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CHAPTER 2

BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY AND ITS LIMITS

Because we work with the body and close contact with it forms part of the therapeutic process, we should not only respect the patient’s boundaries but also ask them frequent questions about our movements and how close we can be to them at any given moment. The experienced therapist knows how to respect a patient’s boundaries without being, or appearing to be, insecure. On the other hand, they know from experience that emotions, transferences and experiences in the therapeutic here and now can change from one moment to the next, and that it is these which determine how close they can get and the quality of their touch. A good and continuous experiential education is, without doubt, essential.

It is not only talent that makes a good therapist. A good therapist should also be a good patient, a person who has acquired, through personal therapy, a good, broad sense of themselves; a person who, recognising their own character-structure, has encountered and dealt with their own blockages in a process in which knowledge passes into and is recorded in the body. Here we are not talking about a ‘perfect’ therapist – the equivalent, say, of a psychoanalyst who has been fully analysed himself. Just as there is no such thing as a perfect parent, there is no such thing as a perfect therapist. Through our training and continuous lifelong education, we try to be as good and effective as we can be in our work as therapists. Besides, who seeks to constantly enrich their knowledge? Only those who believe that, however much they already know, there is always more to learn. And what we learn every day from our patients is simply amazing.

When energy flows freely in the therapist, then it is possible for this energy to make contact with the patient’s energy, and the therapist, in his constant desire to respond to his patient’s needs, will help them to experience the fact that body contact can lead to making a connection and then, in turn, to establishing a relationship, which is the desired aim. In working with the body, we are always in the present. So we encounter the body in the dimension it is living in. And the body always lives in the present. The mind, on the other hand, can travel in whichever time dimension it chooses. The body, like the spirit, knows only the present; the therapy takes place in the present and it is in the present that, in the absence of knowledge, what we call ‘miracles’ take place.

People who have not developed flexible and stable boundaries are capable of connecting and having contact with others but are incapable of developing relationships. Relationships presuppose the existence of boundaries. Let us take the example of a person whose boundaries have been violated and the person who is responsible for the violation. Without effective body therapy, the victim and the offender might remain connected for ever. This connection, however, can never be regarded as a relationship.

The same thing happens in the case of people who, as children, had parents who did not respect their individuality. I am not referring to the type of parents who flagrantly violate their children’s boundaries by sexually molesting or having penetrative sex with them. I am referring to those parents who, under a variety of pretexts, become abusive by expressing their own sexual repression and problematic nature, without assuming responsibility for their desires, which very often remain unconscious. The harm, however, is done. When a parent, without respecting the privacy of the moment, enters a toilet just when a child of theirs, who is old enough not to require their help, is busy attending to his or her own personal needs, this constitutes a violation of the child’s personal boundaries. Another violation of this kind, and one which is also recorded in the child’s system, is when a parent asks a child or teenage son or daughter to clean their back while they are in the bath, or when a mother asks a son or daughter to fetch her sanitary napkins because she is on the toilet and cannot reach them. The victims of such violations will have a deficient sense of self. Their relationships, based on a weak will and an insufficiently integrated self, will be tossed about uncontrollably by the winds and the waves, which will push them either very close to or very far away from the other person in each relationship. They will also suffer in respect of their needs and their desires. It will be difficult for them to distinguish their own needs and place them above the needs of others. As for their desires, it will be difficult for them not only to place them above the desires of the other person in a relationship but also to recognise them as their own, distinguishing them from the needs of others. To this category belong all those who may be described as having an ‘as if’ or ‘false self’ personality.

Our modern societies do not love children

Our modern societies are only euphemistically called ‘child-centred’, however much we like to characterise them as such. Societies whose main priority is the production of material goods are bound to be less joyful and to turn life into a struggle for existence. In these societies – and however harsh it may sound, it needs to be said – people do not have the time to raise healthy children. Haste in itself and the lack of respect for a child’s own rate of development constitutes a violation and is recorded in that child’s system. How many mothers, under the relentless pressure of work, stop breastfeeding their babies very early on? And what about all those mothers who, either as a result of being misinformed or as a result of the belief that they might lose their breast shape, do not even breastfeed their babies? This deficiency will be recorded as a trauma, with the resulting effects. The same thing happens in the case of an adult who holds a child in such a way that they show no respect for the sensitivities of the child’s body. The young human being that has just seen the light of day and come into direct contact with the outside world for the first time – without the protective buffer of the womb that nourished it and helped it grow from a single-cell organism, an amoeba, into a fully-formed human being – is much more sensitive than some people would like to believe. Whatever the child might store in its memory as an engram, the original experience, if it is a traumatic one, will never be erased. What is trivial and unimportant for an adult may often be of great importance to an infant. For example, many early traumas that we come across in therapy originate in bad, sudden or hasty manoeuvres by the medical or paramedical staff during the process of childbirth. In no case should the delivery room become a factory production line as a result of financial or any other kind of pressure. Human beings produce machines; we are not machines ourselves. I can clearly recall the crying and wincing of a helpless infant displayed by many of my patients when, despite the fact that my surgery was properly heated, they trembled with cold as they relived the experience of their birth. Only a warm hug, a gentle caress and a loving, welcoming smile could warm them up.

Oh my God, where are they putting me? Why don’t they leave me inside my mummy? They’re holding me upside down and putting me in something made of metal. It’s even colder than the room. I don’t like it… I want my mummy.

Mothers, however, are, like almost all people nowadays, subject to the dictates of a biomedical model that cares more often about the comforts of medical and paramedical staff, operating schedules and the orderly running of the health system than patients. And here there is a lack of information, while the amount of misinformation is staggering – and this is due not only to ignorance but also to vested interests.

A lack of sensitivity on the part of the mother during pregnancy is a decisive factor in the development of the embryo. What is her own psychosomatic state? How does she feed herself? How does she take care of her body? How does she communicate with the child in the womb? Is she in a calm state of mind or fraught with anxiety? Is she depressed? Is she mourning for someone or something? How is she mourning? What kind of relationship does she have with her partner? All of these things play a role. I am not saying there is an ideal mother or a perfect moment for bringing a child into the world (in many cases there is no such moment). The difficulties and the problems are part of daily life. It is impossible to banish pain, insecurity, sadness and danger from our lives. However, it is one thing to be sad about something and quite another to feel ground down by it. It is one thing to feel a rational kind of insecurity, one which presupposes our acceptance of the fact that we cannot control everything, and quite another to feel that we are at a dead end. Our bodies react in accordance with the way we take in and interpret events, not the events themselves. Here I would like to strongly emphasise the fact that our assimilation of events – which, as I have already said and will go on to show through a number of different clinical cases, determines the way in which we are affected by them – does not always take place on a conscious level.

When we consider the defenceless baby in its mother’s womb and the fact that it is fed by its mother’s emotions – emotions that are converted into biochemical changes, and other things besides – then we can understand just how important the mother’s responses to the realities around her are.

Perhaps we should pause for a moment and consider an obvious fact: we do not bring children into the world to fill gaps in ourselves or our social lives. Children are not fashion accessories. Neither can they seal the cracks in a marriage that is on the rocks. When they are used as tools to satisfy other purposes than their own existence, this fact is recorded in their system as a violation, with serious consequences for the child’s development. The adage ‘like attracts like’ could not be truer in this case. Every experience has its own energy. One trauma, in terms of energy, will attract another trauma, and one violation will always draw another in its wake. Energy-wise, victims of rape attract their assailants, who have the energy of rapists. In the same way, phobic individuals attract the energy of psychopaths.

