Core Energetics Articles - by Pam Chubbuck, Ph.D.

Many ancient traditional therapies treated people as integrated units. Greek healers treated the body, mind and the spirit. Hippocrates, "The Father of Medicine" taught that God (nature/spirit) healed, while the human physician assisted. Later when Newton described the body as a machine, science separated God from the body. This created a long period in western culture, during which the body was treated as separate from emotions or spirit.

Today psychology is conventionally viewed as a mental science. Wilhelm Reich was the first western psychiatrist to begin to reconnect psyche and soma. Alexander Lowen MD and John Pierrakos MD, students of Reich, co-created bioenergetic analysis which works with body-emotions-mind as a unit. When John Pierrakos created Core Energetics he was the first modern western physician to connect the spiritual nature of the human, to the body, mind and emotions. Modern society continues to facilitate this fragmented existence by compartmentalizing our process of learning and healing. Educators are in charge of the mind; psychologists, the emotions; ministers, the soul; and physicians, the body.

Recent exciting information has been presented in the fields of new physics and new medicine, which tell us we must treat the human entity as an integrated systme of body-mind-emotions-spirit. Findings in the new field of psychoimmunology tell us that science is catching up to what has been practiced in folk cultures for generations-we must treat the whole person to truly heal ourselves.

Core Energetics takes as its premise that the Core of the individual person, stripped of all its masks, pretensions and ego antics, is the soul, and its nature is love-the life energy. Core Energetics believes that love is all there is. Everything else is fear, or the fear of fear. Those fears are distortions and illusions, but they seem to be real and they are preventing us from living spontaneously, and with as much flow and as much love as we would like to live.

The Core Energetic Model (figure C), shows circles which form our layers of energy and defense systems. The center is a pulsing moving energy of life, which we call the Core. This is our Life Force which, following the laws of physics, seeks constantly to expand and to grow. When in touch with this part of ourselves we feel love for our fellow creatures and ourselves. It is our connection to the universe-to our spiritual nature.

The next layer is The Primal Wound. When we are not allowed to protest, or to express our pain, this energy becomes stagnant and will produce the next layer of defense, which becomes the physical armoring. The social mask is what we wear to protect ourselves. It is what we believe are what we should be like, act like, think like; but it is not us. It is what we pretend to be so that our caretakers and later society will accept us. "The mask dampens the vibrancy and buoyancy of the life center." (Pierrakos) It is shown as the outside layer of dark energy in our model. When negative or painful experiences happen in this life, we create energy blocks, to try to stay safe. We block the movements of energy from the Core of our being into creative expression in the world. The more pain a child experiences, the more extreme are the measures to protect the self and to block the pain, which eventually become patterns of holding the physical energy. This creates blocks in the physical body. For example, fear can unconsciously elicit held breath and raised shoulders. If this happens enough times, a person develops permanent holding patterns which are present in the body and can be seen and worked with by the Core Energetic therapist. These blocks tell where and how to proceed. An important piece in Core Energetics is working with the dark side, called the lower self, that portion of Core Energy that has been blocked and become distorted. In order for wholeness to be regained, the lower self energy needs assistance for exploration and airing-which leads to transformation.

The process of Core Energetics is to transform the negativity and distortions into creative and positive energy. This can be likened to turning on the light in a once scary closet and seeing that the feared monsters are in reality just items of clothing. We don't show our dark side (or Core) to others, because it is very tender. But they are there and they are quite obvious. The therapist guides the individual to discover in his/her body both repressed feelings and the physical blocks associated with those feelings. Core Energetics includes a lot of body work and energy work, because whatever happens to the child is registered in the body physically. That energy creates the physical body. The Form follows energy in creating our reality. We know by viewing Kirlian photographs, that before a plant grows a new leaf, it shoots out an energy form in the shape of a leaf. The physical leaf then grows into the energy form. Our bodies grow in similar ways. Our emotions, thoughts and beliefs form part of the energy, which the body follows. Genetics is only part of why we look like we do. The process of this evolutionary work therefore is to unblock our defenses, move the stuck energy to create healthy flow and to transform the negative distorted emotions back to the Core Self. By working with the physical body-the body armoring- by transforming the negative emotions of the dark side and by allowing the primal wounds to be expressed. The Core Self can then be experienced as loving, joyful, and connected to all of life. At all times throughout the process, attention to the person's positive qualities of his or her Core is paramount. Universal spiritual principles are taught and applied. Core Energetics is a process of education to our inner reality- which is love.

In this process, people can expect to work hard; some powerful stuff will happen. They may find that what they thought was going on isn't what is going on at all. One of the wonderful things about Core Energetics is that when we do look at the body and use the energy in the body, we discover things that have been hidden from awareness. It's a much faster way of doing that than just through talking therapy. Core Energetics looks for what is going on with the person. What can we do that honors where this person is? Once the person feels comfortable enough, the therapist may work with the breath and with movement. The breath is one of the first things in the body that gets traumatized. For many people, once they start breathing, feelings will begin to be released. Then the work is to get them to move, to see what is happening with the energy, then to help them unblock the physical blocks. That's done with physical movements and by the therapist putting her or his hands on the body to help them allow energy to flow once again. Although Core Energetics is relatively new, people all over the world are seeking it's healing powers. There are training programs, in the Core Energetic Evolutionary Process, all over the US, Canada and several European countries.

A Core Energetic training program for professionals began in Atlanta in the fall of 1997. The Core Energetic therapist is trained in traditional analysis, human development, other traditional therapeutic modalities transference/counter transference issues, as well as in energy analysis.

He or she studies for at least four years in addition to a professional degree. That study includes anatomy, physiology, human energy theory, Reichian theory, Bioenergetics, Core Energetics and spirituality. Graduation requires extensive personal therapy and supervision. Healing happens through love- getting closer to our source, feeling whole, and in balance. To be in balance we must have all our energy centers (chakras) open. When our energy is open and flowing we connect to the earth and to our bodies, we can also think, feel and be connected to spirit. Then the veil between the physical and spiritual begins to melt. I think everyone comes to this work for a reason. The soul decides, at some level, that the time to do this work is now.

What we want most in life is love. What we're most afraid of is love. Sad but true. Millions of people are plagued by the ambivalence: You want it and push it away. Just when you find someone who does love you, can love you and wants to love you, you sabotage the relationship in some way. Are you single and longing for love but some how can't find a partner? Have you ever experienced having to choose between a person who is available and loves you - and someone who is not willing to commit, or unable to give adult love - and you choose the one who cannot love you? Are you always in love with the person you are not with, and unable to accept the love available to you in your present relationship? Have you had serial partnerships always leaving when the romance dies away and the going gets tough? Have you lost your sexual desire for someone you love even though, otherwise, it's a good relationship? Or perhaps your sexual responses are great but you do not open your heart to love? If you answer yes to any of these, you are longing for and fearful of intimacy, a fear of true love.

Why? It is because the child in you has been wounded in the past; so deeply and painful that you, as a child, had to stop that pain in whatever way you could: cutting off feelings, stopping your deep breathing, by tensing your body, and by living a fantasy life. As adults we still use these means to protect ourselves from our childhood wounds and the people who wounded us. Only this time we look at our wife or lover and see Mommy; or our husbands or lovers and see and feel the feelings we felt with Daddy, good and bad. If we don't choose people who are like our parents, we make them like our parents. Ultimately we do this so that we can heal the pain of our past, grow up and get on with life. Harville Hendrix says, "We get married in order to finish our childhood." Only then, can we go on to have an honest, soulful, complete relationship. It takes work and most of us want to quit before it's done. We fantasize that it would be so much easier with someone else. Possible, but hardly ever true because it's us making it hard and, we bring ourselves along to the next relationship. (I am not suggesting any of us stay in abusive relationships or ones where our partner refuses to work on him or herself.) Meanwhile, we numb our feelings to avoid unhappiness. We really do want love. Our primary struggle is for happiness but because of our past wounds and fears, our aim becomes the avoidance of unhappiness. Our conclusion: "If I do not feel, then I will not be unhappy." The unhappiness we seem to avoid will come back to us in more painful indirect ways; the bitter hurt of isolation, loneliness, the feeling of missing or having missed the true goodness of life, and without being the most and best we can be. We also believe that if we isolate, stay alone, that we can avoid our pain. This is a solution we used as children so we try it again and fight against giving it up. Our fear of recreating our original pain will not allow us to have love now. What once was our protector now becomes our saboteur. Our distorted Lower Self's feelings fight to keep us from having what we truly want - love. Our self-created demon kicks up the most when we get closest to having love - now: "You can't have it; you're too bad, stupid, worthless." The demon may change your vision so that your love partner looks like the worst monster in the world. "Get far away from him/her." Status quo, isolation, no feeling, is better, less frightening - in the short run - less soulful, less satisfying in the long run. But we feel trapped and stuck in our old ways, and we must work like hell with the assistance of heaven to get unstuck.

John Bradshaw said that the only time we may feel happy and free is when we're single. Maybe true for many of us. It's easier. We only have ourselves to be with but ultimately not as satisfying and does not have the growth potential of partnering. We are born to connect with others - our biological, emotional urges move us constantly along toward connection with others. Our spiritual desire is toward that of union with another human being; it is the closest we usually get to experiencing Oneness on earth.

The Pathwork guide asks - "How can you receive what you long for - love, belonging, communication - If you neither feel nor express the occasional glimpses of feelings that the still healthy part in you strives for? You cannot have it both ways, though the child in you never wants to accept that." We cannot belong and be loved while we dull our world of feelings into a state of numbness which prohibits us from truly loving others. Core Energetics can help us to feel our deep feelings and transform the pain so that we may be loving and allow love in. Let's look at the challenges of partnership as the next great adventure of life. Take risks - open up. Feel everything we can possibly feel. And remember, we have choice at every moment. We can choose love over fear every time (well, as much as we dare). We can create love in our life. This is today and we're adults. Most of us don't really live with Mommy and Daddy; we just have them internalized. It's time to let them go and embrace the possibility of now. Suggested reading: Pathwork of Self Transformation, Eva Pierrakos; Core Energetics & Love Eros and Sexuality, John C. Pierrakos; Getting the Love You Want, Harville Hendrix; Creating Love, John Bradshaw.

YOUR BODY IS YOUR UNCONCIOUS MIND: The Interrelatedness of Psychology and Medicine
By Pamela L. Chubbuck, Ph.D. © 2002

Modern science is beginning to get excited about what ancient Greeks practiced in Athens and Crete , and indigenous people all over the world have known for thousands of years. Science is proving that mind and body are clearly not only interrelated, they are one. We are bodymind.

Candace Pert, Ph.D., an internationally known and highly respected neuro-biologist has proven that emotion is not generated in the brain; it is generated in the cells themselves -- all over the body. Therefore our bodies are truly our subconscious minds. Dr. Pert, author of “Molecules of Emotion”, with her husband Dr. Michael Ruff, were the first to begin study in what is now well known as psychoneuroimmunology. Pert says that emotions are chemically instigated at the cellular level, which is where unexpressed emotions are stored.

This overwhelmingly indicates that mental, emotional and physical trauma, and shock, when not expressed at the time the event occurs, creates energetic blocks which lead to later problems.

