I hope you are continuing to get the most out of summer. I wanted to share with you a wonderful experience I had at the Cape Cod Institute, training with Pat Ogden, the brilliant creator of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. The power of this work cannot be under-estimated and I think it is an absolute necessity to incorporate “the body” in our understanding of how trauma is stored, and subsequently retrieved, de-coded, and processed in therapy.
Pat shared many fascinating videos with us illustrating, first-hand, how quickly clients can re-connect with thoughts, feelings, and memories through an awareness of body movement and sensation. Inviting clients to “go to” body sensation by asking, “what’s happening right now on your body?” not only yields meaningful information, it enhances a state of mindful awareness, which can help clients return to the “present moment” and reduces dissociation.
Tracking, labeling, and articulating sensations of tightness, constriction, collapse, tingling, etc. also helps our clients to stay in their pre-frontal cortex, rather than their limbic system- where flight/fight and freeze responses get activated. Helping our clients heighten their awareness of body posture, movements, and sensations, can be used for centering, re-grounding, containment, and the delineation of healthier boundaries. In turn, these interventions reduce feelings of victimization and strengthen a sense of empowerment.
I was further inspired by Pat’s discussion of how attachment dynamics (secure, insecure, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized) all yield messages and affective responses that get imprinted on our bodies and profoundly affect our posture and body movements. We adopt body patterns that keep us safe in the world. Children who feel loved, secure, and accepted have body language and posture that exudes confidence, openness, connectedness, etc. Traumatized, abused, and neglected children have posture that is closed, defeated, collapsed, defensive, protective, etc. In Pat’s words, “the body tells the story of our history.” Exploring body postures and gestures can re-connect clients to long forgotten pain narratives. And when we help clients re-align their bodies, we create the opportunity for new experiences and a letting go of well-entrenched symptoms that often sustain feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, repeated victimization, dissociation, and a sense of being disconnected from others and self. Simple interventions including: elongating the spine, bringing weight onto the balls of the feet, taking a deep breath, expanding the chest, standing up, pushing away with the arms, or putting both feet on the floor, can create profound cognitive and emotional shifts for our clients.
Having a simultaneous awareness of our own body movements, postures, gestures, and sensations can help us remain grounded and present during challenging sessions, and reduce counter-transferential responses that communicate confusing messages to our clients or inadvertently undermine our efficacy. To learn more, I highly recommend Pat’s book, Trauma and the Body. I also encourage you to take some of our wonderful trainings at The Institute that focus on working creatively with the body. It will profoundly enhance the quality of your work! And if you already incorporate Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and other Body Therapies in your work, we welcome your feedback!