Body of Awareness

A Somatic and Developmental Approach to Psychotherapy

Ruella Frank

• Publisher: Gestalt Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135061364
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Merging scientific theory with a practical, clinical approach, Body of Awareness explores the formation of infant movement experience and its manifest influence upon the later adult. Most significantly, it shows how the organizing principles in early development are functionally equivalent to those of the adult. It demonstrates how movement plays a critical role in a developing self-awareness for the infant and in maintaining a healthy self throughout life. In addition, a variety of case studies illustrates how infant developmental movement patterns are part of the moment-to-moment processes of the adult client and how to bring these patterns to awareness within therapy.

Body of Awareness is intended to help therapists, new or advanced, to enhance their skills of attunement. They can do this by heightening their observations of subtle movement patterns as they emerge within the client/therapist relationship, and by respective their own developing feelings within session as essential information to the therapy process. And as developmental patterns are central to psychological functioning, a background study of movement provides the therapist with critical insight into the unfolding psychodynamic field.

Index

A

aggression, 201–203

alienation, 69, 70

anxiety, chronic, alignment of units of weight in, 76

autonomy

infants and, 41

movement patterns and, 40

avoidance, 193, 194

awareness, 70, 106, 192

of body weight, 71, 72

B

body/environment relationship, 70

body-weight experience, 75, 81, 82

and orienting processes, 72

and postural types, 73

developmental movement patterns and, 76–77

in clients, 78–79

infant/caregiver relationship and, 77–78

bulimia, 204

C

center of gravity, 75, 76

client, posture and movements of, 22–23, 56–57, 88–89, 95–97, 116–117, 123–124, 152–154, 166–168, 180–184,211–212

client/therapist relationship, 39, 47, 53, 179–180, 184–192

reaching in, 106

contacting, 70, 72, 179

and differentiation, 42, 46, 53

definition of, 41–42

disturbances of, 115

evaluation of during therapy, 54

supports for, 46, 51, 53

crawling, 43

D

depression

alignment of units of weight in, 75–76

postural pattern in, 73–74

developmental body-language, 21

developmental movement patterns, 79

and body weight experience, 76–77

and differentiation, 40–41

as self-organized, 43

assimilation of, 46, 51

discordant, 48

disorganization of, 43, 51

emerging, 42, 144

in overlapping sequences, 45

integration of earlier, 43–44, 45

developmental theory, movement patterns and, 40

differentiation, 46, 64, 65, 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Tribute To My Teachers
• Acknowledgments
• Notes To The Reader
• Introduction
• Opening Dialogue
• Developmental Patterns and the Processes of Differentiation
• Primary Orienting: Gravity, Earth, and Space
• Reaching and Being Reached
• The Upright Stance
• Coining into Wholeness: Annie’s Story
• Resources for Therapists
• References
• Index