Touching your Soul

Dr. John Upledger, founder of CranioSacral Therapy (one of my favorite modalities), talked about placing hands on the body and touching the soul.

This photograph hints at the poetry, beauty, and wisdom of the body. Through CranioSacral therapy, empathic listening, inner dialogue, and other body/mind approaches, I access, and help you to access, the wisdom of your body. You might consider that wisdom your soul.

EMDR WOW

To illustrate the power of EMDR, I’d like to disclose my own healing experience. Actually I’ve had a few amazing EMDR experiences, but the most recent feels like the most powerful. Because of childhood mother-daughter dynamics I’ve spent most of my life feeling like what’s inside me is threatening. As a child I sensed that connection was scary for my mother, so I stayed away emotionally. I knew subconsciously that disclosing, sharing myself would frighten my mother. So I hid.

Recently I’ve been feeling 1) that I’ve been “coming into my own” — finding success in love and work, and 2) feeling physically like I’m falling apart! I set out time this morning to become my own client; I put my hands on my body to sense what was going on physically and emotionally. I did not back away from the feeling of anxiety that I felt in my gut/belly. After a while I realized, understood, that what I was fearing was that I would hurt someone by disclosing/sharing myself. I realized that subconsciously I feel that sharing myself would poison my mother/partner/friend/other.

Then the EMDR; I brought up the feeling of being poisonous, bilaterally tapped on my thighs, and KNEW that the truth; that what I have to share, what’s inside me is love, enlightenment, and caring. Not poison! EMDR helped me FEEL the truth and overcome my irrational fear. Wow.

We are Wounded and Wonderful

"I was looking for the feeling that I knew, in some unnameable way, was the locus of both my fragile humanness and my divinity. The intersection between me and that which was greater than me. The grace inherent in every moment, every person, every pebble...."

Regena Thomashauer

Photograph by Edward Weston

In Lyrical Healing sessions, we experience your "fragile humanness" as well as your divinity. Humans are like this leaf -- wounded AND beautiful.

Come be mindful of who you truly are.

Be Yourself (ves)

"Don’t just be yourself, be all of your selves." ~ Joss Whedon

Let's listen to our inner wounded one, our inner Queen/King, even our inner critic.
Be yourself! We're all good!

And may your Best Self preside over the
domain of You with compassion and wisdom.

Anger Management Revisited

My psyche has been marinating in anger. Why have I been “stewing” in it? As a child, I felt, although I could not articulate it, that my anger would hurt my parents. And even without the fear of harm, expression of anger was not modeled in my home. Expression of any emotion was discouraged. So what did I do with my anger? I turned it against myself. The unsaid but felt words of my mother became the words I directed towards myself. “Don’t be angry; it’s unappealing and scary. Your anger will hurt others, or will drive you to hurt others.” And in the circles I associate with now, the voices I hear say “live in the light,” “think positive,” you create your experience,” you attract what you focus on.” Many voices whisper warnings against expressing and even feeling anger. So I oblige.

Is Anger Bad?

I think I am like most people. We civilized people are expected to control our anger. We label anger as bad and joy as good. But at what price? Do we want to control to the point of repression? What are the consequences of ignored anger? What happens when we can’t even feel our anger?  Obviously we don’t need anger management classes that teach us to count our breath or wait ten minutes when we feel furious. We don’t need lessons in preventing outbursts. We don’t need books or articles or therapists coaching us to stay calm when we feel murderous. We need help feeling murderous in the first place!

Why Express Anger?

Why? Because unfelt feelings do not go away, they mutate. Anger towards a mother may turn to anger towards the self, which can feel like depression. Repressed longing may become an eating disorder. Unacknowledged frustration may turn into chronic headaches. An unidentified anxiety may manifest as hives.

Let's Feel the Feelings

So what’s the solution? Not anger management classes. Maybe Anger Appreciation 101! Which could look like meditation; sitting with the feeling. Notice what happens in our bodies. Notice our thoughts. Feel the anger and then let it go. Maybe know the sadness beneath the anger.

Still Think the Body and Emotions Aren't Inter-related?

