Bioenergetic Psychotherapy: A Client's Perspective

"I had been in therapy for problems in my marriage several times over the past five years. My partner and I had seen two different therapists, each of whom helped us explore the issues that were causing problems in our relationship. We learned how to better communicate and listen to each other. Skills to better manage our time, our stress level and our financial disagreements were offered. Things always improved, for a time. But eventually we found ourselves back in the rut of discord and discontentment. Could it be that each time a new or related problem arose, we would need to return to therapy? Something didn't make sense to me. It seemed as if we were addressing the surface problems, one at a time, like pulling weeds. But, somehow, the roots were never dealt with and those weeds returned in months or years. I was ready for a deeper exploration of myself and my issues that seemed to cause problems in my life over and over again.

A friend of mine was into something called "Bioenergetics." I had watched changes occur in her life, not just her marriage, but in the person she was. I saw that she was gaining a clearer picture of the areas that she personally struggled with and how these areas seemed to get touched, blurring her ability to negotiate through conflict and problems. Rather than just complain about the arguments with her husband, she was talking about what she contributed to the conflict. She seemed to be learning how to derail conflicts rather than helplessly watching them escalate to a destructive argument. I also noticed that my friend was finding deeper joy and enjoyment in her life, her work and her family. When I asked her more about bioenergetics, she told me that bioenergetics was helping her deal with the underlying issues in her life that, time and time again, materialize in problems with her partner, her work or her family and friends. She found a place to deal with the roots!"

Understanding the Connection Between Your Personality
and Your Body

Our total person, mind, body and spirit, is functionally one in its expression of our struggle to be a loving, fulfilled, autonomous person in this world. When the personality balance we have established is challenged or doesn't work in our relationships, we begin to feel anxious, compulsive, depressed or generally dissatisfied. We enter psychotherapy looking for way to change. We slowly begin to understand that our automatic way of being in relationship doesn't get us what we want. We discover that in order to survive in our family, we made costly compromises that have resulted in a life which now feels limited, constricted or unfulfilled. Bioenergetic psychotherapy becomes the safe relationship wherein we can discover the parts of our self that was compromised; explore the present day circumstances that trigger us into our compromised way of being and then experience our truer self in a therapeutic relationship and in the world.

In Bioenergetic psychotherapy, as we tell our life story and the problems that bring us into therapy we begin to recognize that our current condition is directly related to our inability to expand and to feel new situations in our life. Our physical form and corresponding personality pattern is not physically and emotionally flexible enough to move with and integrate the excitation produced in changing situations. We are therefore unable to respond appropriately or in a fulfilling manner to our life's demands.

What is Bioenergetic Analysis?

Dr. Alexander Lowen, founder of Bioenergetic Analysis, writes in his book Bioenergetics, "Bioenergetics rests on the simple proposition that each person is his body. No person exists apart from the living body in which he has existence and through which he expresses himself and relates to the world around him. If you are your body and your body is you then it expresses who you are. It is your way of being in the world. The more alive your body is, the more you are in the world. When a body loses some of its aliveness, as when you are exhausted, for example, you tend to withdraw. Illness has the same effect, producing a state of withdrawal. You may even sense the world at a distance or see it as through a haze. On the other hand, there are days when you are radiantly alive and the world about you seems brighter, closer, more real. We all would like to be and feel more alive, and bioenergetics can help us toward the achievement of this goal."

Bioenergetic Analysis is a psychodynamic psychotherapy which combines work with the body and the mind to help reduce psychological problems. It is a form of psychotherapy that has a psycho-developmental basis. Things that happened to one as a child greatly affects one's adult self-perception and one's behavior towards others. That is, traumas that happen in childhood affect one's way of interacting in their current life and relationships. Bioenergetic analysis sees these traumas affecting one's thought processes as well as their body.

Bioenergetic psychotherapists believe that there is a correlation between the mind and the body. The individual is viewed as a psychosomatic unity. What affects the body affects the mind; and what affects the mind affects the body. The psychological defenses one uses to handle pain and the stress of life as they grow up; rationalizations, denials, and suppressions, are also anchored in the body. They appear in the body as unique muscular patterns that inhibit self-expression. These patterns can be identified and understood by a bioenergetic psychotherapist who knows how to look at the structure, movement and breathing patterns in a person's body.

Bioenergetic psychotherapists, unlike other therapists, focus special attention on the muscular patterns in a person's body. They are interested in these patterns and their relationship to movement, breath, posture and emotional expression. Every physical expression of the body has meaning; the quality of a handshake, the posture, the look in the eyes, the tone of the voice, the way of moving, the amount of energy, etc. If these expressions are fixed and habitual, they tell a story of past experience.

The bioenergetic psychotherapist attempts to read these muscular patterns and introduces the client to physical expressions or exercises to help them experience in present time these patterns of constriction in their body. The therapist explores with the client what it would feel like to begin to release these patterns and recover some of the feelings they have repressed during childhood and continue to repress in their adult life. The bioenergetic psychotherapist also helps their client come to understand how and why their patterns of constriction developed; how these very defenses that are hindering their life today, allowed them to survive in an early environment that was not supportive of their being.

