Within the Body-Mind
“Watch the body
Always watch the body
Watch the body
Pay attention to the breath”
This made-up song (which has many more versus and choruses) was sung along by a room filled with fifty therapists. There was probably 1,500 years of clinical experience in that room since many of the therapists had been practicing for 20+ years. There was a tremendous sense of community, support and liveliness contained within that space. The reason for our gathering was a national Psychomotor Conference.
Many of the participants traveled from out of town to come to this event. I had randomly stumbled upon it a few weeks before by one of my therapist mentors. I had no idea what a beautiful experience I was walking into. Many of the attendees were involved in psychomotor work for years and even decades. Psychomotor therapy is a therapeutic style that often occurs in group settings, but can also be utilized with individuals. Psychomotor is about the mind/body connection. If you break the word down it is psycho-mind and motor-body.
The main objective of this therapy style is to address basic needs that were unmet in early life, either through parentification (the child has too much responsibility or awareness of adult issues at a young age), trauma or not getting other needs met adequately. Psychomotor therapy addresses these issues in a variety of ways, but the main intervention is what is called a structure. In a structure, a participant recalls a memory that has negative emotions attached and chooses members in a group to act as parental figures. There are figures for the actual parental roles and then there are group members that play the ideal parental figures. The idea is that by accessing the memory and recalling the emotions surrounding it, and then having the ideal support characters to enter into that memory with the participant, the participant can create a new memory of having their needs met to be coupled with the old memory. This provides an internal shift or change that is actually an embodied sensation of getting ones needs met, especially around painful issues that tend to create our deeply held beliefs about ourselves and the world.
During the conference, there was a demonstration performed with a conference attendee on a current issue she faced. The depth of her ability to process the emotions that arose with the memories associated with her current issue was very powerful, as well as the response she had to the ideal parents (played by others in the room). The role of the ideal parents is to be supportive in whatever way the participant desires them to be, which could be having an arm around them or holding a hand on their heart. The ideal parents also make statements about how they would have supported the participant if they had been in that memory with them. Ideal parents might say something like, “If we were your ideal parents, we would have stood up to that angry mother who was yelling at her child and protected you from harm.” Creating an experience of support in tandem with a memory actually alters the memory since every time we access a memory we change it. It is called memory reconsolidation and there is a neurological basis for how this process works. This experience really hit me in the gut. The depth of this therapists’ experience who acted as the participant in this exercise really stirred up a lot of questions I have always had about behavioral therapy.
I have often questioned the effectiveness of behavioral therapies, being that change on the cognitive level of awareness is simply that; one level of change. I believe that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is effective as it helps individuals to take charge of their self-talk and bring more awareness to distorted thinking. However, I feel that CBT without deeper levels of processing can often be one-dimensional. I have had many CBT clients complain that they are practicing modifying their thoughts and not experiencing any emotional change. Although CBT preaches that emotional change will follow changes in our thoughts (and sometimes that does work), there may be deeper patterns in our brains that simply thinking new thoughts over and over again does not address. This is why experiential therapies, especially those that are body-oriented are so powerful. Creating new embodied experiences of having our needs met and addressing these painful memories can actually shift those deeper patterns of neural networks on an emotional level. I do not want to put down CBT by any means. It is a very useful and effective therapeutic tool and I myself utilize it often. However, I do believe in order to fully heal trauma and other negative experiences from childhood, which are the causes for our negative belief systems that CBT addresses, we have to re-access that pain in a way that is helpful. Addressing the mind-body connection can be a huge part of creating this emotional shift.
The final point that I want to make is that group therapy is powerful shit. For the past 4 years I have been attending a conference called AAP (American Academy of Psychotherapists), which is a weekend of group therapy with therapists led by therapists. The level of personal change that I have experienced at these conferences doing process groups (a group that does not have an educational component but rather talking through emotions and getting feedback from group members) as well as experiential groups has been life-changing. Being able to process and have new experiences in group therapy allows us to heal our wounds around belonging and our place as part of a community. Many of our wounds happen in relationship and in relationship is the way to heal those wounds. Psychomotor takes advantage of the power of group therapy in order to create deep emotional change for individuals through community and belonging.
Healing on a psycho-motor level doesn’t only have to happen in a psycho-motor group. Try going to a yoga class or a free form dance class. Enjoyment through communal rhythm and movement is a way to attune ourselves to the sense of safety and peace that comes from being connected. If for some reason you have been to therapy and you are not getting results, don’t give up. Maybe you’ve tried talk-therapy and you did not find it helpful. Never to fear there are more options for you to get these deep needs met. If you have friends in your network who are therapists, reach out because they can be great resources for various therapeutic styles that may work for whatever you are struggling with. As one client stated in a Monday treatment group, “May the healing begin!”
