Recently, questions about the body in counselling have been more common. Here are some interesting tidbits about how the body is useful in session and how we can gain insight by being curious about what Pat Ogden (the founder of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy) would refer to as your “Core Organizers” and what your body communicates while your speak about your experience.
What Are Core Organizers?
According to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a wonderful approach to counselling that incorporates your words and your body, there are 5 core-organizers, which include:
Cognition: Your thoughts
Emotion: Your feelings
5 Sense Perception: images, smells, sounds, tastes, the feeling of an object or person (touch)
Movement: your impulse to move or shift the body
Bodily Sensations: internal sensations (tingling, temperature change, relaxing of a muscle, etc.)
Core Organizers can assist you in gaining awareness of your internal experience while also assisting a psychotherapist in reading how your body responds (usually subconsciously) to certain narratives or repeated physical movements.
The Importance of Speaking:
Speaking to your trusted mental health professional about your experience within a supportive and safe environment has proven to be useful for clients for many different reasons. Speaking is an incredibly powerful way to recognize patterns of thought or a self-narrative. Speaking also allows you to put words to internal emotional states, which usually begins to offer a sense of insight or further understanding, creating curiosity and a deeper understanding of yourself and, perhaps, your behaviour. With this insight, changes or growth are possible!
Now, Add the Body:
Whilst we speak using our words, our bodies also communicate (hence recognizing an energy that someone carries). There are people who may give you an uneasy feeling, which can be inexplicable, and others that may increase your energy in a positive way, without necessarily speaking. This is the communicative nature of our bodies.
When you speak, depending on the narrative, your body will respond to, or react with your narrative- and this sounds strange, I know. As a professional who listens to clients on a daily basis, there are some universal signals of self-soothing. For example, when a client is speaking about a situation that triggers anxiety, their hands may move up and down their legs, they may rub their cheeks, or sway side-to-side gently. These movements are the body’s way of relaxing us and there are many more examples of universal movements. This information has been examined by researchers who look at states of the brain while relaxed, and aroused.
The body can also mirror the narrative, which is often completely subconscious. Again, what does this mean? Consider a client who struggles with self-worth and feels like a burden to others. When speaking about their experience, they may sit hunched over, avoid eye contact, speak softly. This reflection of their experiences in the body will not only influence their feelings and thoughts about themselves due to their neurological wiring, but their body language will also influence the way in which others choose to interact with them. This is only one example of many! I hope this gets you thinking!
Everyone is different and there is no formula to learn regarding understanding the messages that the body communicates. However, speaking to this and remaining open and curious about these aspects of self in session may enhance your overall experience of counselling, the world, and your understanding of self! This information is based in many different approaches to psychotherapy, such as Pat Ogden’s Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and this is the tip of the tip of the iceberg!
If you are interested, there is an abundance of literature written on the subject. You can also find a counsellor who incorporates the body into their sessions to experiment and have a bit of fun! Explore, experiment and enjoy!