PATIENT: Now I can understand why in every grade of junior and senior high school there was at least one teacher who made passes at me… The word ‘victim’ was written all over my face and I was the only one who couldn’t see it.

V. Ch.: Let me put it differently… you weren’t the only one who didn’t see it. The only people who saw it were potential violators. It is they who have the ability to pick out victims.

The first part of this dialogue was spoken by a woman who suffered her first violation in her own home, at the hands of the person who should have given her security: her own father. From that moment on, right up until the time she was healed, there was not a single school or workplace she found herself in where she was not assaulted by at least one other person. It is a well-known fact that, in the majority of cases, rape victims have a history of being raped.

Sexual harassment, it should be stressed, is not the only way in which an individual’s personal boundaries can be violated. Our personal boundaries are not firmly fixed from the moment of our birth. They are built through relationships which respect our individuality as children and, through the respect shown for our personal rate of development, at each individual stage of it, by the adults who are taking care of us.

Our boundaries form the basis of our relationships

Examining a patient’s main developmental deficits, mainly in respect of their personal boundaries, is a priority for the therapist because it is on the basis of this examination that they will create the essential support framework that will enable the patient to relive their traumatic experiences in a safe therapeutic environment.

Man is always a single, indivisible entity.

Without boundaries we cannot exist as individual entities. With inflexible ‘limits’, with fixed impenetrable borders, we cannot exist as a society of human entities. And no human being who lives without the society of others is truly human. This brings us back to what the ancient Greeks and the Church Fathers believed: no individual human being can exist on their own; a human being on their own is not really a human being at all. Our personal energy fields cannot exist without the society of other human beings.

AN EXAMPLE OF OUR PERSONAL BOUNDARIES can be seen in the cell membrane. The cell membrane is the boundary which separates the internal part of the cell, which forms part of our being, from what lies outside and is alien to it. The membrane is flexible and permits a two-way flow of material through it. It allows good, useful and nourishing elements to flow in, while safely keeping harmful elements out. It also allows the waste matter produced by the consumption of nutrients to pass out of the cell and to remain outside it. Consequently, the cell’s boundaries never take the form of fixed, constant and impenetrable borders that protect us by keeping us securely sealed off from the ‘dangerous’ outside world.

Let us consider the example of an individual that is suffering from severe depression, a person who is shut up within themselves. From the look in their eyes it is obvious that no energy is flowing through them. They are like a closed circuit. If they are not connected with other people, they will remain dead as a person. More than anyone else, they need to be connected with other people, which will draw them out of their isolation and give them energy to live – and yet this is so hard for them to do. It is as if the depressed individual has no heart. Of course, they have a physical heart but they have no energy, no energy flowing from the heart through the neck to the head that would make their eyes shine with vitality. Eyes without a heart are vacant; they do not encourage others to make contact. If you shake hands with someone without that person’s eyes establishing contact with you, then it is a frigid meeting. No energy is flowing. In such cases do not expect to see the kind of healthy flush and warmth that is generated when two people meet and can see joy in each other’s eyes. When one meets a depressed individual, it is like coming into contact with a cold fire, one which generates no heat because no energy is flowing. The bridge which links the heart with the head is ‘blocked up’. This happens to very many people, not only individuals suffering from depression. And all those of us who work in the healing profession know that depression is not a severe form of sadness. Depression is a deficiency of energy.

When a person is functioning on the level of the head, they are thinking and often become lost in the maze of their own thoughts, but their thoughts have no connection with their heart. It is the same with their speech: when they speak and their utterance is not a ‘silent’ sound in the brain, their speech is not connected with their heart. In this case, the shoulders play a Procrustean role by obstructing the free flow of energy from the heart to the head and the mind. By releasing the flow of energy from the heart to the head we can connect a person’s speech, eyes, understanding and thoughts with the heart. The existence of a connection between the heart and the head is of decisive importance for any individual because it will determine to a large extent the quality of the relationships that that person will have with other people, leaders and movements. It will determine the role their heart plays in lending depth and colour to their life.

The relationships of a mature person are not determined solely by the heart. They are influenced by the heart and the emotions but also by the cold reasoning of the head. We do not follow leaders or movements only with our hearts, neither do we function merely on the level of our heart and our emotions, without rational thought. Nor do we fall in love only with our hearts, independently of the rest of our bodies, without using our heads, embarking on a love affair which, instead of uplifting us, brings us pain and misery and causes us to lose our personal sense of self.

We should also unite our legs with our hearts because they will lead us to the person we love. We should also unite our arms and hands with our hearts so that we can use them to embrace others, to give and take, to hold things and to be held, to attract things to ourselves but also to draw limits.

Procrustes, who obstructs the flow of energy from the heart down to the rest of the body, resides mainly in the diaphragm and, to a lesser extent, in the pelvis – not because the pelvis is of any less importance in providing a connection between the heart and the reproductive organs but because if the flow of energy is cut higher up, in the diaphragm, then there will be no energy in the pelvis capable of being blocked. The pelvis does indeed play a very important role because it embraces and encloses, like a protective shield, the reproductive organs, although, as with any kind of embrace, it could under certain circumstances turn into a prison.

Confidence and breathing

How can you develop, how can you embrace and enjoy life when it looks so inhospitable, so traumatised in the faces of your parents? By working with a patient’s breathing, we perform exercises that build confidence and improve the quality of life, we help the patient to tune back into the rhythm of life. Think of the way that we look a baby in the eyes and welcome it with a smile, a movement or a playful gesture. This gives the baby space, the ability to breathe deeply, and confidence in the adult, and through this channel – the adult themselves – confidence in life. Every breath of life emanates from a feeling of confidence, initially confidence in the parent and then, if deficiencies in the parent are taken on by the therapist and the therapeutic process, confidence – through the therapist – in life. The more deeply we breathe, the closer we are to attaining joy. Breathing is perhaps the most direct way of connecting with the universe and its energy. Restricted and shallow breathing indicates a limited use of the energy of the universe. The effects of this on our sexual energy, orgasmic ability and ability to enjoy life, as well as on our health and our ability to connect with others, are direct and obvious. We cannot mechanically impose a change in body posture or in breathing. Changes that have been imposed in this way, if not cancelled out during the course of the therapy – and not any kind of consultative process – will certainly leave their mark elsewhere. In our work we are concerned with the whole person, the person who is suffering, and when a person suffers it is always their whole being that suffers.

We are not concerned with ‘individual’ symptoms, with individual organs of the body. The body’s equilibrium does not consist merely in an equilibrium between the different organs of the body. The body is decidedly more than the sum of all its cells. And the way all these cells communicate with each other is wondrous. In our work we feel for and understand a person who, in the course of the therapy, displays the need to overcome the symptoms they are suffering from. We give that person support but we do not confine ourselves to, or allow our attention to focus only on the symptoms. The type of treatment we follow is not a symptomatic form of treatment. The symptoms, often to the surprise of the patient themselves, recede almost without our making any special mention of them.

