In my work with clients, I have come to see Gestalt work as a great integrative approach in dealing with memories and traumas that are contained in the body.
Gestalt Therapy focuses its attention on the unfinished business of the past that consistently arises in the present. Since Gestalt therapy is a holistic approach, it does not separate the memories of the brain, (or stories), from the memories of the body, (or ones physical structure and unexplained chronic pain).
In Gestalt therapy there is an invitation for the client to have complete awareness of all that is present in the moment. When we begin to be present in this way, unresolved energies in the body will often make themselves known.
For instance, I had a particularly intense Gestalt session(also called a “working”) with a client in which she was experimenting with her strong, protective part and her seemingly weak, child part, (better known as the top-dog/under-dog polarity). She was sitting upright working on being big and loud when suddenly she felt an overwhelmingly heavy sensation in her body, which I asked her to follow. As she followed the sensations of her body she began to sob and literally collapsed her body onto her thighs and her hands onto the ground. This was her body’s way of remembering how it felt to try to be big and then suddenly being weighed down or crushed by emotional abuse and criticism. By folding her body over and allowing herself to feel that old, traumatic energy, the client began a process of discharging lingering energy. In other words, the client was beginning to complete an old and unfinished cycle of experience. Clearly, the next step would be to move towards a discharge of the more powerful and less passive anger that is beneath the sadness.
Unlike other forms of body psychotherapy, Gestalt maintains the high priority of integration. This means that besides simply discharging energy, we also try to understand how we might repeat certain energetic patterns to protect ourselves or out of habit and how we may make new choices in the future about how we want to use our energy in life. As James I. Kepner points out in his work, Body Process, “Body structure can be seen as a frozen conversation or dialogue between conflicting parts of the self.”
Kepner sees these frozen aspects of the body, as energies waiting to be noticed, released, and healed. He writes: “The aim is not to remove structures, but to transmute them into the processes they represent, and to integrate that which has been disowned or unassimilated into the self.” (53). In order to do this we must reorient ourselves in our bodies and make contact with ourselves.
This process of resensitization can be especially frightening when dealing with traumatic memories. However, when we are able to make contact with these memories and play them out fully in a safe environment, we can begin to heal. This safe environment is provided by a strong and trusting relationship between the client and the therapist.
