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Body and Soul Retrieval: Process-Oriented Trauma Approach Focusing on Body and Mindfulness

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Body and Soul Retrieval: Process-Oriented Trauma Approach Focusing on Body and Mindfulness Body and Soul Retrieval: Process-Oriented Trauma Approach Focusing on Body and Mindfulness A Final Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Diploma Program and Master’s Degree in Process Work by Ken Matsumura Process Work Institute, Portland, OR February, 2013 Copyright © Ken Matsumura 2013 All Rights Reserved ii Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2: Literature Review: Introduction to Body-Oriented Trauma Theories ......... 4 Why Body? And What Does Body Mean? ........................................................ 6 A Brief History of Dreambody .......................................................................... 7 Body-Oriented Trauma Therapy ...................................................................... 10 Process-Oriented Trauma Approach ................................................................ 13 Contribution to the Field, Comparison Between Process Work and Others .... 15 Chapter 3: Psychotherapy and Trauma Now ............................................................... 18 Brief History of Therapy for Trauma ............................................................... 18 Trauma Therapy Goes Through a Transition ................................................... 19 New Approaches .............................................................................................. 21 Chapter 4: Trauma and the Body ................................................................................. 23 What Does Trauma Do to Our Physiological Body? ....................................... 23 Somatic Memory and Neurological System .................................................... 24 Autonomic Nervous System ............................................................................ 25 Somatic Nervous System: Muscles, Movement, and Kinesthetic Memory ..... 26 Emotions and Body .......................................................................................... 27 Chapter 5: Trauma and Mindfulness ............................................................................ 28 What Is Mindfulness? ...................................................................................... 28 Why Mindfulness? ........................................................................................... 29 Mindfulness and Body ..................................................................................... 29 iii Chapter 6: Somatic Trauma Approach ........................................................................ 31 Safety ............................................................................................................... 31 Body-Oriented or Somatic Trauma Approaches .............................................. 32 Body Awareness .............................................................................................. 32 Chapter 7: Basic Theory of Process Work ................................................................... 40 Dreambody to Process Work ........................................................................... 40 Primary and Secondary Process, and Edge ...................................................... 40 Deeper Awareness to Sentient ......................................................................... 43 Field and Role .................................................................................................. 43 Chapter 8: Body in Process Work: What Is Dreambody? ........................................... 45 Dreambody Into Channels ............................................................................... 45 Body in Double Signal and Role ..................................................................... 47 Three Different Levels of the Body ................................................................. 48 Body and Mindfulness ..................................................................................... 50 Chapter 9: Safety in Process Work .............................................................................. 53 Feedback Oriented ........................................................................................... 53 Facilitator / Therapist’s Awareness ................................................................. 53 Pacing Primary Process .................................................................................... 54 Spaciousness .................................................................................................... 55 Brake in Process Work ..................................................................................... 55 Dreaming Up .................................................................................................... 56 Awareness of the Field and Roles .................................................................... 58 iv Chapter 10: Trauma and Field, Roles and Body .......................................................... 59 Victim .............................................................................................................. 59 Perpetrator ........................................................................................................ 60 Bystander and Witness ..................................................................................... 62 Protector ........................................................................................................... 63 Deep Democracy to All Roles in the Trauma Field and Body ........................ 64 Chapter 11: Process-Oriented Somatic Trauma Approach .......................................... 66 Before Process-Oriented .................................................................................. 66 Process-Oriented Safety Principle ................................................................... 67 3 Stages ............................................................................................................ 68 Body Awareness in Process Work ................................................................... 70 Mindfulness ...................................................................................................... 71 Primary, Secondary, and Edge in Trauma ....................................................... 72 Body and Roles in Trauma .............................................................................. 72 Using Therapist’s Body ................................................................................... 75 Chapter 12: Deeper Meaning in Trauma and Spirituality ............................................ 76 Doorway to Dreaming ...................................................................................... 77 Community Process: Dreambody as a Field .................................................... 78 Eldership .......................................................................................................... 79 Life Myth ......................................................................................................... 80 Chapter 13: Conclusion ................................................................................................ 82 References .................................................................................................................... 84 v 1 Chapter 1: Introduction There are several reasons why I wrote this paper for my final project. First, it is about myself and without knowing it consciously, I suffered from trauma. I realize I needed to somehow heal myself, and my recovery process or retrieval of my soul led me to the place where I am now. On the way of this process, I began to know Process Work and had some sessions, yoga, vipassana meditation, and eventually became a clinical psychologist. My master’s thesis was about “Roles of Body and Mindfulness in Clinical Psychology.” The second reason is that nowadays it seems the body has increased attention in psychotherapy and trauma. Somatic and mindful approaches seem to be close to what Process Work does. I will discuss somatic and mindful trauma approaches in chapters 3, 4, and 5, and I explore in detail about somatic and mindful parts of Process Work in chapters 9, 10, and 11. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) has had much influence worldwide as a psychotherapeutic modality. Somatic and Mindfulness approaches are now integrated in CBT, such as Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) (Crane, 2008). In Jon Kabat-Zin’s (1990) Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), the body plays an important role. One of the leading experts in trauma, Bessel van der Kolk, addresses how the body plays an important role in trauma and its therapy and recovery (van der Kolk, 2006, 2011). Third, I had a question to myself of how does Process Work link to those other somatic or mindful approaches? Although Process Work has developed to go beyond 2 being just psychotherapy, I felt it was also important to think about both connection and difference with other modalities. I believe here there must be some contribution from what Process Work does and can offer to other approaches. We could learn a lot from cutting edge research from other modalities, too. So, my paper poses a few questions. What is special about Process Work when it approaches trauma? What does “body” mean in the context of Process Work? How can we see mindfulness from a Process Work perspective? Trauma is, I believe, not just a tragedy. For those traumatized, though it looks like a tragedy, from the perspective of Process Work there must be some
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