Without awareness of bodily feeling and attitude, a person becomes split into a disembodied spirit and a disenchanted body. ― Alexander Lowen

Why So Much Emphasis on The Body?

Most of us are seeking something with some desperation or obsessiveness - The right relationship, recognition, peace. the perfect job, more money, etc.

We try so hard to figure it out, change our patterns, and think our way to success.

The problem is this: We constantly try to "think our way out of a problem" with the same brain that got us stuck.

Our brains are obscured by useless information collected through our adverse experiences, better known as trauma. Trauma creates shame and fear. We all have trauma in some measure.

The messages live in our head, but trauma lives in the body and is packed with powerful emotion. These impacted emotions run our thinking. If we want sustainable change, we have to loosen the hardened soil of our emotions.

The work is in the body. Not the head.

Consider

Most explorations of our psychological well-being start and end with the mind. But the mind extends to our body, and so much of our healing work must focus there.

We want to access our full energy and capacities, right? If we were taught to be excessively tough, smart, or nice, we learned how to hide certain expressions. Most of us were told, in one way or another, that our emotions needed to be curtailed.

Crying, yelling, dancing, singing, shaking, laughing, and other physical releases are not normally encouraged in our culture. Our society tells us, “Keep it Together. Don’t act crazy!” or the diagnosis police may try to capture and medicate you.

I thought all this was absolutely nuts when I first joined a men’s healing group. I had never seen a man grieve deeply or express other feelings openly. Over time, and after much resistance, I began to open up and release a lifetime of suppressed emotion.

It became clear that all of my problems with relationships, jobs, and dependency issues were due to unresolved trauma in my body.

These emotional expressions are not crazy, they are required in order to avoid the development of psychopathology. They are required for stress and pain release.

Traditional cultures have always known this.

We are all people of Earth who, at one time, danced and howled at the moon. We expressed ourselves boldly and regularly.

We had rituals, sometimes in rhythm with the cycles of nature, to let it out and let it go. Now we’re “civilized” and may occasionally go to a theatre to see others portray these expressions, as long as we are sufficiently distanced. Ugh.

When the distress is trapped in the body, a wide variety of physical and mental ailments can emerge. Most of us see physical ailments as something to be surgically or pharmaceutically addressed.

We see worry and sadness as a thinking problem. We say “cheer up” and “get over it” and “think positively.” It’s a relentless pursuit, to the exclusion of all other emotion, toward “happiness.”

But we are seeing through clouded lenses because our vessel is obscured with lodged pain. Then we blame our problems on the world.

Trauma is stored in the body and we must allow it to release. We can return to some of the ancient ways of healing to access our true selves.

Solutions

The most effective therapies use a variety of processes that are contemporary adaptations of traditional healing.

Somatic, psychodynamic, and expressive therapies are best for this. There is a shamanic aspect to the work. Not magic in the superficial sense, but in the sense that the trained facilitator has already done a lot of personal healing and can help others transmute their pain.

These techniques access the wisdom of the body, long neglected. Then our thinking becomes clearer and more congruent with who we are.

Most other therapies are cognitive and behavioral. They can force a change of thinking and behavior but ignore the roots. So, it is usually a temporary bandaid.

Workshops that use a combination of psychodrama and bioenergetics are the very best for transcending trauma and finding authenticity. The Deep Waters Experience and The Bridge to Recovery are great examples. The community aspect is powerful. For more, see the resources below.

Questions For You

• What feelings are hardest for you to access in your body? Mad, Sad, Glad, Scared?

• Are you able to identify any feelings in your body right now? Like “anger in my chest” or “sadness behind my eyes” or “fear in my gut.”

• What messages were you given about being angry? Sad? Scared?

• What comes up for you when you think of being extremely joyful - dancing in the streets joyful?

Contrary to some popular memes, our feelings ARE to be trusted. Especially if we start to get the pressure off from years of repression.

We have a mountain of anger and an ocean of tears. As we begin to thaw out and remove the blockage, our true path emerges. The deep joy we’ve longed for increasingly becomes a reality,

Glad to be on the path with you,

Take care,

Bob

P.S. Please, let’s have a dialogue. Reply and comment on your experience, strength, and hope related to this topic. Let me know if you don’t want it published.

P.P.S. The new book is coming out in August. Please reply to this if you don’t yet have your free pre-launch copy and/or if you would like to join the Stop Doing Sh*t You Don’t Want to Do Book Launch Team (get the promo launch copy and write an amazing review).

Go to this link for a connection to recovery resources.

Go to this link for a connection to community trauma-healing programs.

Here are some of your comments on the last Newsletter Damn Them, Damn Me.

Julia T. My whole life, there have been people I’ve looked up to and admired. I’ve always thought to myself, “wow, I could never do what they’re doing” or “I wish I could do something like that.” While I can’t be exactly like someone else, I CAN claim and own the parts of myself that I’ve been afraid to show. Doing this work has allowed me to start stepping out of my fear, to take chances, and to honor the parts of myself that I thought I was never allowed to honor or exhibit.

Ian F. I have a few family members who definitely trigger my shadow. This occurs when they are selfish to the point where it is as though the rest of the world may as well just be there. This is the part of me that was killed off young, the part of me that I wasn't allowed to express because being selfish was "bad." Recently I am giving myself more and more permission to be selfish, and once I get over the shame of being so, it is actually quite refreshing to let that shade out into the light. Conversely, I have family members who I have really respected for being nearly selfless much of the time. But... it turns out that this is just as broken, they are effectively letting people walk all over them and haven't the freedom to take care of themselves first. When I see them just starting to make the decision to put themselves ahead on occasion, that is quite refreshing, just as it is when I do the same. Turns out, life is about balance and sometimes that means relishing the shadow.