Body-Centered Therapy

The four components of the psyche:

1. Essence - Pure Life, no conditioning, your consciousness.
1. Universal Essence - a clear, Open Spaces feeling that feels connected to the same open space in others and to the universe itself.
2. Personal Essence- the most fundamental, irreducible thing that makes one who he is.
2. Feelings
1. People dread if they experience of the deepest feelings they will die or go crazy.
2. Fear is the deepest and most pervasive feeling.
3. Personas - and way to handle feelings, a way to survive our identity, a way to make contact.
1. Categories #1 - positive and nature.
2. Categories #2- learned to avoid pain and control our feelings.
3. Benefits.
1. We do not have to think creativity.
2. We do not have to feel.
3. We get to make other people wrong.
4. We get to justify our own position or invalidate someone else's position.
4. Costs.
1. We do not get to think.
2. We you not get to feel.
3. We do not get to experience genuine love.
4. Projection - how we see others based on our personas.

Quantum questions- key questions that allow people to move from one level of being to another:

1. What are we experiencing right now?
2. What are your complaints? Rule of three: When we find ourselves complaining about something three or more times without taking effective action, we assume it's a projection.
3. Exactly waht has happening when you started seeing the world this way?
4. What does this situation remind you of?
5. Given this persona, what kind of people are required to play the other actors in the script?
6. What were your feelings when you learned to experience the world that way?
7. Where are you experiencing this feeling in your body?
8. What are the specific sensations you are feeling?
9. Exactly what happened?
10. Can you conceive of yourself completely free of this issue?
11. Who is the you that was there before this problem occurred?
12. Would you be willing to feel and tell the truth of this event until it is complete?

Signposts to essence:

1. Breathing flags- a breathing flag tells the thereapist that the client is withholding some unexpressed emotion.
1. Controlled breathing- movement of the lower abdomen dominantly, with some movement in the chest. Relaxed state.
2. Aerobic breathing- movement of the chest and the belly together, rapidly and deeply. Physically aroused.
3. Fight-or-flight- movement in the belly and forcing the breath up into the chest. Scared, angry, hurt.
2. Movement flag- movement of the arms, legs, fingers and eyes.
3. Postural flags.
   1. Left/right splits- one shoulder higher than the other; one eye more open or more closed than the other; one leg shorter or longer than the other; the left hip higher or lower than the right; one side of the jaw more muscled or bulgy than the other. Reveal a (fe)male distinction in the person's psychology.
   2. Top/bottom splits- weight help in hips and legs while torso is thin or underdeveloped legs. Reveal the difference between supports (lower parts) and expression (upper parts) in the person's psychology.
   3. Front/back splits- pelvis pulled back while belly juts forward; head pulled back while chest juts forward; had straining forward, in front of torso and lower body. Reveal a person's relationship with time. Front of the body seems to be more associated with experience. The back relates to expression. The back relates to expression.
4. Verbal flags.
1. Tone
2. Repitition
3. Emphasis
4. Paraverbal communications- all the sighs, sniffs, coughs, and stutters that accompany words.
5. Attitude flags- combination of the other flags.

The five principles:

1. The presencing principle- focusing our attention on a sensation.
2. The magnification principle - many troublesome symptoms and feelings disappear rapidly when the person constantly magnifies their frequency or intensity. The person either magnifies one of the flags or a feeling.
1. Why the principal works:
1. The powerful way of making the unconscious conscious.
2. Breaks the "vapor lock" of a recycling symptom.
3. Magnifying is a surface symptom gives us direct access to the deeper element just below that symptom.
4. Gives full expression to something that the symptoms may be expressing incompletely.
5. The person who magnify the symptom or a feeling goes benignly only out of control in order to do it.
2. When not to use the principal:
1. Sex.
2. Physical violence.
3. Self-destruction.
3. The breathing principle - breathing patterns precisely reflect the emotional difficulties people are experiencing or have experienced in the past.
1. It enhances:
1. Being and feeling.
2. Unity of the fight or flight instincts.
3. Mastery of feelings and issues.
2. Major benefits:
1. Stress reduction.
2. Treatment of anxiety and depression.
3. Control of physical pain.
4. Improvement of physical problems.
5. Permission to feel good.
3. The daily breathing program.
1. Lie on your back. Bend your knees, placing your feet on the floor a comfortable width apart. As you breathe in, arch the small of your back gently and slightly. As you breathe out, flatten the small of your back against the floor. Breathe slowly and deeply, filling your belly full and gently arching the small of your back. Breathe out slowly, flattening the small of your back into the floor. Do this gently and slowly for about two minutes.
2. Lie on your back. Bend your knees, with your feet flat on the floor a comfortable width apart. Relaxing your abdominal muscles, breathe fully in, and expanding your belly as fully as you comfortably can. When it's full and expanded, hold your breath. Without letting any air out, contract your belly muscles, as if you were shooting the ball of air up into your chest. Then shoot it back into your belly. Do this rapidly, about once per second. Keep rocking it back in forth between belly and chest until you need to take another breath. Breathe normally for 15 to 20 seconds, then repeat the above process. Do the activity for about two minutes.
3. Lie on your back, knees up, feet flat on the floor. Stretch your arms straight out to your sides in a T position. Your arm should be straight out, not pointed in a Y position. Begin by rolling one arm down the floor as the other one rolls up. Let the arms stay on the floor while you roll them up and down the floor. Do this a few times until you get a fluid motion. Now, keeping the arms rolling, let your knees drop toward the site on which the arm is rolling down. Do this a few times until it becomes fluid and easy. Now, keeping the arms and legs going, begin turning your head in the direction opposite to the knees. Do this slowly and easily and gently for about 2 minutes.
4. The moving principle- reflect emotions that need to be addressed. Movement indicates a person's degree of aliveness and it is a bridge to the inner self.
1. A healthy person movement:
1. Healthy people gestures are economical and complete.
2. Their eyes sparkle with vitality and presence.
3. Skin color is radiant.
4. Standing body is balanced and fluid.
5. Express feelings fully and congruently. Their communication matches their inner experience.
6. They tend not to get caught in mannerisms, and they have a large range of possible movements.
2. Movement flags:
1. Facial tics- grimacing, pouting, or screwing up a part of the face.
2. Scratching- signals irritation.
3. Picking.
4. Smoothing.
5. Holding movements- carries emotional charge.
6. Brushing motions.
7. Rocking- signals that the person is experiencing feelings and sensations from early in life. Comforts, protects themselves.
8. Self-touching- reassures the person that they are present, stops feelings, or ground them.
9. The "Hinge-Cringe"- signals fear or avoidance.
5. The communication principle - a problem will persist until someone tells a fundamental level of truth about it.
   1. The main defenses against seeing and saying the truth:
   1. Denial- some people simply refuse to look at the truth.
   2. Illusion - pretend the truth is something other than what it is.
   3. Distortion.
   4. Executing the messenger - getting mad at the person who brings them the truth.
   5. Dramatization.
   6. Not knowing how to access the truth- many people have had their truth defined for them by others for so long that they have no idea what is real and what is not.
   2. What communicating the truth looks and sounds like:
   1. We hear the truth when we hear the statements of primary feelings, with no blame or justification implied.
   2. When we hear statements about the quality of feelings.
   3. When we hear statements about the exact nature of sensations.

Source: At the Speed of Life: A New Approach to Personal Change Through Body-Centered Therapy (1994) by Gay Hendricks and Kathlyn Hendricks.