A plea for a Trauma-Informed perspective on Embodiment

Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.

James Joyce
In my own journey of healing and embodiment I have received much helpful information and
one useful therapeutic intervention. My life journey has included processing traumatic
incidents such as an attempt to abort me, dying at birth, preverbal childhood traumatization
with anal rehydration and fear of being killed being the most difficult of many incidents.
So, what was the one helpful embodied intervention? It occurred when I was having a therapy
session with Roger Woolger, the founder of Past Life Regression. At one point as I was
expressing my fear and Roger said, Look it Mickey, you are going in and out of your body!!
Wow!! Years earlier I had become aware of being out of my body during my first experience of
Oshos Chaotic Meditation Process. In the final stage of that process you lay on the ground,
relax and be aware. As I lay on the ground I sensed myself being a hundred feet in the air
looking down on myself. Wow, I said, This is a really great spiritual experience. Little did
I know!!
Years later, in a Roger Woolger training (Now called Deep Memory Process) I attempted to
operationalize Rogers ability to be aware that I was going in and out of my body. Roger, I
asked, How do you know when a person is going in and out of their body? He replied, I
listen to the sound of their voice. The higher the pitch the more out of their body they are. My
yes-but persona did not find this answer satisfying. It doesnt make sense, I said to myself. In
his intervention, he used the visual predicate, look. So, some other embodied locating
interventions are:
1) Ask them. (Auditory)
David Grove, the founder of Clean Language, has several possible forms of this
question:
a) When you say the word I where is your sense of Iness?
b) A more convoluted question attempts to bypass the conscious mind with this
form, And when I say the word I and you hear me say the word I, where
is your sense of Iness when you say I.
2) Defocuse your eyes and look at clients aura, their surrounding energy field. What do
you see when you this to another person? (Visual)
3) Be embodied yourself and be aware of any changes in your body state during the
session. Use any disembodiment on your part as a possibility that the client is also
becoming disembodied. (Somatic Resonance)
Anybody elses suggestions would certainly be appreciated.
Now that we have suggestions for what the therapist does, the next question is what does the
client do? Before I answer that question I would like to make an important distinction by
stating Judith Blackstones fundamental principle of embodiment work. It says, that Just
because you are aware of body sensations and emotions does not mean you are embodied

With this distinction in mind here is my attempt to describe a persons possible journey of
embodiment.
For me, I have found three articles, which describe part of the process as I experience it. I say
only part of the process because all three neglect the starting condition and the some of the
initial actions of the client. Of course the starting condition is that of location, location,
location. Where is your sense of Iness, your starting place, from which you embark on your
journey of embodiment?
Once we have location what comes next? Next is the act of choice. We decide what we want to
do. In this case we our going to place our awareness at a given location within our body. This is
the act of embodiment. And then what may happen as we do this? For my answer to this
question lets bring back our three authors whom by their descriptions of what may happen to
some people. By their descriptions they show me that they understand, grok it, and have more
than a book learning of what it means to be embodied.
The most recent description is found Thich Nhat Hanhs book Reconciliation.
description from the appendix, Drop the Story

Here is his

Sometimes the energy in the body and feelings can seem impenetrable or
overwhelming. In that case, we can touch the difficult feeling or situation for a short
time, perhaps twenty seconds to a minute. Then we can open our eyes and rest our
attention on something outside us for a few minutesperhaps look out the window at
the natural world. Then when we're ready, we go back to be in touch with the feelings
again. We can try going back and forth for a few rounds. Alternating our attention like
this provides us a safe base outside, and gives us space inside.
An earlier description by Huxter, a Buddhist monk, describes his experience as follows;
When I first started employing the satipatthana methods, I began experiencing a pain in
my heart area. At times it would feel as if a knife had been inserted and was being
twisted. At other times, it just ached. When I meditated the pains would intensify and
distract me from the primary object of the meditation, so one day I decided to make the
pain the object of my meditation. Although the pain was dominant in my consciousness,
I found that when I tried to direct attention to the sensation my focus would
'deflect'. It was as if my mind wanted to avoid touching that area. I experimented with
methods which would enhance exploration and slowly I learned that if I could
generate a quality of total acceptance and gentle love, then the pain would allow
my mind inside.
As I ventured inside the pain, I was flooded with memories. I discovered feelings of
rejection, fear and loneliness which went far back into my childhood. These feelings
also related to my adult life and as I meditated images of past interactions and
associated emotional feelings of inadequacy and frustration would emerge. The images
and feelings arose concomitantly with the pain in my heart. The pains lasted on and off
for a period of about two years. I meditated upon them whenever they arose, and slowly

I gained acceptance of the pains and the past that they represented. Like the integrative
processes of Gestalt therapy, I found that the more I could accept the pain, the more I
could accept myself as a whole. This acceptance was also reflected in the way I
communicated with other people. I could relate with less fear and more openness and
honesty. In addition, the pains became a useful tool. Particularly, when I interacted with
people, (such as threatening individuals) the heart pain served as a warning signal that
communication was difficult. With the mindfulness training, I could be attentive to the
difficulty and allow myself to be open to those individuals (and the pain) finding
acceptance rather than closing down with resistance, rejection and fear. The mindfulness
process related to my heart area was therapeutic and healing in many areas of my life.
Slowly and gradually the pains vanished.
The earliest description of the problem of embodiment that Ive found is that by Fritz Perls. In
his book, Ego, Huger and Aggression, he has a chapter entitled Body Concentration. In
this chapter he refers to the difficult embodiment area as a blind spot and describes the
characteristic of not being able to stay present in the body as jumping. In addition, he adds
the following thought and suggestion about going into these difficult areas. Keeping your
attention on (I prefer in instead of on) the unfelt region requires a considerable capacity for
concentration. Concentration should be relaxed and not result in an increase of tension in
your body.
Gratefully, I acknowledge these major contributions by these three explorers. My hope is that
this introduction fosters more awareness of this embodiment difficulty and that more people
will find joy, happiness and fulfillment of all their desires by being fully embodied. May you
be persistent and consistent in your efforts. And may it be so.