Bioenergetic Therapy: How Does It Help Your Heart-Body-Mind Connection?
Hiding beneath core emotions, reside some glimmers of hope. When these glimmers are expanded in a Bioenergetic body-oriented way of working, a feeling of joy and an enhanced sense of ‘me’, i.e., ‘the real ME with all of my depth and breadth’, can surface and fill us with pleasure. Changes through Bioenergetics can include psychological well-being, love, physiological aliveness, and joy as a social and sexual being.
Bioenergetics is the original mind-body psychotherapy, beginning in the 1930’s. Trained as a Psychoanalyst, Alexander Lowen, MD got patients to their feet in the context of psychoanalytic treatment. He developed studied movements to unblock cellular holdings, weaving together an analytic (talking), and an energetic (body movement, ie., "energy") psychological healing modality. Bioenergetic workshops often begin by asking people to bring attention to the body: to breathe down into the hips and pelvis, to feel the ground with the bottom of the feet, to shift the internal focus. Embodied attention like this can allow feelings to emerge and be noticed — eg., sadness around the heart, emptiness in the gut, or strength (or the lack) in the limbs.
“Grounding” is a fundamental concept of Bioenergetics, with the feet beneath the hips, mindfully engaging all of the body weight downwards through the pelvis, legs and feet. Grounding leads to decreased anxiety, a stronger sense of self-assertion (as in “standing your ground”), and a gentler experience of reality. Gradually, respirations deepen, sometimes as a release of strong emotion – i.e. crying, laughter, anger or loneliness. Bioenergetics helps heal sexual or romantic functioning, as physical and emotional holdings begin to soften.
Bioenergetics teaches ‘being’ rather than ‘doing;
it can transform emotions held in the body into joy and tenderness.
Bioeneregtics is a way of working and living from an energetic point of view: Talking, woven into a fabric with bioenergetic movements, can loosen long-held, core feeling states, and sometimes offer cathartic release and internal change. You may begin to sense the natural pulsations of all living beings in yourself — a pattern of expansion and contraction. Over time the movements may evolve to become an integral, enlivening part of your life.
In contemporary psychological trauma theory, the biological body is now understood to also source the psychological trauma. Bioenergetics addresses panic attacks, eating disorders, and the depleted energy of depression. Bioenergetics crosses bridges of race, economics and cultures since we all live inside physical bodies. Healing through bioenergetics can be a universal paradigm, to benefit individuals or groups, ages young and old.