We now know that what Sigmund Freud termed the “subconscious mind” is actually a measurable physical process. Freud explored awareness outside consciousness and showed that when we banish traumatic experiences to our subconscious mind, they later emerge as physical and mental ailments. Our suppressed emotional events influence our physical well-being.

On the cellular level, emotions are literally created chemically. As we store unexpressed emotions on a cellular level, illness can be caused by this stored and trapped information. Therefore, it stands to reason that to heal from our ills, we must express the information accumulated in our bodyminds.

Wilhelm Reich, MD, a student of Freud, is world renowned for his innovative therapy which treats human beings as living, moving entities full of the life energy, that he called orgone. Reich stated that when life energy is blocked due to emotional distress, illness is produced.

Dr. John Pierrakos, a student of Reich, creator of Core Energetics, has studied the interface between held emotions and illness, for over 40 years, and has taught that specific developmental wounding creates specific disease processes. Dr Pierrakos' book Core Energetics: Developing the Capacity to Love and Heal , explains how Core Energetics combines psychology, new physics, spirituality, and energy field and charka system theory. Once considered to be only in the realm of the spiritual and metaphysical, Dr. Candace Pert's research is now revealing the scientific underpinnings of the charka system. Pert says that charkas are “minibrains”: points of electrical and chemical activity that receive, process, and distribute information from and to the rest of the body.

Alexander Lowen, MD, also a student of Reich, co-creator of Bioenergetic Analysis, with John Pierrakos, MD, writes extensively on the interface and impact of the emotions on the body. In his book, Love, Sex and Your Heart , Lowen explains that difficult childhood experiences impact the human body and particularly the human heart.

Many people in our culture suffer heart disease. Certainly diet and modern day stresses contribute to failing hearts. Most importantly, says Lowen, children who suffer lack or loss of love in childhood suffer heartbreak. To survive they suppress their pain by rigidifying the chest wall, which limits breathing, movement and feeling, therefore creating a continuous stress on the body. Dr Lowen says, “It is the existence of this kind of stress, in my opinion, that predisposes so many people to heart disease.” He goes on to state clearly that “Only a person who is not afraid to love can be reasonably secure that his heart will remain healthy.”

It is well known that people with “type A” behavior are statistically 7 times more likely to have heart disease and heart attacks. People with “type A” behavior have tight mouths and jaws, tense bodies and body postures, rapid finger tapping, are competitive, compulsive, etc. People who exhibit these behaviors are defending themselves from painful childhood histories or current emotional stressors and can help heal themselves by expressing held emotions which will soften and relax their entire bodies, making them less likely to be physically and mentally ill.

Examples of bodymind influence from my own practice are numerable. Two representative cases are: a 40 year old man, who presented with serious long term irritable bowel syndrome/colitis, was able to express his unresolved childhood pain of his mother's death, and his physical symptoms resolved in just a few months. A thirty five year old woman, who for years, had daily severe migraines, was able to release the energy that was blocking her emotions, rage at an abusive father, and her headaches soon vanished.

Physical symptoms of dis-ease are clearly emotionally connected. Working energetically with the deep emotional and spiritual issues can move and transform the stuck energy that creates dis-ease such as, fibromyalgia, ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, some types of chronic pain, migraines, sexual dysfunction, and TMJ among others. Working with the Body and its energy also helps to heal the issues we commonly consider psychological, such as, panic attacks, depression, anxiety etc. People who work with all aspects of themselves, report feeling more alive, having more sexual feeling, singing better, and being more spontaneous and joyful.

What can assist you in your quest for healing your bodymind? Many modalities assist the bodymind healing. Bioenergetic Analysis, massage, Rolfing, osteopathic and chiropractic are among them. Healing modalities that work the emotional, mental and spiritual levels of existence are Homeopathy, Acupuncture and Core Energetics. Among them Core Energetics uniquely addresses the psychological, emotional, and spiritual directly through work with the bodymind.

Anti Anxiety Wisdom: Core Energetics Transforms Anxiety to Free Us
Pamela L Chubbuck PhD © 9/1/ 2003

Anxiety is a huge epidemic in our society. More people are on medication for anxiety than ever before. Anxiety is the cause of many mental and emotionally related symptoms and because we are bodymind our physical symptoms are most often caused by anxiety run amuck.

Anxiety occurs when worrying about possible negative outcomes, or ruminating about something after the initial thinking process has unearthed what we can do about a problem. Anxiety is about living in a negative situation that we feel we have no capacity to change. We lose the ability to trust ourselves to cope with whatever comes our way and lose faith in the universe to keep us ultimately safe. Over time, anxiety shows up in our body in many ways, if not resolved will cause misery, then illness. In fact anxiety can be a killer.

We often respond to life by turning our attention to the negative, sometimes with panic. Adrenaline rushes in to help us deal with our perceived emergency, that our bodies' primitive mechanism treats the same as if we were being attacked by a saber toothed tiger. Only this time we don't run, scream, or fight. We are “civilized” and often times the danger we are up against is living the modern life of going to a job we hate, living with a bad relationship or marriage, not talking back to our boss, or parents, and being out of control about the quality of our air and water. We live in cities where we drive in stop- start traffic that puts us behind the wheel for hours a day. All this while we clench or teeth, our guts stop working properly, our stomach churns out acids, we have nightmares, or lie awake, our hormones go wild, we go numb and may have outbursts of disconnected anger.

Our bodies manifest anxiety in various forms, commonly: insomnia, tooth grinding or jaw clenching, fibromyalgia, loss or the gaining of weight, constipation, diarrhea, and high blood pressure. Anxiety gone unchecked affects all systems of the body including: Muscular-skeletal, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular. Anxiety can and does cause heart palpitations, and an increase of any of the above symptoms which can result in a deeper more serious illness such as TMJ, (tempro mandibular joint syndrome), colitis, stroke, and heart disease. Wilhelm Reich, MD, father of all modern body psychotherapies and body-mind medicine, spent years researching what happens to the body under these kinds of stressors, and developed a therapy to help people not only deal with, but cure their neurosis based physical ailments. John Pierrakos, MD, founder of Core Energetics and co-founder of Bioenergetic Analysis was a student of Wilhelm Reich's when Pierrakos was a young medical student in New York in the late 30's and early 40's. Bioenergetics and Core Energetics treats anxiety well.

Anxiety gone untreated also affects our minds and thought processes, our emotions and feelings, and our spiritual well being. We cannot think straight. Our thoughts may seem to make sense, to us, but they are distorted. We lose the capacity to see our own issues and think logically about how to make positive changes for ourselves. Our emotions become unbalanced -- blocked, distorted, or over active. When we lose connection with our spiritual source - our well being, sense of peace and general safety is disturbed. We don't know why we are here in this life, our purpose escapes us. Life can seem too hard, too lonely, too frightening.

Always, our unresolved childhood issues and woundings come to the surface and cloud our present reality. It's just the way life works. Something happens in the present that reminds us, usually unconsciously, of our past, and the emotions from our past lock us into behaving from that same wounded child state. If we were abandoned or threatened with abandonment as children, we probably are terrified of being left now. This underlying terror keeps us in situations which are not healthy for us as adults but our emotional child's way of experiencing life tells us that if we are left we will die. We feel this because- that is what would happen to a child who is too young to care for him/herself. This creates a state of high anxiety.

If we grew up in a family that did not allow emotions to be freely expressed, or even talked about or acknowledged, were allowed to express only “good” feelings- like happiness was OK but anger, and sadness were not-- we were set up to become anxious adults. People need to express all aspects of their emotional repertoire in a safe environment. Research tells us it's healthier that way.

Some behavioral symptoms we can look for that tell us we have undiagnosed anxiety are as follows: Difficulty relaxing; Having to do something all the time to feel relatively comfortable; Dislike or downright hate of being alone or conversely feel uncomfortable being with others; Overeating; Eating foods you don't want and aren't good for you; Smoking; using drugs or alcohol to medicate; Use of TV or computer to keep from being with yourself; Awaking after a couple of hours of sleep thinking about problems for the umpteenth time; indulging in disconnected or unsafe sex; staying up doing things or watching TV even when you are tired. These are all signs of anxiety. It is essential to your mental; and physical health to process and transform this anxiety. Core Energetics works to transform anxiety, leaving us feeling able to be our Core selves. Free, spontaneous, and more peaceful.

Many people search for medical answers for their suffering and end up taking medications rather than searching for the cause of their neurotic anxiety. Probing for ways to make life changes and better ways to deal with problems to provide a true cure rather than masking symptoms is the way of Core Energetics.

Working with the body is essential as that is where we manifest anxiety. The Integrated Bodymind Psychotherapy of Core Energetics is most helpful for many people suffering from anxiety. To begin or continue your healing use these simple but powerful tools.

1. Mediate 20 minutes every day. Just sit quietly and breathe. Allow your thoughts to gently flow through your mind. Don't try to stop them.
2. Exercise at least 20 minutes a day. Just open your door and walk in any direction for 10 min and then turn around and come back.
3. Get more light in your life. Literal light. Sunlight. (Wear your sunscreen) We know that natural light affects us positively and not enough natural light affects us negatively.
4. Connect with nature. Go outside more.
5. Eat as close to natural foods as possible. More veggies and fruits.
6. Give up coffee and beverages with caffeine
7. Give up sugar and processed foods
8. Some medications both prescription and over the counter, have anxiety as side effects. Even anti-anxiety medications. Ask your doctor.
9. Find a job you love
10. Live only with people who love you
11. Help someone else
12. Work toward a healthier planet
13. Upon awakening be grateful for what is good in your life. Give thanks!

Love, Eros & Sexuality: The Three Stage Rocket of Relationship
By Pamela L. Chubbuck, Ph.D. © October 2003

It doesn't take rocket science to get to love, but it does take more understanding than Hollywood , the music industry or most of our parents teach us. The majority of us are confused about what love is, which causes us much misery. We long for love and don't find it. We settle for less, are unhappy, and our culture supports our misconceptions. The majority of love songs and movies are about Eros. Listen to the lyrics, watch the films; they call up teen-age images of life full of sex and romance. Eros brings to mind the image of cupid hovering overhead, pulling his bow back and zinging the arrow of “love” right at the heart of the usually unsuspecting. It hits the target and we are smitten. All reason leaves. We feel we are floating - the opposite of having our feet on the ground.

In the most positive sense Eros opens us to new possibilities; our partner brings up all our best, most creative traits. As an evolutionary process our minds and spirits expand because together we can be more than we are alone.(1).

Romance makes us want to get closer to the object of our good feelings and since there is nothing physically closer than sex -- we do it. Sex can be the bridge between Eros and love. When sex is added, we have uranium-power for our transformation and are on our way to love. Sex is exciting, energetic, expansive, and it helps create more Eros -- especially for women. Studies show that the more sex we women have the closer we feel to our partners. We want to stay with them or move in, get married, and have babies. This urge is even greater when we have orgasms say sex researchers. (1) Our biology creates this strong urge to couple for the survival of the species. If you don't want to desire the person, don't have sex.

