Categories: Health

Alternative therapies: Bioenergetic analysis and body psychotherapy

Bioenergetic analysis therapy is a form of treatment with a unique technique. Each patient’s problems are approached considering one’s energetic system and the way it affects the psyche and using methods of verbal therapy.

The intention behind this form of therapy is to provide the patient with self-knowledge and self-fulfillment, which is achieved through the process of unblocking profound physical tensions that are connected to unconscious emotional patterns.

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Body psychotherapy

Bioenergetic Analysis is based upon the work of Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian Psychoanalyst that developed the idea of a “muscular armour”, the expression of the personality in the way the body moves. This form of body psychotherapy also contemplated theories such as transference, countertransference, Oedipal issues, dreams and slips of the tongue. It was developed by two of Reich’s students, Alexander Lowen and John Pierrakos.

During a bioenergetic analysis session, the therapist and the patient will work on emotions like hatred, fear, sadness, and rage, which may trigger aggression and go as deep as unblocking emotions from before birth. The blocks are treated with a combination of bioenergetically designed physical exercises, affective expressions and palpitation of the muscular tensions.