Moving into the new year, I have been focusing more on what actually is happening in the room with my clients and their parts, and the impact of the presence of others (therapist, group members, and family members). Experiential therapy has always been of great interest to me and has long been an important part of how I work with clients. In the 12 Step Programs, there is a saying that our greatest journey is the 18 inches from our head to our heart. IFS-informed experiential work has helped many of my clients to make their recovery journey, in a safer, faster, and easier way.

In parts language, we speak of fostering a Self (compassionate)-to-parts relationship. I often find that an intellectual manager is in charge and not so willing to allow access to other parts deemed too dangerous (firefighters) or too vulnerable (exiles). They are often more willing to allow access to a simple breath or a micromovement, draw or map a part(s), or witness/assist in another clients experience. I start by doing something simple, with the intentions of accessing more Self energy and engendering the trust of the protective system. Over time, we progress to more in-depth experiences.

Clients are often surprised that they can be with themselves (inside) in these ways. For people with addictions (extreme firefighters), most of the time is spent looking and being outside the body, avoiding parts that feel pain, shame, rejection, lack of love, and worthlessness. A client who engaged in an experiential piece around a family member and her triggered parts reported an amazing and unexpected shift. She had talked about this issue in past therapies with little resulting change. Through experience, the presence of others, and witnessing, she was able to unburden and experience a physiological shift.

At another time, my group was spending several weeks working with their angry parts. The first week, clients were asked to focus on their anger and describe it after a brief meditation. During the ensuing discussion, intellectual managers began to take over and speak for those angry parts, moving clients into the “safer” cognitive zone. The following week, I asked clients to break into dyads, embody their anger while being witnessed, and to then have their partner mirror for them while they witnessed their anger. This was all done without words. Clients were reported being deeply moved, there was a clear energy shift in the room, and the discussion following was more heartfelt.

I have had the privilege of guiding numerous clients who were stuck in cycles of addiction toward recovery using experiential IFS interventions. Many of our parts and experiences are beyond words, not reachable through traditional therapies. I continue to be curious about ways to move our clients into a place of true and compassionate healing.

I just returned from Esalen, where I had the privilege of doing a workshop with the Israeli and Palestinian women from Together Beyond Words. This nonprofit organization promotes “the empowerment of women, the healing of emotional wounds and traumas and the undermining of prejudice as a path towards building a just and peaceful society.” The women of TBW deeply impacted all of us—Esalen staff, guests, workshop leaders—with their heart and their courage.

When I heard about this group of Jews and Arabs and learned that they were finding IFS helpful for their peace-building efforts back in Israel, I felt a strong calling to be involved with them. Dick taught them some IFS at Esalen for a few years and then recommended me to work with them when they came to Alabama at a time when he wasn’t available. Sharing a farmhouse and a rich mixture of eating and sleeping, dancing, crying, laughing, learning, and healing together was a remarkable experience. So when Nitsan invited me and Beth to bring Somatic IFS to the TBW group at Esalen this year, we were delighted and honored.

Sitting in the circle of women with the Pacific pounding the shores of the cliff outside our room, Beth and I know only Nitsan from TBW. I look around the circle. We are a diverse group. We are different ethnicities, religions, cultures, and languages. We are Buddhists, Jews, and Muslims—including Bedouins and Druze. Hebrew, the Palestinian dialect of Arabic, and English are spoken. The language of the body is shared by all of us. Some are trained in IFS; others hadn’t heard of parts until they got to Esalen. Some are longtime close friends; others had not met before they arrived. All of us are leaders. All of us are committed to peace and justice and healing personal and societal wounds. By the end, we have become a sisterhood.

As I give a brief overview of the five tools of Somatic IFS, I realize they already effectively use these tools, especially movement and touch. Rooted in an expressive cultural heritage, they break into dance and song at every opportunity. They are eager to heal their burdens and to learn new skills. As trust grows, they share many stories—stories of displacement, of terrors of bombings, of huddling in shelters, of being both oppressor and oppressed, of victim and perpetrator, and of issues common to all women, such as the desire for freedom and satisfying relationships.

They tell their stories first in words and then choose people to embody their experience and act out the stories. They bring their understanding of the IFS Model into their work with Playback Theater. They present their theater to the larger group at Esalen in the evening, facilitating small groups of the audience to share their reactions to the theater. They experiment with using Playback Theater with their parts and with their relationship issues with each other. Their time at Esalen prepares them for interactive Playback Theater performances and follow-up workshops throughout Israel to audiences of women and girls—at least 30 performances to 2,500 people in 2013–2014.

