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Bodyspace Weekend and Weekly Ongoing Groups
Bodyspace weekend/weekly groups draw upon three traditions of personal
development. The Bodyspace 'tree' has energetic roots, a psychodynamic trunk
and psychodramatic branches.
BIOENERGETICS
A body-oriented therapy that emphasises the energetic processes of
breathing, movement, feeling, sexuality and self-expression, and addresses
interruptions of these life functions, especially through patterns of chronic
muscular tension. The exuberant but grounded bioenergetic body with a belly
and a heart is the inspiration for the Bodyspace logo.
PSYCHODYNAMICS
Articulates the active nature of unconscious forces and fantasies, desires
in conflict, defence mechanisms and developmental phases. The endeavour, in
the spirit of the Delphic injunction to "Know Thyself", is to
understand both the relationships between different parts of the psyche or
self and relations with others.
PSYCHODRAMA
A playful action-based form of groupwork that promotes spontaneity and
empathy, invites you to "show us" rather than "tell us",
yet no acting skills are required. The therapeutic space is viewed as a
theatre in which peoples sensations, emotions, images and ideas through
enactment become the key to recovery of significant memories, to deepening of
insight and to rehearsal of new capacities for relating.
Bodyspace Groups
- Bodyspace groups work simultaneously with four dynamics: group dynamics,
role dynamics, body dynamics and transference dynamics. Thus Bodyspace
groups feature action methods (from Humanistic Psychology) within a
psychodynamic frame
- Bodyspace groups aim to integrate body sensations, emotional
expressions, fantasy/dreaming and cognitive understanding within a
framework of the meaning all these dimensions of being have for the
individual.
- Bodyspace groups generally begin with active, movement-based bodywork
followed by a go-round phase of checking in with responses to this, with
references to carried-over process and claims for the group's further
attention. The group then proceeds into a longer unstructured phase known
as 'open group time'.
- Bodyspace groups hold the space for the actual concrete body along with
its sensations, emotions and impulses to become an organ of experience, for
awareness of feeling to precede communication. DH Lawrence wrote, "The
body's life is the life of sensations and emotions…All the emotions
belong to the body and are only recognised by the mind." Bodyspace
subverts the consensual drift in psychotherapy towards cerebralized
procedures and "aboutism" (disconnected speech).
- The discourse within a Bodyspace group takes in body language, body
image and body structure, homes in on the bodily aspects of issues of
identity and differentiation and holds in focus the ways in which bodily
events are symbolised.
- Besides its value in supporting whole person presence and the emergence
of joie de vivre bodywork has two specific justifications that argue for
its indispensability (i) it provides transitional structures or 'bridges'
to and from pre-verbal spaces where no words can be found until after a
bridging has occurred (ii) with actual trauma (shock) from any time in a
person's life the primary defences involved are often physiological rather
than psychological and are therefore more responsive to body-based
interventions.
- Bodyspace groups address the main domains of ordinary living - love and
work, intimacy and creativity, cultivating the capacities to think with
feeling and to feel thoughtfully, promoting an articulate, honest and at
times passionate encounter between participants. The mode is one of
being-with as opposed to doing-to. Ground rules and a working contract
safeguard confidentiality and continuity.
- Bodyspace groups are also a response to the contemporary dearth of
organic community. Many of the 'natural' or traditional groupings
intermediate between mass society and the isolated individual eg families,
clubs, churches, political parties fail to perform therapeutic functions
for their members. This leaves an acute need for groups where personal
issues can be worked through.
- The term Bodyspace is replete with meaning and should not be misread as
a facile market-driven exercise in branding. A schizoid (bodymind split)
culture carries deep fears about the emotional body and therefore has need
of 'spaces' within which this schiz/schism can safely heal. Bodyspace
weekly and weekend groups are a manifestation of this project and are
appropriately sited in the supportive environment of London's Open Centre,
a growth centre with its roots in the Human Potential movement of the
1970s. See www.opencentre.com.
- Bodyspace carries forwards and reinvents Wilhelm Reich's preoccupation
with the cultural and political role of psychotherapeutic praxis, see www.erthworks.co.uk,
while heeding Norman Mailer's qualification of psychoanalysis as a process
of attrition in which the worn out wear others out.
- The normalising tendencies within groups are balanced in Bodyspace
groupwork by the fostering of deconstructive attitudes. There is also a
countercultural emphasis (eg the behavioural challenge of bioenergetic
bodywork is distinctly counter cultural) on human potential without the
often concurrent New Age transformational hype (whereby meaning is
delivered rather than authentically discovered and promises are made which
the typically transient teacher cannot possibly deliver).
- Bodyspace is a vehicle for humanistic values of self-actualisation and
personal authenticity, and is explicitly in tension with both the adaptive
and normalizing ethos of the consumer/patient with medical provider and the
tokenism and image-driven, profit-centred, selective accountability of
market values.
- Over the last twenty years more than one thousand five hundred people have
participated, many for a period of several years, in Bodyspace weekly and
weekend groups. Bodyspace is here to stay.
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