S e i s h i n d o
(continued)
Cognition, Soma, Mind, and Emotions, are One Complete and Indivisible
Unit
"Bill" comes to me concerning problems he is having in his marriage,
and as a secondary issue he reports that he is suffering from dangerously
high blood pressure. I notice as he sits facing me and begins to talk
about his work, that he begins to rock ever so slightly forward and
backward, that he is slouching just a bit, with his head ever so much
tilted to his right. I also notice that he tends to hold his breath
when he pauses, and his face gets red at these times in particular.
After a few minutes I distract Bill by asking him about his recent fishing
trip to Russia. He really enjoys telling me a few fishing tales, and
I notice that as he tells me these stories his posture straightens up
ever so much, he is now moving his trunk in a barely perceptible, gentle,
right to left rocking motion, as he now tilts his head slightly to his
left, and breathes deeply each time he pauses to regale me with another
story. Having noticed all of this I ask Bill if we can get back to his
original issue while I stand behind him and place my hands gently on
his head and neck. Bill is familiar with my work and he is thus comfortable
with this form of interaction. (Otherwise, gaining much more rapport
and further explanation would be necessary before I would offer to engage
in helping him with "hands on" work.)
Thus far, Bill has no idea about what I have noticed concerning his
rocking movements and posture, because in this instance I do not want
him to try and consciously change what he is doing. Bill is a perfectionist
and I don't want his need for "perfection" to get in the way of his
somatic intelligence. I am hoping to help him bypass his usual habit
patterns as a first step toward learning something new.
As Bill begins to again tell me of his business difficulties, he again
unconsciously moves his trunk forward and backward, and he starts to
slouch again. I gently guide him with my hands, without words or any
other form of logical explanation as to what I am doing or what I want
him to do. I subtly suggest with my hands that he very gently change
his posture, and without any verbal form of acknowledgement, he does
so. I let his change in posture stabilize and then I begin to suggest
with my hands that he move his trunk ever so much from right to left
(the way that he tends to move when he is enjoying himself) instead
of from front to back (the way he tends to move when he feels stuck.).
Most of all of this time Bill continues to talk. Next, my hands suggest
that he tilt his head ever so much to his right like he does when he
talks about fishing. Now he finds himself discussing his problem while
sitting and moving in a way that is quite different from his usual way
of eliciting his problem. In working together with Bill, his cognitive
self begins with a focus on his problem state, while I help his somatic
self to begin to elicit a state of well being. In this way, his somatic
intelligence becomes a context for dissolving fixed problems and allowing
new solutions to arise. His body leads his brain, which changes his
mind, and thus his emotional reaction. Indeed, after a short while Bill
states that somehow the problems in "our" marriage don't seem to be
quite as insolvable as before. (He unconsciously switches from "my"
problems to the "our" problems of he and his wife) He says, "Funny as
it might seem, I am already beginning to imagine some potential solutions."
As he starts to generate some initial solutions his head becomes more
balanced over his torso and he is definitely breathing more fully than
before. At some point I take my hands off of him and come around to
sit in front of him while he continues to think and talk in a solution
oriented manner. Now I begin to use various Self-relations processes
to assist him in melding his "new" somatic experience with the cognitive
understanding that will help him to actually go out and utilize what
he has learned. He comes back for a follow-up session in a week's time,
and reports that he and his wife have definitely been doing somewhat
better, and he feels like there is definitely hope for a better future.
I work with him some more in the same manner as I did last time, but
this time filling him in some on what is taking place. Towards the end
of the session I teach him two relaxation exercises and send him home
to practice. Ten days later I get an email from him which says "Went
to the doctor and my blood pressure was down for the first time in six
months! Wouldn't you know it, getting along better with my wife and
lowering my blood pressure were bound to go hand in hand."
In Seishindo we believe that changing the condition, usage, and awareness,
of the body helps shift emotions, cognition, and behavior, and brings
the entire self into a state of greater balance and well-being. We don't
so much try to get our clients to maintain a somatic-emotional balanced
state, as we teach them how to get back to this state when they find
that they have strayed and are suffering dis-ease.