SIMPLE EXERCISES BUT A GREAT HELPDeep breathing from the stomach and the sound made by the expirations help the energy to flow in both directions, both upwards and downwards, although mainly downwards because breathing from the stomach functions as a constant form of internal massage that relaxes the diaphragm area. Gentle jumps, with the joints relaxed, and twists of the pelvis in both directions, with no pressure on the stomach and deep stomach breathing, help to release the energy and make it flow downwards. Lying face up on a mattress and pushing on the back of the neck and the feet to raise the pelvis and hit it against the mattress, can also activate the flow of energy. For the upper part of the body, simple exercises that include twisting of the shoulder, neck and throat joints, and gentle massaging with sound of the joints of the upper and lower jaws, can help energy to flow.

An all-round balance

Individuals with blocked energy usually need support in order to relax. For this reason I would advise the therapist initially to use his back as a support. Once they feel the support, the patient can begin rotating the joints of their shoulder blades, using small movements and pressing their back gently against the support. Another type of support that strengthens the patient can be given when the patient is lying on their back on the floor: after raising the patient, the therapist can get underneath their back and support it, thus enabling the energy to flow. On an emotional level, at this point it is not unusual for the patient to burst out in sobs.

As we have seen, our main concern is achieving a balance. Just as we seek to achieve an energy balance between the upper and lower parts of the body, we should also seek to achieve a balance between the front and back of the body because if there is a surplus of energy at one point, there will be a deficiency elsewhere.

The front part of our body, which is used in the contact and relationships we have with other people, is a very sensitive part. For protection, it draws from the back of the body, where our willpower and strength are based. Thus, sometimes there is a large concentration of energy in the front of the body because of great pain and fragility. The opposite happens when the heart loses its energy as a result of a person’s efforts to protect themselves. In such cases, in which a person channels all their energy into protecting themselves, the heart loses its vital energy and dies – or, in the best of cases, we have a ‘warning’ heart attack.

We need our hearts; rather, we as human beings, in order to achieve balance in our lives, need a heart which is sensitive enough to allow us to communicate and connect with others and yet at the same time strong enough to enable us to pursue our goals. Therefore, we need a heart that is sensitive and receptive – and therefore vulnerable, because that is the only kind of heart that can enable us to draw close to other people – and at the same time strong and determined, a heart that can keep us steadily on course in the pursuit of our goals, of those things which are important to us. I have known people who, because they were incapable of finding a solution to their emotional problems, despite their wealth of professional qualifications and social or professional achievements, had their problems ‘solved’ for them when their heart collapsed. For some people, however strange it may seem to most of us, death is the only way out of what they have come to regard as an impasse in their lives. It is another, what I would call ‘silent’, form of suicide.

In relation to the heart, the hands are in a privileged position and have a special relationship with it. However full the heart might be, if the hands are not free to express its joy, if, in energy terms, they are not capable of touching and feeling the objects of its love, the heart can do nothing. How can the heart embrace another person without hands and arms?

Our hands are bridges that connect us with the outside world and help us to draw the things we love close to us. Our hands enable us to give what is in our heart to others. In energy terms, our hands are not connected merely with the opening of the throat as an energy centre, they are not connected merely with our breathing; they serve as wings for the heart, enabling us to fly, always through our connections with other people, in worlds which, by ourselves, we would never be able to approach. We feel a unity, we become one with the person we embrace – two individuals with ‘one’ big heart – when we are truly united by love.

Connecting heart to heart…

Often, when I work with individuals who feel lonely and disconnected, individuals who have never really experienced unconditional love, regardless of their own understanding of love – you cannot imagine how ingenious many patients are in their attempts to justify the deficits of love they are suffering from –, I hold their left hand in my left hand and, placing my right hand on their heart, I ask them, as a first step, to make contact with their heart. Through this holding of hands and contact with the heart, we effectively form a figure-8, which is the well-known symbol of infinity. In the process of making a connection, this infinity symbol becomes the circuit which unites the hearts. Do not be surprised if very often the patient tells you that they can see the flow of energy. The patient really can see it. They can see it flow from the therapist’s heart, first through the therapist’s left hand into their own hand, then through their shoulder down into their heart and then from there into the therapist’s right hand and back into his heart, where it began. It is an energy circuit with a yellow colour, a circuit of love that unites the hearts. Not all patients, particularly at the beginning, can feel their heart or any contact with it. If a patient has no sensation of their own heart, I ask them simply to feel my hand and tell me how it feels on their breastbone. Does it feel heavy? Does it feel as if it’s pressing down? Do they feel stifled by it? Do they find it irritating, even if they do not know why? Do they find it warm or cold? Are they unable to feel it at all? If my hand in some way feels heavy or irritating – here I try to obtain as much clear information as possible – I take it away and place their own hand on their heart. If they can bear it, I then put my hand on top of theirs and ask them to feel their heart. If the patient feels comfortable with my hand on their heart, a little later I ask them to place their hand on top of mine and tell me what they feel.

Do not think it strange and do not be dismayed if someone tells you they cannot feel their heart at all. Gently and lovingly ask them what they can feel, whatever it is. The mere fact that you are showing concern for them may be enough for the time being. We humans can almost always understand – even if for reasons of self-protection we do not admit it to ourselves – when another person is really there for us. Then we feel something, and that something is love. Yes, we show love when we are there, in an absolute way, giving our full attention to the other person. At that moment, in the therapy session, our complete giving of ourselves to the patient means only love for that person. Our total focus on the other person is love, and this love is God. This does not mean that I always agree with the other person and do what they want. It is one thing to love another person and another to become that person’s stooge. As the Church Fathers say: ‘love is the highest of all the virtues, while discernment is higher still.’

Now maintain the contact you have established and ask the patient to keep their eyes closed and maintain that contact with their heart. Whatever kind of contact they have, now ask them to feel your heart. Can they feel it? Can they see it? And in what way can they see it? Do not be surprised: at moments like this it is not unusual for patients to talk to you about their spiritual experiences. Rather it is to be expected… When we escape the tyranny of the mind and enter the realm of the heart, the spirit and the body, then we enter the timeless Now, the Present which is our true home. It is here that we can make true contact with other people as somato-psycho-spiritual entities.

All patients, in their own time, usually make contact and see the heart that is inviting them to enter into a personal encounter. If you do not feel that you are fully in the Present and totally focused on the person who is trusting you with the opening of their heart, then do not go on. This process is more than a mere exercise. You should devote to it the time that you yourself really need. In order to open up, a heart requires respect and truth. The heart is not like the mind, which plays games with words so as to hide from the truth. This heart-to-heart encounter can take place at some other time, when perhaps you feel more prepared, so that the patient, in their open heart, can sense the presence of a heart that will be with them for ever – a heart that connects them with THE HEART OF THE ONE and brings them into contact with the forgotten memories of the unity of all things. The patient obtains the thing that all people need, the thing they were deprived of as a child or did not get as much of as they needed, and no longer feels this deficit in their heart.

