The Pilates and yoga world talks about the core as a fundamental element of the health of the human body. In yogic tradition the bandhas are the energetic equivalent to the core, and in Pilates one focuses on the inner muscles that underlie the superficial ones and have essential role in the healthy holding of the body and containing the inner organs. The whole body’s alignment and ability to move in an effective and sustainable way depends on this core. When you work out, practice asanas in yoga or strengthen your core muscles in Pilates, you are working on this core.
In psychoanalytic therapy there is something very similar happening. Dependent on the health of the structure of the psyche- - just as dependent on your body’s health in physical exercise – you will need to recreate the structure by recognizing, finding, strengthening and maintaining your core, your inner self. Throughout our lives we have gone through many experiences that have had strong impact on us. These impacts shape our core understanding of who we are. Who we are is in relation to others. Thus others, or the outside environment affects who we are at our core. This core develops throughout our lives, some stages of life having more permanent effects and some less important or less lasting ones.
About the psychic core it is said that it has been influenced a great deal in early childhood when our original interpersonal patterns were shaped, formed, molded and established. This can happen later in life as well, especially if we go through some traumatic influences. These traumas - whether in the word’s most often used sense, when something traumatic happened to us, but it is also true for other, major influences that leave permanent marks on us.
Again, the parallel with the physical body, we can say that our physical build gets created and recreated by such events as playing a certain sport or musical instrument for an extended period of time, or using our body regularly in a certain way, like driving. For women pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding can have similar long lasting effects on their bodies. The examples are endless and they surround us all the time.
The same way it happens to our inner psychic core as well. It gets molded and shaped throughout life’s interpersonal experiences. We internalize and process those experiences and some of them stay with us as our own.
The process of psychotherapy – as I see it – is a process similar to a Pilates or yoga training. The instructor – or the therapist – looks very closely at the minute manifestations of the person’s inner workings. We listen, or look, and observe. Soon a picture of manifestations clarifies a view of the inner core, and the therapist takes that inner core and helps the client rearrange their view of reality in a way that will be healthier, will induce less suffering and will clear the way to free flow of psychic energy, libido – as some call it – or the person’s capacity to live a fuller life.
The core of the personality is that inner container that needs to be strong enough to maintain its essential ingredients, on which the outer manifestations depend. These are not only the person’s behaviors, thought and actions, but their very details of their personality and interpersonal communications. The work is done at this core level. When it is out of alignment, it causes many unhealthy manifestations, and the process of bringing it back to alignment needs to be very gentle, precise and nonjudgmental. That is the only way that its well established ways will allow to loosen up, to shift and to heal.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
The homeopathic principle
The homeopathic principle states that an organism is trying to express, or excel it's dysfunction. The best way to help this effort is to aid the process of expressing or excelling. If the body is trying to get rid of some poison (in food poisoning), the best remedy that one can offer to the person is something that will aide the excelling process, i.e. something that will take over the body's effort to expell the disturbing substance and as a result will give the opportunity to relax and recover for the body.
The other day I was thinking that psychodynamic therapy is very much in line with this thinking. There are psychotherapies that are more aligned wit the allopathic thinking, which is based on the theory that the problem needs to be fixed, stopped, cleared up. While the intention is good, and is often effective, the medications stop the body's (and mind's) natural process of elimination. They go against, they fight the body (and the mind and the person). They prove the body (mind, person) wrong and they teach the body (.., ...) how to do it better, how to be more effective. While it is a fine idea to do this, this often meets resistance in the person. In the body. In the mind.
The idea in homeopathy is well documented and I do not intend to recite that theory. For me this is a new idea when it is translated into the world of psychotherapy:
the approach in psychotherapy I am prone to is an expression of the individual, a ways of finding the root cause of the problem in the very experience of the person. While the therapist is encouraging the patient to talk about their view of their problem, their relationships and their experiences, these form some themes for the person. Their unconscious experience is coming to the surface in some form of conscious manifestation. It is not always a solution per se to the problems the person is facing. it is often a revisiting process of one's experience, a retelling of one's stories and in this process of expression one finds the healing, the reorganization of the unconscious self experience into a more balanced self image. Healing happens, as in homeopathic theories, through this expression of one's imbalance. The sheer telling of the story in a therapeutic environment and in the presence of the expert guidance of a therapist the story, the expression transforms into the vehicle of healing.
This is in parallel with homeopathic theory and the same forces are seen in action. In this lies the body's and mind's own self-healing power. The encouragement for expression is the key to healing. The faith in the process is the art of the therapist.
