PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences

ISSN 2454-5899

Victoria Dunaeva, 2018

Volume 4 Issue 2, pp.793-799
Date of Publication: 27th August 2018
DOI-https://dx.doi.org/10.20319/pijss.2018.42.793799
This paper can be cited as: Dunaeva, V. (2018). Study of Bodily Awareness during A Psychological
Inquiry. PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences, 4(2), 793-799.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ or send a
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STUDY OF BODILY AWARENESS DURING A

PSYCHOLOGICAL INQUIRY

Victoria Dunaeva
Activus Aspectus. Innovative Laboratory, Warsaw, Poland
[email protected]

Abstract
In the last few decades there have been an increasing number of studies on mental
health and emotional well-being and their influence on physical health. According to this
approach, physical problems often manifest unexpressed hidden inner conflicts. Psychologists
increasingly apply their client's awareness of bodily sensations as a tool for therapy. In my
paper I would like to present one of such psychological methods named focusing which I use in
my practice as a clinical psychologist. Focusing method was elaborated by Eugene Gendlin,
American philosopher, who collaborated with the founder of person-centered therapy Carl
Rogers. Gendlin’s research showed that positive change in psychotherapy depended on client’s
ability to experience bodily reaction of the topics discussed during therapy. In my practice I
include Focusing method into my own system based on the idea that we can influence our
healing process by discovering inner resources. It becomes possible when we get rid of feeling
guilty and feeling of "being wrong" and overcome a negative self-image created as a result of
adverse childhood .I have found that the awareness and verbalization of negative feelings
facilitate the process of releasing emotional suffering from the memory of the body. Specific
bodily responses can lead to discovering the true reasons of emotional conflicts. I would like
also to show how I combine the Focusing approach with another psychological method based
on the connection of body and mind, Recall Healing elaborated by Canadian expert in holistic
approach to health Gilbert Renaud.

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Keywords
Focusing, Emotional Conflict, Body Awareness, Felt Sense, Recall Healing

1. Introduction
What does the connection between the psyche and physical health really mean? How can
we use bodily awareness for solving emotional problems? When we are talking about bodily
awareness, we usually include into that notion our conscious perception of body sensations, our
breathing, way of movement, posturing, sitting, gesticulation. However, it has a deeper meaning.
We become aware of our body, when we feel it as a part of the self, and when we learn to read
the signs of our body for the improvement of our well-being.
Deepak Chopra, the founder of the popular Center for Wellbeing, believes that mind-
body connection is so flexible that it can be adapt not only to adversity, but also to perversity -
the perversity of turning our back on what Nature has designed us to do, which is to remain in
balance. Chopra underlines that when "we push our body to the point of exhaustion and ignore
the body signals of distress, we are flouting the wisdom inside every cell" (Chopra, D. &. Tanzi,
R., 2015).
Christian Fleche, a psychotherapist and the author of best-seller “Your body knows how
to heal you”, suggests that “disease is a word expressed by body” (Fleche, 2015). When we
reveal our emotional conflict on the level of words, gesticulation, symbolic activity, we are able
to release ourselves from it.
According to Ewa Danuta Bialek, the founder of the Institute of Psychosynthesis in
Poland, the particular parts of body that don't function properly, may represent the parts of our
life which are connected with a great amount of negative emotions. (Bialek, 2013). Sometimes
it's not difficult to find an analogy between tension headache of a woman and her complicated
family situation which she perceives as an unsolvable problem and, therefore, unbearable for her.
"Our body is a kind of map of consciousness" - Ewa Bialek believes. When we discover
and release tension in particular parts of our body, we can understand how to get rid of our
negative feelings. It is an active process of bodily awareness and self-awareness, leading to
wellbeing and life success.
However, trauma in childhood can affect both our physical and mental health and limit
our self- and bodily-awareness.
Clinical professor of medicine Vincent Felitti claims that people who experienced
childhood trauma are more likely to attempt suicide, become drug users and/or have eating
disorders. (Felitti, 2015)