I am inspired and touched in more ways that I can speak about yet from this experience at Esalen. I am particularly touched by the courage of the Arab women. Palestinian Arab women face double discrimination as both Arabs within the Israeli state and as women within the Palestinian society. Some of the Arab women at Esalen had never before left their village, let alone flown in an airplane. They risk disapproval from family and community in order to heal and develop their skills as leaders in their communities. I learned that many forces make it difficult for Arab women to form close friendships. At Esalen, and in the TBW organization, they have the freedom to forge and strengthen their bonds and get support for these crucial connections.

My heart opens as I witness the deep, embodied experience of connection between the Jews and Arabs. They consider themselves daughters of Abraham: Arabs descended from Ishmael and Jews from Isaac. The sense of sisterhood—of mothers, daughters, and sisters whose hearts ache for themselves and each other—is a strong basis for building peace in the world. They feel that many of the efforts to build peace in the Middle East have been on the shoulders of the men, and that it is time for women to stand up and bring their gifts to the effort. Together we celebrate our embodied Selves and commit anew to peace in the world.

The following session is an example of how the tool of Somatic Awareness can translate the nonverbal narrative of sensation and integrate it with the verbal narrative. The client’s parts, speaking only through sensation in her head, are welcomed and witnessed. We bring Somatic Awareness not only to the parts that were “speaking” but also to those that were silent—to her largely disembodied lower body.

Rachel suffers with chronic migraines. She has been doing some good work with another IFS therapist but hoped that Somatic IFS could help her specifically with the headaches. My heart went out to her as I heard of the intense and unremitting pain and saw the pain in her eyes. I became aware of a part of mine that wanted to effect a miracle cure. I told her I needed to first work with this part. I focused on the part and the sensations of restriction in my upper body until my body felt more open and spacious. I recalled a lesson I learned from a client who also suffered from debilitating headaches. He taught me that although all my efforts had not cured his headaches, his work with me had totally transformed his relationship to them. From him I learned the difference between a cure and a healing, so this part could step back and trust me.

I then brought my attention back to Rachel. Her goal was to help her parts find another way to communicate with her rather than through the headache. Rachel had a great deal of awareness of the varieties and intensities of the pain in her head from moment to moment. It variously stabbed, throbbed, and ached in her temples, around her eyes, in her cheeks, and even down into her neck. Her awareness of her body below her neck was much less. At first she told me it all felt fine, but it became clear that her lower body was just out of her awareness. Her ankles were crossed so her feet were not making contact with the floor, and as I looked at her body, I had a flash of imagination of her being a paraplegic in a wheelchair.

During the session, we worked together to translate the sensations in her head into words. I would make two different guesses about what the sensations wanted us to know, and Rachel was able to tell from the sensation in her head which of the two statements was true. By this translation process, we learned how her mother had regarded her childhood pains (coaching stoicism and expressing impatience and exasperation) and how alone with her pain her parts had been. As we attuned to the sensations and together listened to them with respect rather than from parts that were either exasperated with them or trying to get them to be different, there were many moments of relief from the intensity of the headache.

Rachel’s lower body began to come alive as her story was being heard. There were involuntary and mostly unconscious movements in her hands and her legs. There were occasional stabbing pains through her right arm. Some of the details of the stories were not entirely new to Rachel, as she has done a lot of IFS therapy. But what was new was the quality of the attention to the sensations and the permission we were giving them. The nonverbal stories were being integrated with the verbal narratives.

I decided to focus our awareness in a stronger way on her lower body. I guided her to uncross her ankles and notice her feet on the floor, and I also helped her scan the muscles and bones of her lower body. I asked her to breathe into her pelvic floor. This seemed to relieve the pain in her head. Then I asked her to focus on the place in her core where the cutoff between the upper and lower body was located. With this, she got an intense, stabbing pain. That translated into a clear “no” to going there in that session, and we respected that “no.” With that, the sensations subsided.

Near the end of the hour, the movements of her lower right arm changed in quality. They were still involuntary, but when she brought her conscious awareness to them, the movements became more lyrical, more graceful, and more integrated. We appreciated the “dance” of her right arm. Neither of us had the expectation that her migraines were cured after one session, but she had learned several things she could do to lessen the intensity of the sensations. She has a direction for future sessions to explore the block between the upper and lower body.

When I followed up with her, she said that this one session had a huge impact on her. She says the pain is down a notch, and she is feeling hopeful again, which is crucial to her recovery.

We have all experienced the automatic changes in our breath when we are stressed or frightened. The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system causes our breath to become more rapid, more shallow, and higher in the torso. Once the perceived threat is gone, the breath is supposed to be governed by the parasympathetic branch and return to a deeper, slower rhythm.

However, sometimes parts are frozen in the time and place of the stress or trauma and continue to believe they are in danger. The individual’s nervous system becomes locked into the fight-or-flight mode and can’t return to the rest-and-relaxation phase of the parasympathetic branch. Somatic IFS’s tool of Conscious Breathing can help with these and many other burdens in the internal system.