Sex connected with love is the best we human beings have to experience the bliss of the union we long for. Sex alone is not love nor is it sexuality. Sexuality has to do with who we are as individual alive beings. It is our very nature and allows us to feel our most animate. Western peoples have split sex and love, the heart and the pelvis, one from the other. Unified sex is powerful and pleasurable but our culture supports images of sex cut off from love every minute of every day. To be truly sexual we must find our creative spark, our spontaneity, our passion for life itself. If we are cut off from our sexual flow we must work to unblock those wonderful forces within our bodies.

With time Eros tends to die out. Our shadow side surfaces and the personal demons we have not yet tamed roar their mighty roar. Just as our partner brings out our best, s/he predictably brings out our worst. Fear, anger, psychic pain and sadness are some of the emotional issues we probably stuffed down as kids which now need to come up and out to transform to love. (3) In the best sense we pick our partners so we can bring to consciousness and move through these stuck places.(4) But sadly we or our partners usually then feel we must leave the relationship to find that initial excitement again… and again.

We come to expect never ending romance in relationship. We are not taught how to find and create love. We end up with hurting hearts; or -- in dead-end mediocre partnerships. But wait! It takes work and commitment to get to Love. And just when most people are leaving a new relationship the chance to find true love is at hand.

Getting to love needs a three stage rocket. It takes Eros and sex to blast us out of earth's gravitational pull and into the realm of true love. Reaching and sustaining orbit takes revealing to ourselves and our partners, our shadow -- our shameful demons. We must be genuinely honest and find our deepest truth. Along this path we will have profound life lessons that we share with our partner and together we can solve life's problems and experiences life's joys. This is what moves sex and romance into the realm of true love. Eros and sex can and should remain part of partnered love and what makes our partners sexually exciting to us and us to them is the constant discovery of new things about ourselves and the other. One never knows all about the partner because we are all constantly discovering, evolving, and learning. Love is an adventure of revelations. Partnership and marriage are one of life's most spiritual paths.

To stay in Love's orbit we must practice unconditional positive regard for our partner, loving them even when they reveal their dark side to us as we hope they will love us through revealing ours. Stay in orbit by keeping the spark of Eros alive, enjoying the excitement and pleasure of sex and embracing the practice of love as growth potential at its most thrilling.

1), Union, Eva Pierrakos

Also suggested:
Pleasure ; and Love, Sex & Your Heart , by Alexander Lowen, MD

Breastfeeding is Essential for Bio-Psycho-Spiritual Health
Pamela L Chubbuck PhD © February 2007

Oh! Did you see the national news in December that told of a young mother being kicked off a Delta airplane by the stewardess, in Burlington, VT for discreetly breastfeeding her baby, in her seat? Her husband was in the seat next to her. I was horrified! I wondered what had happened to the stewardess in her childhood to disconnect her from such a basic natural human function. My guess is that she had not been breastfed.

I was happy to learn that La Leche League in Vermont staged a “Nurse-In” at the Delta counter in Burlington shortly thereafter. I have a lovely image of a group of young mothers nursing their babies in front of that Delta counter. Delta did apologize, as well they should. That news article prompted me to write to Delta, sign a petition and now to write this article. Later I discover another article more shocking. Read on.

I began my career first as a La Leche League Leader, then midwife before I became a psychologist and international trainer of The Core Energetics Evolutionary Process. I am experienced in the joys of breastfeeding having breastfed my three sons; two of them weaned themselves, one of whom can remember his breastfeeding experience. When I worked at Georgetown University Hospital in the early 70’s, one of my jobs was to teach nurses and doctors about breastfeeding and assist brand new nursing mothers.

Breastfeeding is the most natural and essential of connections that human beings have. And many humans in westernized countries are being deprived of their birthright often because mothers don’t have enough correct information. But when people are deprived of the right to breastfeeding because of patriarchal misinformation and institutional prejudice, those of us who understand need to take strong action fast.

Preserving Healthy Traditions
Natural long-term breastfeeding for baby is the gold standard by which we measure natural healthy babies and the children they become. Long term breastfeeding means child-led weaning. The average time world-wide for mothers to nurse babies is 2 ½ to 3 years. But sadly as the western cultural norm spreads throughout the world, this average time is shortening. What normal mothers in loving, indigenous tribal cultures do could teach us some good ways to better raise healthy children who grow into healthy adults. Read one of my favorite books, The Continuum Concept, by journalist, Jean Leidloff. She spent over a year living with and studying one of those tribes and writing about her experience. It’s fascinating!

Less than three months of breastfeeding is the norm for American mothers who pitifully must go back to work after 6 weeks of leave time. This is mainly because of our distorted cultural priorities that put stuff before healthy children. It’s also because we are the only “modern” nation in the world that refuses to adopt a national Family Policy. What is this doing to our children who are deprived of this exceptional nutrition, immunization, and contact with their mothers? And what of the adults?

Benefits for Babies
Most of you know the health benefits of breastfeeding: Human milk is perfect for human babies made so by millions of years of genetic changes for the purpose of the human species to prosper well. Before a mother’s milk “comes in” she produces a thick creamy substance called colostrum. This assists in baby’s first bowel movement and therefore fends off jaundice; gives baby essential antibodies and keeps baby from getting many infant illnesses such as colds, diarrhea, and most illnesses the older children and adults bring home from school or office. After a few days milk changes to what appears thin and bluish. If a mother is not educated she may worry that this is not rich enough to sustain her baby. Human milk has more protein and less fat than cow’s milk, and is just right to grow brains that are the most intelligent of earth’s species. Cow’s milk, Mother Nature made perfect for calves so that they stand up and walk within minutes after they are born. Cows are not very smart, but they need to keep up with the herd for their survival. Human babies grow their brains for many months before they have to get up and walk, and mother’s milk is perfect for them. Forty one years ago my eldest son, at age 4, walked over to a young mother bottle feeding her baby at the playground near our house, looked her straight in her eyes and proclaimed nonchalantly, “Cow’s milk is for cows.”

The best studies have told us for many years now that breast fed babies are physically healthier. Breast milk is virtually always available, sterile, portable, and the right temperature. It comes in nice containers too. (Read La Leche League’s best book, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, was written over 45 years ago and has been updated regularly.)

Essential Benefits for Human Brain Health Starts Before Birth
Mother feeling safe, cared for during pregnancy birth and when her infant is young, helps her care for her baby in a way that creates normal brain health. Breast feeding is essential for optimal brain health. Among the many perfectly designed, essential for human babies, ingredients in human mother’s milk, is Tryptophan. It is one of the many crucial elements that are absent in formula milk. Tryptophan is an amino acid which is a precursor of brain serotonin. Serotonin is essential for healthy brain function. Since human babies have brains that grow enormously fast in the first two years of life, and calves (goats, sheep [soybeans?!] etc) do not, (their clove- hoof- bodies need milk to create the ability to stand immediately after birth, walk within the first hour of birth and soon run from predators) it makes sense that human milk should be fed to human babies unless there is no human milk available.

James Prescott PhD, Neuro-Psychologist, formerly with The National Institute of Child Health and Human Services in Washington DC, well known for his cutting edge studies on human bonding and breastfeeding, researched violence among over 50 of the world’s cultures over thirty years ago. Dr Prescott tells us that In major studies, it is now well known that a Serotonin deficit creates problems in human subjects. Depression and violence is present when mother love, mother bonding and breastfeeding are absent. The damage to human children is done in the first weeks, months and years if there is lack of what they need most.

Prescott says that the human brain needs what breast milk contains and the breastfeeding experience of holding, movement and what we call love, does to assist the brain to be healthy. Children who are breastfed and lovingly carried and held close to mother’s body for the usual two plus years for the most part become adults who are calm, and peaceful. Breastfeeding, positive sensory stimulation, and physical affectional bonding, insures normal brain development, Prescott tells us.

Babies who do not get what they need often become depressed and more alarming, violent. Prescott thinks that this explains the epidemic of deprived infants who grow up to become children who kill children without remorse or feeling. By not supporting mothers to stay home and nurture their babies our culture is creating more psychopaths and sociopaths, who do heinous acts without consciousness he believes.

Since human babies have brains that grow enormously fast in the first two years of life, and calves (goats, sheep [soybeans?!] etc) do not, (their cloven- hoof- bodies need milk to create the ability to stand immediately after birth, walk within the first hour of birth and soon run from predators) it makes sense that human milk should be fed to human babies unless there is no human milk available.

Nurturing our mothers to feel safe, stay home, be taken care of by our governmental system will enable them to raise healthy children who become healthy adults. Working to change rules so mothers and fathers can stay at home with their young children must become one of the top a priorities in out nation.

Benefits for Moms
Breastfeeding benefits mothers also. Because baby’s sucking stimulates uterine contractions, there is less bleeding right after birth and mother’s uterus goes back to its original size more quickly than woman who bottle feed. Breastfeeding women generally get back into healthy physical shape more quickly than their bottle feeding sisters. And in the long run women who have breastfed have less incidence of breast cancer.

Psychological Advantages
Breastfeeding offers huge psychological advantages as well. On an emotional level women who breast feed bond more deeply with their infants and make very caring mothers. The kind of mothers who will fight off saber toothed tigers to keep their kids safe. There is good reason nature wants mothers and babies to connect in this healthy way. Basic…Survival of the species

There is less postpartum depression among women who breast feed. Breastfeeding produces hormones that keep moms feeling good. Oxytocin, sometimes known as the bonding or love hormone, is made more so by breastfeeding mothers. Oxytocin is also present during sexual intercourse creating a bonding that helps keep couples together so that they stay together to best raise their offspring. Again an important survival mechanism. Candace Pert, PhD, internationally known neuro-biologist, thinks that the strongest hormones in human beings are the ones that create loving bonding for Families. Breastfeeding mothers also create more opioids, natural morphine-like chemicals that create good feelings and enhance bonding, and other chemicals such as endorphins that are all about pleasure. No wonder breastfeeding moms and breastfed babies are so serene most of the time.

A mom who feels good is better able to feel good with her baby. They are a nursing couple who merge together in a state of real pleasure and contentment. It has been shown that when one has pleasure negative thoughts and feelings are at bay. (See James Prescott PhD’s -- past psychologist with NIMH-- research on pleasure, touch, bonding and aggression) Breastfed babies are usually content and feel safe. These psychological advantages of feeling truly safe and secure are essential for human babies to grow into mentally and spiritually healthy human adults.

Breastfed babies enjoy long “in-arms” time with mommy. They have more skin contact and eye contact…both vitally important for attachment and trust. The eyes are said to be the windows to the soul, and gazing into a baby’s eyes and baby looking at mommy is one human connection to the blissful state, that baby experiences. The other is in the mouth-nipple contact that baby makes with mother. Very like the connection baby has intrauterine with umbilical cord and placenta connecting to mother where baby is always fed and therefore feels more secure. The blissful state currently written about in neuro-biology, tells us about the endorphins and peptides that are in the human brain and body when people experience what they term their “spiritual experience” are the same we experience in sex and other blissful states such as deep meditation. (Read internationally known, scientist and brain researcher, Candace Pert, PhD’s Molecules of Emotion and her latest, book, Everything you Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d).

