Written by Julie Simons, LCSW

Bioenergetics is a form of psychodynamic psychotherapy that combines work with the body and mind to help people result their emotional problems and realize more of their potential for pleasure injoy in living.

Bioenergetics psychotherapists believe that there is a correlation between the mind in the body.  What affects the body affects the mind; in what affects the mind affects the body.  The psychological defenses when uses to handle pain and stress of life are also anchored in the body.  They appear in the body as unique muscular patterns that inhibit self expression.  These patterns can be identified and understood by bioenergetics psychotherapists who knows how to look the structure, movement and breathing patterns in a person’s body.

Bioenergetics psychotherapists, like other psychotherapists, focus special attention on the muscular patterns and person’s body.  They are interested in these patterns and their relationship to movement, breath, posture and emotional expression.  Every physical expression of the body has meaning.

The bioenergetics psychotherapist studies muscular patterns and introduces the client to physical expressions or exercises to help them experience in present time these patterns of constriction in the body.  The therapist explores with the client what it would feel like to began to release these patterns and recover some of the feelings they have repressed during childhood and continue to repress in their adult life.  The bioenergetics psychotherapist also helps their clients come to understand how and why patterns of constriction and developed; how these very defenses hindering during their life today allowed them to survive an early environment that was not supportive of their being.

As these repressed emotions emerge, clients begin to realize that these patterns inhibit their capacity for spontaneity and creativity in self expression.  They begin to understand that as these defenses became chronic, so have the muscular patterns in their body.  As clients progress in bioenergetics psychotherapy, old ineffective patterns which block connection, pleasure, spontaneity and joy slowly dissolve.  Through the physical and emotional release of body work in the experience of a safe, healthy, supportive connection with his/herself and others in new more satisfying ways.

©Copyright 2007 Sandra M. Wolf, M.A., LMFT, All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. The article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org.