Vassilis Christodoulou - Body Psychotherapy

Do not think it strange and do not be dismayed if someone tells you they cannot feel their heart at all. Gently and lovingly ask them what they can feel, whatever it is. The mere fact that you are showing concern for them may be enough for the time being. We humans can almost always understand – even if for reasons of self-protection we do not admit it to ourselves – when another person is really there for us. Then we feel something, and that something is love. Yes, we show love when we are there, in an absolute way, giving our full attention to the other person. At that moment, in the therapy session, our complete giving of ourselves to the patient means only love for that person. Our total focus on the other person is love, and this love is God. This does not mean that I always agree with the other person and do what they want. It is one thing to love another person and another to become that person’s stooge. As the Church Fathers say: ‘love is the highest of all the virtues, while discernment is higher still.’

Now maintain the contact you have established and ask the patient to keep their eyes closed and maintain that contact with their heart. Whatever kind of contact they have, now ask them to feel your heart. Can they feel it? Can they see it? And in what way can they see it? Do not be surprised: at moments like this it is not unusual for patients to talk to you about their spiritual experiences. Rather it is to be expected… When we escape the tyranny of the mind and enter the realm of the heart, the spirit and the body, then we enter the timeless Now, the Present which is our true home. It is here that we can make true contact with other people as somato-psycho-spiritual entities.

All patients, in their own time, usually make contact and see the heart that is inviting them to enter into a personal encounter. If you do not feel that you are fully in the Present and totally focused on the person who is trusting you with the opening of their heart, then do not go on. This process is more than a mere exercise. You should devote to it the time that you yourself really need. In order to open up, a heart requires respect and truth. The heart is not like the mind, which plays games with words so as to hide from the truth. This heart-to-heart encounter can take place at some other time, when perhaps you feel more prepared, so that the patient, in their open heart, can sense the presence of a heart that will be with them for ever – a heart that connects them with THE HEART OF THE ONE and brings them into contact with the forgotten memories of the unity of all things. The patient obtains the thing that all people need, the thing they were deprived of as a child or did not get as much of as they needed, and no longer feels this deficit in their heart.

True relationships vs. dependent relationships

A person who is not instructed in the secrets of the heart might believe that a connection of this kind will create a relationship of dependence. Such a relationship does indeed develop, and this happens when the patient, as an adult and on an adult level, develops such a strong connection with another person that it is a completely novel experience and, wishing to keep what they have found and recognised as something they need, they become ‘hooked’ on the other person in an often intolerable way. In the body therapy process, when the patient experiences a deep connection, this connection will lead them to the primary deficit that was created in the ‘then’ of their childhood, which is experienced in the ‘now’ of the therapy session. The therapy always takes place in the present and when the patient’s needs are covered by the therapist in this ‘now’, they have no need of any kind of dependent relationship in order to function. This ‘novel’ sensation that I have mentioned recurs every time the patient comes into contact with an object of dependence. Here we are dealing with the self-repeating vicious circle ‘dependence → enthusiasm → rejection → depression → hate → new dependence’ or the similar one of ‘dependence →mythification → enthusiasm → demythification → demonisation’ and the endless process of making connections without the patient being able to establish a real relationship. Real relationships always require both freedom and commitment, which represent another stage of development.

It is not uncommon for patients of mine, in the pain they experience on discovering a new connection with me that might lead them to have a new kind of relationship, to react negatively at first by saying something like: ‘Yes, I feel okay about you holding me… it's nice to be hugged and to have someone you can turn to for support when you need it. But I don't want it, I don't want to get used to something I know I won't be able to have when I leave this place. I won't be able to find it…’ The only thing I ask of them is to put their trust in the therapeutic process and I explain to them that what they are experiencing now, as adults, and is causing them pain because they recognise the deficit they have, is experienced in such a way during the therapy session that it is recorded in their system as if they had experienced it at the stage of their development which is under examination. The experience will be recorded in their system in such a way as to eliminate the deficit. A similar thing occurs in the treatment of accident cases. When the treatment is over, the patient knows that an accident took place but, despite this knowledge, feels that it never took place. The same thing often happens in phobia cases. For example, recently I was told by a fifty-year-old woman who had been afraid of dogs all her life ever since she was chased by one when she was eight years old: ‘I remember the incident, I remember that I used to be afraid even of small and completely harmless puppies but now it's just a vague memory that causes me no fear at all. I remember that I used to be afraid; now I no longer feel any fear… Now I play with dogs and stroke them as if I had always done it.’

Let us return to the process of making contact with the heart. When someone makes contact with your heart, they can often – in fact, it would be no exaggeration to say almost always – see it. It might look red to them. It might look red with a yellow halo. It might look a pure yellow or gold. Maintain that person’s contact with your heart for a short while and then ask them how they feel and what their own heart looks like. Some people will find it difficult at first to see their heart. Others will find it easier. To some people their heart will look black, dark or slightly red… The most important thing is that they should establish contact with it. Then we can go on to make a connection.

Each time you breathe, press my hand a little harder and do it as if it were a pump. Try and pump energy out of my heart into your own. Look at your heart now: it is not alone. Look at what it’s like now that your heart is not alone. Look at how you feel… keep hold of that feeling, it’s yours… Your heart is not alone. Now it knows what it’s like not to be alone, now it can trust… Keep hold of that feeling, it’s your heart. Look at what colour your heart is now. Is your heart now the same colour as mine? Now your heart knows, wherever it is, that there will always be another heart it can connect with…

Often, people who have a certain amount of spirituality or believe in God will speak to you of the awe they feel when they make a connection, and they will often tell you afterwards that they felt the presence of Christ, the Virgin Mary or a saint they particularly revered. People who do not believe in God are surprised when they have spiritual experiences. At first they try to deny that they had the experience. Later, however, they find that they cannot deny the obvious. The truth, their own truth, is so powerful that it eventually imposes itself.