2000; Ogden, 2006); or in love; or through work (in a mine, factory or at a desk in front of a computer screen, when we don’t use our body); or as a way to cope with stress; or in a spiritual crisis when we (mistakenly) try to surmount the earthly and material forces of the body; or when a loved one died and we could not bear the pain and grief. There are a multitude of ways and means to become disembodied. From a karmic perspective, maybe it is our fate – or choice – for our essential spirit or soul to become embodied or incarnated (‘in the flesh’). We choose an exact time and place and family in which to be born. This is so we can learn a particular set of lessons or repent for a particular mistake in a pervious life. Part of the conditions or requirements of this school classroom (this corporal life) is to forget the continuum and to become disconnected with that part of our Self. This also means loosing touch with our body. The lesson is then to find one’s embodiment back. I would maintain that, parallel to this process of refinding one’s embodiment, is the mature quest for a greater connection to spirit. With my wife, I do a workshop entitled “The Spirit of the Body”. There is not a lot of touch involved – indeed, the more transpersonal the work, the less one is inclined to touch. Right-Brain / Left-Brain This separation often happens naturally with the development of the left brain functioning in the 3rd and 4th year of life. Up to then the child operates with essentially a right-brain predominance. The social environment, including eye contact with the mothers face, the mother-infant attachment, facial expressions, communication, posture, tone of voice, tempo of movement, actions and responses (Bowlby, 1969), is essential for establishing this basis of communication. “The main thing is a communication between the baby and the mother in terms of the anatomy and physiology of live bodies.” (Winnicott, 1986) These are all affect features and are centred in rightbrain functioning. When the child becomes more capable of a return communication is when the left hemisphere starts to come into its own. The child begins to define itself as separate from its mother and thus as separate from the basic right-brain functioning. Hopefully this is on a solid and healthy functioning right-brain basis, but where there are deficits in this basic functioning, the individual will have dysfunctional components. As Allan Schore was telling us so clearly and emphatically yesterday, the right-brain is not just essentially the source of non-verbal, inter-subjective, unconscious, affect-oriented, bodily-based, existential processes. The right hemisphere represents the unconscious psychic system described by Freud and this drives all human emotion, cognition and behaviour. Embodiment is thus quintessentially a right-brain process. In order to feel our humanness, which has a social and evolutionary value, we are performing essentially a right-brain function. All information from the limbic system must go through the right-brain imaging empathic experience before it crosses over to the left brain consciousness. The symptomatology of neurosis is found in deficits of right hemisphere functions in “maintaining a coherent, continuous and unified sense of self” (Devinsky). Nonconscious regulatory functions of corporeal-emotional implicit self are at the core of various developmental psycho-pathologies, and therefore become forces for treatment. We now use this perspective in psychotherapy nowadays with the concept of somatic resonance. (Shaw, Psychotherapy Research, 2004) “Self-awareness, empathy, identification with others and more generally intersubjective processes are largely dependent upon … right hemisphere resources.” (Decety and Chaminade, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003) The right-brain hemisphere is also dominant in perceiving threat and dealing with stress. This is basic ANS dys-functioning. It is therefore essential to help the person rebalance their ANS. Whilst this can be done by techniques involving touch such as Gerda Boyesen’s Biodynamic Massage: this is not self-regulation. The high centres of the right-brain need to come back into their own autonomous balanced and unique functioning. Since these are more associated with images than words, art therapy might be more appropriate than cognitive behavioural work. But there are also benefits to movement therapy, dance therapy, voice work: all therapies. Gut Feelings: As we get more in touch with our bodies, and as we get more in touch with our feelings, we start to appreciate what Gerda Boyesen called the “Emotional Digestion” and something what Will Davis calls ‘endo-psychic’ processes that lead towards an Endo-Psychic Self. An essential part of better embodiment is the switch from more sympathetic, adrenaline based, stress-motivated, activity towards more gentle, soft, emotionally-oriented , 42 Courtenay Young Doing Effective Body Psychotherapy without Touch: Part II: The Process of Re-embodiment
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