the therapeutic process in body psychotherapy does not do away with the role of the therapist. It confronts us, however, with a universal truth: on the journey of life, we are all – therapists and patients alike – fellow travellers in the process of maturing. Our roles, therefore, alternate. We are equal, although as therapists we should not overlook the fact that the person we are treating is a person with certain demands.

Man is an integrated entity of body, mind and spirit

In our work, the whole person is the focus of our attention and so we treat him or her as an integrated entity of body, mind and spirit that lives and evolves in society.

Each of us does not possess a body; he or she is a body. Each of us does not possess a spirit; he or she is a spirit. And we are all conceived, we are all born and we all evolve in society.

It is quite common for people to ask questions like: Why are you raking up the past? The more you search, the more you'll find… If something doesn't bother you, then why don't you leave it alone? What’s the point of going ‘back’ to things that happened so long ago they’ve almost been forgotten about? What’s the point of raking up childhood memories? We all have old wounds: what’s the point of bringing them back again and again and hurting ourselves by thinking about them?

All of these questions are often asked, in good faith, by people who cannot see the real benefit of a therapeutic process that uses only speech as a tool. It is indeed pointless, and very often causes fresh pain, to recall a traumatic experience and do no more about it. In psychotherapy we never get patients to recall things simply for the sake of doing so. Knowledge in itself, I will never cease to emphasise, will not bring about healing. The relationship between therapist and patient always lends a new dimension to things and can invest past events with such meaning that they fall into place without causing distress when they are recalled. Awareness always plays a positive role in giving life meaning, and the feeling that our lives have cohesion and meaning has a constantly beneficial effect on us.

Is this the kind of therapy that we want? Is the aim to prevent our memories from disturbing our consciousness? I do not disagree with the basic principle: if something doesn’t bother you, then leave it alone. This raises the big question: are we always conscious of the thing that is bothering us? The answer is no. Many of the issues that cause us severe health problems completely evade our consciousness. In fact, I believe it would be no exaggeration to say that the deeper something is buried within us, the more destructive it can be. We are mistaken in believing that when the danger is removed, our bodies will automatically return to a state of relaxation and calm, with the body’s systems having released the energy they had mustered in order to deal with the danger. This energy is not some kind of mythical entity but the biological residue that remains trapped in the various systems of the body and in each of its cells. If this energy residue is not cleared out of the body, it remains and has the capacity to build up and join forces with other stress-inducing residues. This build-up of residue can be likened to the build-up of various toxic substances, such as heavy metals and other toxic elements; the body absorbs them from various sources and sometimes finds a way of discarding them, while at other times it is unable to do so and so these substances remain trapped in the body until the critical point is reached when the body can no longer withstand their toxicity and either breaks down, expressing its predicament in the form of an illness, or completely collapses, leaving death as the only way out.

Matter has a memory

The original cell of the human embryo develops at its own pace and with exceptional precision, and, in a miraculous fashion, from its three original layers – the outer layer (ectoderm), the middle layer (mesoderm) and the innermost layer (endoderm) – a whole body will develop. The harmonious way in which the body develops can be disturbed in such a way that the disturbances are not physically obvious. Just as we have obvious physical disabilities and disfigurements, so also do we have what are in most cases concealed ‘deviations’ from a harmonious and healthy development, which will emerge on certain occasions and under certain conditions. The most important thing to note here is that matter has a memory.

It is time for us to understand that every cell in our bodies stores information about the experiences we undergo, and this has nothing to do with time. This information, for the body’s purposes, is what we call memory. This memory keeps the cells and other parts of the body in a constant state of readiness, just like the state the body was in when it underwent the original experience: finding itself in danger, it placed all its systems on maximum alert in order to survive, which it succeeded in doing.

What happens at the cellular level when the body is exposed to danger? Exactly the same as what happens in the rest of the body: all of the body’s activities are scaled down so that it can focus on its defence. Very simply, it is true to say that anything that does not directly contribute to the body’s survival either ceases to function or underfunctions. When either of these things happens often, the body is prevented from functioning properly. The appearance of an illness is a visible effect of this mechanism.

An example of this is what happens to the immune system. When it ceases to tackle internal pathogenic organisms and mobilises its forces in order to defend the body against external threats, it does this to ensure survival. When, however, the body almost constantly senses the presence of an emergency or an almost permanent state of red alert, this leads to a drain on its energy resources and leaves its defences in an almost constant state of disorganisation. Then the body collapses at its most vulnerable point. The other important thing we must bear in mind when we deal with human beings as a whole is that information is energy.