True relationships vs. dependent relationships

A person who is not instructed in the secrets of the heart might believe that a connection of this kind will create a relationship of dependence. Such a relationship does indeed develop, and this happens when the patient, as an adult and on an adult level, develops such a strong connection with another person that it is a completely novel experience and, wishing to keep what they have found and recognised as something they need, they become ‘hooked’ on the other person in an often intolerable way. In the body therapy process, when the patient experiences a deep connection, this connection will lead them to the primary deficit that was created in the ‘then’ of their childhood, which is experienced in the ‘now’ of the therapy session. The therapy always takes place in the present and when the patient’s needs are covered by the therapist in this ‘now’, they have no need of any kind of dependent relationship in order to function. This ‘novel’ sensation that I have mentioned recurs every time the patient comes into contact with an object of dependence. Here we are dealing with the self-repeating vicious circle ‘dependence → enthusiasm → rejection → depression → hate → new dependence’ or the similar one of ‘dependence →mythification → enthusiasm → demythification → demonisation’ and the endless process of making connections without the patient being able to establish a real relationship. Real relationships always require both freedom and commitment, which represent another stage of development.

It is not uncommon for patients of mine, in the pain they experience on discovering a new connection with me that might lead them to have a new kind of relationship, to react negatively at first by saying something like: ‘Yes, I feel okay about you holding me… it's nice to be hugged and to have someone you can turn to for support when you need it. But I don't want it, I don't want to get used to something I know I won't be able to have when I leave this place. I won't be able to find it…’ The only thing I ask of them is to put their trust in the therapeutic process and I explain to them that what they are experiencing now, as adults, and is causing them pain because they recognise the deficit they have, is experienced in such a way during the therapy session that it is recorded in their system as if they had experienced it at the stage of their development which is under examination. The experience will be recorded in their system in such a way as to eliminate the deficit. A similar thing occurs in the treatment of accident cases. When the treatment is over, the patient knows that an accident took place but, despite this knowledge, feels that it never took place. The same thing often happens in phobia cases. For example, recently I was told by a fifty-year-old woman who had been afraid of dogs all her life ever since she was chased by one when she was eight years old: ‘I remember the incident, I remember that I used to be afraid even of small and completely harmless puppies but now it's just a vague memory that causes me no fear at all. I remember that I used to be afraid; now I no longer feel any fear… Now I play with dogs and stroke them as if I had always done it.’

Let us return to the process of making contact with the heart. When someone makes contact with your heart, they can often – in fact, it would be no exaggeration to say almost always – see it. It might look red to them. It might look red with a yellow halo. It might look a pure yellow or gold. Maintain that person’s contact with your heart for a short while and then ask them how they feel and what their own heart looks like. Some people will find it difficult at first to see their heart. Others will find it easier. To some people their heart will look black, dark or slightly red… The most important thing is that they should establish contact with it. Then we can go on to make a connection.

Each time you breathe, press my hand a little harder and do it as if it were a pump. Try and pump energy out of my heart into your own. Look at your heart now: it is not alone. Look at what it’s like now that your heart is not alone. Look at how you feel… keep hold of that feeling, it’s yours… Your heart is not alone. Now it knows what it’s like not to be alone, now it can trust… Keep hold of that feeling, it’s your heart. Look at what colour your heart is now. Is your heart now the same colour as mine? Now your heart knows, wherever it is, that there will always be another heart it can connect with…

Often, people who have a certain amount of spirituality or believe in God will speak to you of the awe they feel when they make a connection, and they will often tell you afterwards that they felt the presence of Christ, the Virgin Mary or a saint they particularly revered. People who do not believe in God are surprised when they have spiritual experiences. At first they try to deny that they had the experience. Later, however, they find that they cannot deny the obvious. The truth, their own truth, is so powerful that it eventually imposes itself.

The two aspects of time

By creating a suitable therapeutic framework for each individual patient, we can proceed in depth with the treatment, in which, in the here and now of the therapy session, the two aspects of man as a creature ruled by time are unified and experienced as if they were one and the same thing. We shall take a more detailed look at this later.

Suffice it to say here that the experience that is relived in the here and now of the therapy session is relived as if it were happening in the present. Consequently, every intervention we make in the here and now of the therapy session is experienced in the time at which the trauma occurred and cancels it out, as if it had never happened. We encounter the trauma in the time at which it occurred and it is in this context that the therapy takes place, ‘changing’ the course of events at its onset. The historical event is still there and the memories of it remain but what makes the difference is the energy: the energy which flows freely and marks the patient’s release from the trauma.

It should be noted that our ontological system leads us to the therapy by following not the chronological order of events as has been recorded in the patient’s calendar time but a progression from the least painful to the most painful experience. In this wise manner it enables us to move on to deal with painful experiences after having gained strength on the way there. Indeed, at some stage our system will need to nourish us by leading us to very positive experiences so that we can gain the strength that we need for the next step, which is likely to be very painful.

Very often the progressive work that we do in order to nourish a patient and help them move forwards is alternated with regressive work to help the patient obtain what they never received in the past, to help them feel secure and continue their development with confidence.

Now I shall describe part of a therapy session I had with C. D. that took place after we had been working together for about three months. As usual, he arrived five minutes early. He declared that he was feeling very tired, although he hadn’t done anything to justify such tiredness. ‘I don't know what's happening to me… I feel so stiff and sluggish, and yet I haven't done anything particularly unusual to feel this way,’ he said with a self-deprecating expression.

V. Ch.: What you did might not have been unusual but it might still have been tiring.

C. D.: I haven’t done anything different from what I normally do… I shouldn’t be feeling this way.

V. Ch.: Are you perhaps too hard on yourself?

C. D.: That’s how I’ve learnt to be… I always feel as if I’m to blame for something. I feel as if I’m not good enough for someone… as if I fall short in some way… I don’t know, I always feel as if someone is expecting something from me…

V. Ch.: Now, at this very moment, what do you feel? Do you feel as if I’m expecting something from you?

C. D.: That you’re expecting me to be cooperative? I don’t know…

V. Ch.: And how do you feel when someone is expecting something from you and you don’t know what it is and you don’t know how to respond?

C. D.: I don’t know…

V. Ch.: At this moment, how do you feel physically?

C. D.: Tired. Yes, I feel as if someone forced me to dig a field on my own and I haven’t heard a word of thanks from anyone…

V. Ch.: If they said thank you, would you feel less tired?

C. D.: Definitely.

V. Ch.: Okay, concentrate on your physical state. You’re feeling tired, okay, we’ve got that… Now try and tell me a little bit more about the tiredness you feel.

C. D.: My head feels tense… it doesn’t hurt but it doesn’t feel good. I feel as if I can’t see clearly… The back of my neck feels like a lump of wood, I find it difficult to move my head from side to side. I feel as if my head will drop off… My shoulders feel like two blocks of stone. They feel heavy and hurt me… I find it hard to breathe deeply… My chest hurts…

V. Ch.: Your belly, your hips, your legs… how do they feel?

C. D.: Well, my belly feels a bit queasy… As for my hips and my legs, I can see them but I can’t feel them!

V. Ch.: Concentrate for a moment on what you can feel in your body… If you can, close your eyes and tell me what happens… or tell me if you can see something.

C. D.: Yes, I can see my girlfriend. I can see what happened yesterday… I’m close to the bed… I’m sitting on the bed and my girlfriend is coming towards me. She’s standing in front of me now and I’m afraid that she probably wants to have sex and I don’t know if I want to. I love her, I find her attractive, but right now I’m not sure that I want to have sex and I don’t know what to do.

V. Ch.: What if you simply told her that right now you don’t feel like having sex? If you simply said: ‘Darling, I don’t feel like it’, wouldn’t that be enough? Never mind the fact that you don’t know if she really wants sex.

