alternate. We are equal, although as therapists we should not overlook the fact that the person we are treating is a person with certain demands.
Man is an integrated entity of body, mind and spirit
In our work, the whole person is the focus of our attention and so we treat him or her as an integrated entity of body, mind and spirit that lives and evolves in society.
Each of us does not possess a body; he or she is a body. Each of us does not possess a spirit; he or she is a spirit. And we are all conceived, we are all born and we all evolve in society.
It is quite common for people to ask questions like: Why are you raking up the past? The more you search, the more you'll find… If something doesn't bother you, then why don't you leave it alone? What’s the point of going ‘back’ to things that happened so long ago they’ve almost been forgotten about? What’s the point of raking up childhood memories? We all have old wounds: what’s the point of bringing them back again and again and hurting ourselves by thinking about them?
All of these questions are often asked, in good faith, by people who cannot see the real benefit of a therapeutic process that uses only speech as a tool. It is indeed pointless, and very often causes fresh pain, to recall a traumatic experience and do no more about it. In psychotherapy we never get patients to recall things simply for the sake of doing so. Knowledge in itself, I will never cease to emphasise, will not bring about healing. The relationship between therapist and patient always lends a new dimension to things and can invest past events with such meaning that they fall into place without causing distress when they are recalled. Awareness always plays a positive role in giving life meaning, and the feeling that our lives have cohesion and meaning has a constantly beneficial effect on us.
Is this the kind of therapy that we want? Is the aim to prevent our memories from disturbing our consciousness? I do not disagree with the basic principle: if something doesn’t bother you, then leave it alone. This raises the big question: are we always conscious of the thing that is bothering us? The answer is no. Many of the issues that cause us severe health problems completely evade our consciousness. In fact, I believe it would be no exaggeration to say that the deeper something is buried within us, the more destructive it can be. We are mistaken in believing that when the danger is removed, our bodies will automatically return to a state of relaxation and calm, with the body’s systems having released the energy they had mustered in order to deal with the danger. This energy is not some kind of mythical entity but the biological residue that remains trapped in the various systems of the body and in each of its cells. If this energy residue is not cleared out of the body, it remains and has the capacity to build up and join forces with other stress-inducing residues. This build-up of residue can be likened to the build-up of various toxic substances, such as heavy metals and other toxic elements; the body absorbs them from various sources and sometimes finds a way of discarding them, while at other times it is unable to do so and so these substances remain trapped in the body until the critical point is reached when the body can no longer withstand their toxicity and either breaks down, expressing its predicament in the form of an illness, or completely collapses, leaving death as the only way out.
Matter has a memory
The original cell of the human embryo develops at its own pace and with exceptional precision, and, in a miraculous fashion, from its three original layers – the outer layer (ectoderm), the middle layer (mesoderm) and the innermost layer (endoderm) – a whole body will develop. The harmonious way in which the body develops can be disturbed in such a way that the disturbances are not physically obvious. Just as we have obvious physical disabilities and disfigurements, so also do we have what are in most cases concealed ‘deviations’ from a harmonious and healthy development, which will emerge on certain occasions and under certain conditions. The most important thing to note here is that matter has a memory.
It is time for us to understand that every cell in our bodies stores information about the experiences we undergo, and this has nothing to do with time. This information, for the body’s purposes, is what we call memory. This memory keeps the cells and other parts of the body in a constant state of readiness, just like the state the body was in when it underwent the original experience: finding itself in danger, it placed all its systems on maximum alert in order to survive, which it succeeded in doing.
What happens at the cellular level when the body is exposed to danger? Exactly the same as what happens in the rest of the body: all of the body’s activities are scaled down so that it can focus on its defence. Very simply, it is true to say that anything that does not directly contribute to the body’s survival either ceases to function or underfunctions. When either of these things happens often, the body is prevented from functioning properly. The appearance of an illness is a visible effect of this mechanism.
An example of this is what happens to the immune system. When it ceases to tackle internal pathogenic organisms and mobilises its forces in order to defend the body against external threats, it does this to ensure survival. When, however, the body almost constantly senses the presence of an emergency or an almost permanent state of red alert, this leads to a drain on its energy resources and leaves its defences in an almost constant state of disorganisation. Then the body collapses at its most vulnerable point. The other important thing we must bear in mind when we deal with human beings as a whole is that information is energy.
A first acquaintanceship with the eternal present
A young female patient of mine once turned up for her therapy session in a particularly happy and cheerful mood, and jokingly described how she had come to buy something for herself that she had needed to get for a long time:
When my parents finally needed something of mine, they ‘discovered’ the thing I had been telling them about for ages. It was broken and needed to be replaced! Weren’t they listening to me when I spoke to them? What can I say? It seems that sometimes they don’t listen to me!
She was talking and laughing about the other things she had bought that day that were not so necessary and she was describing the wonderful morning she had spent with her mother. I was listening to her attentively and I was with her in what we call the ‘here and now’ of the therapy session. In this Now, when the therapist is completely focused on the patient, the connection between the two does not consist merely in the therapist listening carefully to the patient. Neither is it a connection between the subconscious of the one and the subconscious of the other. It is a much deeper somato-psycho-spiritual connection that involves the whole person. At such times the therapist can feel in his or her own body sensations experienced by the patient and when these are followed up, they open up new paths that can lead us to what I call man’s eternal present. The human body experiences and records everything only in the Present. Whatever is experienced in the therapy session is experienced at the same intensity with which it was originally recorded in the patient’s cellular memory.
In my case, the sensations I feel in the soles of my feet constitute a privileged route that will lead me to the experience of the other person – a person who is distinct from myself only on one level; on another level, that person is simply my other self. The pressure in my soles is like a sacred gateway that will lead me to the patient’s past traumatic experience, and it can lead to great pain, a pain that has remained unaltered in time, serving as an indisputable witness to the traumatic experience.
The young woman before me was shaking all over… It was clear that she was afraid, yet she had still not established a connection with the emotion that she was experiencing. When I asked her how she was feeling, at first she replied that she did not know. A short while later, however, she realised what was happening to her. She was afraid and the fear was paralysing her to the extent that she could not breathe. When I put my arms around her and she felt the security of my presence, she said:
Oh my God, I’m three years old, perhaps even younger, and I’m in the hall…