Baby’s mouth intimately contacts the mother’s nipple as milk and nurturing energy flow from mother into baby. Baby at mother’s breast is exactly the right distance for the newborn to be able to focus on mother’s face. The eye contact baby and mother make throughout the breastfeeding time is essential. It’s about love, the kind you can see and experience. Sometimes nursing is Mommy’s first awareness of human merging with this blissful state we sometimes call God as well. (For wonderful images see Alex Grey’s amazing anatomic and energetic painting of a mother breastfeeding her baby in his beautiful book, Sacred Mirrors).

Touch
Breast fed babies get touched more often and longer. In baby-led nursing baby learns to connect and to feel accepted and cared about deeply. This creates a trusting loving environment that in turn creates a trusting, loving, and kind child who can develop into a loving kind adult. Babies who are held close to caretaker’s body including sleeping in arms have much lower incidence of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). It is thought that baby regulates her breathing pattern, and regulates her heartbeat with those patterns of Mommy’s, which baby sleeping alone cannot do. Many Indigenous mothers and fathers sleep with and carry their babies at all times, until the baby wants to get down. Babies are not left alone, held in plastic seats, cribs and chairs or observed over closed circuit TV.

Breastfeeding works on a supply and demand system, therefore Mom must feed baby when Baby indicates hunger. Consistently. This way Baby learns that another human will fulfill her basic food needs when they arise….when Baby needs food. The life sustaining elixir will not be forthcoming only when Mother wants to produce it (after her hair appointment, or washing up the dishes after lunch or when the clock says, the pediatrician prescribes, or mother-in-law demands.) By having this life or death need met, the baby grows into a child who experiences the greater world as safe or at least benign.

Tradition Backed By Science
Harry F. Harlow, PhD, in his early monkey experiments, in the 1950’s, showed that baby monkeys preferred soft cloth milk-less mother dolls to wire dolls that did provide milk. What may be surprising is that when he then observed that those monkeys that were not breast fed by their mothers, the adolescent/adult monkeys did not know how to copulate. I think that if more babies were breastfed, when grown up, those adults would not experience the frequency of sexual dysfunction that we hear about today. Indeed, in a small qualitative study of mine, with my colleagues as subjects, breastfed adults were more comfortable with their bodies, enjoyed body contact more, and were better kissers and better lovers in general than their non breastfed peers.

Alexander Lowen, MD, co-founder with John C Pierrakos, MD, of Bioenergetics Analysis, talks about the nipple being like a penis and mouth a vagina. Without that early connection sexuality is likely distorted, theorizes Lowen. (Read Lowen’s Language of the Body and Lowen’s Love and Orgasm. Both classics). Wilhelm Reich, the father of body psychotherapy wrote about the importance of breastfeeding for the mental health of the child. (Read Reich’s book, Children of the Future) Lowen wrote in his classic, Physical Dynamics of Character Structure, that breast feeding for three or more years is best for the child and impacts hugely on those later adults’ mental and physical health. Donald Winnicott, MD, famous for his work with mothers and their children, writes that three years of breastfeeding makes for the healthiest children and later adults.

Sexual Dysfunction at an all Time High
Within my practice (and profession) people report sexual dysfunction at an all time high and it is surprisingly and frequently talked about on national daytime television and commercials. Viagra for sale on TV and the internet is a sign that sexual dysfunction is on peoples’ minds. Why? And what to do? We need to look to the cause and bring our focus to remedying the real issue. Lack of body feeling, connection, and intimacy are the most important.

Why do we Have Problems with True Intimacy
How did we become a nation of people who are disconnected from our bodies and have trouble feeling our hearts, our loving feelings, leaving so many unable to share true intimacy? It starts with babies and children who are not cared for lovingly in a physical way, with body contact as paramount, simple, natural, and traditional. Mothers who say, “I love you, of course I love you”, but do not have skin to skin contact with their infants are not demonstrating their love and their babies do not feel as loved. The importance of pleasurable skin contact is clear. Love comes with the physical experience, not with the words alone.

Babies learn communication and intimacy skills by interacting with their primary caregiver, first by gazing lovingly into her eyes while she looks upon them with unconditional love. As stated above, babies also need to touch skin and be touched on their bare skin a lot. Skin is the largest organ of the body and it is informed by millions of years of genetic information that says “touch me.” Babies who do not get touched and held die. Period. In the early nineteen hundreds many babies in orphanages in New York and elsewhere died because they were not touched. These babies were fed sufficient amounts of food and kept clean and dry. They died from lack of touch. Babies who are touched and held most are shown to have higher IQs and are more content. Read Touching: The Human Significance of Skin, by Ashley Montague, which is the prototype for most research on touching worldwide, and a fabulous book.

Being Taught What Nature Intended
And guess what! Most “modern” mothers do not know how to best give the unconditional love in this gift of life we call breastfeeding and loving natural pleasurable touch. And mostly it is not their fault. Their mothers probably did not breastfeed at all or were not able to do so with joy and pleasure. These women were not touched with unconditional love. Even physicians do not usually understand some of the basic principles of breastfeeding that all dairy farmers around the world do and must know. That milk production is based on how much sucking stimulation there is. In other words breastfeeding is a supply and demand system. Baby needs milk, sucks, and milk is produced. Voilà. In the early 1970’s I was a counselor/educator in the neonatal department at Georgetown University Hospital, a prestigious teaching hospital in Washington DC, USA. One of the things I taught new mothers and medical students, nurses and residents of neonatology, was breastfeeding information. Nurses get little information about breastfeeding. Medical students generally get very little information about breastfeeding, and receive over 10 times more bottle feeding information. Thus we have created pediatricians and general family physicians who feel more comfortable with bottle feeding than breast feeding. They can see, measure and regulate bottle feeding and regulating is something doctors are taught to do. Regulating in this way is not natural, necessary, or desirable for the best overall outcome for the everyone.

Too few women have been taught by role modeling to use their bodies as nature intended. After all, breasts evolved over millennium to nurture babies! A colleague reported to me his experience in graduate school recently when a young woman in her mid twenties, a fellow student, learned that human breasts are for feeding human babies. She was shocked! “You mean breasts are like cows udders”! She exclaimed in a horrified voice. My friend was amazed that anyone could make it to the age of 26 without knowing that breasts are for feeding babies! I have met several women in the USA that have never observed a mother breastfeeding her baby.

Men and women in our culture are taught that breasts are sexual and primarily for sexual pleasure and women think breasts are for attracting men. This is very sad and concerning to me.

The following is an excerpt of a true news article and is adapted from "Breastfeeding a Crime?" by Linda Folden Palmer
Two children were taken away from their parents after a photo of a 12-month-old baby with his lips on his mother's nipple was developed at a local drug store and then reported to authorities by the shop's clerk. No experts were consulted, no evaluations were made, the children were simply whisked away and the parents charged with the second-degree felony of "sexual performance of a minor."

According to the Dallas Observer, after responding to the photo clerk's alert, Richardson police in Texas reportedly considered the pictures to contain sexuality. A Child Protective Services supervisor, without any information beyond the photos, ordered the children to be removed from their home.

The story goes on and is horrifying because people who were not educated, had serious bias and in my opinion, sexual distortion, managed to have children removed from good parents because of an innocent photo showing mom breastfeeding a 12 month old. Fifty parents wrote letters and many parents sent their own breastfeeding photos to the authorities. When the story hit the national news the parents got their kids back pronto. But what a sad state of affairs! Severe pain has been created by ignorance and distorted sexual beliefs. Linda Palmer calls it a run in between Bible Belt Texans and natural innocent Peruvian parents.

In our culture many girls watch extreme plastic surgery TV shows like, The Swan, which teach girls by example that however they look is not good enough. Many women on these shows have breast augmentation to feel OK. Sex is flashed on MTV and in other media while loving connection, family caring, touch between children and adults is seen infrequently or not at all. I have known mothers who because of some religious beliefs hide their children’s eyes when loving physical contact is shown between a man and woman on TV or a movie, but allow these same children to watch human beings being shot, beaten, blown up and obviously killed. This truly distorted behavior and belief gives our children a message that killing is normal but loving sex is not. A mother breastfeeding a baby on prime time TV? Let me know when and where you have seen that please.

Mothers who Don’t Breastfeed Suffer Too
Woman who do not breastfeed do not receive the clear physical and deep but subtle and lasting psychological benefits that breastfeeding provides. Not having an extended period of breastfeeding her child cheats mothers out of a natural experience that that will open her to feeling and experiencing her normal bodily functions. The act of giving birth naturally opens an amazing and perfect opportunity to experience emotional and spiritual growth. Similar to the act of giving birth-- which blasts energy through mother’s body connecting her to the earth-nature-all of life-and her deepest self -- breastfeeding more gently focuses energy inward toward a mother’s body and heart and opens her to her deep soulfulness. During the act of breastfeeding a woman enters a most sacred woman-space. From this deep place she focuses on her baby, touching the smooth softness of baby’s skin, gazing deeply into her beautiful eyes and receiving the gentle sweetness of her unique face. This profound connection opens Mother’s heart and she feels love in a way she never experienced before. This is a sacred journey.

Mothers who Must Work
Because of economic difficulties exacerbated by a culture uneducated or uncaring about the mental health of our children, many women must work to support or help support their families. Women need to be educated about the many physical and emotional benefits that breastfeeding provides their children long term. Therapists and other support people can help by encouraging a mother to continue breastfeeding as long as possible. To take as long a leave time to bond and care for her infant as possible, and to understand that some sacrifices now, such as waiting for a new TV, car and new clothes, will be vastly beneficial to the baby now and in his or her future. If Mother must leave her baby she can be taught to pump her breasts so that her baby continues to receive the best nourishment possible while she is away. Mothers can then nurse when at home and hold, carry, cuddle and sleep with their infants when not working. This is essential for good bonding.

Every caretaker that is with the infant while mother is working must be chosen for her warm and caring qualities as well as her ability to care for the baby on a practical level. The care giver must be encouraged to hold, carry, touch, talk to and make eye contact with the baby every day throughout the time Baby is in her care.

Caregivers Unable to Nurse
Some very few mothers can’t breastfeed their babies due to a medical condition. Obviously if mothers don’t have breasts, have TB or AIDS, they can’t or should not breastfeed. A relatively rare genetic syndrome, such as polycystic ovary disease (estimated at 7% of the population) may make it difficult to produce enough milk. Some babies have primary caregivers other than birth mother such as adoptive and foster moms, or kin in the mother role. In these situations, mothers or other caregivers can give the baby plenty of skin to skin contact; sleep with them and hold them close; take baths with them, and carry their babies on their back or front as they go about day to day chores. When giving the bottle they can hold the baby close, look into Baby’s eyes, and touch their bare skin and allow and encourage them to touch them.

Case Examples Involving Lack of Breast Feeding/ Early Physical Bonding
Fred, a handsome professional man in his early thirties, recently experienced what he called his primal wound in a deep Core Energetics session. Fred complained of never being able to really connect intimately for long with a woman. He picked inappropriate women and even when he wanted to change their relationship or leave altogether he held on and became angry and jealous. He “went nuts,” becoming furious, a few times even though in his mind he knew the best thing would be to end and look for a more appropriate partner.