Breathing is both a voluntary and involuntary process. It is controlled automatically from the brainstem but can also be controlled voluntarily from the motor cortex. As an involuntary process, conscious breathing can access parts that are otherwise unavailable to our awareness. As a voluntary process, various breathing techniques can assist with unblending and bringing Self energy to the part. These techniques are also effective with clinical issues such as trauma and addictions, depression and anxiety, working with chronic illness, and improving one’s general health and well-being.

I describe some breathing techniques below that are examples of working with the voluntary muscles of breathing to shift the emotional states of their parts. Most of the techniques focus on the exhale since more muscles are involved in exhalation than inhalation, and therefore the exhale is more subject to our voluntary control.

When protector parts are blocking the expression of the exiles, the Release Breath can be used. The Pause Breath and Grounding Breath are useful in the opposite case—when exiles’ emotions flood the system and when asking the exile to not overwhelm isn’t sufficient to contain the emotions.

Release Breath: I used this technique with Roger, who wanted help getting in touch with his sadness. Having been abandoned by his mother as a young boy, he came to me because his wife was leaving him. He had high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. He easily accessed his anger, but he couldn’t feel his sadness, which he sensed was just below the anger. His manager parts had been afraid he would be humiliated if he cried. They realized the situation was safer now to feel his sadness, but the tears remained elusive.

I considered that the shift in the managers was only in his cognition and not yet in his body. Knowing that the breath is a favorite body process that managers control in order to contain an exile’s emotions, I observed Roger’s breathing pattern as he talked. His breathing was typically fast and shallow, and only his upper chest moved.

“Roger, just pay attention to your breath for a few breaths, particularly the exhale.” I took a few breaths along with him and then gave him another suggestion:

“Now open your mouth and your throat with the exhale. Don’t force the air out, but just let the exhale be as full and as long as it wants to be.” I didn’t want to engage a striving or pleasing manager who might polarize with the one controlling his breathing.

I noticed Roger’s shoulders tensing and asked him if he could let that tension go.

“Breathing out is the body’s way of letting go of what it no longer needs. The body lets go of 70 percent of its toxins through breathing. Blood pressure decreases on the exhale. You just let go of some extra tension in your body. Now see if you can make a sound that expresses the relief of all that letting go.”

I breathed with him and let out an “Aaaahhhhh” on the exhale. He began to make the sound as well, at first with some hesitation but then with more expression. After several audible sighs, the next inhale was followed by some sobs. After crying for several minutes, he reported feeling relief, more relaxation in his body, and less anger. The manager part was reassured that Roger had not been shamed for his crying. His breath continued to be slower and deeper. He was able in the next weeks to be more vulnerable with his wife.

Pause Breath: At the beginning of a session, Diane was activated by a panicking part and was hyperventilating as she tried to talk about what was upsetting her. I directed her to shift her awareness to her exhale and guided her through the following process.

“Purse your lips, breathe out, and wait one second before you take in a new breath.”

As she was able to do that, I directed her to pause for two seconds, and then three, before she inhaled. After about a minute of this Pause Breathing, Diane had more Self energy to bring to her panicked parts.

I have also used this technique of Pause Breathing with Amy, who struggled with various of issues around letting go. She was a hoarder. She struggled with overeating and couldn’t find the courage to leave her dead-end job. I noticed she took several fast inbreaths, but it was hard to notice her exhales.

After a few minutes, Amy said, “I feel very uncomfortable with the pause. I have to make myself wait even a second before I inhale. But I notice after the pause that I can take a longer and deeper inhale, and that feels good.”

“Good. Just notice what feels good about the deeper inhale, and notice the discomfort in the pause before you breathe in again. Maybe you will find a part involved in that reluctance.”

Amy found parts that feared not being enough, and not getting enough, that were being expressed in the overemphasis on the inhale. In the discomfort of the pause, she found a part that was afraid of losing control. As we explored that part more deeply, its fears of dying were revealed. The Pause Breathing allowed us to access her core parts’ beliefs that we had not found before. Amy began to incorporate this technique several times a day and found her life beginning to change for the better. We had greater access to these parts and to her Self energy as her breathing became more normal. She let go of some of the clutter in her home and in general felt a lessening of the anxiety and tension in her body.

Grounding Breath: In the middle of one of our sessions, Jasmine’s fearful exile blended with her, and Jasmine wasn’t responding to my words.

“Let’s just leave the story and the feelings aside for now and just breathe together for several breaths.”

Jasmine’s breathing slowed and deepened slightly.

