Working With The Body As A Pathway To The Mind - Yoga Overview

Written by Tammie Byram Fowles, PhD, LISW-CP

THE RUBENFELD METHOD

Ilana Rubenfeld, a former professional musician turned bodywork counselor/teacher, has led over 800 workshops, presented at hundreds of conferences, and has established a center in New York where she offers a three year training program. She also serves on the faculties of New York University Continuing Education and the Graduate School of Social Work, the Open Center in New York, the Omega Institute, and has served on the faculty of the Eslan Institute for over 20 years.

Rubenfeld perceives every human being as a unique psychophysical pattern, possessing a distinct emotional agenda with an expression of its very own. According to Rubenfeld, the body serves as a functional metaphor and practical tool for reaching hidden levels of discord and revealing them to the client's awareness. The Rubenfeld practitioner assists the client to re-enter the original experience of an intense emotional event, rather than search out reasons for stress and disease.

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This is accomplished through subtle touch and nonintrusive collaboration with the client, where the practitioner intuitively helps to unleash negative emotions and guides the individual's inborn self-healing abilities. "Disease is but a message revealing a more subtle, inner message," claims Rubenfeld.

It is by using both real and imagined movement, in addition to intentional touch of the practitioner with the client's consent, that subtle changes take place in the nervous system, whereby deeper levels of meaning and emotion become more accessible over time.

Rubenfeld stresses the importance of the client taking the physical aspects of life into account by caring for the body. Her primary goal is to help individuals become their own therapists by assisting them to learn how to more effectively release and resolve emotions in everyday life. Rubenfeld maintains that once we learn to focus our awareness, we are able to more spontaneously modify habitual behaviors, as well as release and access stored memories.

BIOENERGETICS

Edward W. L. Smith, who was influenced greatly by the work of Wilhelm Reich and Frederick Perls, wrote, The Body in Psychotherapy (1985). In his book, Smith describes techniques he believes facilitates body awareness in his clients. In utilizing these techniques, the therapist offers some relatively simple instructions, while the client's task is to direct attention and allow awareness to develop. This awareness provides the client and therapist with information regarding areas of the client's body of "diminished aliveness" or "blocks in the flow of that aliveness." Body awareness exercises also assist the client in taking a more active role in therapy, according to Smith, as it mobilizes him or her to take responsibility as the client is the ultimate source of information on him or herself in the therapy. The most important advantage perhaps to body awareness work says Smith, is that it can locate the precise locus for a body technique. The spot of tension or zone of heat provides the therapist with a map of the client's energy blocks and status.

There are several body phenomena which are looked for in body awareness work. Among such phenomena are hot spots, cold spots, tension, pain, numbness, paresthesias (prickling or tingling of the skin), vibrations and energy streamings.

Hot spots are areas on the surface of the skin which feel hot relative to surrounding areas. These "spots," according to Smith, may represent an area where energy has accumulated because of the individual's charging then holding energy in the hot area of the body, and thus not allowing it to be processed or discharged. Cold spots, on the other hand, Smith suggests, are areas on the body from which energy has been withdrawn, resulting in these areas being "deadened". Smith hypothesizes that these cold spots result from an individual's withdrawal of energy from an area which is held from full aliveness in order to protect the individual from some threat. "Going dead", says Smith, is a means of avoiding the aliveness which is forbidden by the unhealthy "introject" operating in the individual's dynamics. Smith asserts that this interpretation of hot spots appears to be clinically supported in the case, even of Raynaud's disease, a disease involving the constriction of blood vessels causing impaired circulation in the hands, feet, nose and ears.

Smith cites biofeedback literature providing evidence of the ability of individuals to learn voluntary control of skin temperature, pointing out that this very mechanism could operate on an unconscious level. Further, he refers to our "lived language" in support for attributing psychobiological meaning to hot and cold spots. For instance, when explaining a potential bride or groom's emerging hesitancy to go through with the wedding, the term, "cold feet" is often used. Other such terms are "the cold shoulder", hot headed", "hot under the collar", etc.

Smith views tension as the direct subjective experience of body armor.

"Where one feels tense is where one is contracting a muscle or group of muscles to avoid the flow of a contact/withdrawal cycle.

If tension is strong enough and long enough in duration, pain is experienced; often, tension and pain are experienced together.