In his session it became clear that he had early deprivation and lack of breastfeeding went along with that. His mother was hospitalized after his birth for 4 months during which his father took care of him. Fred rejected his mother when she returned home, and refused to take the bottle from her. He continued to reject her, no doubt causing her pain and concern. As Fred grew, he was told his fist word was Daddy. Fred told me that intellectually he was not attracted to any particular part of a women, he desired a whole healthy integrated relationship. He realized however that he had been always attracted unconsciously to women with large breasts.

One woman he described having a short relationship with, was not really a women he wanted to be with long term, but he felt safe and secure, and slept better than usual, while lying with his face next to her breasts.

I met another man, I’ll call Will, while teaching Core Energetics in California. I was doing an exercise with the whole group but I was paired momentarily with Will. Something shocking occurred when suddenly with no warning Will had me by the throat with the look of murder in his eyes. I looked him in those eyes and choked out “Will, it’s me, Pam. Let go! ” Just as suddenly he realized what he was doing and let go. Immediately he sobbed deeply. He was sorry he said.

In working with this experience with the assistance of the whole training group, Will told me that he was afraid to be near his infant nephew because he had images of strangling a baby. This frightened him a lot and he was ashamed to tell anyone about his feeling. I encouraged him to tell me about the baby that was inside him, and what had happened to that baby after he was born or at birth.

Will said that a short time after his birth his mother became seriously ill and was bedridden in the room next to the one he occupied alone. He was cared for by a rigid aunt, his mother’s sister who only held him when she fed him. Most often he lay in his crib with great painful longing for his mother, he recalled in an abreaction. It was excruciatingly painful to be so close yet so far from her arms and he choked himself off when he experienced over and over that crying never brought the relief he sought -- to be held and nursed by his mother. He choked his feelings off and continued to feel choked in his adulthood. His pain became fury as he helplessly awaited a care taker to love and nurture him. At that moment in the group process I described above, he transferred his past pain to me and I became both the desired nurturing mother figure and the hated torturer. He instantly “snapped’ and wanted to strangle me.

Years later Will reported happily, that he never had the urge to strangle a baby again. Will got married and has a son of his own who was breastfed by his wife. Will carried, held and nurtured his son at every possible chance. The baby grew well and is now a very happy contented child.

I once worked with a client I’ll call George. George wanted to be tied up during sex so that he could not move. He wanted to get over that because although stimulating he found it also painful emotionally. Besides, his wife didn’t really like it. She said, “Then he can’t touch me, and that doesn’t feel good to me.” In working with his sexual issue we discovered that he not only had not been breastfed, his mother was quite frightened about her own body and he never remembered seeing her without all her clothes on and did not remember ever really being allowed to touch her. As a child he longed to touch his mother but then became cut off and angry. He stopped his painful feelings to the point where he would not allow himself to want to touch her or be touched by her.

Unconsciously George re-played this out in sex with his wife. He longed to touch her and could not, making it both arousing and painful. After re-experiencing his pain about not being physically nurtured by his mother he lost his desire to be tied up during sex.

What Else Happens to Adults Deprived as Infants
Adults who were deprived of breastfeeding and did not receive enough sucking time in general, become adults who are always, albeit unconsciously, seeking the breast. Oral deprivation takes on many habits that somehow mirror the breastfeeding experience. Adults, who unconsciously want to suck, do suck -- but they suck on cigarettes, candy, beer bottles, suck soda and other liquids through straws, they chew gum, chew their finger nails, and talk a lot, and sometimes even still suck their thumbs. I saw an adult woman on an airplane recently sucking her thumb while sleeping.

All of these habits in some way use the mouth, tongue and lips in similar ways a baby sucks at the breast. These are forms of self soothing that would normally come from the infant’s mouth being in contact with mother’s nipple.

Baby also is soothed by touching mother’s skin and hair. Babies who are not allowed to touch mother’s smooth skin will touch their own hair and may become adults who twirl their hair unconsciously. These babies who want to touch mother’s soft skin must settle with touching themselves or feeling a soft toy or blanket. You may remember the image of Linus, in the famous American cartoon Peanuts. Linus had his blanket with him always and when his mother washed it he would stand outside at the clothesline and hold a corner of his blanket while it dried. When mother is not or can not be the soother the baby transfers his desire to someone or something inanimate. Psychology calls those things transitional objects. The transition is from mother to object. I knew one little boy who was weaned too early directly to a cup (that was the taught technique for a while in the 60’s) who chewed paper from napkins for over a year. Transition away from mother is certainly not a transition that should be made too early, and much better when the transition is from mother to another human being. Babies who are supported by touch and breastfeeding are adults who grow up and find another adult to love and bond with in intimate relationship.

Adult Relationships Based on Early Deprivation
Early deprivation of the breast and mother figure wreaks havoc on the person’s adult relationships. The deprived adult seeks someone to take care of him or her, often taking on the role of caretaker in order to have someone love them. The term co-dependence fits very well for this person; meaning they will put the other before self to the detriment of self. “I love you so much I will take your abuse…just don’t leave me.”

Both men and women, who have been deprived of early nurturing, usually pick bad partners. These partners are often demanding, cruel, and controlling. But the deprived child, now living in the adult body, tries to change to please them, to try to keep a relationship that they feel is better than no relationship at all, and thus giving up their true inner self. Giving up your inner self creates a situation where a person is not able to be content in life or to find their own deeply satisfying and spiritual work in the world. In losing their core, their true self, they spend a life devoid of deep personal meaning. They are too afraid to feel the pain of the deprivation they experienced as infants and toddlers. This is even more tragic because feeling that pain now is the gateway to their healing and freedom as adults.

How Psychotherapists Can Help
What can practitioners of Core Energetics do to best assist clients? What can you as a client tell your therapist to help you? Therapists; please ask clients if they were breastfed in your intake paperwork and interview. If they answer yes, ask: how long were you breastfed? Please don’t forget to put that information into your mind and heart when creating strategy to assist the healing process of your clients.

The dilemma of deprivation takes a particularly kind, gentle, grounded and clear intervention. These are issues that must be dealt within the bodymind as they reach into the cellular memory. Sadness and rage must be felt and released from the bodymind. The therapist must have the ability to nurture unconditionally and teach the client to eventually stand on his or her own two feet in order to compassionately take care of the infant and toddler within.

But what if you weren’t breastfed or held and have transference with your client about his or her early needs? Perhaps you want to touch a client to get your touch needs met, or can’t tolerate feeling your client's needs. You may avoid the entire issue of early deprivation or keep your client at arms length so you won’t feel your own pain. This is a huge issue for practitioners and is a challenging problem if not addressed in oneself. You can not fake clear, grounded unconditional care for your client. If you suspect any of these issues are yours, get some help. Go back into therapy and talk to your supervisor about what is happening right away.

Clients be Alert to Your Early History
Please be sure to tell your therapist about your earliest infant nurturing experience. Think about these questions for yourself and your own understanding: Were you breastfed? How long? Who took care of you the first year of your life? Was your mother at home or working? From what you know about your mother now, do you think she held and carried you? Did you sleep in her or your parent’s bed? Have skin to skin contact? Does/did your mother like her own body? Is your mother comfortable with her body? Were your parents physically demonstrative of love and affection?

Core Energetics Therapists
Core Energetics therapists are taught to pay attention to body typology and what the body of the client tells about his/her history. Lack of breastfeeding and early bonding shows up in the body. Almost always, the client has clear body signs of lack of intimate nurturing, lack of being held close to the chest of the mother or care giver. Some of these physical signs are a thin collapsed physical structure, eyes alive but seductively needy, and weak legs. Sometimes a rigid body and attitude cover up the neediness underneath. People, figuratively and sometimes literally, have difficulty standing up for themselves because he/she did not have enough energy = nurturing as an infant to create that strength.

Some of the issues that lack of nurturing creates are what Core Energetics calls character type, and one type is the deprived person who has fear of being abandoned, lacks trust of another, is disconnection from his or her real needs, refuses to ask for what they want, is co-dependence, has feelings of weakness, can be very demanding, acts aloof, and may be terrified of the very thing he/she longs for -- intimacy.

Skillful seasoned therapists work with these basic issues and what they create in the clients’ life in adult years.

Core Energetics Heals
Core Energetics works physically and energetically with the lack of breastfeeding, lack of physical nurturing issue. Techniques are taught to students of Core Energetics within the Core Energetics Institute South Training Program that creates therapists who are experienced and competent to work with this and other deep psychophysical issues. Students of Core Energetics Evolutionary Process first must deal with their own feelings, blocks and character defenses in their bodyminds. Core Energetics Therapists work on themselves before they work on others.

Bodymind Therapy: The Time Has Come - A Message for Psychotherapists
© Pamela L. Chubbuck, PhD

We are one flowing vibrating mass of chemicals, electricity and ultimately -- light. We are an integrated whole. In this age of new science and holism regarding both mental and physical health, it has become clear that we human beings connect and flow as unified body-emotion-mind-spirit. Most psychotherapists have not been trained to work with their clients using this information. Our academic culture is still most comfortable teaching theory-- using the mind and possibly dealing with deep emotions. But the body? No. The body is viewed as separate from intellectual pursuits, religious thinking and emotional balance.

Doctors and research scientists, as well as ancient medical practitioners who integrated body-mind-emotion-spirit, (such as acupuncturists and homeopaths), know that what we once thought of as body and mind must now be treated as bodymind. Psychotherapy has the opportunity to follow this lead; to keep up with the latest findings so that their clients can heal in the deepest way possible.

Western knowledge of the bodymind connection originated with the work of Wilhelm Reich, MD in the early 1900’s, followed by the creation of Bioenergetic Analysis, by Reich’s students Alexander Lowen, MD and John Pierrakos, MD, in the 1950s. Pierrakos created Core Energetics in the early 1970s. Only recently has this knowledge of the role of the body in the treatment of dis-ease of any sort come to be viewed as important in psychotherapy. It is still the rare therapist among us who has learned to interpret the body’s clear messages when treating a client.

Now writers exploring frontiers of psychology who are applying neuroscience to psychotherapy and psychoanalysis are constantly alluding to the importance of the body. We often hear about the importance of non-verbal communication, body messages; in the early mother-baby pair, in adult relationships of many sorts, and in the psychotherapy office. But how can we practically apply these ideas in our practices?

First, we need detailed training in the anatomy of emotion. We psychotherapists rarely know an acetabulum from a piriformus, much less know that the physical body can inform us about how and why our clients think and emote the way they do. We have not been taught that every muscle tension connects with and can express a withheld emotion. We never learned this in our academic psychology and counseling programs where we trained to be therapists.

Our training was way too brief. The typical master’s degree program that prepared the majority of us to become psychotherapists and counselors is set up to whisk students through the academic part of our learning in one short year. So, even if it were seen as important, not enough time could be taken in our short training to give much more than rudimentary information about counseling psychology theory. The next year we were already on the job…being a student therapist in a real life setting, usually overwhelmed with just keeping our heads above water. We were pressed to act without any chance to learn about the mind-body connection.

If we continued in our academic programs, perhaps we entered another four years in a conventional Ph.D. program which also was not able to prepare us to integrate body and mind. We may have been curious about how to use the latest science of neurobiology and the bodymind techniques we had heard about, but most of us did not have a chance to get the training we needed to do it. Some would have liked to become experts in the growing field of Core Energetics, or other modalities such as Bioenergetic Analysis, considered to be the fore runners in body psychotherapy specialties.

Core Energetics is the first Western truly holistic approach to psychotherapy. It is an evolutionary process that uses the body as a base for therapeutic work. Core Energetics works with all known levels of human existence – body, emotions, mind, will and spirit. Core Energetics Institute South offers a 4 year professional training program in the Core Energetic Evolutionary Process.

In order to provide an opportunity for therapists to learn more about the body in psychotherapy, I am offering a workshop on June 23rd and 24th, which will allow you to explore this new exciting field of study. Tris Bescher, anatomy instructor and musician is joining me to offer you a full two days of energetic experiential learning. You, as a curious psychotherapist, counselor, helper, nurse or other care giver, are encouraged and welcome to join us and learn more about the body and integrative, holistic psychotherapy.

In this training workshop you will first begin to experientially and didactically learn, about your own body-- and what messages your body has for you. Then faculty will teach and assist you in observing and reading each other’s bodies. This learning will enhance your own life and your professional life. You will learn to be more grounded and alive both personally and professionally. You life can be more interesting and fun!

What Can A Good Couple of Therapy Hours Do?©
An Excerpt from Pam Chubbuck’s upcoming book:
Your Client has a Body: Healing the Mind Body Split in Psychotherapy
by Pam Chubbuck ©May 2007, All Rights Reserved

Core Energetics sometimes may seem miraculous. The results that can often be obtained in a short time, by a well trained and experienced therapist are truly remarkable, but when you understand Core’s basic philosophy and study the depth of the integrative techniques used, it becomes demystified. Let’s look at the following case to better understand the power of Core Energetics. Below you will read that Susanne was helped in one extended session in a way that a team of physicians had not been able to accomplish in a year. Her physicians lacked a vitally important part of the puzzle -- body and emotions are one.

Susanne, an intelligent, young professional woman in her early 30’s entered my office for the first time looking miserable. She walked stiffly; shoulders squared and raised, her head gave the impression of being glued to the top of her rigid mechanical looking neck. Indeed, Susanne soon told me that she had been in an accident just about a year ago. While riding her bike, a car hit her and she was seriously injured. In fact she told me that she had been in pain for the entire year. All the time. She said that it hurt to talk, and thankfully I knew how to gather much of the information in other ways.

She had surgery that fused four of her lower cervical vertebra, C5 and 6 and C6 and 7, and had a titanium rod inserted that held her neck so she could barely bend it. Her eyes were dull, and even her hair lacked luster. She looked more than sad, she looked despairing.

Susanne, once very athletic, being accustomed to running, biking, and doing yoga, now looked emaciated with very little vital force appearing to run through her. Her once strong muscles had begun to waste away from lack of use. She had no affect and said she was on an antidepressant, prescribed by her psychiatrist, that she explained made her feel nothing. “I’m numb.” She went on to describe her hopelessness, “I feel that God has abandoned me.”

I observed her body, how she moved, breathed, and held herself. With her permission I then palpated the muscles of her upper back, neck and then her occiput -- meaning I palpated the lower part of Susanne’s head as it met her neck. I felt muscles that were like steel bands, and the hard lumps of muscle tissue that had become spastic particularly at the muscle insertions near her skull. I knew this had to be very painful to the touch and Susanne flinched and yelled when I touched her fairly softly. Then I felt her jaw, another spastic area. I knew that she tightened her jaw originally to keep from crying out or shrieking rage or pain. Now spastic, her jaw tensing was out of her conscious control.

I sensed by looking at her contracted muscles and by intuition, that Susanne had been gripping the handlebars of the bike when she was struck. She held on tightly trying to keep the bike upright, so she wouldn’t fall. Almost a year later she appeared to still be holding on so she would not hit her head on the hard surface of the road. Her body had gone into survival mode as it should have, but no messages had come through later to tell her she was safe. Her upper trapezius and other levator muscles were still in shock and had never relaxed. They continued to anticipate danger and hadn’t let go for the last twelve months.

Because Susanne’s upper back, shoulder and jaw muscles particularly, had become chronically tense, and spastic, they were hurting and complaining like hell. A pain always says, “Pay attention! There is information here for you to learn about your healing”.

I asked her if she had cried after the accident, and had she gotten angry. She said no. I told her I experienced her as stuck in mid floor like an elevator that could not go up or down. If she could go down to the depths of her suffering, she could then feel her pain anger and sadness. Only then could she transform her stuck ness back into her life force. Her own life force could heal her, but not while being blocked by the tensions she was experiencing.

Each of us must go down into our depths, and feel our darkness before we experience our light, I knew. Susanne needed her metaphoric elevator to go to her basement of deep feelings before she could then take that elevator up again, see the light, and find that God had never abandoned her. It was with her fear and tension that she was blocking herself from feeling her connection to God. I knew from my own experiences in life and over 35 years of working with clients that when she unblocked her held places she would automatically re-connect with her inner and outer God.

I had Susanne kick and helped her begin to express her anger, then her rage. I was cautious to check in to see if any activity was making her neck feel worse. It did not. With my support and encouragement, Susanne let fly her rage at the woman who hit her and who had then immediately blamed her for the accident. At the end of the session I asked, “What do you experience now”? Susanne said, “I am not in any pain.” She began to cry tears of relief and newfound hope.

Session Two
When I walked into my office 5 days after our initial session, at first glance my senses told me that Susanne was feeling better. Susanne looked more alive. Her cheeks had more color; she sat more comfortably and talked more easily without the unbearable pain so visible on her face, just a short week before. One might say her spirit was returning to her.

Susanne told me her pain was diminished since last session, and that sometimes since her session she was pain free. Most importantly, she now had hope. She told me she cut her anti-depressant medication in half, and that “yesterday I cried all day. It felt really good.” She smiled genuinely over this fact. “I plan to get off the antidepressants completely”, she told me. I reminded her to check with her MD for how to safely come off her medication.

She announced that that very day was the year anniversary of her accident and that it was her day to feel. But when she started to look inside for her feelings, she said she felt good. I suggested that we start by celebrating a years passing. “Now you have turned the corner, you are getting better! I said, “You will no longer think of yourself as a women who is in pain, you are now a woman who is well, who is sometimes in pain.” Susanne repeated that fact out loud and then laughed with pleasure.

What Happened?
With help, Susanne began to release a years worth of held in fear, anger, sadness and pain. Her muscles softened, her shoulders lowered, her face brightened. Her chronically spastic muscles had hurt. Those muscles were so tight they even could pull her bones out of place – and they did. When they relaxed her pain lessened. The key to relaxing those muscles was Susanne’s finally connecting with her pain and expressing it emotionally and physically. Susanne’s muscle fibers were finally doing what they/she wanted to do for almost a year. Now they/she could begin to rest.

What Now?
Obviously Susanne still has a long way to go with her healing. If she continues in this therapy she will find resonances in her past that will explain when and why she learned to hold back her emotions with such force. Over time she will learn to let them go. She will learn to breathe spontaneously. We will work on her buried bodymind memories and free up the energies she needs for her own health. Susanne will then learn to physically and energetically stand up for herself and take control of her healing process. She will be able to let go of negative relationships in her life and replace them with healthier ones. She will discontinue seeing herself as a victim and ultimately take responsibility for each choice to breathe fully or contract.

What Therapists Need to Know to Better Help Their Clients

Therapists and Helpers need to know that body and mind are one. Therapists need education that includes how to get cues from the body that will better inform them what is happening with their client and how they can help. Core Energetics teaches how to look, sense, and feel the body for information. Core teaches how to look at the body; and sense information that is available by educated looking. Most of us are well aware that psychotherapists are not taught to really look. It may be considered rude, frightening, or perhaps too intimate.

Core Energetics teaches how to approach and touch the body with reverence; and to sense information that is available by educated touch. Psychotherapists are most often taught they should not touch their clients at all. At the very most, psychotherapists are taught that we might shake hands or perhaps, but rarely, touch a client lightly on an arm or shoulder to show empathy when he or she is feeling deep painful emotions. We are taught that otherwise touching a client can get you in big trouble. Maybe sued. Many people in the United States are pathological about touch. Many people long for touch and for some unconscious reason deny themselves or do not know how to unlearn years of teaching often caused by distortions in religious thinking. (For more information on touch read my article on Breastfeeding above)

Therapists need education about integrated health care, and psychotherapy that includes the body. What clients need is educated, clear, healing about bodymind integration. We as therapists/helpers need to learn educated empathetic touch along with a deep understanding of the fact that our bodies and minds are functionally identical. When we begin to really understand that concept within ourselves, we need to teach clients that their body mind emotions and spirit are one.

Training Available for Professionals - For further information please
Email coreenergetics@msn.com or call Pam Chubbuck at 770-388-0086.

When I was a kid I wanted to be a veterinarian. Back then I liked dogs better than people. I experienced them as more genuine and more affectionate. And they often were. I had a dog (cat, horse, hamster, ducks, and every other animal my parents would allow) and along with my best friend Linda, saved strays and naturally studied dog and human behavior.

In my early teen years I began to think humans were pretty fascinating too. I watched people intently, I made up stories about strangers by looking at how they walked, moved, talked and interacted. I didn’t know then that doing this was the beginning of my career as a body psychotherapist. When I was grown, an old boyfriend sent me a box of letters that I had written him as a 16 and 17 year old. There were pages of descriptions of my observations about people I had simply observed at a distance and some of people I knew a bit more. I was studying Bioenergetics at the time he sent them and I was amazed at how astute I had been as a teenager. Maybe I had a gift at gathering information by feeling and observing and now I know each of us has the ability to get information from others body movements, body appearance and their energy fields that create their physical shapes. (Read Language of the Body, by Alexander Lowen, MD, Core Energetics, by John Pierrakos, MD. And Desmond Morris, talked about body signals in his fascinating book, The Naked Ape).

If you watch the National Geographic channel on TV, you may have seen a show with, Oscar Milan, The Dog Whisperer. Hardly ever watching TV myself, my friend, colleague and fellow animal lover, Phyllis described several shows revealing Cesar’s amazing ability to deeply know dogs and their human companions. So I was fascinated to read his two books on dogs. Cesar’s Way and Leader of the Pack. For dog lovers and those of you interested in human psychology, take a look at the show and read his books. Pronto.

Cesar has a list in his book Leader of the Pack, that everyone considering getting a dog would benefit from reading. He tells us what one must do to have a mentally and physically healthy animal. He starts by telling us that dogs must be walked/exercised 45 min twice a day. He explains that dogs are naturally hunters and their ancestors walked through a large territory each day in search of food. Only after finding enough food do they rest and then play.

The walking rule in itself would deter most dog owners who think that letting Rover out in the back yard to “do his duty” for 5 min a few times a day is all they need to do. Rushing off to work in the morning and coming home after fighting traffic to let Rover out a few minutes just won’t cut it. Neither will tying Rover out in the back for an hour or two, or letting him out in the fenced yard for the day. Those that already have a dog they treat this way probably wonder why the dog is neurotic.

