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Mind-Body Problems
"Every individual in our culture suffers
from some degree of splitting... A severe degree of splitting
results in a visible break between the major segments of
the body. To the degree an individual is split, he is robbed
of his grace and denied the spiritual experience of identification
with the universal."
—
Lowen, Spirituality of the Body (1988).
In his writing, lecturing and teaching Dr. Lowen often addressed
the connection of disease processes and physical symptoms
to psychological issues and physical/energetic holding patterns
in the body. This section of the website presents a variety
of direct quotes from Lowen to introduce the way he thought,
wrote and talked about psychosomatic (mind/body) issues.
This page also offers a link to a forum for people to share
their own vignettes on how Lowen's Bioenergetic approach has
helped them in dealing with or understanding physical symptoms
and/or disease in their own lives.
Please feel free to share your story.
Quotations from Dr. Lowen’s Writings:
Chronic muscular tensions
“Chronic muscular tensions serve to suppress forbidden
and dangerous impulses from consciousness and expression.
They are, in effect, locked up so that one need not spend
conscious energy guarding against them. It is like imprisoning
a dangerous criminal who can be guarded with less energy once
he is behind bars. But no prison is fully escape proof. And
no superego regardless of how strong can free the person from
the possible danger that the suppressed impulse may break
out. This impulse is an expression of the person's life force
and is, therefore, constantly seeking release. Any breakdown
of the defensive structure due either to additional stress
or other forces can raise the possibility of such a release.
That possibility may be strong enough to evoke the original
fear and throw the body into a state of distress. It is this
possibility that makes the discussion of emotional conflicts
so stressful for many people. Shocks of this kind, if repeated
or intense enough, will upset a person's adaptation, undermine
his resistance and leave him open to breakdown and illness.”
From Lowen, The Voice of the Body (2005), p.16.
Cancer
"I see cancer as frozen energy. Over-stimulation
and over-excitation of an area of the body is connected with
unreleased emotional charge. Excess energy that is not discharged
leads to decay, similar to the way the ocean leaves debris
at low tide. Vibration removes the body's decay just as the
tide removes the ocean's debris. Strong vibrations and crying
awaken the body's innate healing."
F rom Lowen, Honoring the Body (2004), pp. 241-242.
Heart Attack
“…panic is the emotional attitude of persons
who develop heart attacks. That panic is expressed in the
rigid, over-inflated chest, and is the feeling of being trapped.
Although we say "I feel trapped," it is more accurate
to say "I feel panic because I sense that I am trapped."
However, the rigidity of the chest wall which constitutes
the trap and creates the state of panic is at the same time
a defense against the perception of the panic. The armoring
negates the person's vulnerability and panic while it expresses
both.”
From Lowen, The Voice of the Body (2005), p. 22.
Allergies
“Over-reaction by the body to "comparatively
innocuous injuries" is seen in allergies. Anyone who
has suffered from hay fever knows how violently the body can
react to a minor irritant which pollen is. But pollen is only
the precipitating cause whose action is similar to the match
that lights the fuse. The explosive substance is the predisposing
cause. In the case of hay fever this is the hypersensitivity
of the tissues which is due to the continuing stress they
are under. That stress is caused by the suppression of crying
which occurred because of shock. A parent's angry tones ordering
a child to stop crying can come as a shock to the organism.
This shock will lead to a conflict between the need to cry
and the fear of crying. If this conflict is active at the
time pollen is in the air, the tissues will become sensitized
to it. But to understand the hay fever reaction we must see
it as an attempt to discharge the underlying tension and not
as a simple response to the irritant. As long as the conflict
is alive, pollen will be able to set off the hay fever reaction.
Antihistamines prevent the hay fever reaction by drying out
the mucous membranes and so de-activating the conflict by
deadening the tissues.”
From Lowen, Voice of the Body (2005) , p. 26.
Arthritis
“Arthritis is a disturbance of the motility of an
organism. The arthritic joint is literally frozen due either
to the pain of the inflammatory process or to degenerative
processes in the articular surfaces. But the inflammation
and the degeneration are both secondary phenomena. The disturbance
in motility actually precedes the arthritic condition. We
know from our study of persons with this condition that they
have in their personality a strong conflict about the expression
of aggressive impulses. This conflict is just under the surface
in contrast to masochistic individuals where it is more deeply
suppressed. The arthritic person tends to have a rigid character
structure although masochistic tendencies are present. There
may even be a marked schizoid element in the personality.
It is the rigidity which predisposes the person to arthritis.
For example, in hands which have some arthritis, one finds
a tendency for contracture in flexion of the fingers. The
arthritic hand in its contracted state often resembles a claw.
One can surmise that the unconscious blocking of the impulse
to claw is what creates the contraction.”
From Lowen, The Voice of the Body (2005), p. 27.
Ulcerative Colitis
“The withdrawal of energy from the lower gut is
associated with the emotion of fear. The basis for this statement
is the language of the body. In this language "to have
guts" is to have courage. However, since everyone has
"guts," the expression makes sense only if it refers
to the feeling of the guts. A person who feels his guts has
courage, the person who doesn't is a coward, that is, frightened.
Sensing or sensation is a function of the energetic charge.
Thus, when a person is very frightened, "scared shitless,"
as the expression goes, energy is withdrawn from the guts.
This constitutes a state of shock in the abdomen. The rebound
or return of energy and blood produces the bloody diarrhea
of ulcerative colitis. This reaction is due to the fact that
the "shocked" state of the mucous lining of the
gut cannot hold the returning charged fluid which then pours
into the colon together with the sloughed-off lining of the
gut. In less severe cases, the result is a mucous colitis.”
From Lowen, The Voice of the Body (2005), p. 38.
Please click here
to visit the Mind-Body Unity and Health Forum.
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