Neo-Reichian bodywork and Bioenergetics
Decades before The Body Holds the Score, Wilhelm Reich created a uniquely deep system of hands-on breathwork-based muscle release psychotherapy.
Neo-Reichian bodywork/breathwork – focussed release of primal trauma emotions
Breathwork is increasingly popular and there are many kinds, some described in a separate post. The deepest therapeutically is the hands-on bodywork therapy developed by Wilhelm Reich in the 1930s, and developed by others including Kelly and Aneesha Dillon. It’s powerfulness and the fact that it requires a highly trained facilitator makes it almost unknown in the UK.
Most breathwork systems aim to disrupt ordinary breathing by an unnatural rhythm such as in-in-out or many others. Reich’s method however supports and aims to heal and restore the natural breathing rhythm.
This is a therapy which I have trained in but never practised.
The natural breathing rhythm
Natural inbreath is this. The diaphragm moves down so the lungs expand and air is drawn in. As a result, the belly expands and if you are standing loose and relaxed, maybe the pelvis rocks back a little. If we are breathing quietly the chest may move little or not at all, but if we breathe more deeply then the chest expands to draw in more air. The diaphragm moves first.
Pain, trauma and stuck emotions disrupt the natural breathing
Emotional pain from all sources makes disrupted breathing our normal habit. Sometimes this is obvious: people who keep their tummy tight and breathe only in the chest so as to not feel softness or vulnerability; people who make their chest continually big to feel big and important; people who are slumped over and don’t breathe much at all because they aren’t putting much effort into life.
However we all have some contraction, over-movement, heldness or un-flowing rhythm habitually built into our breathing. Often it takes a practitioner to point this out, since these patterns can be subtle and are engrained and feel like what is natural. It comes to feel like the natural rhythm is the “wrong” way to breathe.
Restoring natural breathing by breathwork and bodywork
Neo-Reichian therapy works like this. The client lies down on a mattress with their knees bent so their feetare flat on the floor. Lying down relaxes the non-breathing muscles and is reminiscent of lying like a tiny baby. Knees up, feet flat releases the pelvis to move freely; gives a connection with the solid ground; and sets the stage for potential foot-stamping or kicking.
Then the therapist invites the client to breathe with the natural rhythm of belly first, then chest etc, but in a “circular” rhythm of breathing in and out continuously without pauses and through the mouth. It’s amazingly difficult to maintain the natural rhythm for more than a few seconds. The body switches to “counterpulsations” where the chest expands first; or the person thinks they are breathing, but chest or belly hardly move at all; the pelvis is held tight; and very many others. In particular, it becomes clear to the therapist that some part of the body is being held in tension.
The therapist supports the breathing to deepen and so invites the tension to release. Very commonly as the tension releases there will be release of trapped trauma emotions. Sometimes this is extraordinarily powerful. As a simple example, one person might be full of suppressed rage that they keep habitually controlled be tensing their neck. The therapist gently rolling the head from side to side and little invites awareness and so invites the tension to release, and the could result in a huge release of anger that involves the whole body, with screaming and hitting the mattress with fists and feet. Again, possibilities are many.
At the end of the session there will be extensive quiet time for relaxation and integration.
You can approach the release of ancient pain-based body tensions in many ways including dance, yoga, body based meditations and others. But this is the most focussed and direct. It needs a highly trained facilitator.
As first Reich, and then Alexander Lowen, Charles Kelly, Stanley Keleman and others practised this method, they realised that certain personality types had characteristic tensions and breathing patterns and indeed that people’s bodies are actually shaped from childhood by these ingrained tensions. This led to Neo-Reichian characterology. This is in my view the deepest system of understanding our personalities and there is another resource article elsewhere on this.
“Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise from outward things, whate’er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in us all Where truth abides in fullness…and to know Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without. ”
– Robert Browning, Paracelsus