As a student of Espritedu with Jo-Anne Corbeil and Barbara Dewar, I believe wholeheartedly in the importance of the Mind-Body-Spirit connection. Through my own therapeutic journey, I have experienced some body sensations that speak to me of a younger time. A time when I first entered this world. A time when my spirit experienced terror and yearning. Terror of death and yearning for love. These primitive, core feelings of origin are surfacing and being processed within the safety of my therapeutic community, composed of: therapist; experiential therapy group; Espritedu Training of Psychotherapy Associates; dialoguing about Espritpublications and reflecting through its networking diary; and participating in Midlife Retreats conducted by Barbara Dewar. Recently, I have experienced more frequent moments of infant sensations. I am unsure why I am experiencing these infant sensations more often, but assume that this is part of my therapeutic journey. Although terrified to expose my vulnerabilities and risk the judgement of others, I take courage in the pioneering spirit of the Espritpublications Women. Thus, I wish to share my story of my embodied infant-body experiences, of my terror and yearning.

My first memories of infant-body sensation came from a personally challenging exercise generated in group therapy many years ago. I recall my therapist asking me to raise my arms as I lay on my back. Embarrassed at being witnessed in this bodywork, but recognizing the need to process my childhood traumas, I lay struggling to engage. Raising my arms and voicing my need for my mother was sheer agony, the breaking of years of my "myth-ical" defence: That I Do Not Need Anyone!! By "myth-ical", I mean that my defence was to generate the myth that I was independent and capable of caring for myself. Buirski and Haglund (2001) describe this as "the patient's striving for psychological health" and attempting "to maintain a precarious sense of self-cohesion" (Buirski & Haglund, 2001, p. 21) in adapting to difficult childhood experiences.

I lay struggling, with my hands reaching out and my voice pleading for my mother to come to me. Initially, I used words to call my mother: "Help", "Mom", "Somebodyyyyy", "Where are you?" I could feel my arms reaching, demanding, begging to be picked up. Then, as I became more engaged, I had no words left (pre-verbal), just crying and moaning. I relived the pure agony of the grief of knowing no one was coming and I felt hopelessness engulf me. I remember the vague sensation that there were walls, or bars, around me. During that exact moment, my conscious mind told me "crib", and I knew deep in my bones that that was me as an infant, left alone, crying, vacant, unmet, in a crib. Kaplan (1978) would likely describe this stage of development as 3-6 months of age. These body memories are still difficult to discuss, as the shame washes over me. But I am not so paralyzed, nor so terrorized by these memories, or this fact. Buirski and Haglund (2001) would describe this as due to the "transforming" of my "organizing principles". Organizing principles are created when "people organize and give meaning to the recurrent patterns or themes that emerge from their formative relationships with caregivers and other significant players in their lives" (Buirski & Haglund, 2001, p. 15).

Recently, my struggle with Love, in shifting my organizing principles from "I Am Not Loveable" to "I Am Loveable", and further to "I Can Love and Receive Love", has surfaced numerous infant-body sensations. Experiencing my head as unbearably heavy, where my hands must hold it up or it will fall forward, (probably an age range of 0-2 months), is a clear infant-body sensation that has occurred often in therapy. During a recent session, my eyes became quite foggy. I blinked frequently to improve my sight, then realized this was an infant sensation, and allowed the moment to be. As I acknowledged this, I felt a strong sensation to move my legs, then, to lower myself to the floor. I sat on my folded knees, then rocked forward on my hands. I felt my arms shaky, and bending weirdly at the elbows. I remember reflecting that this is the sensation of an infant before she can crawl, excited to be "on all fours", but not able to "put it into motion".

As I write this, I cannot recall the exact details of the conversation, but dialogue was occurring with my therapist. What I do recall about many of our recent sessions is a sense of opening myself up to my therapist's enormous love, and experiencing the struggle to allow myself to see and feel and absorb her love and respect for me.

My interpretation of these infant-body sensations surfacing is that my therapeutic work during these moments is reaching deep into the core beginnings of my spirit, trying to "make sense" (Buirski and Haglund, 2001) of an unloving environment. To change my core (archaic) organizing principles, I am experiencing the beginning of time for me: the time of the origin of my terror, the time of the origin of my yearnings. The building blocks of my myths are being explored and reorganized. Affect experiences of love, compassion, respect and connectedness are being absorbed and integrated during my infant-body sensations within the context of a primary selfobject relationship (Buirski & Haglund, 2001, p. 151).

A final comment to the reader: although I speak about transforming organizing principles, intersubjective psychotherapy, as read in Making Sense Together: The Intersubjective Approach to Psychotherapy indicates that we will always carry the initially developed (archaic) organizing principles within ourselves (Buirski & Haglund, 2001, p. 17); there is no magic wand here.

However, these principles will constantly adjust, and become less prominent as the reorganizing continues with loving, connected selfobject interactions, and new organizations of experience form. To explain this in my experiential terms of the Mind-Body-Spirit connection: As I struggle in therapy with my pain of feeling worthless or empty (this is the Body), I can gradually absorb that my therapist is present, and that we have a loving and respectful exchange of attunement (here is the Spirit), and truly integrate these loving experiences to create my own conscious and unconscious beliefs (voilà, the Mind) that I am loveable, and loving.

References

Buirski, Peter & Haglund, Pamela (2001). Making Sense Together: The Intersubjective Approach to Psychotherapy. Northvale: Jason Aronson Inc.
Kaplan, Louise J. (1978). Oneness and Separateness From Infant to Individual. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc.