One of the discoveries of somatopsychotherapy, in my opinion, is the fact that, if a person refrains from hysterical, hypochondriac, phobic and other pathological ways of responding to the fact of the awareness of the «stones within them, and retains a calm, judicious attitude to conscious, this suffering person becomes a winner, they get their power back, reborn like a Phoenix from the ashes. The task of the somatopsychotherapist is to help the patient create and maintain a working tone in relation to these phenomena, without unnecessary affectation, but by understanding the significance of what is happening.
The patients can melt the stones with their own eyes, and it will not be just a «game of imagination, but a real change to: 1) the structure of their consciousness; 2) the state of their body.
Working with sensations as a method of psychotherapy is highly effective and fast-acting. It can change the patients condition radically and do it without the phantasmagoric external manifestations inherent in some known types of therapy.
For my last preliminary remark, my own experience and communication with colleagues brings me to the idea that along with the division into schools in the world practice, there is a very simple division into «fast and «slow or «short and «long types of psychotherapy.
Experience makes us accept the fact that all forms of work are important. The fact that you can work with a patient for five, ten minutes, or even a year, or two, or more, and all this will be normal psychotherapy, does not seem to be a paradox.
So-called classical schools, such as clinical psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, or younger schools like gestalt therapy, tend to work over the long time. Among «short-term schools, there are representatives of neuro-linguistic programming, next to them, perhaps, eriksonians and some other supporters of empirical, short-term, intensive psychotherapy.
This method also draws from the intensive and short-term schools. It is good for working through traumas. However, it is as thorough as the therapies of the first «classic group.
1500 patients
From my point of view, this study takes into consideration the most important issues of psychotherapy.
How to bring the patients to an understanding of their inner state?
How to change that inner state for better?
How to get a sustainable result?
After 15 years of research, this method has been formed by the process of solving psychological and psychosomatic problems of more than 1500 people during 35 sessions of one hour with each of them.
Introduction
Every psychotherapist and practicing psychologist know about patients descriptions of their bodily sensations. There is no more or less noticeable experience that would not be accompanied by a burning of the chest, or a pain in the head, or compression in the abdomen.
Different attitude to the body sensations
In classical medicine, the body sensations are taken into account to clarify the diagnosis and monitor the dynamics.
Clinical psychotherapy calls them vegetative accompaniments of experiences.
In psychoanalysis, they serve as a material for the interpretation and construction of structures, where through somatic symptoms «the body reports the dominant idea of the «subconscious. The subject of the searches is the idea underlying the formation of the symptom.
In the context of Jungians approach, there can also be situations in which patients indicate body sensations in the process of experiencing certain archetypal scenes, but these feelings rarely fall into the focus of attention. More importance is given to the semantic elaboration of the symbols.
Gestalt therapy pays more attention to body sensations to establish contact with them, to find out their «addressee, if any, and to complete the unfinished deal associated with them.
Psychosynthesis does not exclude the use of body parts to establish mutually beneficial contact between them. In this case heart, brain, stomach, ears, personified as subpersonalities, can sort out their relationship, but this process does not have the nature of direct work with sensations.
Reichian body-oriented psychotherapy attaches great importance to the analysis of the «rings of tension at the level of the eyes, mouth, neck, chest, abdomen, pelvis, forming a «protective shell around the body, delaying the free flow of «bioenergy, and considers its important task to work through the «muscle armor. However, this approach works primarily with the surface of the body.
Erickson hypnotherapists use descriptions of body sensations to create a background of reliability in the process of «soft trance guidance. Bodily sensations in this tradition are highly valued for their credibility. With their help, hypnotherapists often receive from their clients, a credit of trust, which a person is inclined to give to someone who has correctly described at least three components of his bodily experiences. An erickson hypnotist describes what a person feels with their body but thinks about something else.
Heres how body sensations are characterized from the point of view of neuro-linguistic programming: «Evaluative meta-feelings about other perceptions or representations, also called emotions, feelings, or visceral kinesthetic, which are presented in the chest and/or abdomen, or in the midline of the body. These feelings are not direct sensations/perceptions, but representations derived from other sensations/perceptions.2" «Other sensations/perceptions» specifically visual, auditory and kinesthetic are the main focus of attention in NLP.
The ontopsychology of Menegetti attaches great importance to the knowledge of the doctors own body sensations in the process of communication with the patient and the study of «semantic field. However, in this case the appeal to the sensations is of an official nature.
The process-oriented psychotherapy of A. Mindell touches the sensations in the prosses of working with the «channels of perception.
There are many reports of body sensations during sessions of holotropic breathing according to the methodology of S. Grof.
We can say that every serious school of psychotherapy somehow reacts to the fact of the presence of body sensations brought about from experiences, but almost none of the existing schools work directly with them, thus remaining within the indirect use of this phenomenon. I would like to name the way it is done as external.
Psychocatalysis of body sensations works with sensations directly, «internally using them.
Traditional Russian attitude to body sensations
As real force that significantly affects the health of our fellow citizens, this tradition does not exist. The interests of the social experiment, which our country went through, demanded special personal qualities from its participants. The inclination to introspection was not listed among them. Moreover, its manifestations were considered almost counter-revolutionary. The battles for the harvest and other battles for agriculture, industry and other fronts did not include any study of body sensations. That era put forward its heroes. However, their valor was not intended to be healthy for, but rather, to be useful to society.