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Dr Deborach Lee underlines that the main reason of destructive and profound influence
of childhood traumas is the loss of feeling of safeness. (Lee, & James, 2012).
Most people who have experienced trauma confess to having problems with themselves,
suffering from feeling ashamed, frightened, isolated, and useless. People affected by trauma tend
to feel unsafe in their bodies (Lee,& James, 2012).
However, as many studies show, each of us has a hidden potential to contact natural
resources we can use to heal our emotional wounds ((Frederickson, 2017). The problem appears
when we don't know how to access them. Buddhism, for example, has elaborated sophisticated
practice for developing consciousness. Nowadays, western psychology has found effective new
ways to obtain the power of our inner resources (Smith, 2018). A key element of contemporary
therapeutic practice is body awareness meant as an inseparable aspect of embodied self-
awareness.
The purpose of this paper is stimulating the discussion on mind-body approaches, in
particular, Recall Healing and Focusing method.

2. The Recall Healing Method

Among the contemporary psychological methods aimed at revealing emotional trauma
which is related to childhood experience, it is important to mention Recall Healing. The author
of this approach Gilbert Renaud believes that we express ourselves through our diseases. The
reaction of our body can show us what kind of emotional problems we have. Renaud focuses on
the healing power of expressing emotions: "In Recall Healing we work at identifying and solving
the emotional trauma behind the condition or behavior" (Renaud, 2017).
Deep unsolved emotional conflicts, especially when they have roots in our childhood,
cause suffering and illness often becomes the automatic brain’s response to it. Due to Gilbert
Renaud, most diseases appear as a result of the “biological correspondence” between the definite
part of the brain that controls definite organ and the organ controlled (Gilbert Renaud, 2014).
When we manage to "recall" what has really happened with us and what our true
emotional conflict is, we become aware how to find a practical solution for it. In that moment we
stop feeling as a "subject" to our disease. Moreover, we start to observe how the reaction of our
body reflects our negative emotions.
Practicing Recall Healing method, I am convinced that signs of disease and body
sensations help to explain possible the emotional conflicts of a person.
As an example, my client, 29 years old woman had syringomas on her neck and couldn't
get rid of it for 7 years, using all possible means. Syringoma is characterized by multiple small

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bumps on the skin which is generally harmless; however it is visible and doesn’t look healthy.
My client complained also about a lack of physical power, low mood and unreasonable panic
attacks.
Using Recall Healing method, I found that syringomas on the neck and the lack of life
energy of my client were invoked by a repressed memory about a car accident in which her close
friend died... due to broken neck. Another identified reason was the memory about her mother
who often had red blemishes on her neck after quarrelilng with her husband. We come to the
conclusion that the childhood of my client was connected with complicated parental relations,
her phobias and feeling of loneliness. When she stopped feeling like a small girl who couldn't
protect herself, she discovered additional energy within. We also worked on her trauma related
to the death of her friend and as a result, she started to think about life with less fear.
The above mentioned Recall Healing method can be effective for discovering the
symbolic meaning of one's health troubles and the connection between a definite disease, bodily
reaction and an emotional experience. There are special tools for it such as a questionnaire, a life
time line, genealogical tree and analysis of family resemblance in particular fields. I have noticed
that Recall Healing method especially suits sensitive, attentive and thoughtful persons.
Working with clients suffering from depression, anxiety and fatigue syndrome I am often
using, besides Recall Healing, Focusing method.

3. Focusing Method
Founder of that popular self-actualization technique Eugene Gendlin, was inspired with
Western philosophical tradition (among others phenomenology) based on working with
awareness in the present moment. Being an American psychologist and philosopher, he worked
together with Carl Rogers, famous author of humanistic psychology.
During his longtime practice of psychotherapy, Gendlin noticed that the effectiveness of
work with patients depends significantly on their ability to listen to their body. When he
managed to teach especially stuck clients to “find their inner contact”, he observed a big progress
in their psychological treatment. That connection between mind and body he called a "felt
sense" (Gendlin, 1998).
Eugene Gendlin suggests that when we cannot find answers for important questions in the
mind, we can find them thanks to special sensations in our bodies. We know much more than we
believe we do.
Gendlin elaborated the procedure how we can access bodily knowledge. Through
applying signs of the body, asking the "right" questions and creating an appropriate atmosphere

