THE BODY KNOWS.

Lisa sat up on the table, beaming, and exclaimed, “I’m only human …and that’s enough!”

Six months before, Lisa who was in her mid twenties, had come to me unhappy with her life.  She was functioning well enough – living with a roommate, financially supported by her controlling father and passive, childlike mother and working to build a career as a graphic designer.  She complained of being averse to relationships with men and didn’t trust women. Talented, smart and attractive, Lisa felt inadequate, unlovable and ashamed.

I had been teaching Lisa to build and hold a charged state in her body using Reichian-like breathing.  The particular way of breathing builds energy throughout the body.  When the energy is contained instead of discharged it energizes the body, relaxes tension and creates a felt experience of total aliveness and presence.  The work, which is called the Sustaining Constancy Series, leads to a total experience of well-being, both physical and mental.  Lisa had come to that state when she expressed that she was only human and that that was indeed enough.  The Sustaining Constancy Series is one of the specific exercises that I teach my clients so that they can have mental health “tools” to take with them. 

This breath-work training and body awareness had been done slowly over a period of months in conjunction with object relations insight work and teaching her self-nurturing techniques.

I start by establishing a relationship with my client and assessing for appropriateness for the powerful breathing work.

Early on I ask my client to sit on the floor and draw a “boundary” for herself.  I then observe, usually aloud, whether she drew it clearly or vaguely, large or small.  I track her breathing, her energy and her body language and ask her to share her experience of having declared a boundary.  Lisa didn’t understand my request when I asked her to draw a boundary and when I showed her, she as very uncomfortable.  When I had her identify a pillow as her mother and say, “Mom, this is my boundary and you can only come in if I invite you,” she became agitated and said her mom would be very hurt if she said that. 

OBJECT RELATIONS.

The boundary exercise was Lisa’s introduction to Object Relations.  It allowed both of us to experience and witness her primal relationship with her mother, which, of course affects her current relationships.  Lisa couldn’t set limits so she stayed out of relationships because she invariably would lose her sense of her Self – her autonomy.

As a child Lisa had learned to abandon her own self-interest in order to soothe her mother.  In the process, she would also abandon herself energetically or physically in order to attend to her mother's emotional needs.  In IBP we call this situation Agency. 

The treatment goal was to lead her to a sense of aliveness and a consistent sense of herself, grounded and experienced in her body.  At the same time I helped her understand the origin of her childhood “survival strategy” and how that “survival strategy” was the foundation of her current dilemma about losing herself in relationships.  Understanding was coupled with self- nurturing and reframing in concert with breath work to provide a somatic component to the “mind-work.”

SELF NURTURING AND REFRAMING.

There are several techniques for self-nurturing and reframing in IBP work.  Because Lisa’s primary need was to identify and retain a sense of her Self and set boundaries in relationships, the self-nurturing and reframing that I focused on in this particular part of the work used what we call Agency Mantras. 

AGENCY MANTRAS.  Although there are twelve Agency Mantras, the ones that were most applicable to Lisa’s work were:

I am not bad. I haven’t done anything wrong.  I am worthy of love.

I am not selfish when I think of myself or act on my own behalf.  I am entitled to my own body-voice, my own body, my own toothbrush.  I am entitled to know what I think and want and to speak up and ask for it.

When I make the well being of others my responsibility, when I try to change how they feel, no matter how positive my intention, it is invasive and cripples them.  With Agency, I undermine those I try to fix as well as myself.

Only in my body can I know the difference between an act of caring and an act of Agency.  The end of agency is not the end of love. It is the beginning.

USING THE AGENCY MANTRAS.  One session early on in treatment, Lisa brought up a problem with her roommate.  Her roommate was 3 weeks late with her share of the rent.  Lisa had paid the rent for both of them and was alternately anxious about getting her money, guilty because her roommate wasn’t working lately and “needed support” and angry at being taken advantage of.  I asked her to be aware of the feelings in her body when she thought about the problem.  She reported feeling tight in her chest and stomach and a sense of helplessness.  She also noted that her breath was shallow. 

