We are born helpless. I assume a newborn also feels helplessness through and through. That sense of helplessness lies near the core of our body and experience, and we grow by pursuing power and a sense of mastery over it.  For some this is more successful than others.  Ask any truth teller, and they will tell you they usually feel some level of anxiety on a scale of 1-10, 10 being panic and 1 being just a little.

We also have genetic contributions to our readiness to be afraid. A solution to anxiety is to acquire appropriate (as opposed to inappropriate) power over it.  Often anxious persons are not able to express appropriate power comfortably, or it was forbidden along the developmental road. Bodywork and intensive therapy are about growing the capacities toward reality orientation and mastery, often with a physical component.  For example:  presence in the eyes is a physical marker of contact with reality.

Depression has anxiety as a component, but it also contains a sense of defeat, helplessness, hopelessness and resignation. These, too, have their physical components, and bodywork coupled with psychotherapy hold a path to its reversal.

Trauma has a sudden fight/flight/freeze/collapse feature. The body can’t emotionally manage the moment, so it necessarily compartmentalizes and dissociates from the overwhelm.  

Gentle and consistent bodywork and slowly growing a stronger emotional framework can help many people out of this ‘stuckness”.

This is in my opinion one of the best tools in the skilled therapist’s toolbox. Multiple relationships provide manageable stimuli the helps a person re-awaken emotionally, and to learn to give voice to those emotions, and to relate as well as correct the way they relate. It is particularly useful for shame-based difficulties: 8 real people are never as shaming as the internal voice that drives a person into the ground.  Healing takes place when reality trumps fantasy.

The self is not in the head.  It is the body. The head is an agent of the body, but the sense of self is a vivid awareness of the continuous movements, great and small, within the body from its center to its periphery. It is in this sense of the self that healing is confirmed.  Understanding in itself does not lead to healing unless the body is engaged.  I had a friend who once said, “I went to five years of analysis. 
I understand why I’m a mess, but I’m still a mess.” This is why a somatic component is essential.

If you are a therapist who sees the merit of working with the physical aspects of emotional difficulties, you can call to see what it’s all about.  Be sure to read the “Professional Testimonials” elsewhere on this site.  

If you are a patient in ongoing therapy and are curious about the benefits of body-oriented work to you and to your therapy, talk to your therapist about it.  He or she may then contact us for more information and to see if it’s possible to provide this service to you.