What is Bioenergetic Analysis?
BIOENERGETICS IS A WAY OF UNDERSTANDING PERSONALITY in terms of the body and its use of energy. How much energy you have and how you use that energy determine how you respond to life situations. Obviously, you can cope more effectively if you have more energy.
BIOENERGETICS IS ALSO A FORM OF PSYCHOTHERAPY that combines work with the body and the mind to help people resolve their emotional problems and realize more of their potential for pleasure and joy in living. The mind and body are functionally identical. What you think can affect how you feel. The reverse is equally true: what you feel affects how you think. Bioenergetics seeks to bring about the healthy integration of the body and the mind so that you have the energy to discover pleasure.
Every stress (physical or emotional) produces either a state of tension or energylessness in the body. Normally, the tension or droopiness disappears when the stress is relieved. Chronic tensions or laxities, however, linger as an unconscious bodily posture or physical predisposition even after the original stress has been removed. Such chronic muscular reactions disturb emotional health by decreasing your energy, restricting your motility (the natural, spontaneous play and movement of the musculature), and limiting your self-expression. It becomes necessary, then, to relieve these chronic patterns if you are to regain your full aliveness and emotional well-being. Therefore, the focus is on both the psychological problem and the physical expression of that problem as it is shown in your body and movement.
THE BODY WORK OF BIOENERGETICS includes both manipulative procedures and special exercises. The exercises are designed to help you get in touch with your tensions and release them through appropriate movement. They also help to build strength in the weak areas. The manipulative procedures consist of massage, controlled pressure, and gentle touching, to relax contracted muscles. Naturally, this touching occurs only with your consent. It is important to know that every contracted or enervated muscle is blocking some movement. Often, breathing patterns are established by chronic tensions due to emotional stress in earlier years. The therapist’s helping you change these patterns in order to increase your breathing enables you to have more energy, to discover more feeling, and to increase your potential for pleasure. Bioenergetic techniques focus on releasing the physical tensions while dealing with the psychological issues underlying them.
THE ANALYTIC WORK OF BIOENERGETICS involves understanding the attitudes, feelings, and expressions that you have learned to adopt and to maintain through the musculature of your body. Therapy is a process of self-discovery. A careful, supportive exploration of your early life and life patterns illuminates the way you act, think, and feel today. By addressing your problems at both the emotional and physical level, you gain the awareness that comes from understanding, the freedom from outmoded patterns of acting and reacting, the strength to tolerate life’s pains, and the capacity to tolerate its pleasures. The result is an enhanced ability to enjoy yourself and to relate to others.
THE BIOENERGETIC THERAPIST acts as a guide, navigator, and ally. He has made his own journey of self-exploration. He can offer support and encouragement when the going is rough, and he can also share in your pleasures and joy in living. He works with you to increase your sense of internal harmony, to enhance your ability to relate to others honestly, openly, and deeply, and to help you feel more productive and effective in everyday living.
For more information see http://www.bioenergetic-therapy.com/ and http://www.bioenergeticspress.com/ .
This is also explained further in “Bioenergetic Analysis: A Body-Oriented Psychotherapy”
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