The Body as a Reservoir

Do you use your vulnerability as a defense mechanism? A friend asked me today while reading a piece I had written. It was a random observation she had made while reading, but it hit the right spot. In my head, everything made sense. It was as if my mind processed all the relevant data and arrived at the conclusion in her words. How often do our friends help us with the emotional mathematics of our bodies? It reminded me of focusing, a method of somatic healing introduced by Eugene Gendlin. The body is like a hard drive that saves information in raw form for the mind to process. However, it is not enough to treat the body as a backup reservoir of emotional and experiential data. The body also needs to process it because the mind is not an isolated undisputed god overlooking and processing the various functions of the body and itself. When one thinks of the mind not in isolation but as part of the body itself and dependent on its mechanisms, one comes to the conclusion that the body as a whole is a processing machine. Focusing on one area, i.e., the mind/brain, and using it as a processing tool does not benefit the body. One has to take the whole and eat it – it’s not a game of pick and choose. The body is good at it. It is ready to use its reservoir. One just has to allow it to happen. Gendlin’s manual on focusing is a great start if one wants a simple methodology. He outlines steps in simple and easy language that is helpful for the newcomer to navigate. I think it is about time mental healing takes into consideration somatic ways of healing because, apart from some specialized cases, our woos and self-knowledge have answers already imprinted in our complicated organization as a human being. Move, breathe, slow down, ground, talk, write – make a pattern that you can recognize at miraculous eureka moments in an instant. Your body waits for you to come back home.

Image: The Dancer by Egon Schiele (Wikimedia Commons)