Michael Rupp, Bodynamic trainer

Published in JHH 19.2- Embodiment and bodywork

Introduction

Bodynamic or bodynamic analysis is generically a somatic, developmental psychology; the Bodynamic Institute was founded in the early 1980s under the leadership of Lisbeth Marcher and has been active in such diverse countries as Scandinavia, central, eastern and southern Europe, the Americas, Japan and recently India (www.bodynamic.com). In her ground-breaking research of over 10 years Lisbeth, has looked deeply into the psychomotoric development of children, ending with the age of puberty. Every developmental age is closely linked to a central psychological theme, eg existence, need, autonomy, will, love and sexuality, opinion and solidarity/performance. In every phase the growing child’s interactions with its caretakers and the world are mediated by specific movements and muscles. At the end of her research, Lisbeth was able to precisely link more than 120 muscles with their corresponding psychological theme (Marcher & Fitch, 2010). Modern brain research was additionally used to help confirm the functional unity of the body/mind. From this understanding bodynamic has developed a unique approach to working with developmental and shock trauma putting great emphasis on the healing potential of an embodied, resonant therapist/client relationship).

Developing in relationship

Relationship of any kind – including the relationship each of us has to a sense of ‘self ’, to an ‘I’ – can only be fully understood if we include the relationship (or lack of it) to the body and our capacity for body awareness. Whether we are aware of this or not, from the most casual to the most intimate, it is through the body that we sense and consequently feel ourselves (or not) in relation to others. All our social skills, how we communicate with people, the way we come into contact through the body with others, is predicated on the psychomotor development in our childhood.

To begin with, a child’s experience as she interacts with her parents, others and the physical world is primarily one of sensations, emotions (‘setting into motion’) and movements. The dawning of embodiment, of the emerging physicality of one’s lived experience, is an intricate process spanning the early and most formative years as mind and movement evolve together, as in phase after phase the maturing nervous system allows new muscles to ‘switch on’.

Though this natural psychomotoric process is innate, it still entails a giant develop mental effort, which may be joyful, but sometimes will be difficult or even painful. By the age of four, the age of will (the fourth of seven bodynamic developmental phases) the primary embodiment process is complete. With the foundation of what bodynamic analysis calls the body ego most children will have landed fully in the material/physical world.

Meeting the world

This opens up a whole range of new modalities for meeting the world and engaging with people. As the body lengthens and we more fully employ our diaphragm, greater emotional expression is possible: we can ‘put our foot down’, claim ownership, choose to walk in a certain direction and make a decision. We can maintain a better balance with our body, and also socially as we begin to experiment with roles and ‘shoulder’ responsibilities in our family system.

In bodynamic analysis we refer to the core sense of self as the body ego. Around it successive levels of self-awareness (higher ego-organisations) can build up: the individual ego, then the role ego, the observing ego and finally the integrating ego. Although not all psychotherapy schools of thought pay enough attention to the body, most would agree it’s through the body that we learn (for good or ill) how to be in the world and navigate it; equally that our sense of self – of ‘ego’ or being an ‘I’ – takes shape in response to our manifold interactions with our early caregivers and the world.

Bodynamics views this developmental drive as fundamental. When it thrives, it serves the need for mutual connectedness on the one hand and individuation on the other. If the drive is thwarted we struggle to be in relationship with the world and people, because essential resources of the body ego did not fully develop or were lost later perhaps because of developmental deficits, lack of support, insecure attachment or above all due to traumatic experiences.

Ultimately in all its many forms, psychotherapy aims at helping people to open relationships. This is the essence of therapy to make sense of and to heal the impact of adverse development and trauma. From the bodynamic perspective such detrimental conditions as well as a widespread societal disregard or even contempt for anything bodily leads to a deep-seated loss of embodiment. In consequence we ‘lose touch’ with the most basic aspect of ourselves. Alienated from our body ego, we feel estranged from ourselves and others, and disturbed by a pervading undercurrent of emptiness; that nothing makes sense in our lives. Arguably much of modern unhappiness and neurotic behaviours, the rise of narcissism, of addictions and compulsive consumerism of all kinds that seek to fill this existential emptiness all stem from this original loss; perhaps especially with narcissism.

Narcissism and the body ego

Here we refer to a whole spectrum of character type, and not just to the hardened grandiose narcissist or narcissistic personality disorder. It can be interpreted as an attempt to fill a lack of inner sensation and the replace the partial loss of body ego with a sense of ‘false self ’ (Lowen, 1985). But it is not just alienation from one’s body awareness that leads to the narcissistic defence, but also that specific embodied character-structures develop that seek to replace and compensate for this. These defensive structures or embodied ‘positions’ constitute the narcissistic behaviour on the physical level, and so root them in the body and body ego.

