September 2019
by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD
In Germany in the
1920s to the 40s some very innovative work was going on that traversed
psychotherapy and body work. Dancers, gymnasts, massage therapists and other
body workers were in conversation with psychoanalysts and psychologists (including
C. G. Jung) and these conversations were the seed to recognizing that no
psychological problem exists without a bodily response and no
psychological/emotional problem exists outside a bodily experience. It is
curious, therefore, that the two forms of therapy then went off in separate
directions. Psychotherapy started to think of itself as entirely to do with the
mind and social domain, and physical work as having nothing much to do with
feelings and thoughts. Both had got caught up in a mechanical way of doing
things. I’m talking mainstream here; alternative modalities didn’t lose track
of the whole embodied self.
It is interesting
that the severe anxiety response particularly in post-traumatic stress disorder
is being our entré into more holistic approaches to healing. Anxiety is a fear
response, a flight-freeze-fight response that stirs up adrenalin, causes
cortisol levels to soar, saturates the blood with higher levels of glucose and
more white blood cells, hyperventilation, saturates the mind with recurring
thoughts and imaginings, stirs stomach discomfort, gives us a dry mouth, makes
us feel we can’t escape, etc. Imagine
being in a sustained fear response lasting days, maybe years. Fear is
crippling, and those consumed by it tend not to venture far.
In the 80s a Tai Chi
practitioner friend was involved in a study with a group of elderly people with
a fear of falling, Many had already fallen several times and broken bones. My
friend was hired to teach the group some simple Tai Chi exercises. The more
they exercised in this flowing fluid way, the less fear was experienced. Fear
of falling, and interestingly, other fears went away.
Exercise is good, but
I think there is more to what was going on here. I have two main thoughts on the matter. Focused body movement
matters. Tai Chi is a mindful,
focussed form of exercise. Mindfulness is now a tool in psychotherapy. When you
are aware of what you’re doing, your thoughts are no longer on your anxiety.
My other thought is
that mindful physical exercise expands our perceptual strengths and capacities.
Most of us have a dominant sensory perception, where the less dominant ones are
not paid much attention. When one
perception shapes a person’s experience in a fairly exclusive way, negotiating
the greater world can be compromised. Think of someone who practically
exclusively gets around using just what they can see as a means of knowing what
is there and how it must feel to meet the unseen, unexpected whatever. It would
be scary.
We usually talk of
only five sensations: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, but there is
another: proprioception. Proprioception, also known as kinaesthetic sense, is
the sense of self body movement and position in relation to space and other
things. Developing proprioception can be very beneficial for people who have an
over developed sense of sight (maybe they spend all day on their phones). When
fear arises from encountering the unknown (which is always there) – eg not
being able to see into a dark room – having a strong body knowing, that is, a
better proprioceptive sense, can give greater security, because presences and
absences can often be felt actually in the body. You don’t have to see
everything to feel secure.
Focussed exercises,
like those in the martial arts, where you are aware of your own sense of
balance, your core fulcrum, as it were, the slowness or speed of your body
movement, the grace of an arm, perhaps an unsteadiness of a leg, your breath,
your sweat, expand your sense of safety and confident engagement in the world. It’s also great fun.
As one of the early
German body practitioners who worked alongside a psychotherapist, said, the
therapeutic work is speeded up when patients do both focussed body work and
psychotherapy. I encourage my clients in the pursuit of both for their healing.
