Guided Body Awareness

Something you can do on your own afterwards.

Most of the time our attention is elsewhere: on what happened, on what is still to come, on what somebody said. The body carries on meanwhile, unasked. Noticing it again is not a special ability. It is more like something most of us were trained out of.

Guided body awareness means: I say nothing beyond where you might put your attention, and then I wait. Whatever you find there is yours. I do not interpret it.

What for

Not in order to achieve anything. More to get your own inner perception back: to notice when something tightens, when something lets go, when a sentence lands in the belly and when only in the head.

This is not a relaxation exercise, even though it often relaxes. It is an exercise in noticing. Someone who notices that things are getting tight has more options than someone who only notices afterwards.

What I draw on

I borrow from several approaches without following any of them entirely.

Self-treatment with your own hands. Daniel Agustoni has put together a series of simple exercises: place your hands at particular spots, do nothing further, wait. Fully clothed, sitting or lying, three minutes or half an hour. His book Craniosacral-Selbstbehandlung describes them in words and pictures. His website has several sample chapters; anyone who wants to try whether this is for them will find enough there to begin.

Attachment needs a body. In Attachment-oriented Body Psychotherapy, Thomas Harms starts from the idea that closeness, safety and belonging are not something thought but something felt — and that, conversely, contact with oneself is lost through the body before it is lost in the head. What he learned from working with infants and their parents he later carried over to working with adults. What helps me most is his view that calming is not something you can resolve to do.

Giving feelings room. Raja Selvam starts from the idea that feelings are not overwhelming because they are too big, but because they are spread across too little body. His work consists of giving them more room — with attention, breath, movement, one’s own touch — rather than explaining them or getting rid of them. Like a heavy weight spread over a larger surface.

Going with the protection, not against it. Staci Haines calls this blending, a term she takes from aikido: not working against a contraction but becoming curious about it and then supporting it in the direction it is already going. A hard belly, a held breath, a shoulder drawn up — in her reading these are not faults to be corrected but a safety shaping, something the body organized long ago in order to protect something, and that is still doing that work today. Told to open up, it reads that as a threat and tightens further. Asked instead what it is made of — hard like metal or like wood, how dense, how much room does it take up, how long has it been doing this, what is it taking care of — and then supported rather than opposed, the tissue begins to soften on its own.

Haines writes for people who accompany others professionally, and she writes politically: her subject is the violence of racism, sexism and poverty, not just private injuries. What I take from her is the attitude, not a technique.

The felt something. From Focusing, as developed by Eugene Gendlin, comes the patience for what does not yet have a name: that indefinite something in the belly or the chest which is unclear at first and clarifies if you give it time instead of naming it straight away. Gendlin stands behind the way I work more generally; there is more about that on the Principles page.

When something comes up

That belongs to it, and is not a sign that anything is going wrong.

Turning your attention inward, you do not only find calm there. Feelings may surface that you did not reckon with. Memories may come, including from times for which there are no images, only a bodily feeling. Sometimes this happens during an exercise that looks harmless and takes three minutes.

Sitting with that alone is not always good. Not because it is dangerous, but because it goes more easily when someone is there: someone who does not startle, does not comfort, does not explain, but simply stays. That is also why I offer this, even though in the end it is something you do on your own.

So my suggestion: the first few times together. After that you know what you are doing and can decide how much and how often.

If you are currently in an acute crisis, this is not the right thing. Then please speak to me directly and we will see what else helps. We go slowly and carefully. My accompaniment is not a substitute for medical or psychotherapeutic treatment.

How this works

One to one, unhurried, with no fixed number of sessions. Get in touch, and we will find out what suits.

The books by Agustoni and Harms are available in German only.

Daniel Agustoni: Craniosacral-Selbstbehandlung — with sample chapters

Thomas Harms: Verkörperte Bindung. Attachment-oriented Body Psychotherapy (BKPT)

Raja Selvam: The Practice of Embodying Emotions — on the method itself, Integral Somatic Psychology

Staci K. Haines: The Politics of Trauma. Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice — blending is described in chapter 9, “Regenerating Safety”

Focusing, as developed by Eugene Gendlin