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BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY
Dr. Bell practices a type of body psychotherapy (Bioenergetic Analysis)
that is an approved psychotherapeutic method in counseling and psychology
graduate schools. Most graduate schools do not teach the techniques but
introduce the theory and concept of body psychotherapy in graduate
classes. The therapy is so advanced in its ability to encounter the
individual at the deepest psychotherapeutic level that it takes years to
be a Bioenergetic Analyst. It is taught only in private analytic
institutes of bioenergetic analysis.
BIOENERGETIC ANALYSIS
Bioenergetic therapy differs from traditional talk therapy in several
ways. The Bioenergetic therapist pays attention to the body, its feeling
and lack of feeling, its movement and lack of movement and how it relates
to ones personal history and the way each person developed. As persons
begin to understand and experience how their history may have restricted
their contact with themselves and their lack of joy in their lives they
begin to grieve. The quality of the grief process is deeper and more
complete when it is experienced in the body. Traditional talk therapy may
bring to surface an understanding of ones history and feelings of loss
about childhood experiences but ends there. Talk therapy is generally
engaging the left brain, a linear and language oriented process. The
client is often left with a an experience of helplessness often moving
through their lives experiencing more of their brokenness. A full
experience of the grief must emerge for the person to be complete. For a
grief process to be complete a person must move through their helplessness
and begin to reclaim their lives in a new and empowered way. We can be
empowered by the grieving if it is not cut short and but felt in the body
in a full experience. Bioenergetic therapy helps the stages of anger and
aggression to be addressed at a very deep level in the body. As the
emergence of ones anger is supported and worked with at a body level one
can reclaim their lost power and emerge whole. The emergence of ones power
and wholeness maximizes their vitality and human potential. Alexander
Lowen, the father of Bioenergetic Analysis states, “ Neurosis is the fear
of life; the neurotic body can only tolerate a limited degree of aliveness
and feeling. Reducing muscular tension expands one’s capacity for feeling
and aliveness.”
BIOENERGETIC EXERCISE
In the therapy we may use an exercise to address the tension
held in the body. However, the exercises alone are extremely helpful
therapeutically. Dr. Bell offers a regular bioenergetics exercise class to
teach the exercises that enliven the body. Comments from class
participants about the exercise are that they look forward to the class
every week and feel it changes their whole way of being in the world. They
feel more grounded, secure, serene, and free of stress. Many of the
participants after a period of time find that they start integrating the
exercises into their daily lives. Some participants that have had chronic
pain because of muscle tension are freed from the pain. They begin to feel
things in their body that they have never felt before and realize the
positive emotional changes that result. Many of the exercises come from
years of bioenergetic bodywork but some come from traditions such as yoga
and thi chi.
Learn more About Dr. Bell's Bioenergetic Exercise Class |