From the images
If a jealous woman is driven crazy by imaginary scenes of her husbands cheating (I go crazy when I imagine her hands on his neck") one can ask what she feels when she sees these scenes. Where is the charge associated with her emotion: in the head, in the chest, in the stomach? Is it big or small? etc. There appear a black funnel in the abdomen. The direct correlation between the brightness, proximity of images of significant persons and the size of internal formations existing in relation to them is obvious.
From complaining about other people
My mother-in-law bothers me, a young woman complains with tears in her eyes. What do you feel? This question immediately turns the conversation from a useless discussion about the nature of the mother-in-law to a discussion of her state that arises as a result. The poor daughter-in-law finds iron weight in her chest (her resentment). Somatopsychotherapy is the option of working with the results of the experiences.
On orders from the outside
An irritable person says: I have a feeling that the energies of some people, like tentacles, reach for me, and I feel bad. At the same time, he jokes at himself: A false psychic! What do these tentacles indicate in you? How are they related to you? Why are you visible to them? It turns out that these tentacles are the assistants in tracking his own charges.
You can worry less
Wives of alcoholics often have an upset contour of their own feelings. They persistently take care about their husbands, but not themselves. The moment when a poor woman is asked: In what state do you solve your problems? becomes a true revolution in the life of their families.
Such women should be suggested to check the state in which they try to solve their husbands problems considering them to be their own. It helps to switch to the discussion about themselves. For example, a woman is trying to help her husband to stop drinking alcohol and at the same time is experiencing anxiety. She can feel that her anxiety takes away 90% of her forces and makes her almost unviable.
«Should you be so much stressed to solve your husbands problems, or can it be less?»
«Maybe less.»
«How many percent less?»
«I guess it can be a hundred percent less. Whether Im worried or not doesnt change anything.»
«Maybe you shouldnt calm down because in that case you will do nothing and let events take their course. Should you?»
«I think, on the contrary, I will be able to do something worthwhile, only when I am calm.»
«Well, will you calm down right now?»
«Yes.»
«Calm down and watch how your sensations are distributed. We always talk about the reconciliation of proportions of what we spend our energy on.
The method to add volume to the therapy process
Primary care for a patient depends on what they attention are initially focused on. The work on the bodily level usually finds a greater response in those people who have got naturally good feeling of their body, the body of their consciousness. They describe their sensations as an important part of their experience without any stimulation from a psychotherapist.
The ability for such awareness of the problems is an indication for the bodily psychotherapy. However, somatopsychotherapy can be also highly effective with other forms of self-consciousness and, in any case, is recommended as an additional means of «giving volume to a therapeutic process. Somatopsychotherapy is a good way of activating self- awareness and working out the physical aspect of the problematic experience, regardless of whether it is the main approach to change the state of a person or an ancillary one.
No matterwhere to start
There are an unlimited number of ways to start the recovery process: from a posture, from intonation, from facial expressions etc. It always turns out, that such manifestations are found in the body structure.
Fine examples of the beginning from gait features and gestures of a person are given by Arnold Mindell (USA)16. He organizes the process of «amplification of the movement, which tends to manifest, but is hidden. It is on the «lunar but not on the «solar side of consciousness. The question of the process-oriented psychotherapy is: what are you doing when you are holding your leg in such a way? The answer is: I am preparing it for a fight! The SPT question is different: where is what makes you so tense to keep your right leg like that? The answer is: there is anger in the chest. Thus, the continuation of the work is different.
N. R. Cape (Brazil)17 offers to pay attention to the characteristics which a person uses to describe the others. His integral psychoanalysis is based on returning to a patient their statements-projections. The SPT interiorization is achieved in a different way. «Is there something that makes you choose such words? Is it at the level of your head, chest, abdomen? What do you feel when you say that?» We move from the projection to the state which is holding it. We talk in a «topographic manner, using the question «where?». From nouns and adjectives that are used by a person to define the others, we move to the essence of the «speaker, to that part of their consciousness, which «invests such speech behavior.
Now we will not go into details of somatopsychotherapy «debuts. Let us agree with Jung, who noted that " in case you want to determine the patients complexes, you can reach the center directly from any point of the circle you can start with the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, with meditation in front of a crystal ball, with a prayer wheel or a modern painting, or even with a casual conversation about a trifling event. In this sense, a dream is as effective as any other starting event.18»
It does not matter which of the rivers will bring us to the lake, and, in a sense, it does not matter what to start the recovering process with. What is important, is how to end it. According to V. N. Tsapkin, we are looking for the «invariant of options.» He noticed that the same mental content expresses itself through the absence of legs in the drawing of a person, made by the patients with clinical symptoms of astasia-abasia, as well as through their dreams, or their behaviors in a group.
In somatopsychotherapy this kind of invariant is thebodily-oriented structure of consciousness. Under other circumstances, a person expresses it in words in free associations (in the psychoanalytic model); projects on the inner screen in the form of «movie, accompanied by sounds, smells, bodily sensations (in the NLP model); expresses behaviorally (in the procedural model). In a «somatopsychotherapeutic situation it appears as an object in the body of consciousness. It is like a book on the bookshelf that can be read, filmed, or performed dramatically (as in the above-mentioned models), but which is now stored in a potential state within its covers.
The direction of asking questions
Two spaces
The somatopsychotherapy questions are topographically structural: where and what? at the first stage, and where to and what? at the second one. The psychotherapist aims to help the patients find their sensation, associated with the certain experience, in their special internal space the space of sensations. It is different from the one with the realities of the objective external world. The table which I am sitting at, the tree which I can see in front of me, the sky above me are outside my space of sensations. The space of things and the space of sensations complement each other. Both are parts of the reality of our consciousnesses. The reality associated with the external space can be called the reality of open eyes, whereas the internal one is the reality of closed eyes.
