Things in The Body. Andrey Ermoshin

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СКАЧАТЬ this does not mean that in “the domestic’ tradition there is no other attitude to the perceived.

      The Orthodox Church, especially the Byzantine monastic tradition of Hesychasm (sacred silence), which was developed in the environment of Russian monasticism, offered to be very attentive to what was formed in the mind of a believer.

      I was greatly impressed by the topographic structure of the descriptions of «mind preservation’ by the Christian ascetics. Long before the emergence of any psychotherapy, they described the phases of entering into a passionate state and their ways out of dead-end experiences. Those experiences often resembled plants and animals.

      We know such expressions as «seeds’ or «roots’ of passion. In the V century the monk Neil of Sinai wrote about «the foxes that live in the soul of the vindictive, and the animals that hide in the indignant heart’ or «as the water is perturbed by a falling stone, so the heart of a man by a bad word.» «As the smoke from smoldering straw bothers the eyes, so the rancor bothers the mind during the prayer’3. These descriptions are more than just beautiful literary images, they are documentary evidence of the experience of internal work.

      The image of perception of the soul and passion is found in the following excerpt by the monk Hesychius: «Distinctive in the old Testament, the high priest decoration (a pure gold plate on the chest, with the inscription: «Holiness to the Lord’, – ex. 28, 36) has a conversion of heart purity which inspires us «to heed the plate of our heart, so that, if it is black from sin, (if we can find it) we should hurry to clean it with our tears, repentance and prayer.4»

      «From incessant prayer the air in our minds is pure of dark clouds and winds of evil spirits.5" The concepts of purity or blackening of the soul, the quality of the «mental air’ in us are important for us and will be repeatedly mentioned in the book.

      Sinful thoughts «come to the door of the heart and, finding it is not protected by mind, one after the other comes in, each in its own time. When one of these […] thoughts, rising to the heart, enters it, then brings with it a whole swarm of impure thoughts and, thus darkens the mind and heart, irritates the body and attracts it to the shameful deeds.6" The «Swarm of impure thoughts’ is not just a comparison, it is a documentary description of what is happening.

      “Objectification’ of sensations in psychotherapy

      To continue the conversation about schools, dealing with sensations, the method of bioenergotherapy (BEST), developed by E. I. Zuyev (St. Petersburg) should be mentioned first. BEST, as no other manner of work, enables a person to transfer to the practitioner (the operator) the nuances of body sensations. The peculiarity of BEST is that in the process of massage, which is more than just the mechanical interaction between the practitioner and the patients (which, rather, should be called work on the movement of sensations in the body) the latter are asked “strange’ questions: about the consistency of movement in the body “sensations’, the color of the inner space and other characteristics of the “body scheme’. The patient, for example, reports that their head is filled during the manipulation. “With what?” – the operator asks. The patient: “Air (water, milk, resin, lead, etc.)”. The practitioner holds the shoulder blade and asks again: “What am I holding?” The response is: “A chicken”.

      Zuyev’s followers gently call the evocation of those felt images to be the product of «illusions’, the «suggestive effect’. They use this curious feedback to adjust their operational efforts, as well as to divert the patient’s attention towards the process of performing manual therapy procedures. Representatives of the BEST school also suggest: «The immersion in figurative reality is an integral part of deep diagnosis, since the patient «gives’ those images that are embedded in the structures of the subconscious. The creative application of the knowledge of psychoanalysis has limitless possibilities here.7»

      We can say that the psychocatalysis of body sensations is the development of BEST ideas in the direction of the psychotherapeutic usage of the ability of man to recognize the «schemes’ of a body.

      Spontaneous detection of sensations

      “A stone in soul’ is one of those images most often experienced by patients, but it’s not the only one. “Jellyfish’ or “octopuses’ of fear, sitting in the stomach and launching their “tentacles’ in all parts of the body. “Clouds’ of anxiety in the chest, forcing the patients to wring their hands and run around the room. A “mass’ of anxiety, bursting in the forehead, preventing them from sleeping. “Lumps’ of grievances in the chest, preventing them from breathing. “Balls of despair in the throat, squeezing tears from the eyes (“globus hystericus” in Latin). “Brain-eating snakes’ of doubt in the head and “steel plates’ of situation control in the back of the head, raising blood pressure to pre-stroke levels. “Lead shoulder straps’ of responsibility hanging on the shoulders, flattening the spine. Patients often describe their sensations in these terms.

      The objectification of feelings in artistic speech

      In everyday and poetic language and in proverbs, one can meet such expressions as: “my problems swell my head’, or “cats scratch my heart’. Joy is usually described as big, and grief as heavy. Doctors speak about the “neurasthenic helmet’, though it is not known how to get rid of it.

      It is possible to give a lot of quotes from popular songs, for example:

      «Don’t go to him, don’t go, he’s got a granite stone in his chest.»

      Here is an example from a novel: «A young woman is standing in a dark and cold hallway, near a tepid stove, warming her hands, waiting to be called for dinner- and, having pursed her dried up lips, thinking… about what? About Rodion? It is all nonsense, that she has poisoned him, nonsense! But what if she really has poisoned him… my God! What must she feel? What tombstone is lying on her secretive soul!8»

      There is no need to add to the list of excerpts because the reader will be able to recall such collocations, used to describe sensations in the body during the experience of various emotional states.

      Snakes in the head is not a sign of schizophrenia

      Being a student of the clinical school, I used to perceive the evidence of patients about their feelings as a part of the information needed to help establish the diagnosis and verify the effectiveness of the treatment. If patients told me about the “daggers in their backs’, “the devil on their shoulders’, “worms in their heads’, I thought about senesthopathy, and schizophrenia.

      Today, while working through «a given’ energy structure rather than an innate genetic one, I often met the descriptions of «strange’ feelings experienced by my patients. For me, the style of such descriptions is important. It can be epileptoid-photographic, cycloid-colorful, or schizoid-abstruse, or organically flattened. Knowledge of the patient’s character remains essential, but no less important is the fact that there is practically nobody who is unable to describe what is felt. The body experience, (or «experiences of the body’) is a phenomenon which is quite СКАЧАТЬ