Last Thursday, walking to my office to do online sessions with my clients, I was listening to a podcast on On Being with Krista Tippett. She was interviewing the clinical psychologist Resmaa Menakem, about rage and racism. He had what for me was a different emphasis on this question. In his mind change was not going to come about through psychological strategies and government policies until each individual, white or black, brown or any mixture of these, addressed the violence that was in their body. Interestingly he referred not only to the abuse and trauma that black and indigenous people have experienced and continue to experience across generations but also the violence, abuse and trauma that is embedded in ‘white’ bodies.
Having worked with clients from a somatic perspective many of whom have experienced different forms of trauma and abuse, I knew what he meant. Though in my racial ignorance I hadn’t quite put it together for the issue of race.
The main point he was making was if the violence is in the body then to achieve healing we must work with the body. The energetic body.
The energetic body is an interesting phrase. It implies more than body awareness. In this podcast Resmaa said that working with the energetic body makes it operational, an action rather than a cognitive idea. Again an interesting distinction.
What does it mean to work with the energetic body? I am not sure what Resmaa meant, he didn’t give many examples that made sense to me. However having been a Radix body centred psychotherapist for nearly forty years I have my own ideas.
With the development of the theory of neuroscience there has been a growing emphasis on the necessity of working with the body for effective therapeutic work. More practitioners are bringing work with the body into the therapy room. The most common method for doing this is to focus on the development of Insight. In this process, the therapist teases out themes, patterns and repetitions that are occurring at a conscious level of body awareness or mindfulness. Such an approach develops insight. However it is not working energetically with the body, not working with the energetic body. Working with the energetic body implies more than body awareness.
The Radix somatic therapist is trained to not only listen to the clients current experience of their body but to track where the ‘life force’ or energy of the body is being held or interrupted or absent. To bring the clients awareness to this and then to skilfully negotiate the provision of a corrective somatic experience that may address what is missing from this client’s life and body experience. What may in fact be quite unconscious. To discover and move the energy in the body that for protective reasons has been dissociated from, interrupted or blocked. This may involve working with sound, voluntary movement, touch, words and actions.
The purpose maybe to assist the client to slowly re-inhabit a very abused body, to develop a sense of their body being a container, to increase the client’s tolerance of energy in their body or assist them to discharge this energy in a productive and meaningful way. Sometimes the experience of this energy shift results in deeper connection with their emotions, sometimes more integrated thoughts and sometimes simply more embodied fluid actions. Someone who has had trouble inhabiting their body suddenly finds themselves feeling safer as they experience their body as a container. Or someone who cried all the time but only with tears in their eyes can connect to their deeper sobbing and despair. Another client may feel more committed to some goal but the energy had to be connected to and moved first.
As this process evolves the somatic relational dynamics usually come to the fore. As these energetic changes mentioned above emerge, the Radix therapist tunes into what is happening in their own somatic process as well as that of the client and the impact this resonance or dissonance is having on their work together. Their somatic or body relationship. This impact is then explored openly and directly in the here and now. A curiosity develops around the question “As I inhabit more of my body and connect with my energy more consciously and give expression to my thoughts and emotions what happens in the energetic body of the other”.
Exploring in relationship these unconscious ways we create and perpetuate subtle violence to our bodies and to bodies of others is uncovered and addressed. The full aliveness of both bodies moves towards restoration. I suspect that this somatic energetic relational work is what Resmaa was suggesting is at the core of working with the violence that is in our bodies. Our path to healing.
Author:
Narelle McKenzie (Director of Training)