Here are several valid reasons for self-monitoring your internal sensations. Some people have physical problems that can be exacerbated by emotional problems or that are caused by the interaction between emotions and the body. People who suffer from psychosomatic illnesses or those whose illnesses lead to more emotional stress need to identify, at the earliest stage possible, internal physical processes in order to control them and divert their consequences.

Physical symptoms are used to diagnose anxiety, panic, and depression. Palpitations, dizziness, and sweaty palms indicate anxiety; whereas, the inability to sleep, exhaustion, or lack of energy help to identify depression. Depersonalization, another disorder from which certain people suffer, also has a physical aspect. In such cases, people are often disconnected from their bodies and unaware of them. A conscious awareness of the body sensations leads to emotional and physical health. However, this consciousness should be balanced, because an overemphasis on physicality is no better than a total lack of emphasis, for example, when a person is terrified by every little twinge.

If people prone to panic attacks learn to identify physical symptoms that alert them to the possibility that an attack will follow, they can manage it better. In order to teach people who suffer from hypertension how to handle their anger, they must first identify body signals that indicate they are angry. Those who suffer from unreality and detachment need to learn a gentle, non-threatening way to connect to their bodies and the feelings within them,

Biofeedback is one important way to teach body awareness. However, these machines and the technicians who operate them are not always available or feasible. In addition, if people learn how to self-monitor, they will not be solely dependent on an outside source for information about their own bodies. Here are some exercises that will help you develop self-monitoring skills.

1. Body Scanning:

Stand up or lie down. Name each part of your body, starting with the feet or toes, and describe it with a word or phrase. This exercise can be done in two ways.

a. Describe the sensation in the body part (tingling).

b. Use descriptive words, such as “cold” or “hard” to describe body part.

All answers are acceptable including “I feel nothing there.”

2. Relaxation Exercises:

a. Ask each body part to relax.

b. Tense each part and then allow it to relax.

3. Running in Place:

Run in place for one full minute as fast as possible (Do only with physician’s approval). Then lie down on a bed, mat or floor. Experience sensations in your body. This exercise allows you to get in touch with blocks in your body as well as problems with breathing and energy flow.

4. Meditation:

Begin in short sessions, 5 to 10 minutes, set an alarm clock, sit comfortably, eyes closed, focused on breathing, let all thoughts drift away, on each in breath say “in”, and on each out breath say “out”, the objective is to follow the breath in and out of the body, observe it, but do not control it.

5. Draw Your Body:

Make a drawing of your physical body. Mark an “X” where you feel tension. Place a “Y” where you feel relaxed. Place a “0” where you feel numb or have no feeling.

HAVE FUN, Karyne

Work with your body’s energy — if you are to be vital and alive. The energy flow in your body should make a figure eight. Up one side from the ground, cross at the solar plexus, travel up the other side, cross again at the soft palate, in the mouth, and go back down. Why doesn’t it work like this for many of us. We have one half of the figure eight or the other. The energy gets blocked for some of us in the upper body, chest, shoulders and head, and then for others in the bottom, the legs or pelvis. For the most bang for your buck, and by this I mean life energy, you need your whole body. If all your energy is upper body, you are going to be bossy and controlling, and want things your way. Not a lot of fun to be with for others. If you are bottom-heavy, you will be stuck, you are over-planted and don’t take enough risks. For those people with full body energy flow, life is full and exciting. Become one of them by freeing up your energy and making it travel through your full life circuit.

Yours truly, Karyne Wilner, PsyD

The goal of Core Energetics is to open the heart and experience love. This is accomplished by helping individuals remove the obstacles embedded in their personalities, heal their splits, explore their emotions at the level of truth, experience love throughout their beings, and actively cope with life. Few other body therapies integrate spirituality and the universal life force into their basic theoretical formulations and similarly, spiritual therapies rarely give emphasis to action methodologies or focus upon energy or the body. An innovator, John Pierrakos, MD, the founder of Core Energetics, broke with both traditions when he combined spiritual, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral elements, creating a psychotherapeutic system capable of mobilizing potent forces for change. The therapy which resulted strengthens the transformational process and enables people to attain love and pleasure in their lives, as well as a deeper level of truth.

Clients can expect to achieve a deeper connection with the spiritual self, the resolution of specific problems in living, and the transformation of destructive patterns of behavior. Movement, action, catharsis, and honest expression are the essential tools of this therapeutic method.

Next post: Every Body Has the Answer

Core Energetics focuses upon the life force and considers energy to be the basic building block of human life. To work with energy, Core Energetic therapists employ movement in the session. Like a mosaic in motion, therapist and client move in relationship to each other, often engaged in physical exercises in tandem. Both are on their feet for much of the session, involved in cathartic release, grounding exercises, charging and discharging, and procedures to produce vibratory motion in the body.

Clients learn to use their sensory modalities to experience the distinction between blocked energy and energetic streamings. The return of a natural flow to the body enables them to become aware of forces beyond themselves, to feel fully alive, to experience potency and assertiveness, to explore their sexuality, to improve their physical health, to love others, and to free themselves from undesirable ways of being and dysfunctional behavior patterns.

John Pierrakos posits that every living substance pulsates with energy: cells, organs, and muscles expand with pleasure and contract with pain. Health, both mental and physical, is dependent upon energy flowing throughout the organism. People have an energetic field, called the aura, around their bodies. When the aura portrays stagnant energy due to contractions and fear of movement, disease processes may follow.

This topic will be continued in my next post, “The Core Energetic Therapy Process.”

Dear Friends of Core Energetics,

The Essence of Core Energetics