Connecticut Society for Bioenergetic Analysis

      Bioenergetic Analysis is a unique way of combining body therapy with psychotherapy. The integrating concept is that body and mind form a unit. We are our thinking, emotions, sensations, impulses and actions.

      Sigmund Freud is the founder of psychoanalysis. He was born in Vienna in 1856, where he studied medicine and neurology and explored new ways of counseling his patients. He died in 1939 in London, England, having moved there in 1938.

      In Freud's days people had a number of illnesses for which no medical causes could be found, eg., palsies, epileptic fits, blindness, memory loss and loss of feeling in parts of the body. Freud discovered that these symptoms were a bodily expression of repressed memories of painful and frightening childhood experiences. By helping his patients to remember and relive these experiences Freud could cure their symptoms. He called his method psychoanalysis. Once patients had become aware of what had happened to them in childhood, they no longer needed to express these memories with bodily symptoms. To lift these memories out from repression Freud utilized his patients' dreams, slips of the tongue, free associations, and manifestations of transference.

      Transference describes a condition in which people view some of their adult interpersonal relationships through the lens of their childhood experiences. In other words, people experience their mate, their child, their boss or their therapist not entirely the way they are. Instead they experience them as if they were a rejecting, ignoring, critical or humiliating parent. They transfer the repressed memories of what people did to them in the past to people in their present life.

      Wilhelm Reich, who lived from 1897 to1957, was a patient and student of Sigmund Freud. While Freud paid attention only to the verbal productions of his patients, Reich introduced to psychoanalysis the observation of the body, such as expressions of eyes and face, quality of voice and muscular tension patterns. What we today call body language was first described by him. Just as Freud noted a split between a conscious and unconscious memory, Reich noted a split in the expressions of the body. For example, a person may smile but be unaware that his face looks mournful. He may say kind words but not realize that his eyes look resentful, that his jaw is set in an expression of spitefulness.

      As his patients improved through psychotherapy, Reich noted that muscular tensions also changed. The depressed person's shoulders and arms became less tense, the jaw became relaxed, the teeth were no longer clenched. The reason he restrained his impulse to reach out and repressed the painful memories in the first place was to prevent being vulnerable. With the relaxing of the chronically tense muscles the patient therefore re-experienced his vulnerability. By his set jaw and clenched teeth he had adopted a bodily expression which spoke of never wanting to reach out and be hurt again.

      Reich experimented with attempting to relax chronically tense muscles by pressing on them directly. He discovered that it worked. People would often experience strong emotions and recover long forgotten, painful memories. The unity of body and mind and emotions became clear.

      He also noted that people started looking more alive, their skin pinker, their voice fuller and stronger, their movements more graceful and flowing, their eyes brighter. It was as if they had more energy. They did have and he called it "organismic" or "orgone" energy.

      Dr. Alexander Lowen, a patient and student of Wilhelm Reich, renamed this orgone energy "bioenergy." Dr. Lowen, still active at the age of 88, broadened the scope of body work and introduced bioenergetic homework. Instead of only pressing on chronically tight muscles, he also made use of stress positions which cause chronically tense muscles to let go. Evidence of this relaxation could be seen in a trembling and fine vibration of the muscles.

       Lowen could actually observe the blocks to energy flow caused by chronically tense muscles. For example, a chronically tight diaphragm interrupts the respiratory wave, causing shallow breathing. As a result the oxygen intake is reduced and the person's energy level drops. Such shallow breathing is one way we keep our emotions controlled. To help people breathe more deeply, Dr. Lowen introduced the bioenergetic breathing stool.

      An important discovery came from his observation that a person whose energy flow is blocked has lost a part of his aliveness and personality. This loss causes the person to be depressed, needing to struggle and constantly use willpower to accomplish daily tasks. It becomes difficult to get close to people or to feel pleasure. Life loses its color and becomes drab.

      Grounding, another concept introduced by Dr. Lowen, describes the energetic contact with reality. In order to have good energetic contact it is necessary for energy to flow freely to those areas of our body with which we make contact with the world: the sense organs, the arms and hands, legs and feet, the skin and sexual areas. Watch a baby or small child who cries, is angry or happy, or reaches for something. His whole body participates and his movements are truly harmonious. The person who is well grounded is said to have "his feet on the ground". He feels the connection between his feet and the ground he is standing on.

      As we grow up, we usually experience that some of our free emotional expressions are often met with disapproval, rejection, humiliation or punishment. We therefore learn to control expressions which have such consequences. We permanently inhibit the muscles involved in these expressions through chronic, unconscious tension.

      Blocks in the throat and jaw restrain our crying and screaming; they also inhibit our joyous shouting and singing. Blocks in the shoulders and arms restrain not only our desire to grab and hit but also our desire to reach and hug. Blocks in the waist restrict our crying and yelling as well as our breathing and sighing. Tight muscles in our legs and feet curb our rebelliousness; they also decrease our capacity to stand our ground and be independent.

      There are many muscles that connect the pelvic girdle with the trunk and the legs, such as the muscles of the lower back, the buttocks and the thighs. There are also muscles that form the pelvic floor. All these muscles are involved in controlling our sexual and excretory functions. Their chronic tension dulls our sexuality and often causes lower backaches and even frequent urination.

      Dr. Lowen made still another discovery, perhaps his most important: as long as we keep the illusion that we can get as adults what we failed to get as children and that this will end our depression, we are doomed to failure. No acceptance and love by a therapist or mate can replace the missing experience of having been recognized and cherished for who we were as children. Because we had to permanently block certain unacceptable self expressions we continue to long for the missing experience of being accepted for who we are. Why did our parents deny us the acceptance when we were free and loving? Unconsciously we hold a justified anger over it.

      Letting go of such blocks is never easy. We believe that they saved us from being abandoned and the terrible loneliness that would be the result. Through body work we can soften the blocks and relive the longing for that accepting love and the terrible sadness of longing in vain. Through grounding and having an energized body we can live in our adult reality and therefore sense that wanting to replace the missing childhood experience is an illusion. In therapy this is felt as a choice between being oneself -- free and alone -- and holding on to the therapist and his love.

      This intricate combination of body work and psychoanalytic work constitutes the essence of bioenergetic analysis.

February 26, 1999