“Now focus just on the movements in your lower belly as you breathe in and out. Let your belly move out on the inhale and move in on the exhale. On every exhale, bring your navel closer toward your spine.”

As she was able to do that, I added one more voluntary movement.

“On the next exhale, as you pull your navel toward your spine, also pull up on the muscles of your pelvic floor.”

Dropping the story line relaxed the firefighters who were blocking her from our interaction. Focusing on her breath gave her mind an alternative focus to the upsetting narrative. Activating the muscles of the lower belly and pelvic floor brought Jasmine’s awareness to some earlier places of grounding from before her trauma. The navel is the infant’s source of grounding and connection, and the infant expands that grounding to include the pelvic floor and sitz bones as it learns to sit.

Now that she had regained her grounding and her access to her Self energy, we were able to continue to witness her exile’s narrative story.

Conscious Breathing assists the therapeutic relationship: These three techniques of Conscious Breathing can be effective with many clinical issues with every step of the model. As with all the tools, whether or not they are appropriate for your clients, you will find them useful for you in the role of therapist to unblend from burdened parts and to increase your access to your Self energy.

*  *  *

There is one way of breathing that is shameful and constricted. Then there’s another way: a breath of love that takes you all the way to infinity.
—Rumi

Happy and aligned with the One are those who find their home in the breathing.
—the translation of the original Aramaic of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, usually translated as “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

From Prayers of the Cosmos by Neal Douglas Klotz

The holidays can be stressful for any number of reasons. The continued economic uncertainty, the dizzying array of demands on our time and energy, unresolved personal histories, and unrealistic expectations cause our autonomic nervous systems to get stuck in the “on” switch as the sympathetic branch of the nervous system (SNS), also known as the “fight and flight” mode, goes into overdrive. Our SNS and the muscles and organs governed by it prevent us from being able to be fully present to the gifts that the season offers us and to give the gift of our embodied Self energy to those we love. Firefighter behavior abounds when the SNS is dominant, resulting in more emotional and physical stress and suppressed immune function. When we are in Self energy, the parasympathetic branch (PSNS)—the “rest and relaxation” phase—is predominant. The activity of our autonomic nervous system is largely out of our awareness and our voluntary control. But there are some ways to consciously bring our nervous system back into balance.

I want to offer a somatic exercise to help the autonomic nervous system shift from the sympathetic (SNS) to the parasympathetic (PSNS) mode. In the PSNS state, we are more likely to be able to fully embody Self energy and all the qualities of compassion, joy, and harmony that we wish for in this season.

First, to understand why the technique works, let’s look at the diagram of the autonomic nervous system below. You can see the two main divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic (SNS) and the parasympathetic (PSNS), which ideally act together, largely outside of our awareness and our voluntary control. The diagram shows where the neurons originate on the spinal cord with each of the two divisions. Notice that the neurons of the SNS—which is responsible for our racing hearts, our shallow breathing, and our digestive distress when our parts perceive danger—come from the thoracic spine, while the neurons of the PSNS come from the base of the brain (the cranial nerves) and the sacrum (S2–S4).

Simply bringing our attention to the places in our body that are governed by the PSNS system—other words, the base of our head and our sacrum—can begin the shift of the nervous system out of SNS and into PSNS. To the tool of somatic awareness, we add conscious breathing and mindful movement. You can do this exercise, which is similar to the yoga move commonly known as “cat and cow,” sitting in a chair. You can do it in in your therapy office, and if you find it helpful, teach it to your clients. You can do this while sitting at the family dinner table to assist your digestion and help you enjoy the social interactions. You can also do this on your meditation cushion to help quiet the racing thoughts of the managers.

“Rock and Roll” Exercise

1. Bring awareness to the base of your head where your top cervical vertebra meets the base of the cranium. Try a few micromovements to help you tune in to that area of your body—a very small “yes,” “no,” and small circles—so small that others won’t notice you are moving. Ask the muscles that connect your head to your spine to relax. Let your jaw go. Drop your shoulders and gently squeeze them together in the back. Let the back of your neck lengthen.
2. Now, with your feet on the floor, bring your awareness to your pelvis as you sit on your chair, and, with the same tiny movements, rock forward and back.
3. Coordinate this rocking of your pelvis with your breath so that on the inhale, you are rocking forward on your chair as your lower back arches a bit, and on the exhale, you rock back on the chair as your spine flattens and you draw your navel toward your spine. These movements can be large or so small that they will be nearly undetectable.
4. About a dozen of these breaths should be sufficient to return your nervous system to a more relaxed state. Come to stillness, flatten your lower back, drop the sacrum toward the chair so the sitz bones of the pelvis are grounded. With shoulders relaxed down but slightly squeezed together in the back, allow your breath to come into your heart area.