Chopra and the Body/Mind Connection:

https://chopra.com/articles/mind-body-connection-understanding-the-psycho-emotional-roots-of-disease

The Dalai Lama on Healing Emotions:

https://books.google.com/books/about/Healing_Emotions.html?id=sjFYFE_OFzAC

Candace Pert and the Body/Mind Connection:

http://candacepert.com/

The Physical Side of Emotions:

http://www.ener-chi.com/the-physical-side-of-emotions-and-emotional-healing/

Traditional Chinese Medicine "Causes of Illness:"

https://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/natural-medicine/chinese/traditional-chinese-medicine-causes-of-illness6.htm

Organs and Emotions:

http://www.shen-nong.com/eng/principles/sevenemotions.html

Tuning in to Our Feelings

Sometimes it’s easier to hurt physically than to hurt emotionally. Sometimes the low back pain, twisted knee or achy shoulder is less distressing than the emotions “behind” those symptoms.

Pain and Emotions

Here’s an example. I recently had a very intense therapy session in which I felt feelings from my childhood that I’d rather not feel. I hesitate to even write about them. Not long after this session, I developed a strange pain in my right low back. I imagined a tumor, a pulled muscle, I googled the Quadratus Lumborum muscle, conferred with my chiropractor brother, asked a colleague for a trade, thought about dying from cancer. Then I noticed that I felt emotionally numb. I wondered… when did I start feeling this back pain… and what was I feeling emotionally?.... As soon as I realized that I was avoiding my feelings, that the REAL issue was emotional pain, the physical pain started to subside. The less need I have to distract myself from the emotional pain, the less physical pain I manifest.

What did I really feel? (And this is a great question to ask yourself at any moment during the day.) I feel shame. Shame for not overcoming childhood pain. Shame for not loving all parts of myself, after all these years, shame for not standing up for myself with the therapist, and shame for feeling anger towards the therapist. In the past few days it became easier to feel the back pain than to feel the shame.

Healing Shame

How can I heal that shame? Feel it. Share it. Know that I am not unique. Have compassion for myself. Don’t expect the shame to disappear; what we judge won’t budge. Maybe spend some time just acknowledging and feeling the shame. Comfort the part of me that feels ashamed.

Feel the Feelings

Our feelings can guide us. If we don’t feel them they may transform into depression, muscular tension, eating disorders, etc. Let’s listen, feel, and let go. Let’s prevent the headaches or heart palpitations or back pain; feel the feeling. Try this: notice an uncomfortable or tense area of your body. See if it’s associated with a thought or a feeling.  Feel the feeling. Then, instead of jumping to a more “positive” thought or feeling, breath in that discomfort, that pain, that anxiety into your whole body! Breathe it in. Feel it. Then exhale it and let it go. Do that a few times and see what happens. Let it flow.

Is the Law of Attraction Really a Law?

When we look at a plane, we see a sleek machine with wings. If we could see inside an airplane, we would know that most airplanes have more than one engine. Commercial airplanes have an autopilot option and flights often employ two pilots. So who is in charge and what powers the plane? It depends.

Similarly, our bodies/psyches can be powered and ruled by a variety of “engines.” So who is in charge of you? It depends. Is it your inner critic? Does she or he rule you? Or is it your inner child? Perhaps your Higher Self is in charge...until you visit your parents, at which time your inner child takes over. When we are encouraged to “think positive” or use the power of our intentions, which part of us is “intending?”

Perhaps we need to question the power of our intention.  Can we really attract what we want by thinking positive thoughts or by chanting affirmations? After all, who is it that is chanting that affirmation? What happens when our conscious mind affirms that we are happy while our shushed inner child silently frets? If we continuously shush that inner child, he/she will get more insistent, more powerful. He or she will shout over the affirmations. Let's listen to our inner child, access our inner nurturer, let our capital 'S' Self overwhelm us with his/her innate optimism and positive spirit!

Your Divine Spark

"Our supreme purpose in life is not to make a fortune, nor to pursue pleasure, nor to write our name on history, but to discover this spark of the divine that is in our hearts." ~ Eknath Easwaran

Artwork by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

The Use of Touch in Psychotherapy: Beyond the Controversy

While working towards my counseling degree, I wrote this research paper advocating the use of touch in psychotherapy.  I hope that you can look beyond the paper’s formality and enjoy the content!

The Controversy

The use of touch in psychotherapy is controversial. Many therapists and counselors nonetheless find it beneficial and some even necessary, for facilitating health. While physical touch is widely acknowledged and scientifically proven to have a healing impact on physical health, (Dworkin-McDaniel, 2011; Zur, 2011), the use of touch in a psychotherapeutic setting has historically been perceived as questionable if not absolutely forbidden (Pinson, 2002). This paper will briefly discuss the origin of this ambivalence and will defend the use of touch as beneficial and ethical.

Why Not?

