A session with Carey: His truth came through pushing.

Carey, a male in his mid-forties, came to session wanting to be more assertive in general, and in particular work with how he continually gives in to his ex-wife’s demands; how he sacrifices his own feelings, knowledge, and desires. When they met and married, 20 years before, her education level was far below his. He had taken it as his task to help her become educated and find fulfilling work. It seemed however, that she would be very satisfied if he just took care of her financially. At a surface level it was true that he was hardly able to say "NO" to her. At a deeper level he understood that he was treating her similarly to how he relates to his mother. As we talked, I (J. I.) remembered from his Bodymap that his triceps muscles were hypo-responsive. I proposed that he use these muscles to push against my resistance, while exploring different verbal expressions meant to be addressed to his ex-wife. The instructions were to "see what happens when you try this". I wanted to explore whether his appreciation of the issue, his understanding, and abilities changed as we worked with this resource.

At first he pushed and said it felt mechanical. Then, as I asked him also to focus on his center, the experience of pushing became more involving, more meaningful for him. As associations or historical material came up, we would explore these briefly. The more he connected with his center and his grounding, the more the pushing helped him to recognize whether or not the phrases he was addressing to his ex-wife were appropriate. As we progressed, I realized I was beginning to understand his subjective experience of assertion. This was allowing me to attune my verbal interventions and my suggestions for his attention to and use of his body. It became apparent that we were performing an experiment to explore his understanding of himself, the issue of assertion, his relationship with his ex-wife, his relationship to his mother, and more.

As we continued he was visibly discovering his truth. He could feel it in his body. From the trend of what he was expressing I suggested, as a next step, that he experiment with the phrase "I can’t change her". This brought him to resolution. It was an essential understanding for him; and it arose from the pushing. He recognized that he could immediately begin to act differently towards his ex-wife. Along with being excited, Carey was very curious, even disconcerted, that his previous therapies had not come led him to this connection and understanding.

The primary ego function worked with there was Interpersonal Skills (See Appendix 4, #10) , and the sub category was "Pushing Away (saying "NO") and "holding at a distance". The corresponding muscles, most importantly the triceps, were all slightly hypo-responsive. The therapy process deepened when the ego functions of Centering (#3), and Grounding (#5), were brought into awareness. Another layer of the problem can be approached through working with Boundaries (#4), and specifically the sub category Self-Assertion. This latter category involves three parts of the deltoid muscle, all of which are more strongly hypo-responsive for Carey. From a characterological perspective many of the muscles involved here are related to the Autonomy and Will stages. The themes of these stages concern being independent, having your own feelings, being powerful in your actions, etc., while still being loved and cared for.

While we started with an exercise involving a resource that might help Carey to be more assertive, by exploring somatic responses we arrived at an important motivation behind his non-assertive behavior. His present behavior was now on the way to changing without having had to explore his childhood in detail. The specificity possible in Bodynamic Analysis helped Carey to get to a core issue quickly. Investigating the possible origins of his present behavior in his relationship with his mother, while it would be interesting and potentially helpful, was not necessary here. Additionally, it is our experience that the resources a person develops while working with a contemporary situation will generally shorten and simplify any historical work with the related issues.

We can make a useful analogy between muscle responsiveness and playing a piano. Imagine each key on the piano to be like our individual muscles. We can think of character structure as a musical style that only uses a small range of the piano's capacity. Because of patterns of tension we can't play some keys, we hit others only occasionally, play others too hard, and still others weakly. Our full expression is limited by not having access to all the possibilities. The more limited the character by tensions and resignations, the more limited the range in the style.

As more muscles move towards resource and the psychological abilities become more available in consciousness, our emotional range becomes broader. We can express ourselves in more subtle and varied ways. By unlocking our resources, our potential, we move into new realms of possibility, of utilizing our full abilities.

Continuing with the piano metaphor, we can see that just as single notes can combine to form cords, harmonies, and melodies, so can our new muscular freedom and responsiveness lead to new types of movements and expressions. The therapy process is analogous to helping an improviser on the piano begin to venture out and bring new elements into her playing. First, perhaps, staying within her original style by adding small variations, and then on to broader and broader explorations into the world (of music).

Sometimes, watching a Bodynamic practitioner probing different muscles is also like watching a musician: playing softly here, loudly there; trying first one tone then another; getting the most from the instrument (client) and the most from the music (issue) by balancing each element toward an integrated expression.

One implication of Bodynamic Analysis is that each of us can approach our life like an accomplished musician with full command of our instrument. We can shift our consciousness, our capacity to relate, to work, and to play, by intentionally sensing and using our body. For example the person in business can learn to manage stress in meetings by tensing particular muscles; the person who gets stuck in depression can begin to wake certain impulses, etc. So, No matter which "key or tone", "style or expression" a person starts with, one of the goals of Bodynamic Analysis is to help him be more in flow with his own possibilities, to perform at a high level while maintaining and enhancing mutual connection.

In mutual connection one is in contact with oneself and with the other person. When a person acts primarily from an early position of a character structure he has a tendency to collapse, to give up getting contact, or else to give up himself. A person acting from a later position will tend to go into a fight to be able to keep the contact or the connection with himself. In fighting, however, he doesn’t really get either, or he may be unable to sense when he gets either. A person in the early position must learn to fight for connection, and in the late must learn not to fight. From this perspective we can say that one of our "goals" is to have a client write his own music and be able to perform it for others.