Psychocatalysis of awareness of the space of sensations reveals three areas of this «psychogenetic world which is parallel to the material world.
Three areas of self-awareness
The world of phenomena that opens up when referring to the reality of sensations is rather rich. It consists of in-body sensations, sensations of an integral body, the landscape sensations.
We will mainly be talking about in-body sensations. To begin with, we will mention the «boundary and «over boundary sensations, for example:
Someone is holding his shoulders up.
«What do you have on your shoulders?»
«A stone.» (or «a bag, or «a log, or «a pole with two buckets, or
«my mother, etc.)
(This is a state of neurotic, psychopathic responsibility, or concern.)
One more dialogue with another patient a young woman.
«Who are you?»
«A pineapple.»
«Where are you?»
«On a plantation.»
«Is everything all right?»
«The peels damaged».
These are some more examples:
A man stretches his arm along the sofa, which he is sitting on, as if embracing someone invisible. You should ask him:
«Who is there?»
His answer can be:
«A cat. (or «my friend)
«What for?»
«For calmness.» (or: «to reinforce my position.»)
A man is walking late at night. His right hand is clasped.
«Is there anything in your hand?»
«A gun.»
«Will you shoot it?»
«No.»
«What will you do with it?»
«Throw it away.»
He throws it away and starts to observe an arsenal of weapons, both modern and ancient, including axes, etc., falling out of it. How about his left hand? Quite primitive tools like cudgels and stones are falling out of there. Disarmed, he continues his way under the highest protection with his hands lightweight and free.
The subjective space of each person, as it is described in this book, is saturated with different things and essences. Each of the elements of this internal world is «alive only because of a certain energy current, formed and fed by its carrier.
Perhaps, that is what Jung called «the semantic field19», Menegetti the psychosemantic field, Arnold Mindell «the field, the area in space, within which the force lines operate20», Vasily Nalimov «the Semantic Universe21.»
This work is focused on the phenomena of a persons self-consciousness of their own mental space, namely, their in-body space. Knowing about the possibility of talking about «hallucinations, somatopsychotherapy prefers to be interested in what «subsidizes their being, whatcharge is in the body consciousness. «Where is the feeling that makes you get armed?» (The feeling of fear in the stomach). «Where is the feeling that makes you shoulder the burden?»(The feeling of guilt in the chest).
Correlations
Here are some examples of correlation between a persons awareness of the body composition, their own holistic image and landscape.
A woman feels that the cause of her deathly fatigue, which she complained of initially, is her greed. It comes out in the image of her gnarled hands with claws running into a bag, tied on her wrists, which turns out to be empty. She realizes herself as a rat, carrying everything into her hole.
Another woman has not left her house for fear of peeing in public for about eight years. In her stomach there is the sensation of a hot heavy lump, pulling together all her forces. The rest of her body is completely devastated, cold, and trembling. She feels like a fluffy animal-marten, locked in a cage.
A young man of twenty years old, suffering from inability to satisfy his sexual needs and experiencing failure in dating girls, feels on the hand a bracelet with spikes inside it which hurt him. It is the image of the painful circumstances that do not allow him to obtain the necessary warmth. He says, «Im freezing, Im cold!» In his chest there a is a black cloud with the solid black ice in it.
There are also natural correlates of good states that occur at the end of the work. They are usually characterized by a feeling of lightness, loss of body boundaries, merging with space: water, air, etc. BEST, which we have already mentioned, also encourages the identification of these «missing links in imaginative perception, both internal and external {«boundary). («What are you lying on?» «On the sand.»).
«Who are you?» and «Where are you?» are proven work approaches. But they are not presented in this book. They are additional to the question" What do you feel?». Further we will discuss the approach which I consider to be more effective and shorter. As I will not have the opportunity to illustrate the" Who are you?» and «Where are you?» approaches, I will give one of the examples of this kind of work, not only with diagnostic, but also therapeutic parts.
Escaped from captivity
Patient L. M., born in 1953, hesitates for a long time before starting to tell. You do not understand people have this kind of attitude! I fall asleep every time with one wish not to wake up again.
She feels as if lying on her stomach with a granite seven-story building crushing her. Her body is flattened, arms and legs do not even move, but her head is able to rotate. What is underneath her? Also, the stone. Her head is in abyss and at the bottom there is a river. The cliff is 30 meters deep. She is in constant stiffness. No medicine can help her.
«When you are clamped down, what do you feel?»
«Complete despair. I have been in this state for several years.»
She recalls the circumstances when she was «crushed by a granite rock: «I worked at school and always wanted to do my best. (I had studied in a boarding school, and our director who loved and respected very much, used to say: whoever you are a cleaner, or a minister you must do your best. I forgot many of her words, but I remember those ones.) With no experience I had to be a class teacher. The result was good. A lot of responsibility. At the same time, I was studying in the university, my daughters were small and suddenly a conflict situation. The school has been allocated one place at a seaside resort. My daughter was in the school council. I knew how much she was doing there Then the question arose, who would go there. They chose the directors daughter. I started to argue. But the director said to me, «Resign, or we will crush you.» I started to work in a college. I thought it was a promotion. New environment, new job. I was always self-confident. But after some time, I faced the fact that I must go to a lecture, but I do not remember anything. I was stressed.