but steadily changing. There is a greater sense of inclusion: both-and rather than either-or. One’s experience of life and events is being seen as both ‘detached’ (scientific/objective) and ‘embodied’ (being-in-the-world) – as experienced by the perceiver. Embodiment is being seen as the experience of being in the ‘here’ and the ‘now’. There are fundamental changes in one’s perception of reality: you can be a particle (static form), or a wave (dynamic movement), or the potential that both are true. As body psychotherapists, we are obviously professionally very interested in embodiment, and quite a lot has been written about it, clinically, within BodyPsychotherapy literature (ref: EABP Bibliography, 2006). However the ramifications of this change of perspective are affected by and affect a huge number of other areas, perhaps more than we are conventionally aware of. So I would like to explore this concept a little further. We can look at embodiment in a number of different ways. The basic concept of ‘embodiment’ – “I am that which is my body” – is both influenced by, and affects, a vast range of perspectives or different arenas. These perceptions and these affects vary widely; far beyond the scope of traditional Body-Psychotherapy. By bringing these concepts more within the scope of Body-Psychotherapy, I argue that we are increasing our range, depth and efficacy as body psychotherapists. A body-psychotherapy colleague of mine, Michel Heller, commented at a recent Body-Psychotherapy congress in Paris (2008), that whilst we were both very well trained in touch, both he and I now hardly ever touch our clients. Instead, we see more; we perceive more; we often understand them through thought and resonance, and guide them through explanation and suggestion. We definitely ‘do’ less and that has (perversely) often a greater long-term effect: in the words of Gerda Boyesen (and others) “Less is more.” We don’t touch because we have learnt about touch and the effects of touch and because we can now achieve almost exactly the same effects in different ways, if needed, without touch. We can only now work without touch because we have worked extensively with touch; maybe we have ‘embodied’ touch sufficiently so that we can ‘touch’ our clients differently, without touching them physically. They can then use this ‘contact in their process of re-embodiment. In a book that came out of a previous EABP Congress, The Flesh of the Soul, (Heller, 2001), there are a couple of chapters relevant to this theme, especially In Search of the Embodied Self (Marlock & Weiss, 2001). These two very experienced practitioners, from different disciplines, share some of the theoretical background and aetiology of the concept of the ‘self’ in psychotherapy (from Kohut, through Winnicott, Kernberg and Maslow, to Schwarz and Wilbur), and then introduce the concept that there is really no ‘self’ without a body and no ‘body’ (nobody?) without a ‘Self’ – or without various ‘Self-states’ that can be integrated into a whole. This is the process of re-embodiment. Neuroscience: From the recent development of neuroscience, we get a number of fascinating insights as to what is going on in our body ‘proper’ and our brains (also part of our bodies), in our neurons, on a cellular level, chemically and micro-biologically within our bodies. However there are both good points and bad points about these perspectives. Wonderful as it is, neuroscience is telling us so much more about how the body and the mind work, but, in doing this, it can also manage to perpetuate the mind-body dualism. This is counter-productive to our goal. In a quote from a recent book on Embodiment: “Damasio states ‘neuroscience has focused on functions [particularly motor functions] as if it had nothing to do with the person’. This estrangement of ‘the person’ from ‘their’ functions is one type of dualism. Another type is where neuroscience promotes a view of mental processes as residing only in the brain — thinking is neurology – and being distinct from bodily processes.” (MacLachlan, 2004) Much of neuroscience focuses on the localisation of functions: where things are and what happens when that particular area or part of the body is triggered: this is a ‘static’ view. However, as is also very clearly demonstrated by the same neuro-scientific processes, that every human is slightly different - unique; every brain is plastic: it is not pre-programmed. And the human brain also grows dynamically, adapts and changes in a process called ‘epigenesis’, uniquely to each individual. Even in identical monozygotic twins, neurones in the same area (performing the same function) have different dendritic structures (Edelman, 2002). Our brain therefore grows and changes; it retains a degree of plasticity that only diminishes slowly throughout our life. Neuroscience largely ignores this aspect, except perhaps in the repair of brain damage after injury or trauma. Neuroscience, whist it may give us incredible insights into what is happening in our bodies, might 38 Courtenay Young Doing Effective Body Psychotherapy without Touch: Part II: The Process of Re-embodiment
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