Body-Centered Therapies: A Guide
Column Editor: Christine Caldwell, Ph.D., LPC, ADTR*
Editor's Note:
Armed with degrees in anthropology, dance and psychology, Dr. Christine Caldwell founded in 1984 the Somatic Psychology Department at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. She is the author of "Getting Our Body's Back: Recovery, Healing, and Transformation through Body-Centered Psychotherapy" (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1996) and is Editor of "Getting in Touch: The Guide to New Body-Centered Therapies" (Quest Books: Wheaton, IL, 1997). Her innovative work called the "Moving Cycle," spotlights natural play, early physical imprinting, and the transformational effect of fully sequenced movement (www.themovingcycle.com). She has taught at the University of Maryland and George Washington University, and trains, teaches and lectures internationally. She directs the Moving Cycle Institute in Boulder which offers individual and group counseling, classes, workshops, wilderness programs, apprenticeships, and training in the Moving Cycle process. For email *Portions of this column are taken from, Getting in Touch: The Guide to New Body-Centered Therapies edited by Christine Caldwell (Quest Books, 1998).
An Overview of Body-Centered Therapy
by Christine CaldwellThis column introduces somatic psychology, sometimes called body-centered psychology, as a vital component of a prenatal and perinatal viewpoint. Soma simply means body. Psyche typically refers to the mind. Somatic psychology, then, is the study of the body/mind interface, the relationship of our physical matter and our energy, the interaction of our structures with our thoughts and actions. Somatic therapies draw upon philosophy, medicine, physics, existing psychologies, and countless thousands of hours of human observation and clinical experience, to unify human beings into an organic and inseparable whole, for the purpose of healing, growth, and transformation. As a somatic discipline, this field values the physical body as a material blueprint for our consciousness and our essential aliveness. It seeks to rectify an historical overemphasis on cognitive/analytical processes being central in human experience, a malady that confronts the prenatal and perinatal psychology field as well. This body-centered paradigm looks at physical states and symptoms as expressive of the central themes of our existence.
The splitting apart of the body and the mind, where the body is the domain of physicians and the mind and emotions that of psychotherapists, has been so pronounced in Western thought in the last few centuries that the current idea of unity of the body/mind at first felt like a somewhat odd and suspicious hypothesis. Of course, in most traditional cultures, this splitting up of = the human into parts is seen as laughable, and itself seen as a symptom of Western craziness. It has only been in the last twenty five years that the concept of the correspondence between physiological, psychological and even spiritual processes has been popularized, and increasingly many different forms of somatically-based psychotherapies have flourished. These forms seek to re-sensitize us to our birthright of healthy and optimal functioning by using the direct physical experience of the body as a healing tool. These systems also advocate our continued growth and transformation as humans through reclaiming our integrative being, the being we were conceived to be. Many of us are now more than willing to see physical, emotional, and cognitive events as related, and we owe this to the dissemination of somatic psychology principles into our culture. In a sense we could say that somatic psychology seeks a unified field theory of human nature, even though the roots and branches of its family tree hold many diverse pioneers and practitioners. The field has no single founding mother or father, and it arose in many independent ways, the way in which any good idea will keep cropping up. This makes for a field that holds a tremendous amount of creative diversity, and no clearly articulated central core. As the editor of this column, it is my intention to take on the task of helping to articulate this core, and to clarify its role in the theories, practices, and continuing evolutionary steps of pre and perinatal psychology.
This column will draw together many of the current leaders in the field of somatic psychology. Periodically, the editor will ask each one of these leaders to write about how they see the body in relationship to prenatal and perinatal phenomenon, and to discuss some of their unique contributions to our understanding of this precious time. By way of introduction, we now look at four basic areas in which somatic psychology may contribute to our understanding of prenatal and perinatal work.
1. Theory
First, what are our theories about human nature? Most importantly, what are our views on health and illness? Some theories hold that we are inherently flawed or are in conflict with society, and that our health depends on how we manage this reality. Other ideas state that we are inherently good and whole, and that illness occurs when we are forced to go against our true nature. These kind of beliefs form the basis of any therapeutic modality, and color everything about it.
Does a body psychology viewpoint help us emphasize gestational and early childhood experience? Current direct experience? Some therapeutic systems delve deeply into early experience as vital for understanding how we currently operate. Other systems grant early influence, but state that healthy change does not occur through understanding, but through locating oneself in the present moment. Figuring out who did what to whom is an act of leaving the present moment.
