Ways to Access the Unconscious Through the Body Pt. 1

By: Dr. Denise Renye

During this pandemic and social uprising, we’re focusing a lot on bodies. What’s happening to bodies as they contract COVID-19? How much value do we as a society place on Black bodies, but also the bodies of indigenous people, people of color, and those in the LGBTQIA community? If we look to the U.S. government, the answer is “not much.” We have clear evidence of the lack of protection, care, and empathy from the Trump administration regarding people in this country.

The treatment of certain groups of people is a continuation of something that’s been occurring for many years. Now the mainstream is hearing about it more – the unconscious is becoming conscious. What used to be more hidden from some is now becoming quite obvious. I’m glad about that. I think we need to have more focus on the unconscious because as Carl Jung famously said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

In my work as a psychologist, I notice traditional talk therapy can be an intellectualized process, meaning the body isn’t involved much. When it comes to the unconscious, it’s much harder to access via the intellect although that can happen via free association, slips of the tongue, and dreamwork. I’ve found a complementary and perhaps deeper (embodied) way to tap into the unconscious is through the body. Jung thought the same and he discovered that unplanned body movement allowed access to dimensions of the psyche unreachable through traditional psychoanalysis (Jung, 1929, 1976).  

His colleagues did not embrace this discovery but Jung continued to explore accessing the psyche through the body. He considered free-form body movement a form of active imagination or type of meditative state where the realms of dream and fantasy blur with reality, unconscious mixes with conscious, and a tension is maintained between paradoxes (Jung, 1916). The contents or objects of the unconscious become assimilated through a physical activity such as painting, singing, gesturing, dancing, etc., or a metaphysical experience such as mental images, dreams, fantasies, etc.

However, active imagination isn’t the only way to access the unconscious. There are multiple ways to have Spontaneous Embodied Spiritual Experiences (SESE), a term I developed in my dissertation research. Some forms of SESE include the following:

·      Authentic movement

·      5 rhythms

·      Ecstatic dance and free dance

·      Ecstatic body movement

·      Latihan (a body movement technique developed by Subud, an international spiritual movement that began in Indonesia in the 1920s)

·      Medicine circles (a traditionally Native American circle of people who gather for the purposes of healing in community) 

Authentic Movement

Jungian analysts ran with Jung’s active imagination technique and explored how it could be used with movement. Mary Starks Whitehouse pioneered the technique dubbed Authentic Movement, which incorporates spontaneous movement or dance together with potentially insightful self-discovery (Stromsted, 1999; Wyman-McGinty, 1998). It’s an unstructured, active imagination dance therapy technique where psychotherapy patients are moved by their unconscious as a way to make the unconscious conscious (Lewis, 1982). 

Authentic Movement begins as movement within the self and is not externally directed like in a dance class. The motivating force behind Authentic Movement is an absence of ego. The body moves of its own accord and it could be argued it’s an experience that spans beyond the self and becomes a potentially transpersonal experience for the mover. Authentic Movement is a disciplined practice that takes dedication and involves a mover and a witness (and sometimes, a mirrorer). 

The meditative discipline is usually practiced in dyadic or group format and includes moving and stillness within a structured sacred space. The movement part is a free-associative process in which the "spontaneous urge to move is not checked, judged, criticized, or weighed by the conscious mind" (Adler 1972, 43). In this receptive state, the body is more open to movement that springs from seemingly autonomous impulses as they occur (Morrissey 2006).

In the still state, attention is concentrated and focused on awareness of the contents of consciousness with the eyes open. In addition, attention is focused on a mover or movers, as well as on the contents of one's own consciousness.

“Authentic Movement reflects and validates a holistic view of the mind-body relationship, in which mind and body are equal, interdependent aspects of human functioning,” (Morrissey 2006). “This practice can help deconstruct conditioned hierarchical attitudes of the mind controlling the body, of consciousness as abstracted from the body, and of humans as superior to other species.”

For more information about Authentic Movement, I recommend Authentic Movement: Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow.

5Rhythms

 Dance is a popular way to access the unconscious through the body. In addition to Authentic Movement, 5Rhythms may be used for a similar purpose. Developed by Gabrielle Roth in the late 1970s, 5Rhythms is a way to work out and to meditate. Its premise is that dancing 5Rhythms will help a person reconnect with their body and potentially unearth aspects of their psyche.

“In dancing 5Rhythms you can track perceptions and memories; seek out gestures and shapes; tune into instincts and intuitions,” according to the 5Rhythms website (5Rhythms 2020). “They reveal ways to creatively express aggressiveness and vulnerability, emotions and anxieties, edges and ecstasies. They reconnect us to cycles of birth, death, and renewal and hook us up to the spirit in all living things. They initiate us back into the wisdom of our bodies and unleash movement’s dynamic healing power.”

Sometimes reconnecting to the body can be an erotic experience. In my research, five out of 10 participants talked about their SESE as having an erotic aspect to it (Renye, 2012).  One participant noted she felt a climax and an afterglow to her SESE.  Another described her experience with 5Rhythms specifically, which seem to coincide with the sexual response cycle developed by Masters and Johnson.    

What happens at a 5Rhythms class or dance session? It will cycle through five states of being: flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness. Dancers will move in their own individual way, interpreting each state as they wish with minimal guidance from a dance instructor. Doing so allows dancers to reconnect to themselves and a broader community if they choose to dance in a group, which can also have an erotic element. In my research, a couple of participants talked about flirtation or sexual energy exchanged between movers during their Spontaneous Embodied Spiritual Experience (Renye, 2012).

Because the body is allowed to move freely, it’s a similar process to Authentic Movement – not led by ego but instead the self. Moving in such a way again taps into the unconscious. However, 5Rhythms offers more structure because of the music associated with it and also the instructor from a teacher, guiding a dancer through each state of being.

In the next blog I’ll address other forms of dance and body movement to access the unconscious.

Reach out to learn more about ways you can access your unconscious through your body.

References

5Rhythms. www.5rhythms.com Accessed July 16, 2020.

Adler, J. (1972) Integrity of body and psyche: Some notes on work in progress. In P. Pallero (ed.) (2000) Authentic Movement: Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow. Second edition. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Jung, C. G. (1929). Dream analysis (vol. 2). Zurich, Switzerland: Committee of the Psychological Club.

Jung, C. G. (1976). Symbols of transformation: An analysis of the prelude to a case of schizophrenia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Lewis Bernstein, P. (1982) Authentic movement as active imagination. In The compendium of psychotherapeutic techniques, Harriman, J. ed., Springfield, IL:  Charles C. Thomas.

Masters, W. & Johnson, V. (1980). Human Sexual Response. London: Bantam. 

Morrissey, Bonnie. "Authentic movement and embodied consciousness: deconstructing the hierarchies that sustain oppression and domination in human and nonhuman animal life." ReVision, vol. 29, no. 1, 2006, p. 28+. Accessed 15 July 2020.

Pallaro, Patricia. Authentic Movement: Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow. Jessica Kingsley Publishers: London, 1999.

Renye, D. M. V. (2012). Spontaneous Embodied Spiritual Experience of Movement and Being Moved: A Qualitative Analysis. (n.p.): (n.p.).

Stromsted, T. (1998). The dance and the body in psychotherapy: Reflections and clinical examples. In D. H. Johnson & I. J. Grand (Eds.), The Body in Psychotherapy. Berkeley & SF: North Atlantic Press & California Institute of Integral Studies, 147-169.

Wyman-McGinty, W., 1998. The body in analysis: Authentic movement and witnessing in analytic practice. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 43(2), 239-261.