parasympathetic activity. This is an essential re-balancing of the client’s ANS. It does not really matter exactly how we help the client to rebalance their ANS. Gerda claims that psycho-peristalsis (the digestion of emotions) is the day-to-day regulator of the person’s body energy. We will not feel the subtly of ‘soft’ feelings or the depth of our gut feelings without a better parasympathetic component. With sympathetic activity, the gut closes down: we do not digest our lunch when we are trying to avoid being someone else’s lunch. Only with a reasonable switch towards the parasympathetic can we start to feel more balanced. We may need (ironically) to do some aerobic exercise first, so that the stress hormones in our bodies are burnt off, before we can relax and gently potter around and not be overwhelmed or jittery, being full of cortico-steroids. The techniques of how we do this are unimportant. It is the direction of the process that is important. We may need to contact our selves better, before we can make better contact with others. We may need ‘healthy’ contact with others in order to get a better contact with ourselves; but this is an aid. The contact with the self is primary. Pulsation: Reich believed that the basic life energy flowed and pulsated. He talked about ‘expansion’ and ‘contraction’ and seemed to prioritise the former over the latter. Outward movements (out-stokes’) are expressive, expansive, action-oriented: inward movements (‘in-strokes’) are more introjective, more contemplative, where more identification happens, and they tend to be more feeling-based. But out-strokes can be gentle and in-strokes can be violent or aggressive. We need to find a healthy balance between rest and activity; movement and calm; power and empathy; inward flows and outward flows. This assists the client’s embodiment. Again, the techniques can vary: they can be touch-related (like psycho-peristaltic massage) or they can be not connected to touch, like Tai Chi. This embodiment depends on a cyclical process, that Reich describes, of in-stroke, integration and incorporation, and then comes an out-stroke. Then the perception of the reaction of others and feed-back from outside will start the in-stroke process again: and so forth. We go back inside so that we can the move out again. The basic pulsation never goes away: it cannot. It can restricted and distorted, it can vary, and be facilitated. But the pulsation only stops with death. Relationship with Self: All of these perspectives and processes help the client form a much better relationship with themselves. They begin to see themselves as an autonomous being, and independent person, a grounded and embodied entity. The relationship with self becomes primary, so that you can have better relationships with other. We need quiet times in order to be with our self. We need to relax and just ‘be’. We may need times alone, even doing things alone, just to experience our self. It is self-experience that brings us back home to ourselves. The classic split between psyche and soma is a split of an original primary undifferentiated self. This is, in part, not just the psyche (mind) relating to the soma (body), but also the psyche relating with the primary self and the soma relating with the primary self. This primary self is what first comes in to existence; what first develops. Eric Jantsch wrote a physics text about a “selforganising universe.” Carl Rogers also talks about selforganising. We have to have a self to relate to our Self in better ways. The primary self is primarily concerned about maintaining its existence. If that is not being currently threatened, then it will relate to itself. And it is the relationship with the self, the basic in-stroke that then helps us to relate better with the outside. The dance of relationship starts. However the primary relationship is with the Self, or the genetic DNA-based blueprint of the self. Thomas Moore talks about the “acorn” of the soul. External experiences either hinder or facilitate the development of this potential. We become thwarted or facilitated. We like or dislike our relationship with our Self: how much we are close or far from this blueprint of the Self. Then we ether grow as a distortion or we can grow towards this potential. We cannot relate primarily to anything other than this internal blueprint: that is the Self that relates to others. RE-EMBODIMENT The Therapeutic Alliance: In body psychotherapy, we are relatively familiar with the concept of somatic transference. Several different perspectives in psychotherapy are now beginning to accept this on a much wider level and as a significant factor in the therapeutic relationship. A recent book, ‘The energy & character vol.37 may 2009 43
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