I want to welcome you to our analytic somatic community. For most of my life I have been in a search to understand our human nature. My approach has been to cross all the professional fences I could manage. As therapists we must have noticed that once we were defined as a little lower than the angels and now we are defined as a little higher than apes. Scientists are messing with our heads and our genes in ways closer to science fiction. On a more mundane level, De Waal, the primatologist who spends his days in the company of chimpanzees and bonobos understands our somatic communications that often go unnoticed in human communication. He says:
“When picking a seat in a restaurant I want to face as many tables as possible.I enjoy following the social dynamics—love, tension, boredom, antipathy around me based on body language, which I consider more informative than the spoken word.” (Frans De Waal, Our Inner Ape, p. 55)
Our gene for language, foxp2, finally showed up, after approximately 4 million years, as recently as 120 thousand years ago, and probably only reached refinement 50 thousand years ago. No doubt we were communicating up a storm for many thousands of years before our larynx dropped and all those nerve endings grouped around it; and that is why we are involved in somatic communication which is going on in the preverbal languages that De Waal likes to translate in restaurants. When I teach somatic work, I talk about at least 7 languages the last being verbal, and I invite my students to work in the first 6 using words only for simple directions.
There was in the 1960’s an attitude among body therapists that “it was all in the body”. That idealistic view did not work particularly well for Reich and it tends to apply successfully only to a select few that prove it true for them. But for many others, the psyche must be addressed as well. The complexity of working in both domains has kept people hovering in one camp or another. The analytically trained tend to think “it’s all in the unconscious fantasies.” What I address in this training is both the analytic and the somatic. Because “bodywork” works, we need to be skilled analytically also. The spiritual aspect is present but I don’t preach or carry on. I just acknowledge that as human beings, we need to find meaning in our lives and as Jung has observed, in the second half of life, many clients come to us having lost a sense of meaning, and therefore that profound need should be addressed both for ourselves and our clients to the degree that it is relevant. Consequently, our work at the Institute focuses on the correspondence between mind, body and spirit.
We can view our psychological path as scientific because we document and seek to reproduce results. What we practice is also illusive and individual as an art that takes years to develop, and for me psychology can also be a spiritual path where we use our personal difficulties as a way to a deeper humanity, understanding, compassion, and love of the truth. The truth is a sword that cuts both ways so that this path can be a tough road, but that’s what I teach, being present in psyche, soma and spirit. I explain analytically about the formation and the repair of a self and somatically the establishment of being present through the foundations: grounding, boundaries, breath, emotional range, and intention to be here. In other words, how to be here now, or be at home in your body. I teach the work of Freud, Jung, Reich, Lowen, Klein, Winnicott, Bion, and Kohut, and others. I have some amazing people working with me. So my training is not just to train to help others but to transform ourselves in an ongoing, vital community.
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