How easily our experience – at least here in the West – is that “I” am somehow in the mind, perhaps in the head area? We tend to think that it is the mind through which we can know things and with which we should to try to control things. We often view our bodies from a slight distance, from above, possibly also evaluating what the body should be like, how it should function.
My gradually deepening experience is that the body is much more than what we are used to thinking. It is possible to descend into being in the body, being the body – alive, sensing, and present. From the body, knowledge can also arise in a slightly different way than we are accustomed to. Eugene Gendlin, the developer of Focusing, explains that our bodies have lived through our life situations “with us” and thus know about them. Through bodily sensations, tones, and images, something may come to be seen more holistically and freshly than by pondering through the mind.
Bodily sensing and presence also open up space for internal shifts. It often feels to me as if there is a kind of innate direction towards health, openness, and growth within us. It emerges when we allow space for the directions arising from the body instead of just trying to keep things under control through thoughts and planning. For example, free movement listening to impulses arising from within the body may relax better than a planned attempt to release specific tensions in the body.
The significance of the body in therapy
I previously wrote about how the experience of the body may be sensed into in therapy. In this text, I want to delve a bit deeper into why such sensing may be important. Bodily presence brings space for things to unfold and shift. Bodily sensations often operate on a boundary where something unconscious may become more consciously visible.
Exploring bodily experience and the images or other glimpses arising from it reveals shades and details about things. Instead of simply labeling a certain state as fear and assuming to know what it is, one can feel how this fear feels like a desire to curl up and hide in a cave. Perhaps one can also notice what the one in the cave might need to feel safe. The holistic way the body experiences situations also opens up the possibility to reach the core of the experience: “What specifically is frightening about this?” often becomes more readily and genuinely accessible when being present in the body rather than just contemplating the matter.
There is also much that we cannot easily reach through mere thinking. Our early experiences – in the womb and during our first years of life – do not form into similar explicit memories, part of a verbalized life story, as later events. However, they are present in our bodies and lives, manifesting as tensions, ways of being and experiencing, as well as strong emotional reactions triggered by situations, which may feel disproportionate to what actually happened. Similarly, later traumatic experiences, those that were too much for us in the moment, may not necessarily form into coherent memories but often deeply affect us. The body can offer an important avenue for opening up to such experiences.
Embodiment as a resource
Being present in the body can also serve as a resource, both in therapy and otherwise. When touching upon a past challenging experience, through the body one can maintain awareness that we are also simultaneously in the present moment – not completely engulfed in the past. One can feel the movement of breath in the body, the chair underneath, the presence of another person. At the same time as feelings surface, almost as if one was still a small child, it can also be noticed that there is the presence of an adult body, here and now. Support can also be found, for example, by wrapping oneself in a blanket, giving oneself a hug, or allowing the body space to move in a way that it wants to.
When there are various challenging experiences in the background, coming into the body may not be easy. There may be something in the body that is difficult to open up to and feel. The body may feel painful or uncontrollable, perhaps more like an enemy than a friend one can trust and settle into being in. The journey towards deeper embodiment may take time and sometimes require the support of another’s presence.
Despite the challenges, the journey into the body can be important and rewarding. Through being in the body, vitality can unfold, the experience of being present here, existing, in one’s place. A sense of connection can open up: we experience the presence of another, our bodies attune to each other – perhaps we are not as separate as we often think. Through embodied presence, there can also be an experience that simply being is good. When we try to solve things through the mind, we can easily think that something should be done, something in life should change, something should be found that would provide meaning or a sense of fulfillment. Sometimes changes are indeed needed, but the need may not always lie in something external. The presence unfolding from the body can open up what we long for. (E.g. Mark Epstein writes about this.)
Sources:
Epstein, Mark: Going on Being: Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and Psychotherapy. Boston, Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications.
Gendlin, Eugene T. (2003): Focusing (2nd ed.). London, Rider.
Read also my thoughts about the role of the body specifically in talking type of therapy.