Shen EMO Therapy by munificent Blog entry

Blog: Yoga Path
by munificent

Shen EMO Therapy

Yes, I have been frozen in the solar plexus, and the heart- big disappointment with violation of trust -thrown in for good measure! Kronos my healer, gave me a couple of exercises that I finally followed and I could feel the loosening...Be careful who you let work on your body.

Date: 11/18/2005 5:33:49 AM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 2009 times

EMOTIONS, PAIN AND YOUR BODY

Research has shown us that our bodies react to emotional pain such as fear, grief, shaming, etc, the same way they do to physical pain-- by contracting.
Pain and abuse, whether physical or emotional, triggers an automatic physical contraction called ACPR (Auto-Contractile Pain Response) or "splinting reflex", an involuntary reaction that temporarily tightens or immobilizes an area in your body which is your body's way of minimizing tissue damage, such as from a broken bone's sharp ends.

However, when an experience is severe, or if it continues for a long time, this involuntary reaction stays held "frozen" in your body. Subsequent similar experiences will result in increasing layers of contractions held in our bodies. Over time, our minds may or may not consciously remember painful incidents, but our bodies do. The effects of these contractions are tangible, often visible as tension which distorts our natural appearance and hampers our mobility.

These internally trapped, involuntary contractions affect not only our physical health and our appearance, but how we feel and react to present situations. They are often responsible for many conditions labeled 'psychosomatic'. The contractions hold the memories of past events as well as the decisions we made about ourselves and our life during those experiences.

Most of us carry wounds today from earlier experiences, and have developed ways of relating based on our reactions to and our conclusions about those experiences. Many of us have had physical trauma such as accidents, injuries, or surgery, or suffered from traumatic births or childhoods, lost loved ones or had abusive relationships.

Most of us have worked very hard to understand the past events that shape our current responses to life, only to find that learning the origin of our feelings does not always free us, and we still have to deal with old emotional reactions that keep tripping us up. We are all familiar with finding ourselves or others "in the grip of fear","numbing out", "exploding in a fit of rage", "overwhelmed by grief" or "reacting just like my parents did."

Until and unless they are released, these feelings and behavior patterns originating from past experiences are retained in our bodies, where they strongly influence how we relate, how we feel, and how we live our lives today.

It is the buried, trapped emotions birthed in our past and held in our bodies which drive us to think or say or feel or do things we wish we hadn't. Much of what appears to be dysfunctional behavior is our inner self exacerbating painful emotions in intense attempts to throw off these internal contractions and heal.

Research has shown that these deep, bodily stored contractions (tension) also adversely affect the muscles, organs, nerves, glands and tissues at the specific sites where the emotional trauma was experienced and often lead to the onset of physical disorders.

Until recently, how this happens was not clear, but we now know that unreleased tensional contraction in the body will impede normal blood flow, thus interfering with normal metabolic functioning such as cells receiving nutrients and releasing waste products.

For example, feelings of shame and low-self worth have been frequently found to be a fundamental component in prostate, feminine and menstrual difficulties as well as sexua| dysfunction. Long term fear or anger has been linked to stomach and digestive problems as well as insomnia and eating disorders. Retained grief is known to constrict the area around the chest and is often a significant factor in many respiratory conditions, heart problems, and some chronic migraines and headaches when constriction at the vagus nerve and/or the baroreceptors interferes with blood flow return from the head.

In fact, studies have shown that a high percentage of patients in cardiac units have suffered major grief six months to a year before having a heart attack.

The immune system is also affected by grief as contractions around the heart can suppress the activity of the thymus gland, which activates the T-cells.

SHEN Therapy offers an elegant solution to Fritz Perls' theory that emotions have a life cycle with a beginning and a natural ending but, when not completed, remain inside us affecting everything we do.

A CERTIFIED SHEN THERAPIST is skilled at dissolving these physio-emotional contractions held in the body at sites of old or recent trauma.
This is done in a respectful and non-invasive way by directing the naturally occurring biofield, or chi energy (pronounced "chee" and sometimes spelled ch'i or qi) between my hands which relaxes the contraction and lifts the emotion to the surface where it dissipates and is safely cast off. These precise and powerful hands-on techniques of SHEN Therapy have been developed, tested and refined over more than 25 years of clinical research and professional application.

SHEN Therapy can be experienced in a private session by appointment with me, with another certified SHEN therapist, with a supervised SHEN therapy Intern, or in a workshop environment. A short series of SHEN Therapy sessions is very effective for many physical and emotional conditions, and will forward any current therapy you may be involved in.