Body therapy helps to restore peace within, feel centered, become more grounded.
Results can be seen on the physical level: more resilience and feeling relaxed; emotional – increased capacity to deal with difficulties and contexts of discord; energetic – being more resourceful in daily life; and also mental – those who are receiving Body-Oriented therapy sessions often report easier decision making, less doubts or intrusive thoughts.
During sessions we decompose and re-process the content that’s behind our bodily states and responses. In a non-directive manner, we “re-assemble” memories of experiences that are held in the body and manifest through involuntary changes of our inner states – those which affect us by making us feel “wrong” – whether it’s a sense of being too stiff when in need of flexibility, too agitated when calm is more relevant, or absent when presence is required. We often notice such irrelevant responses – they may feel as an internal obstacle in life, career or relationship.
Felt sense
Felt sense makes us become aware of what we are perceiving when we live through a certain experience. In body-oriented therapy it may be used as a compass, a navigation tool. Noticing minor changes in the states of the body in response to memories, perceptions, sensations allows to draw a sort of inner map of what the bodily changes are informing us about.
…the felt sense is closely related to awareness. Its like watching the scenery, or in this case, sensing the scenery.
Peter Levine. Waking the Tiger. Healing Trauma. Berkeley, 1997
Parallels and Influences
The practice is based on the workings of my teachers as well as therapists I had a chance to collaborate with and learn from. Here are some of the names from the list of those who has influenced my view on this work: Stefan Hausner (Germany), Jan Jacob Stam (Netherlands), Sergey Krinitsyn, Anna Petrovskaya, Anna Evstratova-Strougalskaya (Russia). I notice the importance of presence of Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk (United States) with whom I was lucky to study the aspects of working with trauma and traumatic stress.
Online work has elements in common with other therapeutic modalities, like Family and Systemic Constellations or Bodywork and Craniosacral Therapy; its sub-techniques such as Somato-Emotional Release. It also has roots within the field of work with Internal Resources. The paradigms that has been and still are a source of inspiration include Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing, the Bodynamic Approach, Bioenergetic Analysis of Alexander Lowen.
The Library of Bodily Responses
Dealing with reality shapes the library of responses that the body is using. In other words, responses are representing what happens in the body when we meet a new situation (especially, a difficult situation): when one tenses up and prepares to fight, other person stays calm, other numbs out completely.
Some responses serve our needs perfectly, some are a bit outdated, and some seem completely irrelevant, belong to the past as a form of memory and we feel we would rather forget those (however, they are still there, in the library of ours!). Older forms of responses may get stuck, frozen and re-activate when we would want it the least. Those can make a hell of our life, we start looking for help when we see that we act or feel in a completely inappropriate way in certain circumstances. To let go of what is not needed anymore the content of the library has to be addressed.
Notes on the Philosophy Behind
We always belong
We belong to our family of origin, to our present family, to our professional group(s), to the communities that we consider ourselves to be part of, to our culture, to our nation. Our body responds not just to ‘environment’, it lives through a certain dynamic of “belonging”: body responses of a successful professional are not the same as those of a child who had been physically abused in the family, however both can inhabit the body of the same person.
Our relations with the future matter
Depending on the moment in life, our view of the future changes. Our bodily responses depend on whether we anticipate something positive, or if what we expect from the future threatens us.
Past and our relations with it matter as well
May it be our personal past: our family history, the story of our professional and personal growth and failures; or whether it is the history of the collectives we belonged to or belong now.
The dynamic relationships with the anticipated future and the personal past shape the particular bodily responses that are at play, our “how I feel today”.
How it works
Stress in general, and particularly, Traumatic Stress, is necessarily related to the perceived lack of available resources. This may feel as if instead of a mature adult, a dysregulated adolescent or even a child takes over the controls. With better access to resources we are able to reprocess traces of trauma or a difficult context of an everyday situation, whether at work or in a relationship, bring back the steering wheel to the adult. This makes it possible to address actual problems problems from a position of compassionate, empowered presence.
