2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Stress, negative feelings, situations of inhibition of the expression of emotions create psychological discomfort and destroy the personality. Body-oriented psychotherapy based on the interaction of the psyche and the body is used to relieve internal tension, correct negative states. Body-oriented practices are aimed at identifying the provoking reasons for dissatisfaction with the life situation, releasing closed emotions and liberating a person.
First of all, it is worth telling a little what the direction that Wilhelm Reich discovered is. In his approach, Reich proceeded from the theory of psychophysical identity, believing that the psychological characteristics of a person are associated with his bodily traits, respectively, psychological problems are reflected at the bodily level. Reich described the phenomenon of “encapsulation of character in a shell,” or the mechanization of mental life, which arises as a means of suppressing and restraining emotions under the influence of social stereotypes and harsh family upbringing. As an illustrative example of such mental ossification, expressed in an extreme measure, one can recall the character of A. P. Chekhov's "Man in a Case". Alexander Lowen, who first underwent therapy with Reich and then became his student, later became the most famous popularizer of Reich's theory, making a number of improvements to it. Lowen's merits, in particular, include his description of the mental norm - a natural, harmonious psychophysical state inherent in a comprehensively healthy person.
According to these ideas, psychological changes can be achieved by acting on the body, which then entails a change in the psychological state.
Body-oriented practices are effective in dealing with the problems of excess weight, loss of sensitivity and chronic tension of certain parts of the body, retardation of body-mental development, when the body is stuck at a certain age. If a person rejects himself, his appearance, cannot get pleasure from sexual relations, then body-oriented practices can be very appropriate in such a circumstance of affairs.
Of course, in difficult situations, with serious psychological problems, only a psychotherapist should prescribe a course of body-oriented therapy, stress relief exercises or manual techniques. However, you can learn a simple neuromuscular relaxation routine and practice it at home to deal with stress, stress, and negative emotions. You can do it daily, and when you reach a good level of skill, it is enough to do the exercises 2 times a week or as needed. Choose a comfortable time of day when no one will bother you to relax. Try to eliminate extraneous noise, wear comfortable clothes.
Having mastered the techniques of muscle relaxation, a person can, in a short time, bring his body to a state of rest and relaxation in order to restore psychological and physical strength.
Exercise "Breathing belly" intended for training abdominal breathing - an important physiological relaxation tool.
Lie on your back and relax. Start breathing in your belly. Make sure that the chest practically does not take part in breathing. For control, place the palm of your left hand on your chest, and with your right hand on your stomach. Breathe only with your stomach so that the right palm rises and falls during inhalation / exhalation, while the left one is motionless. Note that deep abdominal breathing also includes pelvic movement (pulling back on inhalation and moving forward on exhalation).
The purpose of the exercise "Spontaneous breathing" is the sensation of breathing as a fully automatic physiological process. This process should be allowed to proceed by itself, without interfering and observing from the outside. Pay attention to those sensations that arise, as it were, along the way.
Take a slow breath. Observe the sensations without thinking about exhalation, stretching the breathing pause. Wait for your body to tell you when to exhale. The exhalation will begin by itself, automatically. Wait for the exhalation to automatically turn into inhalation. Continue to breathe, observing the prompts from the body, and soon establish a constant breathing rhythm. While keeping it, listen to other sensations. As you inhale, observe the feeling of lifting the chest, accompanied by a more diffuse sensation. Analyze only those sensations that arise on inhalation. It can be sensations of body expansion, going beyond the usual boundaries, you can feel the body spherical or with altered proportions. Further, there may be a feeling of lightness, lifting the whole body. Get to know these sensations and remember them. Next, start analyzing only those sensations that arise on exhalation. Strive for the appearance of sensations opposite to those that have already arisen. Remember these feelings. You need to complete the exercise with an energizing exhalation, returning to the usual sensations of the body, while feeling additional feelings of lightness and relaxation.
Exercise "Healing Breath" helps to eliminate the uncomfortable bodily sensation located in the projection of a certain internal organ, which contributes to the normalization of its functional state. This is due to "adjusting the relationship" of various areas of the cerebral cortex. From a psychological point of view, eliminating discomfort, thereby normalizing the state that creates it by the "disturbed" part of the unconscious. Repetition of this procedure helps to resolve the internal conflict.
Get into a comfortable position and relax. Take your time, carefully observe the inner sensations, with your inner gaze walking through the entire body, examining it completely, right down to the forgotten corners. Look for places where discomfort, stiffness, tightness has settled, note any suspicious sensations. First, select the most abnormal zone (the one that is in sharp contrast to the rest of the zones and the sensations associated with them). Direct your breath there in your mind. You will most likely find that, unlike the “healthy” areas, where you can easily direct your breath, there is some resistance in the “unhealthy” area, as if something is preventing the breath from passing there. Try to breathe through these places, "breathe" them. Imagine how the exhalation clears these plugs and congestion in the path of breathing. Imagine how the heat, which is carried away with the exhaled air, you send to the unhealthy zone during exhalation. You can imagine how the "cork" moves to another area of the body, using the breath as a driving force that moves the cork further and further along with the exhalation … until the sensation disappears, as if dissolving in a new place.
