A bioenergetic intervention that I used with a client

Using Lowenian ideas of the body holding trauma, this is was a brief intervention I used to enable a client to move forward.

A client, G, often said he was stuck and had no confidence. His mother had always taken his part at primary school and as he grew older had a group of far bigger friends to defend him. G said he’d never learned to stand up for himself and only questioned why someone’s behaviour was attacking him. Any of the “pretend” scenarios we worked with, left G helpless and generally sitting rather than being able to stand to defend himself. He said he’d never learned how to do this independently and just wanted to understand why he was being attacked and threatened.

Despite doing grounding and allowing some anger to be expressed by wringing a towel or using the towel to bang on a chair, I still had a sense that G was stuck.

Getting him to stand up, I “saw” that his feet were stuck firmly on the ground. Kneeling behind him I held onto his feet and asked him to walk forward slowly. Initially G found had difficulty making the big effort to take a step. He did this, keeping his balance as though he was walking through mud and eventually pulling me along the carpet as he moved forward. We repeated this exercise a few times with G becoming excited that he no longer felt stuck.

Penny Currier | https://bioenergetics.org.nz