C. D.: It’s not just that I don’t know if she wants sex, but even if she wanted it, she’s so good to me that I’m sure she wouldn’t grumble or complain or pull a face about it.

V. Ch.: Has anyone grumbled or pulled a face at you before?

C. D.: My parents! They were never happy with me… Never… I remember one day after school when I was young… I hadn’t done very well in a test and I was feeling worn out, I wanted to go to bed and forget about everything. They showed no understanding, they humiliated me and I felt drained. And then later, when I was fifteen or sixteen years old, I was afraid of having a relationship. I was afraid of being criticised by my parents and the girl I’d have a relationship with… I joined the army and hoped I might go out with a girl but I preferred to masturbate… That’s why even now I’m still quite addicted to it. I still find it difficult to take risks… I play it safe… Oh my God, I feel so drained… I want to lie down…

He lay down on the mattress and continued:

C. D.: It’s no accident that I used to tell my parents lies. By telling lies I would try and get a little bit of love and affection… Whenever I told the truth they were dissatisfied with me and rejected me. Whenever a lie was in danger of being exposed, I would make up a new one to cover up the previous one and eventually I always found myself trapped. It still haunts me, even now…

V. Ch.: Now, at this very moment, how do you feel? Focus on your body and your feelings.

C. D.: I feel as if a weight has been lifted off me! I don’t feel any anger, I don’t want to hit out… though I feel hurt… I feel as if I should give an account of myself to somebody, as if someone will judge me… I’m almost trapped in a tight corner. My throat hurts, it feels as though there’s a huge lump in it. I feel the need to curl up…

He curled up into a foetal position and remained silent for a while. He held my left hand while I supported his back with my right. A little later he continued:

C. D.: I’m ten years old now… I’m curled up in this position on my bed… That’s how I protect myself.

V. Ch.: Protect yourself from whom?

C. D.: From those who judge me, my parents.

He remained silent for a while.

V. Ch.: Now, at this moment, do you feel as if I’m judging you?

C. D.: No…

V. Ch.: Good. Now what would help you feel better?

C. D.: To wake up and find that all this is just a bad dream. There’s no other way I can deal with it. I’m not a bad person… I can’t bear the thought that they are judging me and that this will never end. Okay, that’s all right but… There will always be ‘buts’… She’s okay but… He’s happy but… I was always afraid of the ‘buts’… The ‘buts’ are so unpredictable… and you can’t use them to cover yourself either.

V. Ch.: Now, at this moment, what would help you feel a little bit better?

C. D.: A little chat… yes, that’s right… and a good hug would help me.

I covered him with a blanket and held him just as he was, in the foetal position, and I urged him to breathe a little more deeply. He realised, as he was speaking, that the lump in his throat had shrunk. The physical contact and the way I was holding him, with no conditions attached, were doing him good. Somebody was there for him, only for him, without expecting anything from him and without judging him. He remained in this position for quite a long time, as if he were in the nourishing environment of the womb and being nourished by it. His body relaxed, his breathing became deeper and calmer. Slowly he uncurled his body and stretched out his limbs, taking his time. Now he could feel his pelvis; now he could feel his legs and he began to play around with them; he lifted them up and looked at them… He moved the back of his neck around and then… opening his eyes, he gazed up at me like a young baby. He was like a young baby that was still receiving its mother’s attentions and he felt good. He remained lying down and, as he looked up, I smiled at him and, pulling gently on his hands, raised him up slightly. His head fell slightly backwards; his neck was slacker now… He began to respond to my smile and said that he felt ‘different’ at being able to read it well. I asked him not to exert himself at all, but just let himself go and feel what it was like for his body to be lifted up just a short way, only with my help. This was a brand new experience for him… having somebody concern themselves solely with him in a joyful and unhurried way.

Once he had experienced this different ‘now’ and registered it in his system, he was ready to move on to raising himself up through his own efforts and my support. I gave him my hands, he held on to them and, using the strength of his own arms, raised himself up a little. This was also a new experience for him and felt good too. It felt good having someone to support him, to look at him with a joyful expression and in a way that was not only non-judgmental but also encouraging. He took his time, turned over onto his front, discovered what it was like to crawl on all fours with an adult nearby to support him, and then sat down on the floor. It was now time to support his back and the back of his neck so that, with the soles of his feet and his palms planted firmly on the ground and breathing deeply from his stomach, he could feel what it was like to raise his head. It was a truly novel experience for him… He felt so strong that he pushed down firmly and stood up straight. He felt taller than he had ever been before…

Now I’m not afraid. I know it and I can tell my parents, ‘Look, I’m strong now and whether you criticise me or not is your business; it doesn’t bother me.’

Of course, getting to the point where his parents’ criticism no longer bothered him was going to take more time and treatment. Even so, we had made good progress.

From Reich to Lowen and from Lowen to biosynthesis

In body psychotherapy there are no predefined working methods relating to body posture. Together with Reich, we recognise that the lying-down position is an important one because it helps the patient to regress easily and in some cases this is very useful. It can lead us quickly to the patient’s childhood, although as Alexander Lowen has shown, this is not an adult posture. Thus, when we want to strengthen the adult part of the patient, we want them to stand firmly on their own two feet and, as we say, to be ‘well grounded’ – a term introduced by Lowen. In our focus on vertical grounding we aim at the adult part of the patient.

In biosynthesis we do not simply move between these two positions. Recognising the importance of both, we move on to form a new synthesis, stressing the importance of an effective union of the upper and lower parts of the body and then of a grounding of both, the legs-pelvis and the head. This is precisely what I applied in my treatment of C. D. We began our therapy sessions in a seated position; later he felt the need to lie down and his system did in fact lead him, regressively, to recall childhood experiences. Then he moved into the womb, where he stayed to take nourishment for as long as he needed, then, together, step by step, we discovered the spinal column and the adult posture, in which he was able to view his parents on equal terms and through his experience with his parents enter a society of equals on equal terms. (This particular session lasted one and a half hours. I would like to stress the fact that in the experiential exercises and the individual issues that we dealt with in this therapy session we returned repeatedly to the same exercises and issues until they had been mastered and fully integrated by the patient’s system.)

Hence the unifying spinal column has its place in biosynthesis. Grounding is to do with the grip we have on the ground, the grip we have on physical reality, on the natural process of life. Our work, the obligations of our own individual reality, money, the management of space and time, are all connected with grounding. If I have a firm grip on the ground, I know who I am, I know where I stand and I know where I am going. But how can I have a firm grip on the ground, know who I am and where I am going if I don’t have a healthy spinal column and a well-grounded head? We sometimes say of people that they are ‘spineless’, that they don’t ‘stand up to others’ or that they ‘can’t hold their head up high’, by which we mean that they cannot offer any resistance and it is hard for them to deal with other people on equal terms.

The head is grounded through the neck to the spinal column. The first time the head is grounded is at birth. This becomes clear and easy to understand when we come across people who did not have the opportunity to be born head first or who were born head first but in too easy a manner, like a patient of mine who, when her mother was left on her own and without a midwife instructing her when to push, not only emerged without medical assistance but also – as nobody was there to hold her – fell onto the floor. It took months of work to help this patient to be able to stand on her own for a while, unsupported and with eyes closed, without being afraid that she might fall over. One form of physical contact we have which still gives her great joy and fulfilment is when we stand with our legs apart, place our heads together and she gently works her neck. ‘It feels like we are forming a perfect circle,' she tells me. ‘Your energy passes through your head into mine, goes through my body, enters the ground, travels through the ground and up into your body, rises up into your head and then from your head passes into my own head again. Isn't it a wonderful feeling?’

