2.10 Somatic aspects

The Sacred Voyage: a holotropic perspective on mental health

We assume that a person’s essence is vulnerable and resides in the human body. In our views, the body accommodates the essence, the seat of the soul, between the throat and the lower abdomen, known as the ‘somatic self’(Gilligan 1997). Through upbringing, education and/or traumatic occurrences people can become cut off from their essence. People who experience this, often refer to it as ‘missing something important’, ‘roaming aimlessly’ or ‘not having a place they can call ‘home’. Often, it takes years before these vague notions truly manifest themselves. When life itself still offers enough distraction, or if someone’s self-consciousness has not fully developed, the case may be that the body or the psyche give notice through all manner of symptoms or complaints. We assume that most symptoms are a result of being detached from one’s own essence. In other circumstances life itself will provide the means to bring symptoms to the light, such as the loss of loved ones, disease, loss of livelihood or divorce.

Psychologist Stephen Gilligan writes: ‘Life flows through you, except when it doesn’t.' We feel there’s an enormous truth hidden in this seemingly obvious statement. The first part of the statement can be witnessed when we look at small children. There is an ongoing flow of life going right through them. First they laugh, then they cry; moments later they’re surprised, then angry. There’s a continuous flow of life. Many adults have lost this quality and seem to be cut off from this vital flow. When energetic blockades occur in the body, feelings and emotions can no longer flow freely. Psychiatrist Dr. Stanislav Grof refers to these blockades as COEX (which stands for Condensed System of Experience). Dr. Grof: ‘A COEX system is dynamic constellation of memories (and their associated fantasies) from different periods of someone’s life, with the common denominator of strong emotional charges of a similar nature, intense physical sensations of a similar kind or the fact that they share other important elements.’ Stephen Gilligan refers to the same phenomenon as ‘a whole frozen family of associations’.

Peter A. Levine writes about the stored traumatic life energy: ‘In order to avoid becoming a victim, a threatened man must offload all this energy generated by danger. This leftover energy will not disappear by itself. It remains seated in the body and can force the body to form all manner of symptoms, such as fear, depression, psychosomatic and behavioral problems. Through these symptoms the body attempts to keep a check on all the energy that has not been discharged.’

Most mammals, including humans, have developed the fight, flight or freeze pattern as possible responses in the face of imminent danger. Because, most often, children do not have the first two options at their disposal, traumatic occurrences in their youth are often responded to by freezing, for fear of dying.

For now, it should suffice to mention that we assume, in accordance with the theories of Gilligan, Grof and Levine, that traumatic events tend to cause large quantities of life energy to stop flowing freely, and that both body and mind can display a multitude of symptoms and complaints to control the energy that should ideally have been discharged. This causes people to become detached from their essence.

We assume that events such as birth trauma and other issues that Dr. Stanislav Grof has dubbed ‘childhood biographical issues’ can cause energetic blockades, which may become frozen and of a lasting nature if they are not spotted, acknowledged and guided by significant people surrounding the child during its upbringing (such as parents, relatives, teachers and others involved in raising the child). Some relevant themes that we are confronted with in our practice are social pressure and threats to the ‘social self’, such as bullying, (emotional) neglect, violence, discrimination, hospitalization, abuse, loss of loved ones and other traumatizing experiences.

Our principle is based on the notion that frozen energy flows should be reactivated, to enable the body to discharge the excess energy. Our practice aims to teach people to find the blockades in themselves and ‘thaw’ the flow of life, to break down the energy blockade.

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