Even when the holiday season is over, most of us living in this post-industrial, cybernetic age will continue to experience stress in our nervous systems. Overwork, overstimulation, compassion fatigue, and environmental toxins leave us in a chronic state of SNS dominance. The gas pedal is pushed to the floor and is our default position. Even when we are not consciously triggered by something in our lives, we may feel jittery; have sleep problems, high blood pressure, poor digestion and immune function; and suffer from various inflammatory conditions. In that physical state of chronic SNS activation, we are at the low end of the continuum of Embodied Self. The tools of Somatic IFS can help to move us along that continuum.

Wishing you all restful, peaceful, healthy, joyous holidays.

Welcome to both the new year and the IFS column on eating disorders and addictions! My name is Mary Kruger. I’m an assistant trainer for the Center for Self Leadership as well as a certified IFS therapist. Working with eating disorders, addictions, and related issues has been my passion for more than twenty years. I am delighted to be able to share my enthusiasm, experiences, and ideas with my colleagues. I look forward to a rich, varied dialogue and exchange of ideas that piques curiosity and fosters creativity and connection.

During the first ten years of my career, I worked in a substance abuse treatment facility PHP (partial hospitalization program) and IOP (intensive outpatient program) as well as inpatient. I also worked in an outpatient setting where I helped to establish a substance abuse program and established an eating disorders group. During that time, I also founded my private practice, near New Haven, CT, which serves adults, adolescents, and children. My clients work with me in individual, family/relational, and group therapy modalities. I have been fortunate to be able to attend supervision, trainings, and workshops with a number of leaders in the field. In 1999, I was trained in the IFS Model of therapy, which has transformed both me and my work as a therapist.

IFS has been an easy paradigm shift for me in some ways. Prior to IFS, I had embraced the idea of not pathologizing clients, a perspective that is inherent in IFS. Being a systems thinker by nature and training, the concept of imbalances occurring within the inner system (family) was intriguing to me and made perfect sense.

My feminist parts resonated with the collaborative aspects of IFS. The parts of me that love the experiential were attracted to the body focus and right-brain aspects of IFS. And the psychospiritual aspect of IFS has made it easy to integrate with the Twelve Steps.

More difficult, and yet the most rewarding, has been the emphasis on working with our own therapist’s parts, which has made all the difference in my work with clients with eating disorders and addictions. Early on, it became apparent to me that the managerial energy inherent in some of the most popular therapies interfered with their effectiveness. IFS enables me to continue to work with any of my parts that may become polarized with my clients.

Another advantage is that IFS’s compassionate, Self-led approach makes the work safer and easier because clients and their parts feel trusted, honored, and held.

In my early years as a therapist, I often felt stuck as to where to go next with clients. We would create a role play of a client dialoguing with his or her addiction, involving only the client and that part. While it was great for the client to be able to differentiate from the part, it felt to me as though there was so much more to the work than just that. And there certainly were many more parts that weren’t known or acknowledged. IFS offered a way through that situation. Today it is possible to map, sculpt, and unblend from a part as well as the parts connected to it.

Another stuck point: What do we do with shame and other vulnerable feelings? How do we keep clients from being overwhelmed? One of my clients was unable to move past her eating disorder because despite her successful life, she still experienced herself as the ragged girl from Northern Ireland whose family had been burned out of their home. We came upon what I now recognize as a part, again and again. With IFS, it became possible to unburden this part without the client becoming overwhelmed. What an amazing discovery and contribution!

There is so much involved in working with eating disorders and addictions from the IFS perspective that it is best to break it down into smaller pieces. In each blogpost, I intend to share a small piece for discussion. While I have many of my own ideas, I am also very open to requests, comments, and questions. I look forward to some exciting and thought-provoking discussions!

Movement is the unifying bond between the mind and the body, and sensations are the substance of that bond.   —Deane Juhan

The New Year is a time for setting intentions and goals. Many of our goals typically involve movement; more cardio, strength training, and agility training may be on our to-do list. One of my goals is to bring more embodied Self energy as a gift to myself, my clients, and other loved ones. As with the other tools of Somatic IFS, we begin with ourselves. Beginning a regular practice of mindful movement is a step on the path to Embodied Self.

Mindful movement brings Self awareness to spontaneous gestures and movement styles to witness, access, and unburden parts. This fourth tool of Somatic IFS also includes re-embodying early developmental movement patterns associated with trauma and faulty attachment, and encouraging movement practices that foster and stabilize Self energy.

Although I am not trained in Dance Movement Therapy, I have been privileged to study with several people from whom I have learned about movement—Susan Aposhyan, Susan Harper, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Amina Knowlen, and Pat Ogden, as well as IFS therapists Barb Cargill, Gina Demos, and Francine Passias. My experiences with these teachers, my academic study, and my clients have shown me that movement—moving with mindfulness—is an essential component of Somatic IFS.