In Seishindo we usually don't create a sharp differentiation between
problems of the body/health issues, and problems of the psyche/psychological
issues. Indeed we find that often when clients come with psychological
issues, the first positive changes they notice is in the condition of
their overall health and body usage. The same is true "in reverse."
Clients come suffering from the pain of a car accident or a lingering
sports injury, and they might likely report feeling happier and more
at ease in life in general, a week or two prior to noticing any physical
improvement. Cognitive intelligence, somatic intelligence, mind, and
emotions are all woven together into one indivisible and highly creative
whole. For educational purposes we can talk about body and brain, intellect
and emotions, or conscious and unconscious mind, as if they were separate,
but in the living of our life it is just this sense of separateness,
that is a sure sign of a living system out of balance.
Learning and adapting with a dual perspective
Self-relations suggests that people tend to identify with one of two
basic perspectives when perceiving and understanding life- their somatic
self/mind or their cognitive self/mind.
The cognitive self is associated with the brain in our skull, thoughts,
strategies, mental abstractions, and descriptions of one's life. The
cognitive self understands life mainly by passing it through the filters
of verbal language and socially constrained thinking. The main avenue
of communication for the cognitive self is one's native language, used
in both intrapersonal (internal dialogue) and interpersonal conversations.
The somatic self, on the other hand, is associated with embodied knowing,
poetry, emotion, intuition, movement, a non-verbal felt sense of nature
and one's experience, and the archetypal presence of the collective
experiences of all human beings. The language of the somatic self is
based on a "felt sense" of the present moment, emotional states, bodily
reactions, and the relational connections to all we come in contact
with. The somatic self communicates its experience nonverbally yet systematically.
In Self-relations terms, we are advised to tune into "the tender soft
spot in the belly" in order to integrate the somatic and cognitive selves.
The somatic self's ability to sense what is taking place, along with
the cognitive self's ability to negotiate among various distinctions,
words, strategies, and abstractions allows for the evolution of a mature
"relational self." The ideal is to embed the experiences of the somatic
and cognitive selves, one within the other, and in the process to create
a new and different experience that includes and at the same time transcends
both.
Some premises of Seishindo
Recognizing the importance of a relational self, Seishindo is based
on the following premises.
1) A supportive environment in which one
is accepted, protected and respected will greatly increase one's ability
to learn, adapt, and change.
2) Each person has an innate ability to
recognize and create their own personal state of somatic-emotional well-being.
3) To a large extent our feeling of somatic-emotional
well-being is determined by our overall sense of balance/imbalance throughout
the entire system known as "me" and extending out to include all that
we come in contact with.
4) A state of dynamic relaxation in which
we combine relaxation with movement and a lively sense of awareness
is a crucial element in supporting learning. When we are dynamically
relaxed we feel alert and fully alive, and ready for something "good"
to happen. We do just enough and nothing more or less, to perform in
a graceful, efficient manner without inducing excess effort or tension.
5) Every living system is a communication
network that has the instinctive ability to successfully self-organize,
that is, to organize one's "self" and the local environment in order
to survive and thrive . Effective self-organization promotes a sense
of somatic-emotional well-being and leads to successful relational engagement
in the world.. When our physiology is balanced and relaxed and our overall
mental and emotional state is healthy, we establish an optimum network
for information flow. One of the best ways to stimulate self-organization
is to bring a system into a temporary state of imbalance, and then support
and allow the system to instinctively rebalance itself. "Imbalance and
supportive rebalancing" could for instance involve going to a specialized
retreat center for a week in order to work on giving up smoking. The
cessation of smoking will likely initially lead to a sense of imbalance.
The supportive atmosphere and counseling available at the center could
then help to lead towards a healthy rebalancing of ones behavior and
feelings.
6) The ability to adapt and change is part and parcel of the
act of self-organization. An individual who is dynamically relaxed and
continually reorganizing has the greatest likelihood of adapting and
changing. The ability to adapt is the reward for learning.