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Gendlin showed his patients the path to understanding their own true emotions. Finding "felt
sense" is only the first step of Focusing technique. It is very important to bring any kind of inner
experience - even when it is unclear - into expression in order to draw that experience into
articulation.
According to Gendlin, clients should have enough time for concentration on body signs
and searching for images or words that resonate with the inner “felt sense” of their life troubles
(Gendlin, 2018). In the moment their emotions and "felt meanings" become clearer, they receive
new insights, understanding and solution for their problems.
Sometimes we feel trapped with analyzing our complicated life situations. Involvement in
deeper, bodily-felt inquiry about how those situations influence our well-being and where there
are possible ways out, allows us to identify things which were "unseen" for us before.
As for example. My client, a 45 year old woman living with her husband, an aggressive
psychological type, wanted to change her occupational field, but she wasn't sure about her
choice. She was annoyed because her husband didn't agree with her decision and threatened her
with divorce. She didn't know if she could manage to live alone. She was worried whether or not
she "could allow herself" to change something in her life. She felt completely destroyed, had
insomnia and suffered from frequent tension headache. When I invited her to "visit” her
"helplessness" in her body, she noticed a "stuck" neck and strange weakness in her arms. When
she remained with that sensation for some time, she felt loneliness and sadness. The word
"isolation" appeared in her mind and it reflected the felt sense of her present situation, in
particular her personal life. She found that the same word is appropriate for her attitude to
herself. Then she remembered that in her childhood her father was often angry with her and
made her sit down without movement and listen to him very attentively. She was a very shy and
uncommunicative child. During our session she admitted that she had never talked about her true
feelings, emotions and wishes. She even felt guilty when she had strong desires and usually she
repressed most of them. She understood that she used to be "unmoved", passive and too
conforming. However, when she discovered that she deeply disagreed with her condition and she
suffered from loneliness in her marriage, she realized how important it was for her to change her
life. She wanted to leave her accountant job position and work as a florist in her friend's flower
shop. When she visualized that, she noticed a lot of energy and her body, as she said, wanted to
move and to dance. That way Focusing technique helped her to discover what she was longing
for.
During our session I also used Recall Healing method, showing my patient that both
insomnia and tension headache reflected her emotional suffering due to her incapacity to make

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decisions for herself. On the other hand, they manifested her inner "fight" with her father who, as
she believed, didn't love her enough, and with her husband, who also didn't care about her.
Following Recall Healing approach, we discovered the possible reason of her emotional block.
Her mother being pregnant with her, felt trapped, because she didn't know if the father sincerely
wanted to marry her. She also had doubts about if she really wanted to be with him. Discovering
that she had almost the same feelings as her mother had during her marriage, my client was able
"see" that she had a choice and could take responsibility for own life.

4. Conclusions
It should be mentioned that Eugene Gendlin didn't copyright the terms "Focusing" and
"felt sense", because according to him that technique works especially well in combination with
other psychological methods. Notion of "felt sense" is used, for instance, in Somatic
Experiencing, elaborated by therapist Peter Levine for healing post-traumatic stress disorders.
To conclude, nowadays we are living under conditions that often
create excessive stress. The only positive outcome of that is in fact that we become more
sensitive to the signs of our bodies.
Indeed, bodily awareness has become the ground of mind/body psychological
contemporary concepts and therapies, a key element for revealing hidden emotional blocks and
negative emotions.
The effectiveness of such kind of therapy can be explained also by the effect of
"surprising" which makes clients open to new body sensations and mental discovering.
Depression, anxiety, fatigue syndrome and especially psychosomatic diseases often limit us to
believe in ourselves and to find another approach to solving problems seems to be intractable.
Experiencing new, unexpected psychological techniques can help us to reveal our profound
emotional conflicts. As Carl Jung wrote, "Your vision becomes clear only when you can look
into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes" (Jung, 1964).

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Chopra, D & Tanzi, R.. (2015). Super genes. The hidden key to total well-being. London, 236.
Felitti, Vincent. How Childhood Trauma Can Make You A Sick Adult.
http://bigthink.com/videos/vincent-felitti-on-childhood-trauma

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Fleche, Christian. (2015). Your body knows how to heal you. Warsaw: Medium, 42.
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