For those of us who work in biosynthesis, then, grounding is not merely to do with the ground and the feet; it is to do with a good bond between the head, the pelvis and the feet. In effect, we are talking about a functional spinal column. What we are aiming to achieve is a strong and flexible spinal column. We should always view the upper and lower parts of the body, as well as the front and the back, as functional units; in functional terms, they are a single unit and we should treat them as such, as being all inter-related. If, for example, there is a surplus of energy in the head, there will be a deficiency elsewhere.

Truth: the best protection from the inevitable

Each of us is born with a certain amount of energy and this does not change. Our body is built with this energy, as are our defences. Often, human experiences are of such a kind that our defences, instead of being flexible and able to adapt to every case in which they are needed, freeze our energy, trapping it in the body and building character-structures. Character-structures are particularly energy-consuming, limiting the amount of energy an individual has to spend on play and joyful activities, on creating relationships, expressing anger and fear, on developing their creative abilities and, of course, on expressing all the other emotions, life attitudes and behaviours. Sometimes, on a patient’s face, we can see pain and sadness frozen like a mask, with tears that were never shed frozen in their eyes because when they lost a parent suddenly and prematurely in their childhood, they were prevented from joining in the collective mourning by adults who wished to ‘protect’ them.

In very many families there is a tendency for the parents to seek to ‘protect’ their children from the inevitable, whatever that might be. Believe me, there is no better way to deal with tragedy of any kind than by telling the truth. In such cases there should never be any dilemma over whether we should or should not tell somebody about something that we cannot ‘protect’ them from. The most extreme case of child ‘protection’ that I have come across was that of a young man who lost his mother from cancer when he was five years old and had the fact of his mother’s death concealed from him by his immediate family, and above all his father, in order to ‘protect’ him. Even if you keep its mother’s death secret from a child, how will you make up for the loss of the mother as a person? In any case, regardless of this, energy-wise, the child already knows that its mother has died even before we tell it. Talking to the child about the event and the formalities associated with it will ground and humanise the experience and make it more acceptable, and this will give the child access to pain and enable it to manage it. Anything less will leave the child exposed, excluded from the society of its equals, and will cast it into an existential void where the pain of any future loss will not only fail to cause it any distress but will also trap it in a constant flirt with madness. I am not referring, in this case, to feelings of guilt that the child may experience with regard to its ‘vanished’ mother; not because there won’t be any, but because the child will have to deal with issues of a more primitive nature relating to its existential being, and the issue of guilt appears at first to be redundant.

One can imagine how much unconscionable pressure was brought to bear on this child to prevent him from ever asking his father the obvious question: ‘Dad, where's mum?’ Two years later the father had announced to the child that he was going to have a new mother. Just like that: ‘You're going to have a new mother.’ Not a word about his ‘old’ one… Even when the child grew up, nobody spoke to him about his ‘old’ mother. How is it possible, one would ask, for someone to conceal a mother’s death from her child without believing that there would be a price to pay for doing so? One can imagine what insecurities and defences the father had to make him do such a thing.

Apart from this very extreme case, I can also recall that of a woman who lost her father when she was young.

I can remember – I must have been about nine or ten – when, returning home from school one day, I saw a lot of cars outside and people inside the house. I was overjoyed when I realised they were relatives. We didn’t have any other relatives in the town where we lived and so whenever relatives came to visit us from another town I always found it a cause for celebration. I didn’t notice, at first, that they were all dressed in black. They all looked at me with a blank expression. My joy evaporated; nobody smiled at me and they were all looking right through me, pretending not to notice me, until an aunt of mine took me by the hand and led me outside the house. It was then that I managed to overhear somebody say something about me: ‘She doesn’t know.’ Then I realised what I wasn’t supposed to know: my mum wasn’t at home. My aunt told me that she was at the hospital because something had happened to dad… I don’t recall exactly what she said to me. I realised, however, that it was bad news and that I would never see dad again. I started to cry; she took me in her arms and hugged me so tightly that I can still remember it, and she told me not to cry in order to help my mother. They didn’t even take me to the funeral… Ever since then I never cry, never… If I feel moved, I might shed one or two tears, but that rarely happens.

It is no wonder that she does not cry, that she does not shed tears: the sadness, the surprise, the pain and the tears are etched on her face, just like on the face of a clown. You look at her and you feel sure that if she cried, this face would disappear, that the clown’s mask would dissolve and her own face along with it.

Good intentions are not always good and they definitely do not always do good; as the old saying goes: ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’. I also question the intentions of many of those adults – often relatives – who in such cases ask the children to support the remaining parent instead of doing so themselves, as they ought, to the best of their ability. It is not enough that the child should lose one of its parents; it is not enough that, often, we do not allow it to mourn with us – left on its own, it will simply freeze the whole process in its body –; on top of all this, we ask it to support the very person who should be supporting it themselves – the one remaining parent – thus leading it up a blind alley. The situation for the child is tragic. It is faced with having to suppress its own fears and insecurities and the pain of its loss; and at the very moment it needs support itself, whatever kind of support it can get, it is called upon to lend support itself because over it hangs the threat that, without the one remaining parent, it too will die…

When those people who have frozen energy in their bodies absorb energy from others, however much it is, they cannot capitalise on it. The way for them to regain an energy flow is to release their own energy through exercises, psychotherapy and, more particularly, body psychotherapy, meditation and prayer, which helps to coordinate the body’s energy centres.

Each of us has a certain amount of energy

As we have seen, then, every individual has a certain amount of energy and if it accumulates at one end of the body, there will be a deficiency at the other end. For this reason, as therapists we turn to the pelvis and the legs, at the other pole, for it is there that we will find a shortage when there is an excessive amount of energy accumulated in the head. We do the same for both the front and back of the body. And following this basic guideline, we always work with the aim of achieving a balance. In the case of one particular patient, it took a great many therapy sessions to get the energy in the head, the neck and the constantly tense shoulders to move first of all towards the hands and then towards the pelvis and the legs. Like various other patients of mine, when this patient played football he would feel glad whenever he was hit on the legs because these blows opened up the lower part of his body, which was not only unknown to him but also, if I might use the phrase, uninhabited by him… Thoughts, obsessions and ‘mental blocks’, as he calls them, are his distinctive characteristics. He is liable to make an issue out of nothing, even small insignificant things, even though he realises that he should take no notice of them. At work, he is one of the most conscientious civil servants, although he is plagued by numerous insecurities and even fears that he might be fired:

When I start thinking negatively, my imagination runs wild. When I have these thoughts, I feel that anything is possible. There’s no dividing-line between what’s rational and what isn’t… Now, however, I’ve learnt to restrain myself by asking myself the question: ‘What would Mr. Christodoulou say about this?’ I’m also helped by the grounding and walking exercises I’ve learnt, otherwise I feel terribly worn out, as if I only had half a body, without any pelvis or legs.

