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Dr. Ulla Sebastian FROM HORSE(WO)MAN TO CENTAUR Healing the Split between Body, Mind and Soul Evolution in Identity A Clinical Presentation for the First Clinical Congress of the European Federation for Bioenergetic AnalysisPsychotherapy about Body and Identity, May 1995, Rome CONTENT 1. INTRODUCTION 2. THF SPLIT BETWEEN BODY MIND AND SOUL 2.1 The Centaur 2.2 The bodymind split as a result of sexual abuse 3. PROCEDURES AND TECHNIQUES OF INTEGRATION Maturing body functions and establishing boundaries 3.1 Separation and individuation as a frame for infant development 3. 2 Space, time and movement as frame of
building up a body identity 1. INTRODUCTION I would like to quote from a letter that I received a few months after a two-week intensive therapy program with a woman whom I will call Barbara. One of my trainees in Germany had referred her to me. "Every day I do my exercises on the wall (grounding and growing feet as a preparation of Reich's orgasm reflex). I even get up earlier for that purpose. After all kinds of helpful rituals such as stamping, massaging my feet, grounding in a free standing posture, I usually succeed, at least for a few minutes, to feel my feet and lower legs and to experience a grounded flow of energy through my whole body. At the end I stand with my knees slightly bent, the muscles vibrate and I check through all my body and ask what organs and muscles would like to get relieved. I then send the negative energy down through my kidneys into the earth, pull earth energy up through my kidneys and send it to all those places in my body that badly need it. I now understand that I can only take it in small doses to perceive how numb my body is. It upsets me so easily. Soul and mind stand there full of action, the body wants to join in, all three get going, and then the body looses its mouth. It often can't speak and has forgotten to feel itself. It feels like a dry sponge. Its neediness shocks mind and soul, and it costs them a lot of effort to stay with the body. Sometimes horror just paralyses them; sometimes they just run off. I bought Mantak Chia's book and practice the microcosmic orbit and the building of a protective shield around me. I am amazed how well these exercises serve me. The body joyfully sucks in the tiniest drop of attention and affection and expresses his gratitude through hours full of bliss. It feels as if the body acknowledges every drop of attention with ten liters of bliss. But every time before I can receive the gift of feeling I have to pass through the desert of numbness. Today I had a strange experience. I awoke feeling grumpy. The body felt heavy like lead. I was supposed to get my menstruation, an event where I usually mutate into a sniveling sissy. There was not the slightest chance to get feet or arms while I was doing my exercise against the wall. How frustrating. I had been so proud about my successes so far. Full of despair I went into the bathroom, darkened everything down, lit a candle and put my feet into warm water. At least I got two warm feet scaffolds (before they had been ice cold) but no contact to the rest of the body. Although my upper and lower legs vibrated, I didn't have any feeling in my legs. Down there were two warm feet scaffolds, in between nothing and up there a completely desperate residue of a body. I cried so deeply, I felt so unhappy. And suddenly something astonishing happened. All three seemed to come together in this sadness, all three felt addressed. Suddenly all the channels were open, and I could feel a very sad and very anxious body. This letter stands for many of the experiences that I have accompanied during the last four years. Most of the men and women I have worked with are part of a spiritual community in the Northeast of Scotland, called the Findhorn Foundation. The Foundation is an educational centre that helps people to find deeper meaning in their lives. I have been a member of this Centre for four years, from 1987-91, basically developing the programs and training workshop facilitators. In 1991, I started to work again as a Bioenergetic Analyst doing individual sessions. An important reason for this shift in my work was the observation that many of the spiritually highly evolved people actually were not in their bodies. As I started to work with them, it became clear that many had left their bodies in young age in an attempt to cope with sexual abuse. I started to focus on this issue, and I have been working with hundreds of people during the last four years within the Community and a growing stream of people coming from all over the world. The Community provides conditions that allow me to move right into the depth of the core issues and to change the basic makeup of a person. Most community members have already done a lot of work in coping with the implications of their life traumas before they came to the Foundation. They are at a choice point that usually takes years in therapies to reach. They are highly motivated and able to work on themselves, and they have a support network that the therapist usually needs to provide. These conditions enabled me to work with a broad spectrum of people and to explore and develop some principles and techniques of how to heal the split between body, mind and soul. I would like to share those with you. Some are part of the traditional repertoire of Bioenergetic Analysis, some go beyond. 