Basics of body therapy

In our (working) everyday life we are used to subordinate emotional needs and impulses to the requirements of the outside world and to adapt: to be "reasonable", to act "adult", to make rational decisions - these are the maxims that determine our everyday world. The awareness of one's own body and the ability to perceive one's own physical and emotional sensations are often lost in the process. The consequences of this development find their expression in disturbances of the most diverse manifestations in the physical and mental area and psychosomatic illnesses. On the physical level, they become visible, among other things, as blockages in the muscular area, which provide us with a key to related emotional issues.

With the help of body therapy we go in search of the lost body consciousness. The breath acts as a bridge between emotional and physical expression. In addition to breath work, the focus is on voice and body expression. Through bodywork, we focus attention on the here and now and uncover underlying patterns of behavior and attitudes - in this way, the body shows us the way to understand which inner attitudes that ensured psychological survival in the past now need to be released and dissolved.

Who perceives his shadow and his light at the same time,

sees himself from two sides and thus comes to the center.

Carl Gustav Jung
 

 
Trauma

Trauma always occurs when the body cannot respond to a threatening situation through the archaically anchored behaviors of flight or fight. Hurtful and violent events, but also situations that overtax the individual's stress tolerance, lead to a reaction to the psychological stress: the body reacts by increasing muscle tone, heart and breathing rate and releasing adrenaline. Unless this state of arousal of the body is reduced by movement, rigidity follows - "paralyzed with fright," "holding one's breath in fright," etc. are expressions of this. Trauma occurs when the energies blocked by the fright are not dissipated and thus the physical-emotional reactions to the event are not brought to full completion.

Since the trauma is stored in the body as a physiological reaction to an event and can be reactivated by the body memory in future similar situations, it is obvious to resolve the traumatization with the help of a physical approach.