The Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training Program begins in rather less than a month and as Tim and I are getting ready and refining the curriculum it’s additionally making me take into consideration a few of the psychological, non secular and philosophical roots and influences that inform what and the way we train.
Over the subsequent week or so I need to share with you the assorted components of my lineage by way of how I strategy this expressive arts work. And what you’ll be able to be taught from me by taking part on this program.
I’ve been instructing the intuitive portray course of for nearly 28 years however I additionally had a profession as a psychotherapist and bodyworker that started over 45 years in the past. And I launched into my quest to heal myself ( which is the place all these quests finally start) 51 years in the past!
Which suggests I’ve been on this line of labor associated to therapeutic and private progress for a VERY very long time.
All of it started after I was nineteen years outdated and I used to be in my first yr of school, battling despair. I had gone to remedy for just a few periods with a man who sat behind a giant wood desk, taking notes on a yellow pad of paper, often falling asleep and on the finish of something I shared would say to me one thing alongside the strains of: “Don’t fear. Someday you’ll get married and have children after which the whole lot can be OK.”
It didn’t take me lengthy to determine that this “remedy” wasn’t going to actually give me what I wanted.
Round that point that I stumbled upon a e book within the College Of Pittsburgh e book retailer titled Depression And The Body by Alexander Lowen. Alexander Lowen had developed an strategy to psychological and emotional therapeutic known as Bioenergetics which acknowledged that unconscious feelings could possibly be blocked and held within the physique as pressure. And until these tensions and feelings could possibly be emancipated and deeply felt nothing would ever actually change. The physique would proceed to carry onto any psychological patterns that an individual was making an attempt to rework , as a result of on many ranges our physique IS the unconscious.
He taught folks learn how to launch these tense locations of bodily holding via numerous physique positions and postures that have been designed to assist open up the breath, hips, pelvis, head and neck. He developed a method to encourage his shoppers to get grounded by releasing up the vitality within the legs. However he additionally inspired emotional and energetic launch via sure sorts of proscribed workouts, like making faces, and sounds. He was a giant fan of serving to of us launch aggression and frustration although mendacity on their backs and kicking energetically on a mattress, encouraging their interior little one to throw an precise tantrum.
I all the time consider him because the founding father of expressing anger via the 70’s encounter group strategy of pounding pillows.
Studying this e book felt like a complete revelation and a method ahead by way of my emotional struggles. For sure, there weren’t too many bioenergetic therapists situated within the working class city of Pittsburgh, PA. However I did discover a couple who have been providing weekend physique primarily based, encounter group kind retreats at a therapeutic retreat middle in Mays Touchdown, New Jersey.
I attended a few these retreats and obtained my first style of sitting in a circle with other people being open and sincere and emotionally susceptible. And naturally, I used to be hooked. Just about for all times.
This expertise of working with the physique, releasing feelings and doing that in a supportive group atmosphere left me hungry for extra. And it catalyzed my resolution to depart the provincial atmosphere of the city midwest and make my solution to the choice therapeutic promised land of California.
As soon as I obtained to California I didn’t waste any time in pursuing my ardour for not solely therapeutic outdated childhood wounds but in addition studying learn how to dwell life in a brand new and rather more fulfilling method.
I instantly signed up for a 6 month coaching to develop into a therapeutic massage therapist which continued my exploration of how the physique is integral to the method of turning into extra totally alive.
And never too lengthy after that, I found a spot known as The Therapeutic Ourselves Heart, situated in Berkeley California that provided courses, workshops and retreats utilizing each Bioenergetics in a group group course of setting but in addition utilized one thing known as Reichian breathwork as one in all their major therapeutic instruments.
It turned out that Alexander Lowen was a scholar of a German psychoanalyst named Wilhelm Reich, who himself was a scholar of Freuds. And whereas Freud was making an attempt to know human psychology by exploring the thoughts, Reich was exploring the mysteries of the physique and the way our deepest feelings and traumas get saved as tightness and pressure in our muscle groups, tissues and nervous system. This ordinary pressure and holding was one thing he known as physique armoring. And he developed a system for working instantly with this armoring to be able to heal psychological trauma and emotional points, that included working with the breath.
So in some ways he’s the daddy of the multitude of physique therapies like Somatic Experiencing which are serving to folks heal from trauma as we speak.
Throughout my time at Therapeutic Ourselves I not solely engaged with these physique primarily based practices for my very own private therapeutic however I additionally studied and educated to show Bio-energetics and to develop into a Reichian breathworker.
I taught weekly Bioenergetics courses for years and had a personal follow working with people and teams, guiding them via breathwork periods and holding house for them as they navigated their method via physique primarily based pressure, blockages and tough feelings. And thru that course of serving to them to open up right into a larger expertise of vitality and aliveness.
As I continued on my private {and professional} journey into the world of psychological and emotional therapeutic I finally developed abilities as a psychotherapist, guiding folks into the depth of their interior worlds utilizing instinct, language and the psychotherapeutic relationship. However I all the time included my understanding of the position of the physique in therapeutic as I labored with folks’s hearts and souls and minds.
Whilst I branched out into facilitating remedy teams I might all the time start our group course of periods with some form of embodied expressive motion to assist folks join with the current second and with what was most actual and alive by way of their somatic expertise.
That physique primarily based understanding of the human soul and psyche has been a part of my work for nearly half a century and I continued to hold that deep understanding and depth of expertise into facilitating my expressive arts intuitive portray courses.
Using these embodiment practices and mixing them with intuitive portray is definitely fairly distinctive to how I do that work.
And is one thing that I’ll fortunately train and share with you in case you come into my Wild Coronary heart Expressive Arts Trainer Coaching program!!!
So if this manner of making and therapeutic sounds attention-grabbing and thrilling to you contemplate becoming a member of us for the subsequent spherical of the Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training Program Online.
For more information on the upcoming instructor coaching program and to enroll in a free informational interview with Tim and I click on on the picture beneath:
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