As these repressed emotions emerge, clients often begin to realize that these patterns inhibit their capacity for spontaneity and creativity in self-expression. They begin to understand that as these defenses became chronic, so have the muscular patterns in their body. These somatic defenses affect their emotional well-being by decreasing energy level and restricting the capacity for genuine self-expression in relationships; they are not free enough in their body to feel joy, happiness, love, sadness, fear, sensuality and anger. As the client progresses in bioenergetic psychotherapy, old, ineffective patterns of blocking connection, pleasure, spontaneity and joy slowly dissolve. Through the emotional and physical release of body work and the experience of a safe, healthy, supportive connection with a bioenergetic therapist, the bioenergetic client relates to his/her self and others in new, more satisfying ways.

Through identifying patterns of blocked self-expression in the body, the bioenergetic therapist develops a clearer understanding of the various personality types and their corresponding psychological problems. Understanding a person's specific patterns of blocked self-expression suggests the basic defensive structure of the individual which developed as a result of their personal psychological history. In the context of bioenergetic theory, discovering patterns of blocked self-expression and their corresponding connection to personality type, allows the emergence of a potential framework for the course of therapy.

While we must respect the unique muscular patterns and defenses that we used to solve childhood conflicts and emotions around terror, abandonment, manipulation, and rejection, our stereotypical behavior must be analyzed and understood as survival patterns. The modification of these patterns requires an intensive, long-term relationship with a skilled psychotherapist, where the underlying anxieties and terror associated with change can be carefully confronted and new, more appropriate means of relating to these childhood fears and conflicts can be supported. This change is effected through both an active understanding of how the body is an expression of the personality, and through a healing, empathic therapeutic relationship.

Incorporating the Body in Bioenergetic Psychotherapy

Body work is simply the inclusion of your body in the therapy session. This takes many different forms. At times, body work directs you to become aware of and stay in connection with how your body is responding in the moment. What parts of your body are you most aware of? What sensations are occurring in these parts of your body? What parts of your body are you least aware of? How might you describe the sensations in these, less felt parts of your body? Body work is used to bring increased awareness of your bodily sensations, and to connect these sensations to your feelings and to historical events.

As you become more in touch with your body, the bioenergetic psychotherapist works with the basic concepts of breathing more deeply, grounding yourself more in your body (becoming more conscious of what it really feels like to live in your body; allowing yourself to notice when you feeling nothing, go numb, get anxious, afraid; feel needy, desperate, hopeless - all on a body level), and helps you release a wide range of feelings that have been held back as a means of coping and surviving. From this increased contact with your self and your feelings, which develops in the safety of a solid, trusting relationship with your bioenergetic psychotherapist, you begin to understand the connection between your present physical state and the experiences of your infancy and childhood which created it.

Body work also involves a unique relationship with the bioenergetic psychotherapist. In bioenergetic therapy, the therapist uses therapeutic touch to facilitate the therapeutic process. Certified bioenergetic psychotherapists have been fully trained to appropriately use touch in the therapeutic setting. Because most of us were wounded either by the misuse of touch or by the lack of touch in our early years, therapeutic touch helps to contact, understand and release contractions in our body. The therapeutic use of touch also helps deepen your feeling of and connection with your own body and your feelings, as well as increasing your connection with your bioenergetic psychotherapist. It is important to know that the therapeutic use of touch is never sexually intrusive or exploitive. Therefore, through this safe physical contact and the corresponding feelings which develop in the safety of a solid, trusting relationship with your therapist, you begin to understand the connection between your present physical state and the experiences of your infancy and childhood which created it. You learn that to deny your body is also to reject your deep longing for love, contact and affection, in order to avoid your fear of being hurt, rejected and disappointed.

The use of body work in bioenergetic psychotherapy moves from little body awareness to conscious body awareness, little body understanding to greater body understanding and little freedom to express to greater freedom to express.

As therapy progresses, you'll realize that the constrictions in your body are really a defense against feeling and releasing a variety of different feelings. The immobility of your body stems from deep-seated fear of such expression. Given the opportunity to express your feelings by pounding or kicking and given the chance to voice your negativity, within the framework of a safe, therapeutic relationship, you discover that you will not be abandoned or destroyed for expressing your feelings. Through the acceptance of your body and its feelings, you will intuitively broaden your contact with all other aspects of reality. Since the body is such an important part of who we are, any increase in contact with your body will produce a significant improvement in your self image, interpersonal relationships, in the quality of your thinking and feeling and in your enjoyment of life. In this way, Bioenergetic psychotherapy works with the underlying patterns that are consistent throughout life and relationship, effecting change in all aspects of interactions, relationships and daily living.

What is Bioenergetic Analysis
A Therapist's Understanding of Bioenergetic Analysis