Do the theories we operate from require an analysis/diagnosis of the client by a therapist? Whether or not analysis and diagnosis occur, and how they occur, influences the power relationship between the therapist and client, and locates the therapeutic system along a continuum of orientation towards understanding or experiencing.
As well, what are our theories about how people change? Do we change through increased awareness or understanding? Do we change by releasing old energy patterns? Do we change through behavioral movement processes? These and other questions about theory can help readers locate themselves along the bridge between somatic psychology and prenatal and perinatal psychology.
2. Orientation
Arising out of theoretical assumptions about the world, we next develop an orientation towards therapeutic work. Do we have specific ideas about how healthy functioning is restored? Or do we believe that the act of following the flow of direct experience is sufficient to bring about change? This is basically a statement about whether we advocate a goal orientation or process orientation or some blend of the two. Some systems are much more interventional, while others work more with the therapist as witness. Another way to look at orientation is to examine the therapeutic relationship. Is it important or unimportant to the flow of the work? Is the therapist more of a technician, coach, or remediating parent?
3. Forms/Techniques
Here we ask how the therapy is done. Is the technique directive or non-directive? Does it involve touch, specific exercises and experiments? Does it use regressive emotional states, or more a tracking of current experience? Does it use imagery? Is it done primarily in groups, with couples, or individuals? Does it tend to be done in an ongoing manner, or in an intensive format? Is it short or long term? Technique can be very crucial in determining a good fit of individual to therapeutic system. We all learn and process our issues in unique ways, and finding a system that fits our bodies and our learning style is essential.
4. Applications
Body-centered psychotherapists work in the world in different ways. Some are at work in corporations, some focus on couples relationships and some are interested in individual healing as the basis for societal sanity. Others take our work into conflict resolution, peace work, and other community projects. Still others advocate an emphasis on creative expression. Some systems focus more narrowly on healing, while others are interested in applying their work to growth, transformation, and societal evolution.
By looking at these four areas, we can begin to discern how somatic psychology and prenatal and perinatal psychology can nourish each other.
The Spiritual Implications of Somatic Therapy
Perhaps one of the most far reaching contributions of both somatic and prenatal and perinatal psychology is in the realm of our understanding of spirit and spirituality. Western society has a tendency to think of spirit as something disembodied, a part of ourselves free from the fetters of the flesh. In somatic psychology, nothing could be further from the truth. As theoreticians and clinicians, we have come full circle to the original meaning and intent of the word spirit, which shares a root with "inspiration" both the creative kind and the inhaling kind. Spirit comes from the Greek word = for breath.
It is by breathing and being in our bodies that we locate ourselves, and can transcend old, restricting forms of consciousness, many of which are imprinted prenatally and perinatally. When we align ourselves through our bodies, we can balance out the flights of fancy our thoughts are inclined to take, flights that can cause untold suffering when they become blaming and critical of ourselves or others. In somatic psychology we see the body as a temple, a sacred place. Again, we counteract the toxic assumption that our bodies are what gets us into trouble, are our weakness, our tainted, sinfully inclined, lower animal selves. How many of us have heard in church/temple/ashram that we must leave behind the pleasures of the flesh, for they will lead us into sin? This pathologizing of the body has caused immense suffering, and somatic practitioners seek to dissolve this ancient and still festering wound by recovering the body as the part of us that holds, contains, takes care of all our other energies. It is our earth principle, our mother figure. If we care for it, live within it and in accordance with it, we heal both ourselves and the world.
This fall from bodily grace occurs, I believe, in the prenatal and perinatal time. We "gamete" ourselves into the material plane, and if there is any traumatic interruption in this ecstatic dance of forming, we tend to separate from the body we are becoming. Both somatic and prenatal and perinatal psychologists are interested in nothing short of a complete bodymind reunion, and it is through this re-union that we can make unity consciousness more possible. From where else does unity come from than from all the elements of creation? Only through a complete, contemplative return to our essence, our total body, can we locate that essence within the framework of all that exists.
In the summer of 1994, Jack Rosenberg, one of the founders of Integrated Body Psychotherapy (IBP), predicted that in twenty years it will be considered unethical to do therapy without a somatic perspective. This column attempts to keep us on that twenty year track by creating an umbrella that both somatic and prenatal/perinatal psychologists can stand under, as practitioners, clients, seekers, philosophers, and lovers.