Exercise "Awareness of Boundaries" demonstrates the effect of focusing attention and awareness of certain areas - the physical boundaries of the body, which occupy an important place in the internal psychological map of a person and are associated with a stable self-image that affects self-esteem and relationships with other people.
Awareness of boundaries contributes to the ability of a person to be aware of and protect their boundaries, as well as to form greater responsibility - due to their responsibility for what happens within these boundaries.
This exercise, in addition to health goals, helps a person quickly regain composure in a situation of sudden stress (when the ground leaves under his feet), causeless fear.
Attention and with it breathing are directed to the area of the body, which corresponds to the border (crown - the border "man-sky"; palms - border "man-man"; feet - border "man-earth"). Hold your attention in a given area for several minutes, watch how with each exhalation the breath is “transferred” to the selected area of the body, creating a feeling of warmth. After three minutes, switch your attention and breathing to the next boundary. After passing all three boundaries separately, combine them, distributing attention simultaneously to five points (2 hands, 2 feet, the crown of the head). Imagine that the body is stretching, you are growing, you are getting taller. At the same time along the spine there is a feeling of a "stretched string". Imagine that your body is enclosed in an impenetrable spherical shell. Try mentally to push this cocoon apart, resting against it at five boundary points. Memorize the sensations so that you can reproduce them in everyday life.
Exercise "Grounding" (grounding is a metaphor for the person's connection with the soil and reality) is intended to develop a sense of support, psychological stability.
In a standing position, you need to shift the center of gravity of the body forward, transfer its projection to the socks, which is accompanied by the simultaneous advancement of the pelvis forward. Then the center of gravity of the body should be shifted back, shifting the projection to the heels, while the pelvis is pushed back. The task is to move alternately from one position to another, "catch" the middle position of the pelvis and remember it. In this case, usually the projection of the center of gravity of the body falls on the border of the front and middle third of the foot. It is necessary to analyze all the sensations that are associated with the support - in the area of the feet, as if growing into the ground, as well as the knee joints, which flexibly spring and dampen the uneven load and pelvis - and feel how controlling body posture and observing sensations gives physical and psychological stability.
Exercise "Piano" is designed to combat the inability of a person to feel himself (to feel himself through feeling his body), contributes to the return of the ability to feel himself. To restore the ability to feel oneself, both relaxing (relaxing) techniques are used, as well as techniques opposite to relaxation, increasing attention to different zones of your own body and their tension. You will need a partner to complete the exercise.
One person in a pair should lie down in any position that is comfortable for him. The second partner begins to touch various points on the body of the recumbent with his finger. The task of the lying person is to "wiggle" the very place that the partner has just touched with his finger. What is the difficulty of this exercise? Most parts of our body are completely impossible to "move" somehow in isolation. However, one must try. Try to keep the "wiggle" movement on the smallest possible surface. The partner will “play the piano”, touching the points that he pleases … Body-oriented therapy works not only with the body, but also (for the most part) with the sensations in the body. And we can feel anything. If … if we learn to feel our body, we will restore the lost ability to feel ourselves. The partner who “plays the piano” should complicate the task of the lying “instrument” as much as possible.
Throat Singing Exercise designed to release negative emotions, gain relaxedness. This body-oriented psychotherapy exercise is comparable to the famous Tuvan throat singing.
Lie on the floor, on your back. Bend your legs at the knees and rest your feet firmly on the surface of the floor. Relax your lower jaw. Breathe evenly and calmly for a while, trying to listen to your even and quiet breathing. Then begin to exhale noisily. Let every exhalation be filled with noise. Once you get used to it, replace the noise with any sound. Any sound that will be relevant at this moment for you. Now your every exhalation should "sound". Pay attention to your bodily sensations throughout the exercise. Begin to "exhale" all the vowels you know: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, AAAAAAAAAAAA, Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, UUUUUUUUUUUUUUU, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, YYYYYYYYYYYY. Set aside a chant for each vowel for 2 minutes. Vary them in any order. Relax on good-natured hums or those "unclean" sounds that you enjoy breathing out for relaxation. Start experimenting with the volume of the chanted sounds: from subtle to as loud as you can. Experiment with the pitch of the sound you portray - from mezzo soprano to bass. Play this "opera" by imaging any sounds you have mastered. What are the most unpleasant sounds you can now depict. Then try to "sing" the sounds that, on the contrary, will sound the most pleasant to you. These should be "psychological" sounds, sounds that for some reason just now soothe and delight. It is important that your body itself takes pleasure and pleasure from the sounds you sing.
All the time, while you are doing the exercise, your eyes should be open, try to stay “in the surrounding reality”, here-and-now, in full consciousness and awareness of what you are doing. It is important to maintain control over the situation, and no one better than yourself will bring you back to earth from your deepest experiences. Do not lose the firm contact of your feet with the flat surface of the floor.
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