Bioenergetic Analysis

For further information, you can consult the record Psychotherapy . You will find an overview of many psychotherapeutic approaches - including a painting guide to help you choose the most appropriate - and a presentation on the success factors of therapy.

Presentation

The term "bioenergetic analysis" means a form of psychotherapy developed in the United States by Alexander Lowen, the middle of the XX th century, which combines verbal and body work. It is sometimes called "bioenergy", but this term can be confusing because it is also used in other contexts.

Bioenergetic analysis considers the person as a "psychosomatic unity" what happens in the body also takes place in the mind, and vice versa. To understand the approach, we must first talk about Wilhelm Reich, a physician and former disciple of Freud, forced into exile in the United States by the Nazis.

He was the first, in 1930, introducing the concept of "unconscious body" and try to recognize the traces physical pain resulting psychic . Muscle contractions caused by our emotions, he said, leading to the formation of a "character armor" that aims to protect us from suffering, but also has the effect of preventing the flow of energy. The "emotional paralysis," he wrote at the end of his life: "You do not know what to pick up and, you know neither sell nor give, because the fundamental attitude of your body is that of restraint, and the refusal Despite thou art seized of panic when you feel the original movement of Love and Don Self 1 . '

For two years, psychiatrists and Pierrakos John Alexander Lowen, ex-patients and students Reich, continued this work to develop a therapeutic method using physical intervention further recommended that the Reich. They also gave more space to the analysis of personal history. In the late 1950s, they founded together Clinical Research Institute, which later became the International Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis (IIBA).

Fairly quickly, Pierrakos took another way to design therapy known as primordial energies ( Core Energetics ), but the two men remained in contact. Lowen, for its part, has always continued to explore the bioenergetic analysis and teaching. He has written extensively on this subject and his books - including a dozen French - were very popular in the 1970s with a young population open to psychic explorations. It is now regarded as the true father of this approach.

Alexander Lowen IIBA chaired until 1996, at the age of 86 years. Today, the institute is run by therapists intensely involved in their practice. It remains open to the discoveries of psychology and continues to evolve the approach.

Bioenergetic analysis was initially designed to treat people with serious psychiatric problems such as neurosis and problems of depression , of anxiety or sexual or relational. Thanks to its bodily, it would also be appropriate for the treatment of personality disorders (such as narcissism) and diseases of psychosomatic origin. Healthy people can find a way through a crisis, to explore their emotional life and release their potential joy and creativity.

Release the body and emotions
All humans experience conflict, lack of affection, lack of understanding, handling and other difficult situations inherent in interpersonal relationships. Children are protected from these painful experiences through psychological processes such as denial or suppression. They also use physiological mechanisms such as muscle contraction, limiting the mobility of joints. Reich had identified seven "rings tension": the eye, the mouth, the neck, the chest, the diaphragm, the abdominal and pelvis. When the contractions are frequently repeated (programmed reflex), they become chronic and fall deeply in the attitude of the body.

The analyst bioénergéticien attaches great importance to the bodily expressions, such as breathing, posture, tone of voice and the rhythm of it. These physical characteristics he reveal the structure of the defense system of a person and the type of existential struggle it leads. Body work they undertake is to first develop attention to sensations. Then, with particular breathing exercises, postures, movements and pressures manual therapist, it promotes awareness of old become chronic muscle tension. The goal is to discover the defenses we built as a child to face difficult situations and to relax and to redevelop.

Adopting positions that generate tensions - lying on his back on a large ball, chest open and clear, for example, or through some vigorous exercises may cause shouts, tears and anger - it creates conditions for d intense emotional release. It is at the same time, to recover all the energy that was somehow "occupied" to hide and keep these emotions.

As for the verbal portion, it stems from roots psychoanalytic approach (Freud, Reich, Lowen): the practitioner there is analytical work to help the person to connect his words to his body language and his personal history. The goal is to help the person to live with his emotions, considered the "spontaneous movements of the body."

The concept of "energy" is not abstract or symbolic: it is the production of energy through respiration and metabolism, and discharge energy in motion. Energy processes are spontaneous manifestations of life. More life happens to occur in a person, it has more energy. At the opposite, stiffness and chronic tension prevent these events and, in turn, reduce energy. However, the amount of energy a person has and the way she uses determine how it can deal with the situations of life. Bioénergique analysis also highlights the "rootedness" ( grounding ), a condition where the person feels in contact with his feet, his legs and ground support. This necessarily leads to a better contact with self and reality.

The bioenergetic analysis tools can adapt to everyone's processes. When necessary, the practitioner knows how to help people deal with intense emotional reactions, but the work can also be done smoothly.