In the case of this patient, the energy, in embryological terms, is trapped in the exoderm. The way he thinks does not help him in his daily life. The trapping of energy in his head and in his diaphragm obstructs the flow of energy to the legs and to the ground. Therefore, in order to change this situation, we work mainly with the neck and the diaphragm.

If we view things from the perspective of the solar plexus and therefore the emotions, we see that the dominant element is the sympathetic nervous system. It should be recalled that the autonomic nervous system has two sub-systems: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system has a positive charge and a negative charge. The positive charge prepares the body for action and movement. It is a charge that mobilises the body for external action. On an emotional level, surging as it does from the world of the senses and the reptilian brain towards the limbic system and the emotional brain, the positive charge is connected with anger and all the capabilities it gives us for our protection, for opening ourselves up to the outside world and defining boundaries. The negative charge draws all the energy inwards and the body draws itself in, closes up and protects itself through the convulsion of fear. The parasympathetic nervous system has the opposite effect of the sympathetic nervous system: it relaxes and calms us. In some individuals, instead of there being a balance between these two systems, one system is more dominant than the other, serving as a life attitude. Thus there are individuals who are dominated by the sympathetic nervous system and they are almost always hypotonic, lacking in energy and phobic, while other individuals are constantly on the alert, moving in an outward direction and dominated by anger. Both anger and fear, then, are governed by the sympathetic nervous system. What makes the difference is the movement of energy. The outward movement of energy is connected with anger and the inward movement with fear. In order to understand energy and behaviour better, it is important to stress that fear and anger are polar opposites. Thus, in the case of one of my own patients, a little extra pressure can lead him automatically from fear to anger, and woe betide the poor person who happens to be in his way when that happens! The energy he has inside him, which keeps him in a state of convulsive fear, moves instantly outwards, and in most cases the anger becomes a ‘lethal’ rage.

What such individuals are rarely aware of, if they do not undergo systematic treatment, is the beneficial calm and restful relaxation they can experience. They are rarely aware of the beneficial cycle of tiredness and rest. Just as there is a negative and a positive charge in the sympathetic nervous system, there is also a positive charge and a negative charge in the parasympathetic nervous system. The positive charge is chiefly associated with relaxation, a sense of sweet calmness, warmth and pleasure, while the negative charge is associated mainly with sadness and a sense of emptiness and loss. Although we have become accustomed to regarding sadness as being connected with the neck and the heart, it is worth stressing the fact that the source of energy for all our emotions is the solar plexus. Yet sadness occupies the heart and throat centre because it is connected with loss and relationships.

In biosynthesis, as in the body, the solar plexus is a basic energy centre and divides the body into two. In order for a body to be healthy and beautiful, however, and to be able to express its full potential, it cannot remain divided into an upper and a lower part. Thus our aim is to achieve a balance between the upper and lower parts of the body. Often one part is overdeveloped compared with the other, which remains underdeveloped. Consequently, we work on two levels. After identifying what it is that the patient has not received and needs in order to move forward in their life without being overdependent on anything, we should give it to them. The time plane we should aim at working in is the patient’s Present. What nourishes them, what helps them to grow and to move forward? This is what they should be given in their therapy: support to move forward along the path of the Present and of Joy.

The energy of all four basic emotions – fear, anger, happiness and sadness – lies in the solar centre, and this is why it is impossible for us to experience our emotions to the full when we have lost touch with one of them. Usually, when we lose touch with one of our emotions, we lose touch with the vitality of all our emotions because we also lose touch with our truth as human beings. This, then, is what happens when some of our emotions serve our character-structure and what our traumas have created as a self.

Consequently, as therapists, we often pose the question: what does this emotion that is released in the psychotherapy serve? Whatever emotion serves the patient’s character-structure only helps us to identify the character-structure and nothing more. If a patient cries and gets into a repetitive pattern of grieving without getting to the heart of the sadness, this is of no importance in the healing process. The same is true in cases where patients shout and vent their anger. The patient may shout and get angry but the anger remains unconnected and the therapy at a standstill. This is why we should never remain on a superficial level and allow ourselves to be carried away by emotions that are usually expressed in a rowdy manner. Here it is useful to be reminded of the basic notion of the layering of the psyche: we should always look at what lies underneath…

We work with the body and ground through speech…

To return to my treatment of C. D., after we had established the necessary therapeutic framework and taken the first steps in building a relationship of trust, we were then able, guided by the ontological system, to place even more trust in the therapeutic process and go deeper, knowing that the Laistrygonians and the Cyclops that we would encounter on the way were nothing more than the ‘monsters’ that we ourselves had set up along the road of our existence.

Working with the body and grounding each achievement through speech, we moved on until we encountered, grappled with and, of course, destroyed the imaginary Procrustes. After our work together there was no need for any mental acrobatics or tricks for the recontextualised experiences to be assimilated by the patient. The assimilation of experience is connected with the notions of endurance and preservation: we human beings create personal myths in order to endure reality and in order to preserve our personal cohesion. In each course of therapy, we therapists should respect the defences and mental stratagems that have enabled the patient, in their own individual way, to reach the point they have reached.

In one of our first therapy sessions I got C. D. to stand up straight. His body was almost constantly hyperextended and his breathing shallow. When I asked him whether he had any emotional attachments, he replied that he had not. He was focused more in the head than in the body. His neck was blocking the flow of energy between the trunk and the head. Instead of serving as an energy bridge, it was serving as an obstruction.

He was a man of much thought but little action. Although he was not cold, he could feel shivers all over his body, especially in his legs. He was surprised by what was happening. Nevertheless, with his eyes closed, he remained focused on the procedure, accepting my assurances that what we were doing was for his own good. It was clear: all of his efforts were focused on not collapsing. He was afraid that, if he let himself go, he would fall. He was afraid that his legs would betray him, that his whole system would betray him and that what he had spent so long building up would vanish like a dream. In psychological terms, the two poles that were now trying to gain control and express themselves in the psychotherapy could be compared with the ego and the self. The self is more playful, more childlike, while the ego is more adult-like, more mature and, in terms of the physical body, is directly connected with the spinal column.

THE SEVEN MAIN ENERGY CENTRES AND THEIR GROUNDINGIn human beings there are seven main energy centres, each of which needs to be very well grounded.The first energy centre, the base centre, is connected with everything that relates to our family, our roots, our work, our home and the ground we occupy to declare our existence in the world. A well-grounded individual not only has good physical contact with their feet and the ground but also embodies the meaning of the phrase ‘he stands firmly on his own two feet’. Although it is important for this first centre to be grounded, it is in fact necessary for all of an individual’s energy centres to be well grounded if that individual is to have a healthy body, personality and spirit.The second energy centre, the belly centre, is connected with our sexuality and brings us physically close to other people. A well-grounded hara (the Hindi term for belly centre) can be interpreted as a good connection, not only with our own body but also the body of another person. In a way, it has to do with our sexual behaviour.The third type of grounding is connected with the solar plexus, which lies beneath the chest, at the diaphragm, and relates to social grounding.The fourth type of grounding concerns the way in which the heart is grounded, the way in which we live our relationships with those closest to us.The fifth centre is the energy centre of the neck and here the grounding relates to speech and experience. Do we say what we do and do what we say? Or are our words simply empty or ‘winged’ words?The sixth energy centre is that which lies in the forehead, between and a little above the eyebrows.