My eight-month-old granddaughter, Sadie, is my most recent movement teacher. Applying my knowledge to my observation of her motor development has been fascinating. I was present at her birth and was awed by the power of her spinal push—head to tail and tail to head—as she worked with and pushed against the uterine contractions to birth herself.

Her original grounding was through her navel—her point of connection to Life itself and her sole source of nourishment. The sense of core Self is experienced by the infant at this early stage of life. Cohen believes that this development begins in utero and is supported initially by the motility of the cells through the process of cellular breathing, and also by the organization of fetal movement around the umbilical centre in the navel radiation pattern. The infant experiences, through movement, a basic sense of being a unified whole, with separate parts that are both differentiated and connected.

Sadie’s first task was to learn to breathe and to suck and swallow. The first motor nerves to myelanate are the sucking nerves. She practiced these movements in utero. At first, her body movements seemed mostly random, radiating from her core. She gradually gained increasing control and coordination over the gross movements of her trunk, legs, and arms. I noticed the various movement patterns of her limbs as they developed from homologous to homolateral and then to contralateral movements. I observed the infant movement patterns that Cohen describes—yielding, pushing, reaching, grasping, and pulling—which she says underlie the secure passage through the stages of psychological development and the emergence of the sense of self. Daniel Stern also describes how the sense of an “emergent, core, subjective and verbal” self develops out of the intimate reality of bodily sensation and expression—which is movement.

As Sadie learned to sit up, the sitz bones of her pelvis became an additional source of grounding (assisted by a fluffy diaper). Over the next few months, she learned to support this newly integrated spinal core upon all fours. Cohen says that the crawling patterns, which are initiated by yielding weight into and pushing out of the ground, facilitate ego development by embodying and strengthening muscles. Crawling creates a boundaried sense of self as the infant engages with weight, earth, and gravity. All of these movements that Sadie approaches with the same urgency as her birthing are developing her perceptual relationships, including spatial orientation and body image, and the basic elements of learning and communication.

With clients who have experienced trauma and attachment wounds in utero or during infancy, working with the internal family in an embodied way offers an opportunity to directly enter the preverbal matrix of the parts’ experience. IFS recognizes that certain qualities are “lost” when a part absorbs burdens. These qualities in very young parts are imbedded in the body’s systems. As the early movement patterns are reenacted, the associated memories and emotions may be accessed, allowing for witnessing and unburdening of the parts. In Somatic IFS workshops, I have led participants in reembodying the basic developmental movement patterns to access the burdens and restore the underlying sense of unity of Self. We begin on the floor as infants and experience both ontogenetic and phylogenetic movement development. We play frog and lizard, we roll and crawl, and happily suck our thumbs.

Mindful Movement can be employed at every stage of the IFS process. Movement can access the part, help the part unblend, enhance the relationship between Self and the part, witness the part’s story, unburden the part, and assist with the integration and completion phase of the IFS Model. The movements that can be addressed with Somatic IFS include spontaneous movement, habitual gestures, protective stances, and frozen/blocked impulses. These movements and gestures are generally outside of our awareness. We bring awareness, exploration, and mirroring to facilitate the IFS process. Specifically, we invite the client to notice the movement and any impulse to block or inhibit the movement. With permission from the part that is blocking, we encourage the movement to sequence through the body to completion. A movement may originate in the core of the body and sequence to an end point—the head, tail, or any of the four limbs.

Laura is a client who has benefitted from this embodied approach to her internal family. In the last year, she radically changed many of her addictive behaviors. She has lost a good deal of weight and is off some of her diabetes medications. In spite of these improvements (or because of them), in a recent session she reported feeling paralyzed—unable to continue on this course of behavior change. I invited her to experience the paralysis while she was sitting with me. She accessed a young part that felt scared, alone, and powerless. She heard another small voice that said it would be good to stand up and move around, but to move felt dangerously assertive and powerful for the first part. The first part eventually allowed her to stand up, and Laura began to move, quite stiff with fear. She cried and said this is how it feels every time she makes the choice to eat the right foods and not eat the wrong foods, as if she has to change a switch in her brain.

To integrate this shift, I reminded Laura of a session the year before when she made the decision to choose Life. There were more tears. I suggested she find something in the room that represented Life, and mindfully move toward that. She moved toward the object and held it tenderly in her arms for several silent minutes. She reported that her fear was calmer. It felt different from when the fearful, paralyzed part is pushed away by parts that are choosing new behaviors. She invited her guides to be with her. She realized that when she takes the initial extremely hard step to get off the couch, she inherently chooses Life, and she can trust her body to lead the way. She could imagine that her brain was being rewired. Since that session, it has been easier for her to turn on the switch, and it stays on for longer periods of time.