I asked her to remember a time when she was young when she felt the same or similarly.  She related an incident when she was five years old when her mother made her give her toy to a neighbor child.  Her mother said the child was “underprivileged” and needed the toy more than Lisa did. 

I asked Lisa to take three sets of ten charging breaths and read the appropriate Agency mantras.  Then I asked her to report her sensations with each one.  She reported feeling relaxed in her chest and stomach.  She also realized that her breathing had deepened.  Lisa then began to talk about having a discussion with her roommate and developing an agreement about how she would be paid this time and in the future.

Over several months, variations of this process were repeated as Lisa brought up current event issues relating to her “Agency.”  Soon she began to do the process for herself using the breathing and her journal.  She was definitely embodying the work and was making good use of her new “mental health tool.”

THE SUSTAINING CONSTANCY SERIES

During the time that I was working with Lisa on these Agency issues, I was continuing to help her develop her tolerance for building and holding a charge with the breath work. When she was able to be present and charged after about thirty breaths I began to teach her the Sustaining Constancy Series, a series of stressing positions lying down while doing the charge breathing.  The goal is, ultimately, to release all muscle tension which limits the energy flow throughout the body.  The energy flow that develops is accompanied by a profound experience of well-being.  Getting there, however, often requires working with blocks and “speed limits” at the psychological level as well specialized release techniques that go with the breath work.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORK ON THE TABLE

Part of her complex family-of-origin dynamic was that Lisa’s role was that of a little girl.  As a result, it is against her family’s rules for her to feel or experience herself as the grown woman that she is.  This became apparent when breathing while lying on the table.  When she began to feel alive in her body, she could feel her breasts and genitals.  Her first few experiences of this led her to “split off.”  She got dizzy and spacey and couldn’t continue the charging breath. 

I was able to guide her through this “block” by asking her to make the connection to her family of origin.  Once she was aware that being a child was part of her “survival strategy,” Lisa was able to discover the parental messages that were missing in order for her to grow up.  The next step was to coach her in self-nurturing using what we call Good Parent Messages – the basic nurturing that all children need to thrive.

Although there are twenty two Good Parent Messages that we use in IBP, the ones most useful to Lisa in this case were:

The Mother (early childhood) Messages:

I see you and I hear you.

It is not what you do but who you are that I love.

I love you and I give you permission to be different from me.

I’ll take care of you.

You can trust your inner voice.

The Father (later childhood) Messages:

I am proud of you.

I have confidence in you and I know you will succeed.

I give you permission to love and enjoy your erotic sexuality with a partner of your choice and not lose me.

Lisa learned to build a charge in her body with the breathing and then say and write the Good Parent Messages to herself while tracking the sensations in her body.  She could now complete the Sustaining Constancy Series without splitting off.

Now she could experience her Self - the Self that is each person’s core of consciousness that is always there and seldom experienced.   That was the point where Lisa sat up on table and, with great joy, said, “I’m only human!”

There are many different processes and applications in Integrative Body Psychotherapy.  This narrative describes some of the most used.

INTEGRATIVE BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY. 

Integrative Body Psychotherapy (IBP) is a synthesis and implementation of psychotherapies – Object Relations, Cognitive Behavioral, Gestalt, Transpersonal and others.  The somatic components are partly derived from Reichian and yogic breath and body work.   IBP addresses the mental, physical and spiritual aspects of being human.

Upset about a current event will have roots in our early history and IBP treatment addresses both – current event and early history.

Every cognitive insight in treatment is linked to physical/sensate response.

Clients are offered specific mental health tools that empower them to handle their own problems.  Many clients get what they need in as few as 10 to 20 sessions.

IBP was developed by Jack Lee Rosenberg, Ph.D,. Beverly Kitaen-Morse, PhD. and others over the past 30 years.  Drs. Rosenberg and Kitaen-Morse direct the Integrative Body Psychotherapy Central Instiute in Venice, California. There are also IBP training institutes in Zurich, Munich, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver

For more information on IBP, go to