This is the centre of intuition, the grounded imagination, dreams and symbolism. Here, from an external grounding we come to an internal grounding. Images, dreams, the imagination and symbolism are all internally grounded; they have experience beneath them which gives them substance; they have truth; they are either well integrated or rest on an existential void and thin air.The seventh and last of the main energy centres is located at the top of the body, in the centre of the head. It is the ground of our personal identity, our being in this world, and includes our spiritual identity.

In body psychotherapy when we want to work on the ego, we work on the spinal column: when we work on the spinal column, the ego is strengthened. When we examine the rear part of the body – the back and the spinal column – we look to see how rigid it is, and at the same time we take note of the condition of the front part of the body, which is directly connected with the individual’s emotional life. The rigidity of the spinal column reveals the patient’s inability to let themselves express their emotions. On the other hand, a collapsing spinal column reveals a tendency to cede control, to fall easily and to yield to one’s emotions. An individual whose spinal column is in such a state is governed by the childlike part of themselves and is afraid to assume the responsibilities expected of them.

The characterological tendency displayed by my young male patient C. D. was the tendency towards control, despite the fact that there was also a clear tendency to let himself collapse – a tendency to collapse, to seek support and yield to his emotions, to feel the joy of a child. These two tendencies, as Boadella has shown, are to be found in everyone and are always poles apart. This polarity presents itself as a kind of layering… The visible exterior is a poor concealment of the truth, the other pole, which is present in disguise; it can reveal, therefore, what lies underneath. Our character-structure, the defence we have built up in the particular form in which it appears in our body, reveals our real needs. The more strongly we refuse something, the more desperately we crave it. We refuse it on one level and plead for it on another. Thus, C. D. gave the appearance of being both physically and socially strong. In social terms, he appeared to be a very generous, giving person. Instead of taking from others, he would give unstintingly, thus concealing his real need, which was to take, to receive acceptance and love at any cost and, in bodily terms, to fall back on the support of others.

A little later, in the same therapy session with C. D., when he came to feel that I was really there for him, he connected with a former girlfriend of his:

I can see her face, yes, I can see her before me, larger than life. She tells me that she’s pregnant. The news makes my blood run cold. I’m in a fix… I want her but my parents don’t approve of her. And I want their approval. I love being with her, now she’s pregnant and I’m in a fix…

His body, from the waist upwards and particularly his back, was completely rigid. His legs, from the pelvis down, were ‘jigging about’ like those of a wooden puppet whose strings are being pulled quickly to and fro. I asked him to examine his feelings and he realised that he was feeling angry.

I feel angry, very angry because… why should they do this to me?

I asked him if he could identify who he was angry with and he replied immediately: With her, I’m angry with her; how could she do such a thing to me…?

Now he was like a car with its engine fully revved up but the brake pressed firmly down. He was almost hopping about on the spot. He knew what he wanted to do and, when I asked him what this was, he replied unequivocally:

I want to hit her… I want to hit her…

He did not lash out until I gave him the go-ahead to do so. The energy was there, ready to be released, but not in an uncontrolled manner…

I led him to a mattress with a pile of cushions. He knelt down and began hitting a large cushion and, to make it easier for him, I picked it up and held it in front of my chest. He kicked the mattress again and again and then, after the initial release of anger, he realised how he really felt: he realised that he was afraid. He was afraid of facing up to the situation, yet at the same time he could sense something new. He himself would like to keep the child. But his parents didn’t approve of the girl. So it couldn’t happen. The question of the child brought him face to face with his fear of being dependent: he would lose control. It was part of his character-structure, part of his neurosis.

Neurotic individuals fear dependence, just as they fear independence, depending on what pole they are at: if they are too grounded, they fear dependence; they have, we might say, a pathological obsession with independence. On the other hand, when the individual is relatively ungrounded, they display a fear of independence and an obsession with dependence. The ability to move between the two poles, depending on the circumstances, and to have practical experience of interdependence, is a sign of mental health. (With regard to interdependence, Western-type societies have a very negative effect on people’s mental health by placing a sick or pathological emphasis on the independence and self-sufficiency of the individual. In this way they create the illusion that man is an autonomous and self-sufficient being that can live independently of other ‘individuals’.)

The functional dependence of psychotherapy

In psychotherapy we create a form of functional dependence that enables the patient to receive, through our therapeutic relationship with them, whatever they were not given during their personal development, so that they can acquire a healthy interdependence. The aim is to empower them to know when to take the initiative and lead the way and when to follow others, without feeling inferior. In body psychotherapy when we speak of dependence, independence and interdependence, these are not merely mental constructs or concepts that we assimilate mentally. They are bodily processes, they are recorded in human beings purely on a cellular level and become evident in a patient’s muscle tone.

When we come for psychotherapy, we come burdened with our deficits. If our parents have not given us the type of support that enables us to feel that our feet are planted firmly on the ground, we will have the sensation that the ground is slipping away under our feet. The ground and our parents – more specifically, their bodies – play the same role. They give us the ground we need to stand on in our own way and in our own time, so that we can fall safely without fear of crashing to the ground and get up with confidence in ourselves. This is the ground we offer to our patients in body psychotherapy, in terms of space, time and bodily support– the support offered by the therapist’s body. Insecurity is also expressed in the muscle tone of a patient who trusts no-one: in order not to fall, they try to hold themselves up on their own. The result: excessive control, rigidity, overcompensation, taut muscles and in this last case, underneath, we often find weak muscle tone. It is the therapist’s job to help the patient break free from the bipolar cycle of rigidity and collapse. Therapists are well aware of this fact. The aim of therapy is to produce a mature and well-integrated individual who knows when to support others and when to be supported.

In the abovementioned case of the young man C. D., there was a tendency for fear and anger to alternate. In his body, he did indeed move between the two poles of rigidity and collapse. Intense muscle tone, a back as hard as stone, shallow breathing and trembling legs… My hand on his back gave him a sense of support, which enabled him to explore what he was experiencing in greater depth.

From fear and anger he eventually progressed to a feeling of satisfaction, but sadness as well. Sadness was an entirely healthy reaction and showed that the therapy was making good progress. He had broken free from the bipolar cycle and impasse of fear/anger. Sadness helped to give things a better grounding. His girlfriend assented to the abortion. He realised how sad he felt but he was unable to find any other solution. He felt relieved. Now he could see the doctor. He assured him that ‘everything had gone well’. There was his girlfriend coming out of the operating theatre. She was alright… The shivering began to recede. His body was more stable, though the hyperextension was still there. I believed, and this belief was eventually confirmed, that the whole posture of his body thinly disguised his greatest fear, which was his encounter with fear.

This fear was that of a child whose mother and father were not there when he had most needed them. It was the fear and shame of a child who was afraid his parents might forget to pick him up from school, who was afraid of being left on his own in his room for hours on end, who was afraid of bringing home an unsatisfactory school report, of being constantly criticised by his parents, of being scolded by them for the umpteenth time, of their not being there when he needed them for emotional support and to give him a hug. It was the fear of a child who had wanted them to be there with him, to satisfy his own individual needs, but had found himself on his own… the fear of a child who had yearned for a sense of physical security, who had longed to feel his parents holding and supporting him, and to feel that they had time not only for their work but for him as well.