The other day I was thinking that psychodynamic therapy is very much in line with this thinking. There are psychotherapies that are more aligned wit the allopathic thinking, which is based on the theory that the problem needs to be fixed, stopped, cleared up. While the intention is good, and is often effective, the medications stop the body's (and mind's) natural process of elimination. They go against, they fight the body (and the mind and the person). They prove the body (mind, person) wrong and they teach the body (.., ...) how to do it better, how to be more effective. While it is a fine idea to do this, this often meets resistance in the person. In the body. In the mind.
The idea in homeopathy is well documented and I do not intend to recite that theory. For me this is a new idea when it is translated into the world of psychotherapy:
the approach in psychotherapy I am prone to is an expression of the individual, a ways of finding the root cause of the problem in the very experience of the person. While the therapist is encouraging the patient to talk about their view of their problem, their relationships and their experiences, these form some themes for the person. Their unconscious experience is coming to the surface in some form of conscious manifestation. It is not always a solution per se to the problems the person is facing. it is often a revisiting process of one's experience, a retelling of one's stories and in this process of expression one finds the healing, the reorganization of the unconscious self experience into a more balanced self image. Healing happens, as in homeopathic theories, through this expression of one's imbalance. The sheer telling of the story in a therapeutic environment and in the presence of the expert guidance of a therapist the story, the expression transforms into the vehicle of healing.
This is in parallel with homeopathic theory and the same forces are seen in action. In this lies the body's and mind's own self-healing power. The encouragement for expression is the key to healing. The faith in the process is the art of the therapist.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Grounding the relationship
Bodily sensations and the work focusing around these can keep the “talk therapy” wonderfully grounded. Most often patients seeking psychotherapeutic help don’t expect to do anything but think hard and build theories that will explain their turmoil and sorrow. A big part of a therapist’s job is to calm down this expectation and allow some space for some relaxed mindful work to take place. The unconscious part of the work is really important, it is like the soil feeding the conscious mind. If the soil is rich and has the capacity to provide nurturance it creates the potential for growth and healthy being. But more often than not when we try really hard to help ourselves to feel better, we create more constriction and obstacle to a healthy flow of consciousness. I have found that even if the patient is not yet ready to focus on their bodily sensations and their whole-body state (instead of purely thinking mode), my focus on my bodiy awareness of the situation is often calming and centering. The soil is created by my awareness of the situation and the plant is allowed to grow. It is first an observation where patient and therapist discuss the looks and qualities of the plant. Then, while I am holding the space for the soil to be recognized, the patient will gradually become more aware of its existence and then will join me in admiring it, feeling it, sensing it, and eventually exploring it on an experiential level. This is a process that I wish to embrace and nurture this year in my work. I invite you to join in. I am looking forward to an abundance of interaction with people who find this work fascinating, on any level – email exchanges, forums and personal interactions. Please do stay or get in touch!
Ildiko
Ildiko@innerexperience.com
Ildiko
Ildiko@innerexperience.com
Friday, November 18, 2011
Working with families
One of the shifts that is implicit in my shift as a clinician moving from individual holistic health to the psychological wellbeing of individuals, is that in the latter it is necessary to consider the person’s environment as an organizing principle. In my work as a homeopath I took into consideration the effects of the environment and the person’s own view of reality and their understanding of their environment and I looked for the underlying organizing principle why they found themselves in that environment. This is a fascinating study and one that can point to many inner organizing themes in the person’s psyche.
Yet in psychotherapy, while working with the individual, it is necessary to pay attention to the family structure – or the lack of that – when striving to bring about health and balance in one’s inner world. In homeopathy I did not consider it to be my role to help my clients understand their family structure and their place in it, nor using that matrix of family bonds in relieving them from their underlying anxieties and discomforts, I merely needed that understanding to bring us to a general understanding of the person’s constitutional makeup.
In therapy the inner experience of the person is dependent on the maintaining factors, the environment. (It is called “maintaining”, when the circumstances cause suffering and as long as the person is in that environment, healing is extremely difficult). Bringing light on an experiential level to the inner workings of these relationships I believe I can be of utmost help as a therapist. It is most often true about people that they are in certain environments and relationships for a reason but in many cases the person is tied in that particular situation and has no option to move out of it. So while keeping it in mind that this person has a larger organizing principle in their life that keeps them in that particular unconscious set up, a way to dissolving that discomfort can be through solving the puzzle in their family environment.
