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HOW NEGATIVE EMOTIONAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL ENERGIES
GET STUCK IN THE
BODY, AND HOW THAT “RUNS OUR LIVES.”
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL
& STRESS REMOVAL BENEFITS
of Structural
Integration Bodywork - Section 2
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Along with the actual physical restrictions of tightness and lack of
flexibility, the body actually stores the energy of past emotional
upset and hurt. So a lot of the emotional charge that went on
during old traumatic times, or even recent physical accidents, is
actually still present within us. |
by Lou Gross, School Certified Master Postural Integrator
25 years successful experience
For more
information & free consultations, call 321-726-9083
louisryoshin@yahoo.com
Emotional energies like grief, anger
and fear that occurred in the past incidents literally get stored inside
the physical tissues. It’s not just memories in our brains and peripheral
nervous systems, but actual material that got “impressed” into the shape
of our fascia and even in the makeup of the collagen fibers in the fascia
themselves.
Collagen has been discovered to be a kind of
organic crystal that can actually store received energies, like magnetic
tape. So when a Bodyworker or massage therapist presses on that fascia,
the pressure squeezes out the energy imprint in the collagen fibers at the
same time it spreads them so the muscle becomes longer and freer. (While
this may seem farfetched to the inexperienced, it has been a well known
phenomena in the body-oriented psychological field for over half a
century. I myself have seen it countless times.)
When we’ve held in fear, sorrow and anger,
as we’ve tried to deal with difficult, and especially traumatic
situations, those emotional energies not only get stuck in the collagen
fibers, but also in some other energy storage locations in the body, too.
And most of them go in directly, in a physical way, without any mental
thinking or decision making. Sometimes we were forced to hold them in,
even if we didn’t want to, as when a child gets slapped or spanked for
expressing anger, or even tears.
The muscular compression necessary to keep
these emotions in gets stored as well, and it shows up as our shape.
People with a lot of held in anger may look angry, those with a lot of
stored grief may look sad, especially around the eyes, those who were
forced to give in and give up look that way in their body shapes. These
shapes store the emotional charge of the feelings right in the same
muscles in which we sense the emotion, and in the emotional centers inside
the abdomen and chest. The muscles will also store the oppressive and
angry emotional charge of the people who hit us, as they forced us to hold
in our own feelings under fear of being hurt worse. So in that tense area
we also have the fear, and even terror, we experienced during that
repression. You see, all the feelings of the past trauma, ours and
the people around us, get embedded along with the chronic tightness.
This compression of feelings by tight
muscles can also effect the organs and manifest as up-tightness or
physical disease. And the embedded feelings keep the person repeating
the same behaviors they expressed in the past incidents. They
operate directly from the physical location, without any reasoning or
analysis happening in our conscious minds
These muscular tensions create the same
kinds of ongoing shortnesses that physical activities do. And because we
express ourselves with our muscles and movements, the shortness and energy
blockage in the fascia now limits even our own, present day emotional and
interpersonal range of expression. This limitation happens in our
personal lives, and it also shows up when we try to express ourselves
professionally and creatively.
Often times, the compressed muscles that are
holding in a particular emotional expression also limit the ability to
express the same kind of emotion in the present day situations that
warrant it. Some people can’t cry and others never express anger or
self-assertiveness, even when it’s appropriate, and even when it comes up
inside them. Some of these folks can develop a happy personality on top of
this physical restriction and hardness in the deeper muscles, but it’s
relatively shallow in its ability to express with the whole body. And
there may also be bouts of depression, explosions of rage and/or a lack of
candidness about one’s own behavior. This is caused by the trapped
tensions and feelings. And they can get “triggered” by current life
situations. In large part, it is simply a remaining physical limitation
caused by past experiences that could even be a series of episodes, going
back through our entire lives.
Here’s a simple example of emotional energy
storage. I did the manipulations for an elderly woman, to help her leg and
pelvic tightness. But when I went over the area of her hip, where she
broke it and fell two years earlier, that tissue released the fear of
falling that got stuck in her when the accident occurred.. Right after I
did the manipulations in the muscles around the hip, she said she didn’t
want to flex her ankles (the way she normally did for exercise) because
she was afraid that she’d fall down. But she was lying in a reclining
wheelchair less than two feet off the ground. A few hours later she was
fine again.
Another example indicates that we can be
aware of the material that gets released as it flows out of the body.
When lengthening a friend’s arm, I spread tissue over an almost
imperceptible little scar. He said that as soon as I did that, a picture
of the minor incident that caused the scar, 15 years earlier, came to his
mind.
Much more serious traumas come up. And
things people had long forgotten are remembered. The experiences of
abusive childhoods become clearer, including for people who never
remembered much about their childhood. But at the same time the scenes
get clearer, a lot of the emotional charge of the incidents goes away.
That’s because the Bodywork has squeezed out the old “material” that was
defining the feelings. Yet, because it was mentally forgotten, we don’t
recollect what happened until the energy that gets released shows itself
to our conscious awareness. This same kind of increased awareness, and
release of emotional trauma, occurs when we release the embedded material
from adult auto accidents, periods of loss, rapes, events of war, and so
forth.
Did you ever notice how the affects of
long ago stressful or emotionally upsetting experiences still remain years
later? This is why. They remain because some of their energies got stuck
in our bodies. They’re like video tapes of old soap operas. And they
stay with us long after the episodes are gone and our conscious
minds have moved on.