A first acquaintanceship with the eternal present

A young female patient of mine once turned up for her therapy session in a particularly happy and cheerful mood, and jokingly described how she had come to buy something for herself that she had needed to get for a long time:

When my parents finally needed something of mine, they ‘discovered’ the thing I had been telling them about for ages. It was broken and needed to be replaced! Weren’t they listening to me when I spoke to them? What can I say? It seems that sometimes they don’t listen to me!

She was talking and laughing about the other things she had bought that day that were not so necessary and she was describing the wonderful morning she had spent with her mother. I was listening to her attentively and I was with her in what we call the ‘here and now’ of the therapy session. In this Now, when the therapist is completely focused on the patient, the connection between the two does not consist merely in the therapist listening carefully to the patient. Neither is it a connection between the subconscious of the one and the subconscious of the other. It is a much deeper somato-psycho-spiritual connection that involves the whole person. At such times the therapist can feel in his or her own body sensations experienced by the patient and when these are followed up, they open up new paths that can lead us to what I call man’s eternal present. The human body experiences and records everything only in the Present. Whatever is experienced in the therapy session is experienced at the same intensity with which it was originally recorded in the patient’s cellular memory.

In my case, the sensations I feel in the soles of my feet constitute a privileged route that will lead me to the experience of the other person – a person who is distinct from myself only on one level; on another level, that person is simply my other self. The pressure in my soles is like a sacred gateway that will lead me to the patient’s past traumatic experience, and it can lead to great pain, a pain that has remained unaltered in time, serving as an indisputable witness to the traumatic experience.

The young woman before me was shaking all over… It was clear that she was afraid, yet she had still not established a connection with the emotion that she was experiencing. When I asked her how she was feeling, at first she replied that she did not know. A short while later, however, she realised what was happening to her. She was afraid and the fear was paralysing her to the extent that she could not breathe. When I put my arms around her and she felt the security of my presence, she said:

Oh my God, I’m three years old, perhaps even younger, and I’m in the hall… they’re quarrelling… they’re quarrelling and they’re not taking any notice of me…

In this particular case the key that broke down the barrier of time – or rather, as I see it, unified time – and brought what was in the subconscious into the conscious mind, was the patient’s statement that ‘they're not taking any notice of me’, her feeling that she was being ignored.

They don’t care that I’m watching them… I feel afraid.

She was breathing with even greater difficulty, she felt as if she was suffocating and could not cry. Fear was preventing her from crying and breathing properly. The three-year-old infant was so afraid that she could not even express what she was experiencing by crying and this was why she felt as if she were suffocating… Only when she felt my secure embrace was she able to release her tears, to sob and to give vent to her grievances.

Why, oh why, oh why?

Now, in a secure environment, she could release her pain, her tears and the feeling of suffocation. This young woman had completely forgotten this incident with her parents, yet today whenever she recalls such painful experiences, she is able to overcome them, recognising the love and care that she now receives from her parents. Typically, in this case, the body, its organs and every cell in the body had preserved the experience and the information intact: the information that ‘my survival is being threatened’ and the protection provided by the body’s contraction in response to the perceived threat had remained unaltered through time.

The accumulation of such toxic residues merely as memories does not cause emotional problems or disorders. Often, I must say, not even a memory of an experience exists, in the sense of a mental recollection. It is a shame: most people lose their inner equilibrium and die without really having had the chance to consciously choose the path to healing. This is why if we want to help and to heal a person, we should constantly ask ourselves the question ‘WHAT IS MAN?’ We have our accumulated knowledge and we use this to guide us as we go along but we should never, never use it as a fortress and entrench ourselves behind the security of our knowledge and experience.

Experiences which remain in the cells as pieces of information, keeping them in a state of alert, cause changes which in the course of time can manifest themselves as purely physical illnesses. Consequently, what causes the illness is not the mental recollection of the experience but the relevant memory and information, as it has been recorded in every cell of the body. In terms of energy consumption, the cost of keeping this painful information ‘away’ from us is enormous. We exchange one kind of pain for another. Most kinds of chronic physical pain stem from this unconscious exchange.

During the same therapy session, the young female patient who had turned up in a cheerful frame of mind as a result of the pleasant morning she had spent with her mother and the shopping they had done together was connected with another traumatic experience she had had at the age of fifteen. At first I observed that her palms were agitated. However, when I asked her what she was feeling and if she understood what it was that her palms ‘were seeking’, she said that she did not know. There was no assistance from her conscious mind. I knew, however, that our connection in the eternal present, which is beyond all normal time, would help us overcome this obstacle… A slight sensation at a particular point in the sole of my foot led me to exert pressure at the same point on the sole of her foot. At first her body convulsed, then shook, then she began to cry loudly…

In front of everybody, in front of the little kiddies… in front of my friend… why, oh why?