A large group of people for whom this is true are children. This is complicated enough for young children who are stuck in abusive or unhealthy circumstances but I find even more excruciating some of the situations of inner and outer conflict and paradox of adolescent life. Adolescents are on the edge – they are still children but they are budding adults. Several clinicians and authors spent their careers working with adolescents and tried to untie the knots of the complex hardships of transition from childhood to adulthood, in this most active phase of individuation. I find it a rewarding thought as a clinician that I might be able to intervene at this juncture of one’s life.
Adolescents have the mental capacity to see the intricacies of mental emotional and relational (interpersonal) life yet they are operating on the platform of the well-tried and familiar childhood. It is often the very parents who admire their children and want the best for them in becoming healthy adults, who keep them back from making those steps and allowing them to detach from them. It is hard to see a loved one leave. Working with families of adolescents is rewarding as I feel I am allowed into the life of people at this intricate time when one (the parent) needs a little whisper of help to let go and the other (adolescent) needs the whisper of encouragement that it is ok to go.
Yet in psychotherapy, while working with the individual, it is necessary to pay attention to the family structure – or the lack of that – when striving to bring about health and balance in one’s inner world. In homeopathy I did not consider it to be my role to help my clients understand their family structure and their place in it, nor using that matrix of family bonds in relieving them from their underlying anxieties and discomforts, I merely needed that understanding to bring us to a general understanding of the person’s constitutional makeup.
In therapy the inner experience of the person is dependent on the maintaining factors, the environment. (It is called “maintaining”, when the circumstances cause suffering and as long as the person is in that environment, healing is extremely difficult). Bringing light on an experiential level to the inner workings of these relationships I believe I can be of utmost help as a therapist. It is most often true about people that they are in certain environments and relationships for a reason but in many cases the person is tied in that particular situation and has no option to move out of it. So while keeping it in mind that this person has a larger organizing principle in their life that keeps them in that particular unconscious set up, a way to dissolving that discomfort can be through solving the puzzle in their family environment.
A large group of people for whom this is true are children. This is complicated enough for young children who are stuck in abusive or unhealthy circumstances but I find even more excruciating some of the situations of inner and outer conflict and paradox of adolescent life. Adolescents are on the edge – they are still children but they are budding adults. Several clinicians and authors spent their careers working with adolescents and tried to untie the knots of the complex hardships of transition from childhood to adulthood, in this most active phase of individuation. I find it a rewarding thought as a clinician that I might be able to intervene at this juncture of one’s life.
Adolescents have the mental capacity to see the intricacies of mental emotional and relational (interpersonal) life yet they are operating on the platform of the well-tried and familiar childhood. It is often the very parents who admire their children and want the best for them in becoming healthy adults, who keep them back from making those steps and allowing them to detach from them. It is hard to see a loved one leave. Working with families of adolescents is rewarding as I feel I am allowed into the life of people at this intricate time when one (the parent) needs a little whisper of help to let go and the other (adolescent) needs the whisper of encouragement that it is ok to go.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Importance of mother's state during pregnancy
I have been often wondering why the mother’s state of mind during pregnancy is important when prescribing a homeopathic remedy to a child. I have thought and noticed that if the mother had specific traumatic events during pregnancy it must have affected the child and not only in a straightforward manner but also in a more chronic way. This, I have explained, was due to the fact that the mother had a certain predisposition, which corresponded to the trauma or her state of mind during pregnancy and she ought to display it throughout her mothering, not only during pregnancy, thus affecting the child in his or her very essence. This usually brought under my scrutiny clues to whether or not the child reacted to the mother’s state in any observable manner. I often found it did, so I explored the mother’s disposition during pregnancy, tried to see if it had any elements that were unusual for the mother outside of her pregnancy, and included that in the remedy picture for the child.
While this is still relevant and stands true in my homeopathic thinking, I have noted a connection between the underlying logic of including the mother’s state during pregnancy and the child’s constitutional make up. This came through psychoanalytic explorations of the infant’s psychic development.
According to some psychoanalytic theories, the infant is born into the world without a self-concept. The infant does not know about her limitations, physical boundaries and does not have the concept of predicting or expecting future events, like feeding times, hunger, thirst, pain, digestion, urination. All these events and sensations happen to the infant and together with the environment’s response to these events and sensations, the infant slowly but surely starts to develop its own being and understanding of the world.