So patterns of behavior and belief systems
about the world that were created in very difficult times have gotten
embedded in the body structure and in the ways we move. In certain kinds
of circumstances, we live in the past because of what we’re physically
stuck with. This includes conditioning from our childhood, infancy and
even birth, including traumatic experiences that we don’t remember at all.
Structural Integration Bodywork
breaks up and releases a lot of this old trauma at the very same time it
is removing the physical tightness. It even
works for auto accidents, spousal abuse, muggings, loss of a parent, child
or spouse, and even experiences of war.
The result of removing both physical
restriction and emotional energies is
1.)
a form
that operates much more fluidly in response to whatever nerve instructions
or circumstantial demands that are placed on it, and
2.)
a more
alert mind that will, quite naturally and automatically, stay more focused
on the present and what’s really happening around us now.
And I want to emphasize that this happens
immediately from the Bodywork manipulations. No mental analysis is
required. And while breath concentration and other kinds of meditation
also increase our powers of awareness and attention, the Bodywork
processing does the clearing all by itself.
Our relationships to ourselves and to the
world around us change for the better. Many of my clients often say they
feel as if an emotional weight has been lifted out of them. It also
becomes easier to open our hearts.
A clinical study made at a mental hospital
in the 1970’s showed that after Structural Integration, the frequency and
duration of anxiety attacks were both less. In general, all of us become
more centered, less anxious, more aware and have greater range of
emotional experience as well as physical movement.
This can be a BIG help in
psychotherapy. In regular verbal psychotherapy
some people go round and round in circles and can’t seem to break out of
their self-defeating patterns. Others know they have problems but can’t
seem to get to the source of the blocks. This form of Bodywork, (and some
body-oriented verbal release techniques), regularly help both these
problems very quickly. Some kinds of massage
work can accomplish a similar effect that the Bodywork does, but to a
lesser degree. And even without the physical manipulations, the release
techniques can be used to access whatever is already loose and accessible
in the internal organs and in the structural “energy field.”
As I said, when the Bodywork manipulations
release the energies of the old experiences, that energy comes to
consciousness at the same time the emotional charge dissipates out of the
body. So people can get more in touch with the issue and, its charge
actually gets smaller. Then, the improved structural length, lack of
tension and better “organization” also makes the person more open, more
positive, and more self confident. This better body “form” also improves
our abilities to access and release other emotions and psychological
issues as well.
Since a lot of traumatic experiences get
what is called “repressed” by actually being covered up with additional
layers of tight muscles and hard fascia, this Bodywork improvement enables
people to find this stuff, and deal with it better because it isn’t so
“big,” and they, themselves are “bigger.” When these tissues are
released, people get in contact with things that were bothering them, but
which they couldn’t even get a handle on.
Here are a few specific details
about emotional “body storage.” A lot of
resistance and “won’ts” is located in the muscles of the back of the
thighs. A lot of hopelessness and “I can’ts” is located in the muscles on
the inner thighs. A lot of blocks to feeling and a lot of fear is located
in the abdominal muscles. And a lot of sorrow and hurt is located in the
chest muscles.
All these areas have a number of layers of
muscle and fascia. Recent experiences are stored in the outer layers and
the more formative, childhood experiences are stored much deeper down.
And as a general rule, the outer tightnesses cover up access to the
embedded anger and resentment. The next layers down embody that anger and
resentment. And the layers below that embody the fear. So, for instance,
when a person has a habit of “stuffing” their anger and displeasure, it
gets stored in the middle layers and the outer layers have to also become
tight to hold this energy in. The deepest layers embody the fears that
say, “If you tell people that you’re angry or that you don’t like what
they’re doing, you’ll get hurt.”
This information needs to be kept in mind,
especially when working with people who were abused a lot as children (but
for the rest of us as well). The release of the outer muscle layers makes
us better doers and cope-ers in the adult areas of our life that we’re
already good at. People usually become more proficient in their work and
physical activities. But the restrictions to personal satisfaction and
the causes of our self-sabotaging behaviors are located in the deeper
tissues and the internal organs those muscles cover up. There is a
tendency for physically and emotionally abused people to get stuck in the
energies of the middle layers, identifying with “I won’ts,” and
transferring that resistance onto the treatment itself. They may even
stop the treatment. To really feel better and have our needs met, it’s
important to do the releasing deep inside ourselves.
So, in conjunction with psychotherapy, the
Bodywork will significantly eliminate a lot of the negative energies and
their propensities that control our behavior. And since the releasing
increases the “size” of our own consciousness in our bodies, it enables us
to understand and discuss our issues with the therapist in a more aware
way, instead of having the issues run us with their previously
overwhelming energies. The process releases us from being stuck.
Of course, this also increases our abilities
to learn and develop better ways of relating. More aligned and integrated
body structures actual create more open and communicative behavior. And
the lack of old embedded negativity and “protection” allows people to
think more positively, without a lot of “competition” from their old
tapes, including those of mistrust. Significant, immediate improvement
is made regardless of the person’s initial level of therapeutic awareness.
I have worked in association with a
number of psychiatrists and psychotherapists, and a number of my clients
have also been in therapy with their own therapists. All those I’ve
treated who are also in psychotherapy or Reichian-Bioenergetic kinds of
therapy, tell me that the Bodywork in conjunction with it produces better
results and faster and more satisfying progress than with their
psychological therapy alone, even if the Bodywork was done for purely
physical reasons.
Go Back to
Psychological-Stress Intro
Part 1
Go to
Stress Testimonials
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Copyright 2002 Louis A. Gross All Rights Reserved |