Reconnecting to the body

[youngshinzen]

This will be a journey of reconnecting to my body. How do I know that I need to reconnect?

Three years ago I participated in a body oriented therapy called bioenergetics. I did it in a group setting for half a year and then went on a workshop with the group for a weekend. A lot of body contact, expressive exercises and open communication connected me more and more to my emotions.

After the last exercise on the last day I screamed out the "main fear" on my chest, which made the heart open up and I reconnected with my body so deeply that I could clearly feel what I wanted and what not. I realised for the first time how dissociated I was. I had reconnected to my emotional body and from what I felt, it was stuck at 5 years of age.

Many of the anxieties and the inability to set boundaries were temporarily healed and I felt deeply rooted and safe within my body. After a few days though, the inner muscular tension returned and I went back to my previous state of dissociation and dullness. 

The chronic muscular tensions which suppress emotions from being felt are called "muscle armour" in bioenergetics. Nowadays I am able to relax them partially through body awareness, but I want to support the process through exercises an achieve the result of the workshop to evolve emotionally from that point on.

For the start of this journey I will do bioenergetic exercises from the book "The way to vibrant health" by the founder of bioenergetics Alexander Lowen. I will document the exercises here and describe how they helped. According to his book "Betrayal of the body", I‘d categorise myself in the "schizoid character structure" and I’ll highlight the exercises which help the most in this case. 

A huge part of this journey is also meditation and body relaxation laying down. I do both in total for 1 hour daily. Depending on what I need I vary the time of sitting meditation and laying down, releasing tension and emotions.

I did many routines in the past, but instead of doing this new project daily, I want to leave it open and free. I’m only setting the limit that I can do one new exercise per day. Since these chronic tensions stem from resistance and neurotic behaviour I want to decrease my control as much as possible. This will also help diminish these "neurotic holding patterns".

Follow me on this journey back to the body and enjoy!