From the images
If a jealous woman is driven crazy by imaginary scenes of her husbands cheating (I go crazy when I imagine her hands on his neck") one can ask what she feels when she sees these scenes. Where is the charge associated with her emotion: in the head, in the chest, in the stomach? Is it big or small? etc. There appear a black funnel in the abdomen. The direct correlation between the brightness, proximity of images of significant persons and the size of internal formations existing in relation to them is obvious.
From complaining about other people
My mother-in-law bothers me, a young woman complains with tears in her eyes. What do you feel? This question immediately turns the conversation from a useless discussion about the nature of the mother-in-law to a discussion of her state that arises as a result. The poor daughter-in-law finds iron weight in her chest (her resentment). Somatopsychotherapy is the option of working with the results of the experiences.
On orders from the outside
An irritable person says: I have a feeling that the energies of some people, like tentacles, reach for me, and I feel bad. At the same time, he jokes at himself: A false psychic! What do these tentacles indicate in you? How are they related to you? Why are you visible to them? It turns out that these tentacles are the assistants in tracking his own charges.
You can worry less
Wives of alcoholics often have an upset contour of their own feelings. They persistently take care about their husbands, but not themselves. The moment when a poor woman is asked: In what state do you solve your problems? becomes a true revolution in the life of their families.
Such women should be suggested to check the state in which they try to solve their husbands problems considering them to be their own. It helps to switch to the discussion about themselves. For example, a woman is trying to help her husband to stop drinking alcohol and at the same time is experiencing anxiety. She can feel that her anxiety takes away 90% of her forces and makes her almost unviable.
«Should you be so much stressed to solve your husbands problems, or can it be less?»
«Maybe less.»
«How many percent less?»
«I guess it can be a hundred percent less. Whether Im worried or not doesnt change anything.»
«Maybe you shouldnt calm down because in that case you will do nothing and let events take their course. Should you?»
«I think, on the contrary, I will be able to do something worthwhile, only when I am calm.»
«Well, will you calm down right now?»
«Yes.»
«Calm down and watch how your sensations are distributed. We always talk about the reconciliation of proportions of what we spend our energy on.
The method to add volume to the therapy process
Primary care for a patient depends on what they attention are initially focused on. The work on the bodily level usually finds a greater response in those people who have got naturally good feeling of their body, the body of their consciousness. They describe their sensations as an important part of their experience without any stimulation from a psychotherapist.
The ability for such awareness of the problems is an indication for the bodily psychotherapy. However, somatopsychotherapy can be also highly effective with other forms of self-consciousness and, in any case, is recommended as an additional means of «giving volume to a therapeutic process. Somatopsychotherapy is a good way of activating self- awareness and working out the physical aspect of the problematic experience, regardless of whether it is the main approach to change the state of a person or an ancillary one.
No matterwhere to start
There are an unlimited number of ways to start the recovery process: from a posture, from intonation, from facial expressions etc. It always turns out, that such manifestations are found in the body structure.
Fine examples of the beginning from gait features and gestures of a person are given by Arnold Mindell (USA)16. He organizes the process of «amplification of the movement, which tends to manifest, but is hidden. It is on the «lunar but not on the «solar side of consciousness. The question of the process-oriented psychotherapy is: what are you doing when you are holding your leg in such a way? The answer is: I am preparing it for a fight! The SPT question is different: where is what makes you so tense to keep your right leg like that? The answer is: there is anger in the chest. Thus, the continuation of the work is different.
N. R. Cape (Brazil)17 offers to pay attention to the characteristics which a person uses to describe the others. His integral psychoanalysis is based on returning to a patient their statements-projections. The SPT interiorization is achieved in a different way. «Is there something that makes you choose such words? Is it at the level of your head, chest, abdomen? What do you feel when you say that?» We move from the projection to the state which is holding it. We talk in a «topographic manner, using the question «where?». From nouns and adjectives that are used by a person to define the others, we move to the essence of the «speaker, to that part of their consciousness, which «invests such speech behavior.
Now we will not go into details of somatopsychotherapy «debuts. Let us agree with Jung, who noted that " in case you want to determine the patients complexes, you can reach the center directly from any point of the circle you can start with the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, with meditation in front of a crystal ball, with a prayer wheel or a modern painting, or even with a casual conversation about a trifling event. In this sense, a dream is as effective as any other starting event.18»
It does not matter which of the rivers will bring us to the lake, and, in a sense, it does not matter what to start the recovering process with. What is important, is how to end it. According to V. N. Tsapkin, we are looking for the «invariant of options.» He noticed that the same mental content expresses itself through the absence of legs in the drawing of a person, made by the patients with clinical symptoms of astasia-abasia, as well as through their dreams, or their behaviors in a group.
In somatopsychotherapy this kind of invariant is thebodily-oriented structure of consciousness. Under other circumstances, a person expresses it in words in free associations (in the psychoanalytic model); projects on the inner screen in the form of «movie, accompanied by sounds, smells, bodily sensations (in the NLP model); expresses behaviorally (in the procedural model). In a «somatopsychotherapeutic situation it appears as an object in the body of consciousness. It is like a book on the bookshelf that can be read, filmed, or performed dramatically (as in the above-mentioned models), but which is now stored in a potential state within its covers.