EMBODIMENT Whilst we all want our clients to get better (and ultimately not to need our therapy), we might not be quite so clear as to what our immediate goals or intentions are. I think that we are, as body psychotherapists, probably working on a meta-level to assist our clients to get a better sense of, or state of, ‘embodiment’. By this I am meaning that we are working to help them towards a place or a time where they can experience themselves more within their body; that they have a better proprioceptive sense; that they have a regular, closer, deeper, and more intimate relationship with their bodies; that their ‘grounding’ in their body is better; that they can relate better from their body to other ‘bodies’; and that their body has an interconnected sense of being in its wider situation. This, I believe, would also tend to give them a better state of their health, less stress and more relaxation, a clearer set of relationships with other people, a healthier interaction with their environment, a better sense of themselves in society, and sometimes even a greater connection with spirit. In people with (say) schizoid character structures, there is traditionally a profound splitting-off or ‘disembodiment’ from the person’s felt sense of self, from their body. In people, for example, with borderline personality disorders, there is often (if not nearly always) a deep existential fear of their bodily (or felt sense) experience, as it can be either chaotic or like a void, a nothing-ness. Any direct contact, or degree of intimacy, both in relationship terms, or in the ‘felt sense,’ is thus experienced as being quite invasive, or even terrifying. In a more defended character structure, such contact is often experienced as being unsatisfactory, or ‘distance’ is projected onto the other person so that the other person is felt to be too far away, or ‘abandoning’. In all of these cases, gentle consistent (and sometimes very different and difficult) work is needed to assist the client to come into their bodies more completely. This is a process of embodiment. From that place of feeling and accepting themselves more, they can then start to heal some of their early childhood issues, injuries, defects and traumas. This is a generic body-psychotherapy perspective. I am also arguing that this can be done – with or without touch – effectively by changing our (and their) perspectives of themselves and thus their experiences of being embodied. Similar dynamics can be seen with other character structures: there may be an over-groundedness or overboundedness (Boadella, 1987); or there may be a rigidity or lack of mobility where the person experiences flexibility as threatening. Or there may be an over-emphasis on the person’s needs beinggratified (oral); or the ‘hysteric’ character may experience an inability – and fear – to be grounded (solid, stable) and sees their security in their ability to rage or flee. These are all different character structures caused by different, and often disturbed patterns of upbringing, and they all affect our capacity of, and pleasure in our ‘embodiment’. Stanley Keleman argues in his book ‘Emotional Anatomy’ (1985) that tensions and distortions in the various tubes that constitute the body are “insults to form”. To overcome these ‘insults’, as clients, we will have to find a way to come to terms with our body as it is and then re-embody it in a less distorted way, and this may be a continual process as we work in different ways with different aspects of our bodies, or – in the Reichian concept – the different ‘segments’ of our body: eyes, jaw, throat, chest, belly, etc. These are not just character structures, they are all different experiences of chronic embodiment. These are not disembodied people: ghosts. These are people and they have bodies: but their process of embodiment (to date) has been disrupted or distorted, and their resulting embodiment is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. The person’s particular and different experiences have disturbed their relationship with their body – from what it could have been – from the natural, healthy form that is our human potential. As body psychotherapists, I believe that our task is to assist the person (client) to create a better (and less dysfunctional) relationship with their body, and with their self, and thus hopefully eventually with other people as well. I hope that we can help them to overcome most of the difficulties in their current embodiment and create a new embodiment: a re-embodiment. It is difficult – from this perspective – to understand how this healing journey can be done without looking at the concept of embodiment. But it is also a concept that does not have to include touch per se. We do not have to touch someone to help them feel themselves: sometimes touch could even take this feeling (of embodiment) away from them. Embodiment is becoming an increasingly accepted concept in traditional psychological and psychotherapeutic circles. Traditional psychology is now questioning the Mind-Body split, reinforced by millennia of patriarchy and now by an increasingly industrialised society; originally verbalised by Plato and Descartes and one that has dominated scientific thinking for so long. It is now slowly energy & character vol.37 may 2009 37
38 Publizr Home