Wednesday, January 28, 2009
BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY
Dr. Bell practices a type of body psychotherapy (Bioenergetic Analysis) that is an approved psychotherapeutic method in counseling and psychology graduate schools. Most graduate schools do not teach the techniques but introduce the theory and concept of body psychotherapy in graduate classes. The therapy is so advanced in its ability to encounter the individual at the deepest psychotherapeutic level that it takes years to be a Bioenergetic Analyst. It is taught only in private analytic institutes of bioenergetic analysis.
BIOENERGETIC ANALYSIS
Bioenergetic therapy differs from traditional talk therapy in several ways. The Bioenergetic therapist pays attention to the body, its feeling and lack of feeling, its movement and lack of movement and how it relates to ones personal history and the way each person developed. As persons begin to understand and experience how their history may have restricted their contact with themselves and their lack of joy in their lives they begin to grieve. The quality of the grief process is deeper and more complete when it is experienced in the body. Traditional talk therapy may bring to surface an understanding of ones history and feelings of loss about childhood experiences but ends there. Talk therapy is generally engaging the left brain, a linear and language oriented process. The client is often left with a an experience of helplessness often moving through their lives experiencing more of their brokenness. A full experience of the grief must emerge for the person to be complete. For a grief process to be complete a person must move through their helplessness and begin to reclaim their lives in a new and empowered way. We can be empowered by the grieving if it is not cut short and but felt in the body in a full experience. Bioenergetic therapy helps the stages of anger and aggression to be addressed at a very deep level in the body. As the emergence of ones anger is supported and worked with at a body level one can reclaim their lost power and emerge whole. The emergence of ones power and wholeness maximizes their vitality and human potential. Alexander Lowen, the father of Bioenergetic Analysis states, “ Neurosis is the fear of life; the neurotic body can only tolerate a limited degree of aliveness and feeling. Reducing muscular tension expands one’s capacity for feeling and aliveness.”
BIOENERGETIC EXERCISE
In the therapy we may use an exercise to address the tension held in the body. However, the exercises alone are extremely helpful therapeutically. Dr. Bell offers a regular bioenergetics exercise class to teach the exercises that enliven the body. Comments from class participants about the exercise are that they look forward to the class every week and feel it changes their whole way of being in the world. They feel more grounded, secure, serene, and free of stress. Many of the participants after a period of time find that they start integrating the exercises into their daily lives. Some participants that have had chronic pain because of muscle tension are freed from the pain. They begin to feel things in their body that they have never felt before and realize the positive emotional changes that result. Many of the exercises come from years of bioenergetic bodywork but some come from traditions such as yoga and tai chi.