A session with my client Anne is another example of working with parts through mindful movement. Anne is an accomplished, successful corporate executive, wife, and mother with a complex and difficult early history. An exile was expressing itself in her body as a collapse—being pulled down from her solar plexus, while a manager was resisting that impulse and taking a strong, independent stance that pushes through, accomplishes, and achieves. We oscillated between the impulse to collapse and the opposing upright posture. As she inhaled, she extended the front of her body, and as she exhaled, she moved into the collapse and flexed the front of her body. Both parts of the polarization felt understood by Anne through witnessing the movement. We appreciated the upright protector that has served her so well, and learned that it is very, very tired and can’t keep up the resistance. The exile’s collapse was taking over in her body and in her system. Anne allowed that movement to sequence to its endpoint as it curled up in fetal position. She stayed in this position as she accessed a part that knew she was not wanted as a baby and that blames herself for her neglect and abuse. This exile wanted her to curl up and die. The part felt Anne’s compassionate presence toward her and knew that she was wanted by Anne. Eventually the pressure to curl up released. Anne uncurled and no longer felt the pressure in her solar plexus to collapse. She felt ease and calm in her body. Her life is moving toward more balance as her protector no longer needs to battle against the desire to give up and die.

With both Anne and Laura, the parts were telling their stories through movement, and these stories were witnessed mindfully. Movement may be the only way the part can tell its story. A part’s movement story may have been blocked and frozen in the body’s structure—impulses to run, to hit, to kick, to bite, to reach out, to suck, to hide, to cry, to cringe, to speak, to look. With permission from a polarized part, we bring intentional, deliberate movement to the block to free up these frozen impulses, completing the sequence, allowing for a physiological unburdening and restoring the original qualities of Embodied Self.

We ask the meaning-making and story-telling parts to wait until the movement has been able to be fully expressed and witnessed, and has come to completion. Often the meaning, the emotions, and the story associated with the relevant phase of development emerge during the mindful exploration of movement. Spontaneous unburdenings are frequent as we bring mindfulness to the movement. The movement pattern is embodied more fully, and the sensorimotor pathways are restored. Expression of unburdened parts that have restored qualities of freedom and joy anchors the transformation. Simply inviting our clients to move through space with these new qualities of body and mind integrates the shift into daily life.

A regular practice of mindful movement can increase capacity for Embodied Self energy. Martial Arts, Yoga, Alexander Technique, Pilates, and Feldenkrais are some structured mindful movement approaches. Yet we may not need to join another class. We may just need to commit the time to noticing mindfully the movement already happening in our bodies. Our bodies, even in relative stillness, are always moving. The fluids of our bodies each have their own rhythm and are pulsing with various frequencies and paces. Every organ is pulsating with its own energy. Every sensation we feel is a movement waiting and wanting to happen. We can start with our grounding—our navels, our pelvic floors, and our feet. We let go of the tension in our mouths and ask the cortical parts if they are willing to relax a bit. We notice the sensations and invite them to move, breathe, rest, and sound. We notice impulses throughout our bodies to reach, push, pull, yield, and grasp. A regular embodiment practice of attending to sensations and allowing them to move and sequence through to a completion is a beautiful practice for enhancing Embodied Self energy and is a gift we can bring our clients for the new year.

Resources:

Cohen, Bonnie Bainbridge. Sensing, Feeling and Action. Contact Editions, Northampton, MA, 1993.

Juhan, Deane. Job’s Body – A Handbook for Bodywork. Station Hill Press, Barrytown, New York, 1987.

Stern, Daniel N. The Interpersonal World of the Infant. Basic Books, Harper Collins, 1985.

Resonance. I love this word. I like to let the word resonate in my nasal cavity. Concerning how to label this third tool of Somatic IFS, I have vacillated about the adjective before the “Resonance.” Cellular? Too limiting. Limbic? Also too limiting. Somatic? A bit redundant. But Somatic it is, since our entire bodies are the instrument of resonance.

Somatic Resonance is a phenomenon in which bodies impact each other at a vibrational and energetic frequency. It includes concepts of empathy, mirroring, attunement, intuition, and kinesthetic sensing. Somatic Resonance is a mutual process, involving both parties. Just as two finely made violins will resonate to the same vibration when only one string is played, the Embodied Self of the therapist and client reverberate in a somatic duet.

With this tool, we have entered the watery realms of relationship. Somatic Resonance rests on the earthy foundation of Somatic Awareness and is enlivened by the air of Conscious Breathing (see earlier posts here and here). As we cultivate a deep awareness of our bodyminds, we form the foundation for the therapeutic container in Somatic IFS. Within this container, we physiologically witness the nonverbal, implicit stories of our clients’ parts and facilitate in them the state of Embodied Self energy.