Cesar tells us that if we can not or will not follow all 10 of his rules for taking care of dogs, “Do not get a dog.” I think the dog world and the people world would be a better place, if those people who will not or can not follow Milan’s rules actually do not own dogs. It pains me to see dogs that should be running tied up all day long. It makes me angry at the owners when their dogs ceaselessly bark from behind fences. I am annoyed at the people who allow their dogs to jump on me and seem not to have a clue that their little Fifi or Fido has completely taken over the household and is their boss. (read the charming and well written book by, John Grogan, Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog.) People have unknowingly made their dogs neurotic, annoying, and sometimes dangerous by not knowing enough.

Human Children
Some people unknowingly treat their children in ways that are definitely hurtful. They do not know that babies and small children need constant nurturing and can not be birthed and then plunked in front of a TV babysitter and expected to be healthy. By not knowing enough, and by having parents who did not know, parents and other caretakers can make their children, neurotic, (anxious, depressed, fearful) annoying, and yes, dangerous.

I have been interested in the mental and physical health of Human Babies for over 45 years. First as a young mother with my own children, then as a La Leche League Leader, and Midwife, later as a student of human psychology, Developmental psychology, and neuro-psychology. In the early 1970's I was blessed to know and learn from James Prescott, PhD, neuro psychologist. (see below) Now I am interested in the latest developments in neuro-psychology. Reading Leader of the Pack inspired me to come up with my own list for potential parents.

Dr. Pam's List The below list is obviously meant to show the best possible scenario for human babies.

We as a society must work to create an environment where mothers (and other caretakers) can be and feel safe and secure during their pregnancy, lactation period (at least 2 and ½ years) and early child raising period. The lack cultural support of mothers is causing disastrous results, says Dr. James Prescott, a well known neuro biologist who has studied bonding, breastfeeding and the cause of depression, and violence in human beings for over 40 years.

Go to this website for information on articles
by James Prescott
http://www.violence.de/archive.shtml

Dr Pam's Rules for Becoming a Parent: What it Takes to Raise a Healthy Human Being

When adopting a baby or toddler or know you will be care taking a grandchild or other family member because the mother is not available

There's An Elephant in Our Living Room
There's an "Elephant in the Living Room" of our country and he's taking Zoloft! Poor Jumbo is depressed because he was moved to a different circus and had to leave his lover behind. His boss wanted him back on the job pronto since after all - you know - the show must go on! Jumbo wasn't given a chance work out his own feelings and now he is chronically depressed. His body hurts and he is miserable.

Medicating inconvenient emotions is in epidemic proportions: something that we do in this country out of our own fear. Adults and children are being medicated because most people don't know how to help them deal with strong emotions. Parents, friends, family members and frankly most professionals don't know what else to do. And if someone, family member or professional, has not dealt with their own emotions they can be deathly afraid of someone else's. Most often they are unconscious about their fear.

Money Makes the World go Around
Taking advantage of this fear for profit, are government agencies, drug companies, pharmacies, and physicians. We used to worry about illegal drugs and drug pushers lurking around school to sell drugs to kids and street corners to sell illicit drugs to adults. Now we must be concerned about drug company drug pushers and complicit physicians prescribing medications when they should not be. Even parents, not knowing how to deal with normal emotions push drugs on their kids to make them behave, be quiet, don't bother me. But all this is another story to explore later. (See references at end of article). Meanwhile, everyone is afraid.

What Are We afraid Of?
We are afraid to let go of our ego and allow our body to express its natural life. We are afraid of deep emotions because when we were kids and were deeply injured, we moved up into our heads, our egos, to feel safe. Now we don't know how to release the ego and allow the streams of our life force, our pleasurable energies, to take over. We are afraid if we let them flow we will be deeply hurt again. Or worse, we'll be annihilated. So we "bottle them up", try to stop the flow at all costs.

The Soul Needs Time Feel
Professionals generally don't understand the positive results of allowing the feeling and bodily energy to flow. Here in this westernized country, we medicate people for feeling deeply. Don't get me wrong, psychotropic meds are clearly needed in some cases. I'm not talking about withholding medication from people with schizophrenia, psychosis, or true bi-polar disorders; I'm talking about medicating anger, sadness, and anxiety that come from normal events of life. Normal events of life include losing a partner of many years, losing a parent, having a series of disappointments, feeling anger at things that cannot be controlled. Life happens: Parents get Alzheimer's, a child becomes ill. We could sit in these experiences. We could use them for our growth.

Wisdom Keepers Know
Wisdom keepers, master therapists and many holistic physicians know that these difficult things of life must be felt and experienced to heal. Medicating someone under normal life circumstances creates a numbing of normal emotions and ultimately prolongs the painful process. Asclepius, the early Greek God of medicine, was the founder of what we now call "alternative medicine", except it was considered traditional medicine then. What Ancient Greeks and Indigenous Healers understood was that any illness comes from disconnecting somehow from ones' Soul or Spirit. Healing therefore must be attained by reconnecting to ones' soul/spirit/core and embodying it.

To heal, we must become more conscious not less. Many medications render us less able to be conscious, therefore less able to heal. Indigenous healers knew, ancient Greeks knew, my great grandmother knew, that bringing Spirit into the physical body was accomplished by dancing, drawing, writing, wailing, kicking, dreaming, crying, laughing, acting out your story - as in theatre, sweating and story telling.

Not Their Fault
In defense of those fearful professionals, they are/were not taught in their MD, MA or PhD programs what to do with strong emotions - so unless they sought their own therapy or had further training they are stumped. I worked at Georgetown University Hospital in the 70s and talked with a physician who literally ran out of the hospital because he could not deal with his own feelings after delivering a still born child. I have worked with therapists who are terrified of their clients' feelings so much that they unconsciously do not allow the client to deal with emotions that mirror their own unresolved conflict. This is of course Counter Transference, and it happens all the time.

We All Need a Place to Do Our Own Work
These things are a real concern of mine and why I feel passionate about offering integrative therapy and supervision to professionals (see my article Bodymind Therapy: The Time Has Come). Therapists need further education within their own therapy and learn how to safely navigate through their own dark nights of the soul. To assist therapists and other care givers transverse these difficult, often frightening, places we also offer Core Energetic Training and Supervision for Core Therapists!

So, when Cognitive Behavioral strategies fail and they often do fail when strong emotions are involved, medical professionals are likely called in and medication is prescribed. In this day of informational technology, many people walk into their Drs offices and demand Prozac, Zoloft or Wellbutrin,(etc.) having diagnosed themselves by reading a newspaper,

magazine article or seeing an ad on TV. Because god knows, they are afraid to feel. And more shocking is that they usually receive the medication without real diagnosis to determine what is deeply wrong or given guidance by professionals as to how to truly heal. Because most professionals they seek out have not learned to feel deeply and are educated by drug companies who make billions on their psychotropic drugs.

We Must Feel, We Must Move Our Bodies
Core Energetics teaches us that we as energetic beings have emotions that are energy - and we must allow that energy to m o v e. When we get scared we hold our energy, it gets stuck, we feel bad, become depressed, anxious, and if we hold the "stuff" long enough, we become physically ill, taught Wilhelm Reich MD, Alexander Lowen MD, and John Pierrakos MD.

Most people who go to therapy experience what we call "talk therapy" and when that doesn't work for them, meaning they still feel bad, angry, guilty, scared, are on medication that numbs them and they are not happy about it, etc - some show up in my office.

Below are the stories of some who sought my help.
(Identifying Names and Facts are Changed in All Cases.)

CASE I: Dottie came to me referred by an ex-client of mine. Dottie had been in conventional therapy for years, said it had helped initially but now she wanted to go further than her last therapist knew how to take her. At 58 years of age Dottie told me, "I really want to live the rest of my own life!" Dottie felt like she was walking through a sort of fog. depression

There had never been much sex in her 30 year old marriage and for years there was none. Her husband rarely touched her and she knew his anti-depressants had rendered him impotent, but - they never talked about it. They lived a life of platonic non-intimacy. By looking at her body and hearing her history I knew that she craved emotional intimacy and she craved touch. Her eyes were bright but pleading, her body was held tight, her chest caved slightly in, her neck held rigid was painful she said. Dottie's rib cage showed hardly a sign of movement when she breathed. I am empathic so I felt I could hardly breathe as she stuffed her feeling deep inside. She was on an anti-depressant she said, but she did not initially tell me that she was interested in going off it.

We worked together about 5 months using Core Energetics principles, with lots of movement, and expressing long held emotions. I especially encouraged her to express her anger at how her parents had not been physical with her and never taught her that feeling, touching and sex were all part of normal human behavior.

At the 5 month mark, Dot had made regular progress. She said she was feeling better, had taken my suggestion to ask for cuddle time with her husband and that was happening. I began thinking about the possibility of her beginning to come off her medication. I brought it up in our next session and Dot casually told me that she had gone off her antidepressants a couple of months earlier because she had felt so much better. She said, "I feel like the fog has lifted and I feel more alive than I have ever felt in my life"! (I was glad she was OK because going cold turkey off meds is not safe.)

CASE II: A man I'll call Edward, came to me to "feel better, more alive and to get off my medication if possible." Edward was a 30 year old highly educated first born child, who began taking care of his younger brother and his mother, he said, by the time he was four. He had to be good, be right, behave, and be perfect. He had continued to emotionally take care of his whole family up to that day.

Medium height, a bit overweight, he sat very physically still, hardly moving his chest to breathe, and talked a lot with a flat sounding voice. Edward cried some but said he was not angry. He told me that sometimes he thought an angry thought but never acted angry. He thought that acting angry or speaking angrily was not acceptable in polite society. He told me that he tried to commit suicide as a teenager but what he realized was he was really trying to get his parents to take care of him. He had been in and out of "talk therapy" for 15 years.

I suggested that he was angry, "Why wouldn't you be angry when you had to be the adult in your family at such a young age? And why wouldn't you be angry when you were expected to be perfect. No one can be perfect, especially not a child." With that permission he admitted to me and to himself that indeed he was angry. In fact he was furious.

We began to work with his body at the first session. Each time after that we would work with his bodily feelings, emotions and his energy. Quickly he began to feel better. In only a couple of months he began to take better care of himself and to put his own needs first. His voice became stronger, and he had more color in his face and movement in his body. "I feel better each time I come here", he said. "In all my other therapy, we'd talk about my feelings and memories but I was left with them at the end of the session. I felt worse every time and I'd go home and just feel awful. But now it's amazing! I can't believe how much more alive I feel!"

Edward continued to express his emotions, and freed himself from ideas that he was in charge of his adult parents and his grown brother. He went off one medication early in his therapy and with the help of his Core Therapy and a physician consultant, successfully weaned himself off his anti-depressant. The key to becoming alive and free of medication was his continued expressing of his emotions, especially the ones he was taught were socially unacceptable.

In Core Energetics we know that to heal we must go through the lower self, the wounded child, and the so-called negative emotions. Only then can we truly reach our true self which is our Core.

CASE III: Shelly was nine and in 4th grade when a letter arrived from her teacher asking for a parent conference. During that conference that I attended with the parents, at their request, Miss Jackson said that she was sure Shelly had ADD and she should be evaluated and placed on medication. It happened that I knew Shelly's family and I had known Shelly pretty well since she was three years old. Shelly was a very bright energetic child; someone who needed a lot of stimulation both physically and mentally. (I wondered what education the teacher had to make these statements and this diagnosis that she was "sure of".) Shelly had always done fine at school up till now. Later I talked with Shelly about what was going on. "I just hate my teacher," she told me. She doesn't give me enough time to finish my work and if I don't finish I can't go to recess."