I offer here a simplified example of bodily narcissistic defence and the resulting distortions of body ego. A basic characteristic of the narcissistic condition is an inflated or even a grandiose sense of self at the expense of the perception of other people’s needs, wishes and boundaries. This is closely related to events during the age of autonomy, from eight months to two-and-a-half years, a time when an independent sense of self is emerging. At this time the child will be developing its mobility, first beginning to creep and crawl and later to walk, and to start exploring its immediate surroundings. Typically, a narcissistic child is someone who won’t have experienced safe attachment to its parents, and, in adapting to repeated painful or even traumatic experience, will increasingly stop sensing and feeling itself. The consequence will be a gradual erosion, a hollowing out of the sense of self at a very fundamental level. This loss of a deeper sense of self-experience and the resulting emptiness and resignation to the absence of natural attachment will form the core of the narcissistic inner dynamic. In consequence, the child will start to use motor activity as a way of avoiding close contact and so avoid feeling deprived and manipulated. To this end the toddler will tense up or ‘hyperactivate’ its deep and superficial trunk muscles, eg the psoas, quadratus lumborum, rectus abdominis, obliques etc and thus may create a narrow waist – a kind of division between upper and lower body. This division, which further separates the child from its own centre and core and its movements, will accordingly become disconnected from deeper experience. In the limbs, the pushoff from the ground mediated by the deep and superficial calf muscles, soleus and gastrocnemius, and the spreading out of the arms will give the child a natural sense of elevation and greatness at the same time. This will in turn result in broader shoulders (tense deltoid, pars medialis, supraspinatus and serratus anterior). The narcissistic personality will usually be a very active (or even hyper active) person, superficially excited, but not in deeper contact with herself or others, her sense of self-value or self-importance deriving instead from what she can do in the world alone and not from what she is and can sense in relation to others.

Finding our way back

What is the way back: as Lisbeth Marcher (Marcher & Fich, 2010) asks, can we wake our body egos again? A central method or tool of bodynamic analysis to strengthen our body ego and ego functioning is in fact body awareness. When trained, body sensation as part of body awareness functions as a bridge between thought, emotion, action and the body (www.bodynamic.com/blog/scientific-validation-of-the-bodynamic-system). It allows us to become aware of the patterns of involuntary responses in our mind/brain and body that bodynamics calls ‘closed’ or ‘coded’ behaviours. The bodynamic practitioner, in contact, helps the client to sense specific movements and muscles consciously: the theory being that as these responses become voluntary it can alter somatosensory mapping in the brain and consequently change unhelpful emotional behavioural patterns for the better (Damasio, 2004).

In therapy especially a combination of focused sensation and the experience of specific developmental movements in relation to particular therapeutic issues helps the client access relevant skills (eg how to make contact). In practice this might entail a repeated exercise in which the client reaches out slowly with his hand. He is then met by the therapist’s hand, which he pulls towards his chest/heart area against resistance. The ‘right’ resistance equals the ‘right’ contact. The client is encouraged to increase his ability to differentiate subtle and specific sensations of hypo- and hyper-responses in muscles as they are activated in the movement (in this example, first in the frontal part of the deltoid, the subscapularis etc, then the upper, inner part of the biceps, the finger flexors, etc) while he pulls back and finally receives contact when the hand of the therapist comes to rest on his sternum.

We embody our defences

This is one example of how to facilitate awareness of the psychomotoric embodying of how contact is made, kept and received at an early age, and which may persist and possibly distort later developmental stages. If contact was ‘broken’ early in our lives, eg by loss, deprivation or violence, it directly hit our body ego in the form of specific imprints or coding in the corresponding muscles. The muscles have two ways of ‘defending against’ the experience, either by giving up and becoming slack, or by tensing up and resisting. In regards to our example from above this could result in ‘hanging, passive’ arms on the one hand, or ‘held back, slightly pulled in’ arms on the other, later in life. That is, we also embody our defences. And these structures, too, are an integral part of our embodied ego. In bodynamic the sum total of these structures is called ‘character structure’.

In this way, developmental resources can be activated in very precise ways without overwhelming or ever retraumatising the client. The increasing sensory differentiation also improves the client’s ability to test reality (his grounding), develop a healthy and cohesive body image, distinguish inside and outside (perceiving one’s boundaries) and finally sense a source (centring) from which the self originates. Bodynamic names 11 such ego functions.

And here we must return full circle to our question: what is it that is embodied? Are we only our character structure, responding primarily from our defences, living in a mechanistic, deterministic world of push and pull reaction only: or are we more? The different wisdom traditions give different names for the ‘being’ or ‘essence’ behind our experiences and our relating to others. This essence can make conscious choices, but only when actively present, rather than passive or unconscious and constrained by embodied defences and habits. Self-sensing and embodiment, self-agency and a more conscious way of living are all inextricably linked together. By deeply sensing ourselves we enable conscious choice and empower ourselves to experience real contact with ourselves, others and the world. Regular, correct practice of sensing and embodiment can open the way to knowing ourselves in the true sense of the word – holistically; to more fully sense and feel ourselves, and be more actively present, which is to say consciously embodied in our own physical reality. This perhaps is what ‘mindfulness’ really means, the embodied foundation from where we may gain access to the deeper reality of OUR being and the ultimate reality of greater being.

References

Damasio A (2004) Looking for Spinoza, the feeling brain. Vintage.

Lowen A (1985) Narcissism – denial of the true self. Siman & Schuster.

Marcher L & Fich S (2010) Body encyclopedia: a guide to the psychological functions of the muscular system. North Atlantic Books.