At the diagnostic phase of SPT, a charge that deranges the patients consciousness focusing the energy of the body on itself (the substance heat-heaviness) is found.
The question that helps to find to this «charge is usually very simple: where is the sensation associated with a particular episode of life, with a particular fragment of a dream, with a particular picture, which the patient drew on the instructions of the doctor? At the level of head, chest, abdomen, or anywhere else? Is it something big, small, light, or dark? What is it «made of? And so on.
Below we will take a closer look at the options of talking to patients, depending on how they declare their problem.
In fact, SPT offers the patients to think about a simple thing: how are their sensations distributed when they solve this problem? Or simply: how are their sensations distributed? Is there anything that disturbs the optimal distribution of sensations in the body? Is anything missing to feel good?
Where does the heat in the arms and legs reach? Are there any uncomfortable sensations concentrated at the level of an area of the body?
I will allow myself a short historical excursus.
Do not wait for any hair to appear on a tortoise shell
Before somatopsychotherapy I had a few years of practice in clinical psychotherapy.
What are its obvious advantages? Firstly, it is the interest in the constitutional and genetic basis on which certain mental processes are developed. A clinical psychotherapist at the first stage of communication with a patient finds out the specific features of the mentality of the latter, and at the last stage they help a patient to see the world as a meeting of different forms of life, each of which has their own purpose. The ultimate achievement of successful clinical work is the patients inner peace and tranquility based on self-acceptance as a certain natural entity, endowed with their own character, accepting others as well! «Do not wait for any hair on the shell of a tortoise,» says Taoist wisdom, quite «clinical in its essence). This is a substantial part of the work of a clinical psychotherapist, but I would like to draw your attention to something else.
Storytelling
A clinical psychotherapist pays much attention to the baseline state in which the communication between a doctor and a patient takes place. Even the most correct messages can be received by the patients only when they have a free resource for this. The fact is that their resources are mostly spent on tension and neurotic experiences.
Johann Schultz is known to have researched and described the basic sensations that a person experiences in the process of relaxation. They were named «six exercises of autogenous training. A pleasant heaviness and warmth fill up the body then turning into a pleasant lightness and freshness. The heart beats calmly and evenly. Breathing is free and even. The solar plexus emits warmth. The forehead is slightly cool.
The state of the patients when «pleasant warmth reaches their fingers and toes, and the roots of their hair is healing in itself. In clinical psychotherapy it is also the background for the patients to accept themselves, the situation and to adjust to a successful way out of difficulties.
It should be noted that sometimes this part of the work is not the second, but the first one: instead of talking to the patient in their «abnormal state, the therapist invites them to the session, which is called «learning auto-training, «hypnosis or something else. Only after nonspecific calming in a cozy environment, under the influence of relaxing music, words of «comfort with the lulling intonation, and storytelling, the patient is «taken to more specific work.
The psychotherapeutic swing
At the early stage of my professional development my working combination was conversationplus relaxation. After discussing with the patients their important issues, I offered them to close their eyes and let the feelings to be distributed. Partly, that was the pre-system of the work I am describing now.
Conversation-relaxation-conversation this rhythm began to seem more natural and important. It is a kind of a psychotherapeutic «swing. The second part (hypnotic and auto-training) changed its tone in the process of «working out this practice. If, at first, I tried to imbue something to the patients at that phase (based on the material of the previous study of their problems), then later I refused to be directive and often offered just to observe the sensations after the conversation, to let them «lie down.
The questioning observation: question without question
Offering patients to observe what happens after a usual empathic hearing often leads to surprising results. Patients connect to their body sensations, fall into a kind of trance, and undergo a series of transformations, often spontaneously describing the process that, in fact, is organized by psychocatalysis in somatopsychotherapy.
The stones of unease can be detected and disintegrated, sensations can move actively from one area of the body (overfilled) to another (devastated), completely new and optimized contours of sensations can be formed. The convalescents get into the new spaces, from which they come back renewed. It is like auto-trainingwithout instructions. Conciliation, calming down, and rebalancing occur spontaneously, in accordance with the «program, which the body choses itself.
He sat down and began to describe
Recently, I was impressed by a kind of echo of my old mute practice (mute, because it has a minimum number of questions with maximum confidence in own healing process of the body). This story is about the transformations that a twelve-year-old boy began to experience, as soon as he sat down on a chair and heard the words: Close your eyes. Describe what you feel.
The boy had a weakened immunity of unclear genesis. He had been suffering from furuncles for a long time. The last two months he was continuously treated for submandibular lymphadenitis (there was a crack in the corner of his mouth, through which he, apparently, got the infection). Two operations under general anesthesia were unsuccessful. He underwent a lot of bandaging, and there was constantly a tubule for drainage in his wound. Of course, he had to forget about going to school.
The boy was brought to me just after he had been bandaged once again. He sat down on a chair and fell into a special state of connection with attention to inner sensations a kind of trance. He began to describe his sensations in detail without any instructions from me, except for the most general one: «Watch and describe.» The boy understood the main instruction perfectly, though it didnt say: «Heal.»
The movement of sensations was very intense. The terrible heat was gathering in his chest and there was the feeling of a huge furuncle.