2. THE SPLIT BETWEEN BODY, MIND AND SOUL 2.1 The Centaur Before I talk about treatment, let's define the problem. To start with, let me remind us of the basic Bioenergetic model. Healthy Humans are unified body-mind entities, symbolically expressed in the figure of the Centaur. Healthy Humans act from the bottom of their heart consider the rational demands of a situation, give emotionally appropriate responses, feel well and balanced. We can also say that such people are connected to the universe and grounded in their body, their sexuality and their relationship to the earth. Such people are self-actualizing people (to use Maslow’s term), e.g. they find meaning in their life and fulfill their life's purpose. 2.2 The body mind split as a result of sexual abuse Cultural and social conditions in our upbringing as children usually prevent us from developing this harmonious way of being. There are many factors that contribute to blocks or splits in our personalities that have been widely explored in Bioenergetic literature. I would like to focus on one theme that has been prevalent during the last years: sexual abuse. I am not sure how familiar you are with the implications of it. To understand the treatment it is important to be aware of a few key factors. Abuse is an attack on our emotional and physical integrity, abandonment or even an assassination of the soul. Abuse can range from an energetically felt invasion into the physical and emotional space through physical touch, molestation and penetration up to torturous and sadistic mistreatment. In a few of my cases people were actually not the victims of abuse themselves but had picked up the abuse of one of their parents during World War II, or they had witnessed abuse happening to their siblings. The abusers range from parental figures to relatives to neighbors, peers or strangers. The victims are mostly women but I have also worked with a good proportion of men who have been victims of male physical penetration. It is important to be aware of this spectrum when people come for treatment with an abuse issue. If somebody gets personally attacked, either continuously or during a traumatizing event, the soul copes through withdrawal, freezing or splitting. The body mind entity, the centaur, gets split into a horse(wo)man: the mind, and the horse: the body. The body becomes the object of shame, especially if it experienced pleasure during the abusive situation. The mind takes over as a base of identity often riding the body into the ground out of shame, guilt and punishment. The mind may not recognize this self-destructive behavior especially if it is supported by culturally accepted patterns such as smoking, alcohol or medical drug abuse, workaholism and sex or relationship addiction in an attempt to avoid feeling pain and loneliness. Life may become a desert as the body
remembers the attacks even if the mind doesn't and shies away from human
contact. One way to cope with this situation of loneliness is to develop
the spiritual side, especially because in most incidents of sexual abuse
the soul has left the body and is able to move into other realms of
existence. Another reason is that often the infant organism
energetically takes on the From Horse(wo)man to Centaur. Healing the Split between Body, Mind and Spirit energetic pattern of the abuser, for example his body tensions, emotions and thought forms. In psychology we call this mechanism 'identification with the aggressor'. This psychological process has an energetic base. One of the symptoms may be an overwhelming sense of guilt that's out of proportion to the deeds that the person has done. In the work it often becomes clear that the 'victim' has taken on the guilt feelings of the abuser. Developing the spiritual side in this context is an attempt to redeem this guilt. Another possible outcome is 'sex addiction' as a replay of the original situation. If we look at sexual abuse from an energetic point of view, we see that the infant organism gets zero over stimulation. The energy of sexual arousal that can be held by a fully developed adult organism overwhelms the organism of an infant or three year old child. As a result, it develops a fragile ego. This internal structure is called a 'borderline' structure in the psychoanalytic literature. The sensation of overstimulation gets stored in the memory of the infants/child's body. Because the experience has been very intense and highly exciting, the body will look for that pleasure again and will want to replay the overstimulation. In course of time, the body can get addicted to this way of discharge of excess energy. The mind as a moral entity usually does not approve of this type of behavior, sentences the body for seeking pleasure and rejects or punishes the body. This may be more true for women than men, as men can more easily justify this behavior as being successful with the other gender. But it's only a question of time until men experience similar kinds of frustration or pain at being used as a sex object if sex addiction is the coping mechanism. 