One of my colleagues told me a story about a group of American feminists who arrived in Moscow during the perestroika period. Instead of giving a long explanation, I will just say that she invited them to a public bathhouse When the feminists saw the women around them, they began to cry. They could vividly imagine how those Russian women must have mistreated themselves to end up with such deformed bodies. The Americans ladies were particularly shocked by the extent of their distorted joints.
I would like to mention something about the souls of the long-suffering Russian women! Indeed, no matter what, they are distinguished by their commitment to compassion and sacrifice. It would have been necessary to have a remarkable strength of character to withstand everything that our parents and grandparents had to endure. Though, it would have been prudent to add a culture of personal care and self-preservation to such character and experience of suffering; a culture of working through the consequences of the resentment experienced.
I hope that my scientific work will contribute to the formation of such culture.
Domestic tradition
This is an example of attitude to oneself, and to the signals of the body, at the household level. Fortunately, this does not mean that in the domestic tradition there is no other attitude to the perceived.
The Orthodox Church, especially the Byzantine monastic tradition of Hesychasm (sacred silence), which was developed in the environment of Russian monasticism, offered to be very attentive to what was formed in the mind of a believer.
I was greatly impressed by the topographic structure of the descriptions of «mind preservation by the Christian ascetics. Long before the emergence of any psychotherapy, they described the phases of entering into a passionate state and their ways out of dead-end experiences. Those experiences often resembled plants and animals.
We know such expressions as «seeds or «roots of passion. In the V century the monk Neil of Sinai wrote about «the foxes that live in the soul of the vindictive, and the animals that hide in the indignant heart or «as the water is perturbed by a falling stone, so the heart of a man by a bad word.» «As the smoke from smoldering straw bothers the eyes, so the rancor bothers the mind during the prayer3. These descriptions are more than just beautiful literary images, they are documentary evidence of the experience of internal work.
The image of perception of the soul and passion is found in the following excerpt by the monk Hesychius: «Distinctive in the old Testament, the high priest decoration (a pure gold plate on the chest, with the inscription: «Holiness to the Lord, ex. 28, 36) has a conversion of heart purity which inspires us «to heed the plate of our heart, so that, if it is black from sin, (if we can find it) we should hurry to clean it with our tears, repentance and prayer.4»
«From incessant prayer the air in our minds is pure of dark clouds and winds of evil spirits.5" The concepts of purity or blackening of the soul, the quality of the «mental air in us are important for us and will be repeatedly mentioned in the book.
Sinful thoughts «come to the door of the heart and, finding it is not protected by mind, one after the other comes in, each in its own time. When one of these [] thoughts, rising to the heart, enters it, then brings with it a whole swarm of impure thoughts and, thus darkens the mind and heart, irritates the body and attracts it to the shameful deeds.6" The «Swarm of impure thoughts is not just a comparison, it is a documentary description of what is happening.
Objectification of sensations in psychotherapy
To continue the conversation about schools, dealing with sensations, the method of bioenergotherapy (BEST), developed by E. I. Zuyev (St. Petersburg) should be mentioned first. BEST, as no other manner of work, enables a person to transfer to the practitioner (the operator) the nuances of body sensations. The peculiarity of BEST is that in the process of massage, which is more than just the mechanical interaction between the practitioner and the patients (which, rather, should be called work on the movement of sensations in the body) the latter are asked strange questions: about the consistency of movement in the body sensations, the color of the inner space and other characteristics of the body scheme. The patient, for example, reports that their head is filled during the manipulation. With what? the operator asks. The patient: Air (water, milk, resin, lead, etc.). The practitioner holds the shoulder blade and asks again: What am I holding? The response is: A chicken.
Zuyevs followers gently call the evocation of those felt images to be the product of «illusions, the «suggestive effect. They use this curious feedback to adjust their operational efforts, as well as to divert the patients attention towards the process of performing manual therapy procedures. Representatives of the BEST school also suggest: «The immersion in figurative reality is an integral part of deep diagnosis, since the patient «gives those images that are embedded in the structures of the subconscious. The creative application of the knowledge of psychoanalysis has limitless possibilities here.7»
We can say that the psychocatalysis of body sensations is the development of BEST ideas in the direction of the psychotherapeutic usage of the ability of man to recognize the «schemes of a body.
Spontaneous detection of sensations
A stone in soul is one of those images most often experienced by patients, but its not the only one. Jellyfish or octopuses of fear, sitting in the stomach and launching their tentacles in all parts of the body. Clouds of anxiety in the chest, forcing the patients to wring their hands and run around the room. A mass of anxiety, bursting in the forehead, preventing them from sleeping. Lumps of grievances in the chest, preventing them from breathing. Balls of despair in the throat, squeezing tears from the eyes (globus hystericus in Latin). Brain-eating snakes of doubt in the head and steel plates of situation control in the back of the head, raising blood pressure to pre-stroke levels. Lead shoulder straps of responsibility hanging on the shoulders, flattening the spine. Patients often describe their sensations in these terms.
The objectification of feelings in artistic speech
In everyday and poetic language and in proverbs, one can meet such expressions as: my problems swell my head, or cats scratch my heart. Joy is usually described as big, and grief as heavy. Doctors speak about the neurasthenic helmet, though it is not known how to get rid of it.
It is possible to give a lot of quotes from popular songs, for example:
«Dont go to him, dont go, hes got a granite stone in his chest.»
Here is an example from a novel: «A young woman is standing in a dark and cold hallway, near a tepid stove, warming her hands, waiting to be called for dinner- and, having pursed her dried up lips, thinking about what? About Rodion? It is all nonsense, that she has poisoned him, nonsense! But what if she really has poisoned him my God! What must she feel? What tombstone is lying on her secretive soul!8»