The mother (or primary care taker) is a crucial being in the infant’s developing self-concept. This is the person, who responds to the infant’s needs, urges, cries, smiles, and tries to read the infant’s bodily signals, most often in an attending fashion. This care taking, thus plays an essential role in the infant’s development, not only in psychosocial and physical development, but also in the very creation of the infant’s self –image. Taking it one step beyond this actual physical care taking during the initial stages of the infant’s life, the mother, as a container and care taker was there for the infant during the pregnancy as well. The mother was the containing environment the infant (the fetus) was surrounded by, received vital signals of life and well being from, and essentially everything that got absorbed into the infant’s being.
This conceptualization of the origins of the developing self, gave me the missing piece I needed to understand the fundamental reason for inquiring about the mother’s state during the pregnancy. With this frame of reference, I can navigate my way easier in the maze of critical and non-critical information a mother can provide the homeopath during the interview for her child. The mother, as the environment, or container plays a crucial role in the creation of the very matrix of the developing self of the fetus and infant, thus providing clues to the personality and remedy picture of the child through her own inner experience and world of vital sensations.
While this is still relevant and stands true in my homeopathic thinking, I have noted a connection between the underlying logic of including the mother’s state during pregnancy and the child’s constitutional make up. This came through psychoanalytic explorations of the infant’s psychic development.
According to some psychoanalytic theories, the infant is born into the world without a self-concept. The infant does not know about her limitations, physical boundaries and does not have the concept of predicting or expecting future events, like feeding times, hunger, thirst, pain, digestion, urination. All these events and sensations happen to the infant and together with the environment’s response to these events and sensations, the infant slowly but surely starts to develop its own being and understanding of the world.
The mother (or primary care taker) is a crucial being in the infant’s developing self-concept. This is the person, who responds to the infant’s needs, urges, cries, smiles, and tries to read the infant’s bodily signals, most often in an attending fashion. This care taking, thus plays an essential role in the infant’s development, not only in psychosocial and physical development, but also in the very creation of the infant’s self –image. Taking it one step beyond this actual physical care taking during the initial stages of the infant’s life, the mother, as a container and care taker was there for the infant during the pregnancy as well. The mother was the containing environment the infant (the fetus) was surrounded by, received vital signals of life and well being from, and essentially everything that got absorbed into the infant’s being.
This conceptualization of the origins of the developing self, gave me the missing piece I needed to understand the fundamental reason for inquiring about the mother’s state during the pregnancy. With this frame of reference, I can navigate my way easier in the maze of critical and non-critical information a mother can provide the homeopath during the interview for her child. The mother, as the environment, or container plays a crucial role in the creation of the very matrix of the developing self of the fetus and infant, thus providing clues to the personality and remedy picture of the child through her own inner experience and world of vital sensations.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Empathy
As I was working on rebuilding my website (which now includes a track for homeopathy and a separate one for psychotherapy - check it out:), I came across a comment on my book where I describe homeopathic case taking as bypassing the emotional level exploration. The author of the critique seemed not to share my sentiment about this issue. I have found rejection of this idea in some professionals in the past and i am wondering what is the source of this rejection. Why do other clinicians reject the fact that it is possible - and possibly preferable - to avoid the whirlwind of emotional layers that can bring us to faulty conclusions and misconceptions of our clients.
I believe that true empathy lies in an ability to see beyond our client's emotions. If we strive to understand what is underneath the emotion, we will arrive at very personal and individual layers of the person's view of reality and inner world. I believe that using the emotional layer as a diving board to more person-specific areas of one's inner life is a useful tool in therapy and homeopathy.These are the layers of the unconscious which have roots beyond emotions. We might have emotional reactions or manifestations of these deeper roots but the roots themselves are not (necessarily) emotion-based.
The text from Sensations goes like this:
"Before we examine the cases of the animal kingdom, I want to revisit a key component of the Sensation Method of homeopathy so we can see how it applies to the following examples. The power of homeopathic case-taking lies in the fact that it does not involve the emotional layer. As I have mentioned before, our goal as homeopaths is not to explore the emotional layer, nor even the layer that feeds the emotions. Our goal is to arrive at the sensation level and hear the words that describe that level. As we are humans, and homeopathy utilizes our ability to verbalize our feelings, sensations and experiences, we use words to transfer these ideas. But beyond the actual words the coherency of speech has only secondary importance. Describing sensations is often far from what the person is used to. It is far from the realm the ego feels attached to or protective of. Our ego is what works the “pain body,” as Eckhart Tolle calls it. With the Sensation Method we go beyond this body and thus trick the ego.