7) A diverse system has many different
elements. Diversity is ever present in the non-equilibrium biosphere
that we live in; without it, a system cannot sustain itself. A lack
of diversity leads to a limited pool of information, alternatives, and
solutions that will usually tend to be somehow incomplete, incorrect,
and repetitive. A system adept at managing diversity is open to learning
from new information and distilling solutions from multiple realities.
8) Human beings are made up of diverse yet interrelated and interdependent
parts. Our ability to embrace, comprehend, utilize, and unify the different
elements of a given situation leads to high quality solutions and adaptation.
The concepts of "right" or "wrong" are less important than the correlation
and complementarity of divergent sources of information. For instance,
living in a bi-cultural family unit will necessitate that we embrace,
comprehend, utilize, and unify various beliefs relating to religion,
ethical behavior, and cultural norms. In the process of creating a supportive
and loving family unit we wind up developing a "new" culture that is
a rich synthesis of the cultural background of both parents. Robust
systems thrive on complexity, and use it as an impetus for fostering
generative compromises that enhance the overall integrity of the system.
In unbalanced systems complexity tends to create a state of confusion
and chaos.
9) Well intentioned attempts to create
change in our lives often only tend to further amplify what is perceived
to be problematic. High quality learning and adaptation usually requires
an paradigm shift in the way we think and react to the world. For instance,
the behavior of an adolescent boy who is deemed to be irresponsible
will often further deteriorate when the child is faced with ever more
stringent demands from his parents. As a parent, understanding how we
can better support the child to develop as a responsible adult, will
open up many new possibilities for changed behavior that do not seem
possible in an authoritarian relationship.
10) Most of our behaviors and thought processes
are habitual in nature. Whatever is habitual tends to feel natural,
and what is natural often feels unnatural. Lasting change and learning
often requires that we change deep seated habits.
An alternative model of psychotherapy
Somatic psychotherapy attempts to influence clients at their somatic
level of experience. They are asked to lead with their body and follow
with their rational mind.
Since Somatic Based Therapy assumes that much of what we understand
cognitively derives from our verbal interpretation of our somatic language,
we tend to look first at the body in order to understand the psyche.
We begin with both the client and the practitioner getting a felt sense
of the communication of the body. Then we look to enlist the help of
the client's unconsciously generated somatic intelligence, to bring
about meaningful change. This change is wrought by the clients innate
and preverbal sense of what needs to be different somatically in order
to bring about a greater sense of psychological health and well-being.
Once the somatic experience has begun to change then I create a deeper
conversation using the various processes of Self-relations Therapy to
integrate our dual intelligence into an experience of the relational
self.
I hope that what I have explained in these few pages leads you to experiment
more with somatic based forms of therapy and have a greater appreciation
for your somatic intelligence. Please keep the following in mind. First,
I have offered a simple explanation of phenomenon that took me years
to understand and are actually quite subtle in nature. Learning how
to help people change their unconsciously generated movements and posture
usually takes quite a bit of training. If you don't do it just right,
people feel like you are simply pushing them around. Second, each person
manifests their movements in their own particular and unique manner.
Some people tend to move in various oval shapes, and others weave a
bit of a figure eight. Some people are very stiff in their neck but
move their trunk a good deal. Other people are fairly rigid in their
trunk and move their head and neck quite freely. Still others move in
a richly varied combination of ways that defy description. Third, changing
your posture and the way you move and breathe has a marked effect on
your emotional state, and your psyche, but just as importantly, all
of these changes will help to facilitate one's relationships with others,
and an overall sense of belonging in the world. The guiding principle
in this work is that we already possess or have access to all that we
need in order to live a "successful" heartfelt life. When we respectfully
approach our clients and experience their true magnificence we can enter
into a relational loop that will help the both of us to realize that
we have the potential to live life more fully than we usually realize.
~ End of the article
~
Part One Part
Two
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Perfection