Through a sort of fine tuning of the content of the responses of our body, difficult experiences may become more tolerable, maturity and resilience in day-to-day life will support handling the complex context of today’s reality in a more prepared, less stereotypical manner.
In a mild, non-directive healing process we help the nervous system to re-assemble the patterns of response in favour of less demanding, more harmonious. Working with nervous system can be seen as re-training of some sort, however it has little in common with the training we know of when talking about muscular development or physical force. We are working with regulatory mechanisms, it often involves bringing subtle aspects of self-regulation into awareness.
What makes our bodily responses become mature
To be able to notice and clearly Identify the drivers behind them – on sensual, not cognitive level
Capacity to attend the responses without being taken over (I see that my body is moving towards being… I also feel…)
To be able to distinguish responses to safety from survival responses to threat and address those responses properly
Ability to support the shift of the responses of the nervous system to those of safety when the threat is no longer there
Potential results
Better ability of setting boundaries
Allowing emotions to do its job and find its place instead of fighting them
Clearer picture of self, better understanding of the issues that life in real world is bringing
More awareness of own actions and inactions, less judgemental attitude to self
Compassionate, open vision of the world
Resilience: better access to internal resources and ability to manage them
Calmer, easier contact with other people. both in specific contexts (professional, relational) and in general
Inner dialogue becomes quieter, calmer. Thoughts are not running constantly
Body-Oriented Therapy Online offers support that helps to maintain the ‘internal home’ in order
Timing and setting
Sessions are between 60 and 70 minutes long. You will need a place where you won’t be distracted by external noise or other people’s presence. Public spaces are to be avoided. Sitting position, comfortable chair, if possible. I strongly advise not to lye on a couch or bed (sitting vertically is ok).
Preferred option for a communication device to use during sessions would be something with a relatively large screen (tablet or computer), however joining from a smartphone is possible, too.
Process description
Before we begin I will need to clarify what we will work on. Requests may be brought up by a particular difficult situation, a bodily response, a feeling or an inner state (e.g. extreme stress that certain situations are causing). Themes may change from session to session, however it’s not unusual in this type of work when we address various aspects of the same complex group of responses for a certain amount of time.
Body Therapy offers means to relieve bodily symptoms through unbinding the response with what triggers it, making the non-conscious link between the bodily symptom and the initial cause more flexible, and more visible. By making it visible we may understand the nature of the underlying process (e.g. “why not feeling the body is good in this situation?”) and it becomes possible to re-negotiate this relatedness between cause and effect, (e.g. “now, as an adult I can feel the body”) Often the symptom or state represents a certain defensive or supportive function, that is hidden behind it’s painful or uncomfortable aspect.
Throughout sessions therapist accompanies the client in the process of exploring the problematic reactions, body responses, and slowly, step by step helps to reduce the intensity, bring more space and calm into congested, overwhelmed contexts related to intense stress. It takes precision and patience to let go of some of those. This work is relatively slow.
Client-therapist relations
The process requires trust between client and therapist. Relations are necessarily open and equal. Every step has to be accepted by both sides, body-oriented work cannot be done by inducing pressure. Feedback is a thing of major importance, when working online. Client shares the inner picture of what is happening during work. The language of this exchange is free and can at times be full of metaphors: we rarely have a well prepared vocabulary to describe, for example, stress.
The therapist is supportive and present for the client. To some extent it resembles going on a journey together, confidence and mutual presence are to be well preserved.
To clarify the “internal picture” of an evolving process, we may talk a few details after a particular session, though it may often feel a bit redundant both for the therapist and the client.
Disclaimer
This work is not intended to replace any kind of psychotherapy or conventional allopathic medicine treatment. You will need to consult your mental health practitioner or physician in case of any doubts regarding participating in Body-Oriented Therapy sessions online.