Upon further investigation it turned out that Shelly's mother started treating her differently around her 9th birthday. Mother had a difficult family history herself and struggled a lot with her own mother starting at age 9. History was repeating itself as it most often does and that on top of a less than mediocre teacher created Shelly's problems.

I explained to Shelly's Mother that we all - Recreate in Order to Overcome Childhood Hurts. (Pathwork Lecture # 73) Mother understood this and began to make appropriate changes. I spent time with Miss Jackson, who seemed to dislike children, and think they should all behave the same. Miss Jackson did not understand when I suggested that a child who could not sit still or finish projects should not be punished by having to sit still and not be allowed to go to recess. If she was not allowed to go to recess, Shelly therefore could not run off the extra energy she was building up due to both her frustration and her simple biological needs. Obvious to me is children of all ages are not made to sit still for long!

Since Miss Jackson was not open to change, I recommended to the principle that Shelly be moved to another class with another teacher and that no matter what - she should not lose recess as a punishment. I suggested that Shelly have more time for physical activity and not be made to sit for long periods. When this was accomplished Shelly did fine the rest of the year. And her subsequent school years. She is now 23 still energetic, out spoken, her unique beautiful self and doing fine. Were she a child of different parents she would have most likely begun the slippery slope of medication.

CASE IV: When Angie was 14 her beloved sister died and Angie was quickly medicated after she collapsed sobbing on the floor. Big emotions were not allowed in her family, they did not know what to do, the doctors ordered the meds - and her sister was never spoken about again.

Here are Angie's own words."After a two day hospital stay, two emergency room visits, a month of diarrhea and serious weight loss and all medical tests returning as "normal" I found Pam through a friend. Pam was the first (and only) compassionate, caring, loving person of the many general practitioners, G.I. docs and other professionals I had seen. I learned through Pam the connections between emotional and physical pain and illness. My physical symptoms turned out to be directly connected to childhood loss and my repressed emotions [Italics mine] around the illnesses and deaths of my sister and then my mother."

People who had experiences like Angie are why I wrote my latest book, Goodbye Mom, I'll Always Love You. In "Goodbye Mom", I tell kids how to help themselves and adults how to help kids when they have big emotions, such as are usual after the death of a mom. By helping kids feel when the trauma is occurring, they will not have to grow up with huge repressed emotions that cause mental and physical illness. Please do not medicate your kids just because you are uncomfortable! Help them feel.

Al, as his friends, students and colleagues called him, co-created Bioenergetic Analysis (with John Pierrakos) and is best known for his innovative, and vastly important contribution to psychology and all Body Psychotherapies in the US and world wide.

I am saddened by his passing and know that he achieved his task in life; his time had come, so I meet this news with a quiet and grateful heart.

I first met Al when I was a young mother, in the late sixties, when he came to Washington DC to give a workshop. I was enthralled with his knowledge of a method of Body Psychotherapy that I instinctively knew could save my life. And it has.

I went to Al’s office in Connecticut a couple of years later for a private consultation. Al told me that I needed more energy in my pelvis to make it fuller. I was proud of my boy-like pelvis, but when Al told me that I could have more feeling, and much more pleasure, I was willing to allow it to grow! He whacked my back, manipulated my neck and I screamed. I felt great when I left there. I went on to study Bioenergetic Analysis professionally and practice it still, 40 years later.

Many people thought Al to be pretty tough, but on several occasions I felt his soft and vulnerable side. I saw Al cry at a workshop and felt his heart open, as he shed a tear, at his 80th birthday when I went to tell him how grateful I was for his life and all he’d done for me and for the field of psychology.

I visited him at his home in 2006. In his office he had a photograph of himself with his infant son. He also had a photo of his mentor, Reich, holding a baby. Al loved babies and was very clear about how we needed to raise them to create healthy children and later adults. This was an important and wonderful gift he gave us all.

Thank you Al. Your life touched me in deep and profound ways. I will always be grateful. I hold you in my heart and I will never forget you.

Below is an article I wrote in 2006 after visiting Al at his home. Al was then 95.

I had the exhilarating pleasure of spending a few hours with Alexander Lowen, at his home June of 2006.

I had wanted to visit Alexander Lowen for several years, longed to just sit and “hang out” with the genius who wrote all those wonderful books [Al wrote 14 books] that taught me so much. The first one I read was, The Physical Dynamics of Character Structure, now renamed for public consumption, “The Language of the Body”. And wow! What an eye opener for me at the tender age of 23. Lowen was a great writer and his brilliant, easy to read books have changed the course of psychotherapy forever.

Lowen had been one of my early teachers in Bioenergetics. I traveled to New York to work with him in workshops and later in my certification training. My first exposure to his writing came when I was a La Leche League Leader in the mid sixties, and Lowen was the only psychiatrist who wrote about the huge importance of breastfeeding an infant and toddler. I was very impressed by his deep understanding of the significance of breastfeeding on the psychological health of a human being.

Somehow 4 years had slipped by since I first thought of going to spend time with Lowen, and here I was on a very rainy Friday standing with anticipation under a canopy knocking at his door, at his beautiful home in New Cannon, Connecticut. Al, as his friends, students and clients call him, greeted me with a big smile and a spry step. He was happy to see me and invited me to sit in the living room. This was the same room that held a Bioenergetic Exercise Class, led by his wife Leslie, which I had participated in when I was there 23 years ago. Do you remember that joyful picture of Al being held up on Leslie’s feet on the cover of their exercise manual? It’s my favorite.

Al and I sat down and within minutes Al wondered if I wanted to go see his office. I certainly did and we walked around the corner to the small space that looked the exact same way it had when I had my first private (and profound) session with Al, about 35 years ago. No frills - it was furnished with only, a small chair, a bed for kicking and the famous Bioenergetic Stool. A small shelf held a copy of every book Al had written and had been published. He told me there were others he had started and hadn’t yet completed.

On the wall there was a framed word that read…Breathe! The last thing Al said to me at John Pierrakos’ memorial service in Manhattan in early 2001. He had reminded me as he walked away, turning to look back with a smile, “Don’t forget to breathe.” At the age of 90 Al had come in from New Cannon, to pay his respects to John, his colleague, friend and partner in the creation of Bioenergetic Analysis.

The sparsely decorated office spoke that nothing else was needed but Al’s genius and vast experience as he worked with his clients. He told me that he still saw clients in the mornings. Most were Bioenergetic therapists themselves.

Here in Al’s office, I tucked my chin down and put the top part of my head on the mattress and turned a summersault. I got a little dizzy and didn’t like that. “That’s because of the tension in your neck”, he said kindly. He told me, “I do summersaults every morning. It is so important to soften the ego, the thoughts, and to release the tension in your neck.” I noted… ‘This is interesting; within 5 minutes of my arrival Al Lowen has me cheerfully turning a summersault in his office.’ I was game for anything he wanted to show me. I wasn’t going to miss any opportunity to learn from the master. So I turned more, about 5 in all and each time I felt better, less dizzy.

Then Al talked quite a bit about John Pierrakos with me. He recalled that John was able to see energy; auric fields and chakras. Al said that John was a genius who had the gift of sight that helped him see and know things beyond the usual and that he was better able to help people because of his gift. I commented that John taught others to see in that way and John believed we all had that ability. “Even I, I told him, ‘have learned to do some of that HSP perceiving”.

Al talked some about the old days. Sometimes his memory slowed, a bit cloudy, but his clarity about the present and what the fundamentals of body psychotherapy were, never failed.

Al asked me if I wanted to get on the stool. I was up for any experience with Al, and I quickly said yes. Al decided that I may need a refresher on how to use the stool and proceeded to bend backwards over it.

Remember - this is a difficult exercise for most young and middle-aged people to do - and here was Al Lowen at 95 demonstrating the principles of using the stool!

“I do this every day. It’s part of keeping my energy flowing,” he explained. “Put your hands here, [on the handles] open your mouth, breathe, and shout.”

Al shook the handles of the stool, and shouted and screamed and with his permission, I grabbed my camera and took photographs of this momentous occasion. Then he got off the stool and I got on. I hadn’t used the stool in a couple of decades having switched to the roller when it was invented. I could feel that there were some definite advantages of using the stool and wondered if I still had mine somewhere. When I got off the stool, I felt exhilarated and open.

We chatted about the importance of keeping the body flexible, grounded and of opening the breath. Using the stool, (or now the roller) helps stay grounded and out of the head, thus making it less likely to live in the ego. (In Core Energetics terms the ego is part of the mask, and causes us much suffering when used to defend ourselves from our feelings and our Core, our higher self).

We then went on a tour of his home, and Al showed me the bathtub where he started every morning with doing exercises in the water. (John Pierrakos started every day with bathtub exercises too!)

Al's study and bedroom were filled with memorabilia including many photographs of his beloved wife Leslie and Al and Leslie together, alongside photos of his family with his son and then his grandchild.

Al's first, only and long time wife, Leslie Lowen was his help mate in his Bioenergetic work and a very fine therapist in her own right. Leslie led Bioenergetic exercises a couple of times a week in their home, for decades, and wrote the book The Way to Vibrant Health. I attended several of these exercise classes. Al always attended the classes to keep flexible and alive. Once when I was there he got off his tractor and came running in from field, to be sure he got the benefit of his wife's expert leading of the exercises he and John created. Her book is still my favorite to suggest to people who want to see how to do basic Bioenergetic exercises. A touching fact is that Al tenderly took care of Leslie in their home during her dying process while he was in his early 90’s.

I was invited to sit in Al’s Orgone Accumulator which was on the lower floor. The device was left over from Al’s early Reichian days. As students of Wilhelm Reich, both Al and John Pierrakos kept an Orgone Accumulator. John Pierrakos had and used his, in his laboratory at his office on 23rd street NYC, until he passed on. John swore to the accumulator’s efficacy and so did Al on this day.

“Tell me if you feel anything,” Al called down as I sat there feeling something different deep in my cells. “I do”, I called back. He laughed delightedly.

Back in the family room that used to be Leslie's exercise room, Al had a recent wonderful photograph of himself with his dog, which someone had enlarged to poster size. Under the photo a Lowen quote had been printed. “Don’t wait until you’re dead to find your peace.”

Al Lowen has lived a full and remarkable life. Still working to keep flexible and flowing, he is an inspiration to me and to you though his books and his students, even if you never met him in person. For over 50 years Al has been teaching us to live fully in our bodies…now.

This is what I want to leave you with, dear seekers:

Live life as fully as you can now. It’s never too late. Learn to enjoy yourself completely. Your fears can’t stop you, whatever they are and however real they seem!

I still see Al clearly, looking at me with a twinkle in his eye, saying with a smile, “Don’t forget to breathe”!

To find out more about Bioenergetic Analysis and Alexander Lowen go to http://www.bioenergetic-therapy.com

To find out more about Wilhelm Reich and his work go to http://www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org/biography.ht

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