The Bodymap, while requiring a knowledge of anatomy and muscle function, and requiring some effort to make and analyze, greatly clarifies, simplifies, and guides our work with clients. In this sense it may be likened to a musical conductor.

REFERENCES

1) Reich, Wilhelm Character Analysis, 1933. See 3rd Edition, Touchstone, 1972

2) Lowen, Alexander The Language of the Body, Collier Books, 1958, and Bioenergetics, Penguin Books, 1975.

3) Peter Bernhardt, Marianne Bentzen, and Joel Isaacs; Waking the Body Ego, Part 1 and Part 2, in Energy and Character Vol. 26, #1; Vol. 27 #1; Vol. 27 #2.

4) Ian Macnaughton, (Editor), (1997) Embodying the Mind and Minding the Body. Integral Press, N. Vancouver, BC.

5) Stern, Daniel The Interpersonal World of the Infant, Basic Books, 1985.

6)

7) Maslow, Abraham

8) Marcher, Lisbeth See, for example: Bernhardt, P. (1992) Individuation, Mutual Connection, and the Body’s resources; Pre- and Peri-Natal Psychology Journal 6(4), 1992.

9) Britta Holle (1976) Motor Development in Children: Normal and Retarded. Blackwell Scientific Publication, Oxford.

10) Ollars, Lennart Muskelpalpationstests palidelighed, Thesis, University of Copenhagen, 1980. (Reliability of the Bodymap Test - in Danish) Available from Bodynamic Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark.

11) Lake, Frank Clinical Theology (no longer in print).

12) Johnsen, Lillemor See for example: (1981) Integrated Respiration Therapy.

13) Braatoy, Trygve

As was the practice at the time, Marcher worked primarily with breaking down a client’s armor, their hyper-tonicity. However, she was disturbed because this led to some clients experiencing psychosis, especially (in retrospect) if they had experienced PTSD in their life. A possible alternative to only working with armor was revealed to her in reading articles by Lillemor Johnsen, a Norwegian physiotherapist. Johnsen essentially gave a description of hypotonicity, and worked with this so patients began to regain the life impulse (12). At the same time another Norwegian, Braatoy was describing his work with clients (13). Marcher realized that he must essentially also be working with the hypotonicity.

In 1969 Macher arranged for Lillemor Johnsen to come to Denmark to teach. Johnsen demonstrated how she worked with areas of the body and how she "listened to muscles’; how she touched a client, and how she watched the client’s breathing response. While skilled at what she did, it turned out that she could not describe precisely where she chose to touch, nor precisely describe what she did with her touch. This made it difficult to learn from her. She did work in some way with the elasticity of the muscles and the effect of touch on the breathing response. In hindsight we would also say that she worked with patients who had strong early disturbances (prenatal or first year of life).

Lisbeth Marcher set a goal for herself to find a way to work with the hypotonicity that she could describe to others, that she could teach. She also realized that the word "tonicity", which Johnsen and others used, was not a good choice to describe this new work. At the time it had a different and very specific meaning in physiotherapy. Instead, the word "response", was chosen. Marcher worked with muscles for one-half year until she could recognize basic patterns of hyper- and hypo-response. She was also able to sense varying degrees of responsiveness. As she worked with the hypo-responsiveness more impulse for life came into the therapy. Marcher realized that working with lighter degrees of responsiveness was important with less disturbed people. She soon set about teaching all of this to others around her.

As the work developed it became more and more specific. While Johnsen had mapped areas of the body, Marcher began to test and map specific muscles and parts of muscles. Long term empirical studies were undertaken on the links among the phsiological, the motoric, and the psychological. Specific muscles and their physical function were correlated to both their associated psychological function, and to the time period in which they came under voluntary control. Over time, the specificity grew and developed into the present form of the Bodymap, which continues to be refined to this day.

1. CONNECTEDNESS: Taking in; bonding; opening the heart; accepting support, feeling "backed up"; bonding; heart contact/opening .

2. STANCE IN LIFE: ("POSITIONING") Existential position; stance towards life; poise for action. personal stance; standing on one's own; position on values and norms; orienting (keeping or loosing one's head).

3. CENTERING: Filling out (from the inside); being oneself in one's different roles; feelings of self worth.

4. BOUNDARIES: Boundaries of personal space (energetic boundaries); self assertion(making space for oneself in social contact).

5. GROUNDING AND REALITY TESTING: Ability to stand one's ground, feel rooted and supported by it; relationship to reality; relationship to spirituality.

6. SOCIAL BALANCES: Balancing one’s own needs/feelings/desires against others' expectations; balance of pulling oneself together/letting go; balance of facade versus openness in interactions; balancing being oneself with being a group member; balance of managing stress and resolving it.

7. COGNITIVE SKILLS: ("THINKING") Orienting cognitive grasp; understanding (getting something well enough to stand forth with it); grasp of reality; ability to apply cognitive understanding to different situations; planning; contemplation/consideration.

8. ENERGY MANAGEMENT: Building charge, containment and discharge; emotional management; stress management; self containment; perception and mastery of one's own sensuality

9. SELF EXPRESSION: Assertion; asserting oneself in one's roles; forward impetus and sense of direction.

10. INTERPERSONAL SKILLS: Patterns of closeness and distancing; reaching out, gripping and holding on; drawing towards oneself and holding close; receiving and giving from one's core; pushing away (saying no) and holding at a distance; releasing, letting go.