There was anger, there was resentment, yet when the time came for her to claim and defend her personal space, she was initially overcome with paralysing feelings of guilt. She could feel her father’s belt lashing her body. She felt so ashamed that her mental anguish eclipsed her physical pain:

In front of my friend, in front of the little kiddies… Oh my God, I want to murder them and get out of here! I don’t want to hear their voices ever again!

She was afraid of her anger; it was lethal. At first she did not want to tackle or release this anger and she was suffocating with guilt.

But they’re so good to me now…

When, with my support, she allowed her system to release the anger that had built up, she was able to relax:

I’m alright now, I feel as if a weight I never knew I was carrying has been lifted from me… I’m okay…

Psychotherapy: a journey of ‘return’ and unification

Human beings never exist in a cultural vacuum, neither do they grow in isolated independence like trees. The people that come for treatment are, without realising it, seeking the unity they have lost. They invite us to join them on a journey of unification. I prefer to call it a journey of ‘unification’ rather than a journey of ‘return’ because the latter suggests a backward movement and, as I shall show later, this journey only appears to be in a backward direction. The body, the material we work with, dwells in the present. Man’s mind travels in time; the body and the spirit, the unified whole that we call ‘man’, lives in the eternal present of God, where he or she encounters the Spirit that lives in the timeless yet dynamic and never static present.

Our patients, then, invite us to join them on a journey we are familiar with. A journey we made when we held the hand of our own therapist. We entered the maze and from the light of the chest and the upper world we descended into the dark underworld, to the realm of the belly and the emotions. There, in the depths of the unconscious, we encountered the Laistrygonians, the Cyclops and the wild Poseidon and we emerged safely, much wiser for the encounter. And, like the poet, we now know who it is that sets up the Laistrygonians, the Cyclops and the wild Poseidon in front of us, together with all the other things that rule us from the realm of our fears. We are not afraid: we have made the journey, we have seen the fossils of our fears, we have affectionately witnessed the way in which our childishness stacked these fossils up before us like obstacles. We have also learnt, however, to have an infinite respect for our patients when they resist… anything less might cause a new trauma. Like a bright light, the corrective experience will illuminate the shadows and, like a fresh breeze, will blow away all the phantoms that keep people from being their true selves and whole, unified human beings. When each of us went our own way, following his or her own path as a therapist, perhaps at first we only had a faint idea of what we later came to understand very well: the road to maturity is an unending one. Ithaca has not fooled us… however much one discovers one’s own unity as an individual, the achievement of unity with the Whole Man and the circumstances in which he lives constitutes an unending journey through life. The layers in which pain is wrapped conceal real treasures… Many will be content with making just a little progress and many others will refuse to embark on the journey; such reactions are simply natural consequences of the inner fragmentation that has taken place. A direct encounter with trauma is no easy matter… Neither is a direct encounter with trauma enough for us to bring healing to it. Yet such an encounter is necessary, though it may not always take place on a conscious level, in order to introduce the corrective experience which is the only real way to unification.

In some cases the traumas spring up in front of us, like targets created long ago that cannot be ignored. In many cases, however, we will have to do some groundwork, we will have to clear the way, to dismantle obstacles blocking our path, or to build, to create supports and bridges to open up the way to the trauma and to healing. A balanced person is a healthy person and a state of dynamic equilibrium is a healthy state to be in. Whatever upsets the balance, however deep down in the darkness of the unconscious it may be, will show signs of life. The longer we turn down the invitation to confront the trauma, the more formidable the challenge of taking a fresh look at a case we thought had closed will seem. Once, our tendency to flee as quickly as we could from the pain of the trauma was the right response, and indeed may even have saved us. Now, however, we have different capabilities and more choices. We hang on like survivors of a shipwreck to the old, rickety raft battered by the stormy ‘seas’ of our childhood and fail to see the calm waters we are now heading towards. The tried-and-tested formula that once saved us is no longer essential or the right method to use when both we and the world around us have changed. When we refuse to recognise a simple feeling of malaise as a harbinger of something else, we can expect other less persistent but clearly more effective states to follow: panic attacks with sudden bolts from the blue, the depression that deprives us of the joy of living, the phobias that restrict our living space, and other physical illnesses that desperately try, before the final embrace of death, to let us know what is happening in the depths of our being… These are the things that restrict us and inspire fear in us, yet these are also the things that speak to us of new pathways and possibilities. Will we remain in the familiar ‘security’ that the child clings to or will we, as adults, take the frightened child by the hand and, with the therapy we offer, lead it out into the light of day?

We strive to achieve a balance not only in our lives but also in our work. It is essential to achieve a balance in every energy centre we work with because the body needs it in order to live and develop in harmony with its capabilities and its surroundings.