Recent advances in neuroscience have identified right-brain structures, including “mirror neurons,” that are a possible neurological basis for mutual attunement and resonance. As mammals, our survival has depended on our ability to be aware of and respond to others’ nonverbal messages. Our limbic brains are central to this process. Limbic resonance is described in a book about the science of human emotions and biological psychiatry, A General Theory of Love, by Lewis, Amini, and Lannon (2000). The authors cite research that suggests that limbic resonance actually revises damaged subcortical structures in relationship—both caregiver/infant and therapist/client. Daniel Seigel (in The Mindful Therapist, 2010) speaks of resonance as

“the alignment of two autonomous beings into an interdependent and functional whole as each person influences the internal state of the other. Our heart rates align, breathing becomes in-sync, nonverbal signals emerge in waves that parallel each other, and … shifts in EEG findings and heart rate variability co-occur … Resonance reveals the deep reality that we are a part of a larger whole … that we are created by the ongoing dance within, between and among us.”

Although the brain and the entire body are involved in Somatic Resonance, the heart is by far the strongest resonating organ. The heart’s electromagnetic field is five thousand times more powerful than the electromagnetic field created by the brain. The heart attunes to the rhythm of the dance “within, between, and among us.”

We may need to restore our heart’s ability to resonate. We have overdeveloped our ability to listen with our ears and brain. We focus on the content in order to understand, to get the facts straight, and to remember them. Our parts learn to insulate our hearts so as not to be overwhelmed by the world’s pain. I’m grateful for help on this path. My first bodywork teacher, knowing my background as a clay artist, encouraged me to listen with my hands to the muscle tissue as I had to the clay. I learned to rely less on technique and to trust that my clients’ flesh would inform me of what it needed. Years of Zen practice revealed to me the limitations of cognitive knowledge. IFS helped my parts to allow me to be receptive—more willing to risk the impact of another’s experience. Now I am learning to listen with my heart and with my whole body.

Not only do I listen with my body, I listen to my body. I listen to my body with at least half of my attention. As I sit across from my clients, I notice a synchronicity of our body symptoms. We may simultaneously cross or uncross our legs or touch our heads or faces. We may match the pace and pitch of our voices and synchronize our breathing. I notice many sensations. The sensations may reveal a personal trailhead, or they may be information about my clients’ inner world that is not yet ready to be fully embodied that finds expression in my own sensations. My body is a consultant in the therapy room.

As therapists, we have been cautioned not to take in our clients’ material. We have believed it is important to discern whether a body symptom is ours or our client’s. Somatic Resonance implies that the sensations emerge within the intersubjective field of the therapeutic relationship. We recall Siegel’s words that a resonant relationship is “an interdependent and functional whole as each person influences the internal state of the other.” Perhaps whose symptom it is matters less than what we do with it. Using the tools of Somatic Awareness and Conscious Breathing, we allow the sensations to reveal their information and then to move through our bodies to a completion.

Recalling the vibrating violins, we know that if we were to touch one of the violins, the reverberations would stop. Our ability to somatically resonate can be blocked by parts that obstruct the natural flow of energy in our bodies. We feel bored, numb, tired, distracted, agitated, or many other physical symptoms. Instead of resonance, we experience somatic dissonance. It is essential for us as therapists to know the triggers that block our resonance and to let the sensations sequence through our bodies to restore our ability to listen with our hearts.

So, in our therapy offices, we hear the somatic soundtrack accompanying the verbal story. With the finely tuned instrument of our Embodied Selves, we reverberate with the implicit song of the client’s parts expressed in posture, gesture, muscular contractions, breathing patterns, dissociation, and sexual energy. Our clients experience this full-bodied listening as the therapeutic relationship is buoyed in resonant relational waters.

Somatic Resonance revises and transforms both the therapist’s and client’s internal systems towards more fully embodied Self-leadership. In a state of Embodied Self, our energetic and vibrational alignment allows us to recognize our functional unity with other beings. We experience our interdependence with all of life and come to realize “the deep reality that we are a part of a larger whole.”

Somatic Resonance, the third tool of the pyramid of Embodied Self, provides a safe container for exploring movement and touch, the last two tools, which will be addressed in future blogposts. If you would like to experience these tools, please join us for a week-long Somatic IFS Retreat in Costa Rica. The first week (Jan. 28–Feb. 4) is for IFS therapists, and the second week (Feb. 4–11) is for IFS clients. The retreats are at Pura Vida Spa. For an application, contact Nancy Berkowitz at drberkowitz@rcn.com.