Once the ego has no access to what we are talking about, we can truly describe our core problem with no pain and suffering. There is no guard invested in keeping the pain body as intact as possible. This pain body is the very obstacle to health. Our ego does not want us to be free of it. It wants us to stay ill-healthed because that is its only chance for survival. This process has a dual benefit. First, we can reach the core problem without touching painful, tender spots in the whole being we don’t have to stir up traumatic experiences. Second, upon reaching the core level, we touch something truly essential, and once that essential core is addressed and healed, healing will emanate into the whole being, transforming the whole into a healthy state".
I believe that true empathy lies in an ability to see beyond our client's emotions. If we strive to understand what is underneath the emotion, we will arrive at very personal and individual layers of the person's view of reality and inner world. I believe that using the emotional layer as a diving board to more person-specific areas of one's inner life is a useful tool in therapy and homeopathy.These are the layers of the unconscious which have roots beyond emotions. We might have emotional reactions or manifestations of these deeper roots but the roots themselves are not (necessarily) emotion-based.
The text from Sensations goes like this:
"Before we examine the cases of the animal kingdom, I want to revisit a key component of the Sensation Method of homeopathy so we can see how it applies to the following examples. The power of homeopathic case-taking lies in the fact that it does not involve the emotional layer. As I have mentioned before, our goal as homeopaths is not to explore the emotional layer, nor even the layer that feeds the emotions. Our goal is to arrive at the sensation level and hear the words that describe that level. As we are humans, and homeopathy utilizes our ability to verbalize our feelings, sensations and experiences, we use words to transfer these ideas. But beyond the actual words the coherency of speech has only secondary importance. Describing sensations is often far from what the person is used to. It is far from the realm the ego feels attached to or protective of. Our ego is what works the “pain body,” as Eckhart Tolle calls it. With the Sensation Method we go beyond this body and thus trick the ego.
Once the ego has no access to what we are talking about, we can truly describe our core problem with no pain and suffering. There is no guard invested in keeping the pain body as intact as possible. This pain body is the very obstacle to health. Our ego does not want us to be free of it. It wants us to stay ill-healthed because that is its only chance for survival. This process has a dual benefit. First, we can reach the core problem without touching painful, tender spots in the whole being we don’t have to stir up traumatic experiences. Second, upon reaching the core level, we touch something truly essential, and once that essential core is addressed and healed, healing will emanate into the whole being, transforming the whole into a healthy state".
Monday, August 8, 2011
More on the intersubjective nature of the therapeutic encounter
Homeopaths conceptualize their cases in their own mind and they do not share this with their clients. There is no forum for it, as the system of thinking in the sensation method is far removed from the human interaction, which can be "explained" or commented on during a session. The most useful comments I am aware of in homeopathic consulting work are the connections we can make between mental, emotional, and physical symptoms. These are often eye-opened for our clients.
I find the lack of communication on the level of conceptualization a setback in homeopathic work. I believe that the homeopath and client relationship could be enhanced if this type of communication was activated. Many psychotherapists rely on and use the here-and-now events of the session and use the transference and their relationship with the client a sort of practice space for both understanding the client's issues and their healing process as well. If a similar way of interaction were to be utilized by homeopaths, the remedies' effects could be prepared and enhanced, thus treatment could be easier incorporated into the client's experience. It is not simple to point out what this process would be as the majority of these processes - both in psychotherapeutic healing and in homeopathic healing, are unconscious.
Homeopaths conceptualize their cases in their own mind and they do not share this with their clients. There is no forum for it, as the system of thinking in the sensation method is far removed from the human interaction, which can be "explained" or commented on during a session. The most useful comments I am aware of in homeopathic consulting work are the connections we can make between mental, emotional, and physical symptoms. These are often eye-opened for our clients.
I find the lack of communication on the level of conceptualization a setback in homeopathic work. I believe that the homeopath and client relationship could be enhanced if this type of communication was activated. Many psychotherapists rely on and use the here-and-now events of the session and use the transference and their relationship with the client a sort of practice space for both understanding the client's issues and their healing process as well. If a similar way of interaction were to be utilized by homeopaths, the remedies' effects could be prepared and enhanced, thus treatment could be easier incorporated into the client's experience. It is not simple to point out what this process would be as the majority of these processes - both in psychotherapeutic healing and in homeopathic healing, are unconscious.
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