3. PROCEDURES AND TECHNIQUES OF INTEGRATION There are several steps that are important in clearing up this situation and to start healing the split. We'll have to mature body and ego functions and establish boundaries that got invaded during the abuse. Before the client lets us do that, we often have to prepare the body as a base of identity through purifying it from the stigma of the abuse. We need to separate the energy system of the victim from that of the abuser, and often we need to negotiate with the mind and the soul to accept the body in its own rights as a base of identity. Let me start with what's probably familiar to you from the traditional tools in Bioenergetic Analysis 3.1 Maturing body functions and establishing boundaries In cases of traumatic events, the infant development gets arrested at the developmental stage where the trauma occurred. Resulting deficiencies can effect the general energy level, the body functions or the psychological structure. An important part of the work is to rebuild what didn't develop properly. This reeducation or post-maturation process requires daily practice to increase the general energy level, to strengthen the body, learn self -assertion and boundaries in social interaction and rebuild and reframe thought forms and perceptions about reality. The aim is to empower people to find their own inner rhythm again, to take charge of their life and to create a satisfactory reality. There is a broad range of techniques available to do this work, techniques for containment, early grounding, developing clear boundaries on a body level and in social contact, and techniques to build up and strengthen the core. l am not sure how familiar you are with those. I published material about it in a book called: 'Psychoanalyse und Bioenergetische Analyse' in 1983 (source: MBA, Postfach 1422,32588 Vlotho, Germany). The key elements got published in 'Energy and Character" under the title; 'Developmental Aspects in Bioenergetic Analysis' some eight years ago. For the purpose of this presentation, I would like to outline some basic principles. From Horse(wo)man to Centaur. Healing the Split between Body, Mind and Spirit 3.1.1 Separation and Individualization as a frame for Infant Development Infant development, according to Margaret Mahiers work about the 'Psychological Birth of the Human Infant' proceeds along two lines:
This process takes place during the first three years and requires that the infant differentiates its body scheme from that of the mother, practices its ego and motor functions and establishes an object constancy and individuality. The first aspect focuses on social the second one on biological processes. Both are interrelated and can be used for compensating frustrations in the other area. Maturation can be influenced by social conditions in two ways:
As I said, in case of traumas the infant development gets arrested at the developmental stage where the trauma occurred. The inhibition or retardation in the maturation of a body function impacts the maturation of the ego functions, To stay with the above example: Premature standing leads to an uncertainty in the legs that expresses itself in tensions in the ankles, stiffness of the knees as an attempt to keep the body erect and stiffness in the long muscles (depending on the developmental stage in which the traumatic events occurred). Consequently, the contact with the ground could not get adequately built up. Because bodily and psychic functions correspond with each other, it means the Self is 'standing' on insecure ground. When we understand such maturation processes we can use this knowledge to help our clients to develop those impeded functions. We can provide a therapeutic environment that will encourage the client to take the space that has been invaded into his own possession. We can summarize this process into four steps:
3.1.2 Space, time and movement as frame of building up a body identity Separation and individuation take place within a timespace continuum. Both dimensions are so important for the therapeutic process that I will outline some aspects in these areas. In experiencing reliability and continuity, time gets structured into the body as experience of rhythm, pulsation, tension and relaxation, being awake and tired, hungry and satisfied, in short as experience of vital functions. The experience of space requires boundaries that the child acquires in an ongoing process of differentiation, passing from a state of boundless symbiosis, through an intermediate stage of a neutral inward/outward space to a separation of the inner from the outer world. Movement is the link between time and space. It includes space through direction, time through tempo. Movement lies at the bottom of the vital processes of life (pulsation, expansion contraction, tension relaxation). In reaching out, in exploring the environment by crawling and walking the child makes the environment its own and establishes in that way its own inner space in a process of ongoing differentiation of the ego functions. In claiming their own space, their own territory, humans define their relationship to others. Space has to do with three dimensions:
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