legitimate ways to treat these. This is a form of medicosocial dis-embodiment. The amounts spent each week on armaments, would provide clean water, feed, house and educate the millions of people without these basic necessities: this is a form of socio-economic disembodiment, and often disenfranchisement as well. From a psychosocial perspective (as has been mentioned) we are concerned with how we, as a society, see our bodies and what do we do to them. Do we support our children to have their lips or belly buttons pierced or their bodies tattooed? Do we support our daughters to have Victorian-style wasp-waists held in with stays, or our sons to have an upright military iron-man type of body-stature, or to slouch on street corners in ‘hoodies’ and baggy trousers with untied over-sized shoes? Do we feed our children a diet that makes them obese? Do we give them processed foods when we know that these contain excess sugar, salt and food-colourings? From illusions and images (perpetuated by ‘disembodied’ deities or film stars), are we concerned that magazines spew forth epithets and judgements about whether they are pregnant, spotty, over-weight or slimming? And do we buy or read such stuff? From the perspective of new medical treatments like contact lenses, liposuction, prosthetics, implants, and stem cell research, are we concerned that the ‘purity’ of our original body is compromised, or delighted because our body deficiencies can now be enhanced. What do we communicate – verbally or non-verbally to our clients? How do we help them with their process of embodiment if we are encouraging them to exercise their way out of depression, and we weigh 100 kilos (220 lbs)? – as I do! From consumer economics and the sale of body products, do you buy L’Oreal products because “You’re worth it” but only if you buy those products, or do you feel that “You are worth it” without the product. Enhanced self-esteem is an essential component to the client’s process of re-embodiment. From the debate now between medical ethics and health care economics, where the complexities of saving life and giving intensive care to a 65-year old, obese, diabetic smoker are compared with the same facilities being given to a healthy 24-year old, non-smoker; post-code availability of treatments; or whether we are compromising the Hippocratic Oath by assisting someone in a chronic terminal illness towards a more pain-free death, we need to be clear about what we mean by various aspects of any form of embodiment. From an environmental perspective, with increasing occupational health & safety legislation; acceptable limits of chemicals; genetically modified crops; environmental pollution; global warming; or a pandemic arising from bird flu arising from intense farming practices to fulfil people’s desire for cheap, unhealthy food, we need to take a personal and possibly even professional stance – or we may risk losing our life or lives of our loved one, or our clients. As a part of their process of ‘embodiment’ do we support, or advise, our clients to eat only organic food, not to fly on a aeroplane, or join GreenPeace. Do we encourage them to consult a trade union that supports legal or political action against their employers who are forcing them to work in buildings that are ‘sick’, in restrictive uniforms, in noisy and dirty factories, or in ways that give them stress – all in the name of profit. How do our perspectives on our client’s struggle to embodiment affect our advice and interventions and our professional ethics? From legal perspectives of ‘habeus corpus’, incarceration, torture, enforced sterilisation, and whether we support the death penalty, we can get an intellectual sense of what it is to have an autonomous and free body, and support for our right to have one. How do we encourage this perspective in our clients, especially if we and they are in a culture that seems to say one thing and do another (viz: Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graib). From the field of politics, where decisions on health care, international aid, retirement age, pension funds, and so forth affect all pf our lives – and our bodies – considerably, we need to take a position and perhaps even vote – with our voices, our bodies (in which party we support), or our feet? And from studies of collective behaviour (population statistics) where the ‘individual’ differences form a coherent and understandable ‘body’, do we gasp with astonishment if someone can predict whether we will do this or that; buy this or that; move here or there; and predict when we might die – the list of influences on our process of embodiment is almost endless. Regression or Progression: So where does this all take us? As we assist our clients towards greater embodiment – with or without the use of touch – let us be aware of which direction we are helping them in. Do we help them to revert to a wonderful, pre-natal or pre-conscious state of embodiment, when we – as a child – experienced that ineffable lightness of energy & character vol.37 may 2009 45
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