There are many sources feeding the ambivalence surrounding touch in psychotherapy. Touch has the possibility of conveying inappropriate power and/or sexuality. Teachers, childcare workers, and of course mental health professionals are cautioned against touching clients and students for fear of being misinterpreted or even sued. What the professional intends as therapeutic touch may be perceived by the client or student as a sexual overture, crossing a boundary, or a display of power. Especially in Western culture, touch outside certain contexts such as romantic coupling and handshakes is suspect. From a Freudian perspective, touch can impede transference or can inappropriately gratify the “Id” and thus delay its mastery by the “Ego” (Pinson, 2002). Many therapists avoid touch, citing fears of unintentionally harming clients or of engendering culpability.

Why Touch?

In spite of these cautions, therapists and healers have been using touch in many forms throughout time, to the recipient's benefit. As stated above, touch has been proven to be physically beneficial to humans. Touch can decrease stress hormones, increase serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine levels, decrease anxiety, and improve the immune system's functioning, among other benefits (Dworkin-McDaniel, 2011; Field, 1998; Zur, 2011). Studies have shown that patients in traditional psychotherapeutic settings appreciate and have benefited from touch (Horton, Clance, Sterk-Elifson, Emshoff, 1995; Smith, 1998). Jesus, mothers, lovers, shamans, as well as massage therapists, use or have used a hands-on approach to facilitate spiritual, physical, and/or emotional health. And many scientists and health care professionals are questioning whether the three realms (spiritual, physical, and emotional) can be separated. Therapeutic touch is healthy for body, mind, and spirit.

Many psychologists believe that not only is touch not inappropriate in a psychotherapeutic setting, it is actually beneficial. And scientists have proven the connection between the body and emotions (Beckes, 2015; Numenmaa, Glerean, Hari, & Hietanen, 2013; Pert, 1997). If the emotions and body are interconnected, it behooves a mental health professional to treat and even diagnose using the schema of psyche-soma unity. As Pert (1997) states, “...the deepest oldest messages are stored and must be accessed through the body. Your body is your unconscious mind, and you can't heal it by talk alone” (p. 306). Body-centered psychotherapy is based on such a premise. Body-centered psychotherapy encompasses many different approaches to healing, all acknowledging the direct effect of emotions on the body and the effect of the body on emotions. These therapies, in other words, assume the interconnectedness and possibly undifferentiated nature of body/mind. Ofer Zur, in his article on touch in psychotherapy, references more than ten body-centered psychotherapy methods popular today, beginning with an approach developed by Wilhelm Reich, a student of Sigmund Freud (Zur, 2011). Other respected psychotherapists who work with the body include Alexander Lowen, Peter Levine, Ron Kurtz, and Fritz Perls, the originator of Gestalt Therapy. If we see that there is no distinction between the body and the mind, or at the least, a direct effect of one on the other, then including touch as a diagnostic and a healing tool by mental health professionals makes good sense. All healing professions have ethical standards to curtail the inappropriate use of touch, and most therapists and counselors, when presented with proof of the benefits of touch and the interelatedness of body and emotions, will consider the benefits of touch to outweigh the risks. While therapists should use caution when touching clients, the proven connection between body and mind suggests that the use of touch in the context of psychotherapy deserves further attention. And studies involving recently developed body-centered modalities should prove their efficacy and win advocates.

References

Beckes, L., Ijzerman, H., & Tops, M. (2015). Toward a radically embodied neuroscience of attachment and relationships. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 266 [article number]. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00266

Dworkin-McDaniel, N. (2011). Touching makes you healthier. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/touching.makes.you.healthier.health/

Field, T. (1998). Massage therapy effects. American Psychologist, 53(12), 1270-1281.

Horton, J. A., Clance, P. R., Sterk-Elifson, C., & Emshoff, J. (1995). Touch in psychotherapy: A survey of patients' experiences. Psychotherapy, 32(3), 443-455.

Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R., & Hietanen, J. K. (2013). Bodily maps of emotions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(2), 646-651. doi:10.1073/pnas.1321664111

Pert, C. B. (1997). Molecules of emotions. New York, NY: Scribner.

Pinson, B. (2002). Touch in therapy: An effort to make the unknown known. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 32(2/3), 179-196. doi:10.1023/A:1020545010081

Smith, E. W. L. (1998). Traditions of touch in psychotherapy. In E. W. L. Smith, P. R. Clance, & S. Imes (Eds.), Touch in psychotherapy: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 3-13). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Zur, O., & Nordmarken, N. (2011). To touch or not to touch: Exploring the myth of prohibition on touch in psychotherapy and counseling. Retrieved from http://www.zurinstitute.com/touchintherapy.html